I Googled for something completely different, but found your page…and have to say thanks. nice read….

U.S. state department has been consistently, repeatedly affirmimng the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and property from where they were evicted. If Israel would do that, 90% of the problem would be solved.

If we should at all intervene in the middle-east, it should be to compel Israel to obey international law and the American ideals. That way it would a more peaceful world. Do you support an economic embargo on Isreal? You must if you are for a peaceful change as opposed to terrorism.

America might not be an island, but no-one’s advocating isolationism. They just don’t know why we need to have soldiers and bases in over 130 countries that we can’t afford.

It’s a false concept. Assuming that stopping the sending of money and soldiers to foreign countries makes you an ‘isolationist’ is about as valid as saying that you’re not ’supporting the troops’ if you’re against the war.

Are we Americans duty-bound to defend Israel? (that’s what Jimmie seems to mean by Jews). Are we also duty bound to defend other countris as well? Jimmie apparently believes so.

And thats why he is dead-set against Ron Paul — because Ron believes that Americans should not die to save other countries. He is a true patriot who believes that America is for the Americans.

In theory. Not in reality. To quote:

However, the operation of the gold standard in reality caused many problems. When gold left a nation, the ideal balancing effect would not occur immediately. Instead, recessions and unemployment would often occur. This was because nations with a balance of payments deficit often neglected to take appropriate measures to stimulate economic growth. Instead of altering tax rates or increasing expenditures - measures which should stimulate growth - governments opted to not interfere with their nations’ economies. Thus, trade deficits would persist, resulting in chronic recessions and unemployment.

With the outbreak of the first world war in 1914, the international trading system broke down and nations valued their currencies by fiat instead, i.e. governments took their currencies off the gold standard and simply dictated the value of their money. Following the war, some nations attempted to reinstate the gold standard at pre-war rates, but drastic changes in the global economy made such attempts futile. Britain, which had previously been the world’s financial leader, reinstated the pound at its pre-war gold value, but because its economy was much weaker, the pound was overvalued by approximately 10%. Consequently, gold swept out of Britain, and the public was left with valueless notes, creating a surge in unemployment. By the time of the second world war, the inherent problems of the gold standard became apparent to governments and economists alike.

A gold standard is not a magic bullet. As a student of the financial booms and busts in American history should know.

As for the “competing currencies” argument, sure: let other currencies compete. If you want to accept Liberty Dollars in payment for goods and services, you should be free to. But I, for one, like knowing that when I walk into a store, I don’t have to worry about whether they accept my particular kind of currency. And as a business owner, I appreciate not having to decide which of myriad currencies to accept — and how to spot counterfeits in all of them — in order to do business.

Extraordinary harangue! Hope your BP (blood pressure) has had a chance to settle down!
Please don’t take the following the wrong way.
I am sure most here are impressed at your verbiage. I am and I don’t even share your philosophies. And I surely don’t intend to enrage you any further than someone else did, unintentionally. but hear me out.

I am disconcerted that notwitstanding your prowess in imparting your cogitations and apprehensions, any points you may have wanted to get through are lost in that jeremiad. All that beams across is a long-drawn-out sequel of ad-homs toward one individual that you exalted to Joan of Arc.

You have a great talent, but can you be a little more concise, less supercilious and contumelious in the future?

Sincerely,

a commoner

I make no promises in that regard. I do promise to respond to your criticisms.

I still don’t quite get why you can’t point out the errors here in the comment thread, where they become part of the permanent record associated with the post. But whatever.

my e-mail address is seanaqui@yahoo.com

Or is this just an excercise to get me to waste my time, as a little joke to demostrate to me how pointless it is to attempt to do this?

I’m not 12. I have neither the time nor the inclination to play mind games with some commenter I don’t know.

What Jim S. said. Unilateral disarmament isn’t really a solution.

His opposition to NAFTA is not based on infringements of sovereignity, it’s based on it’s unconstutionality. Congress and ONLY CONGRESS regulates foreign trade, not the President.

Congress approved NAFTA and the other agreements. After all, who do you think negotiates trade treaties? The president. Who must then get approval from Congress. That’s one way Congress regulates trade.

You and I disagree about the benefits of free trade and aren’t likely to ever agree because I don’t think it’s possible to have free trade on anything approaching an equal basis with countries that have no environmental regulations, no labor rights, wages a tiny fraction of our minimum wage (And an even smaller fraction of an American middle class wage.) and no respect for intellectual property.

Well, my position tends to be that such things are part of what needs to be negotiated into the framework. It’s irrational to expect third-world nations to suddenly meet first-world wage and environmental standards. It’s equally irrational to expect first-world nations to try to compete against third-world wages and environmental standards without offsetting advantages elsewhere. But those are known issues. If we agree to a framework that doesn’t take those into consideration, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

No, it doesn’t.

> China, for example, has advantages based on a lack of
> regulation that results in an extremely polluted environment,

This is a myth. Go there. They have their problems, but it’s not as severe as it’s made out to be.

> wages that the U.S. can’t possibly match and a manipulated
> currency.

We have the most manipulated currency on the planet. China has absolutely NOTHING on us with regard to currency manipulation.

> The United States eliminating tariffs isn’t going to change any
> of that.

And, prey tell, what will CAFTA do? You tell me.

Do you have any idea? Any at all? All CAFTA is, is giving over trade policy to an international group that have absolutely no obligation to any taxpayer in the United States - and what kind of policy are they making?

Don’t know? Nobody does. This is what Paul is discussing when he’s talking about giving up sovereignty and this is why he frequently says many of our problems are rooted in the fact that our Federal government routinely ignores the Constitution - illegally. Only CONGRESS can made international trade deals, nobody else, and they can’t just give up their obligation even if they want to do so. They are required by law to vote on foreign trade agreements and be held accountable to their constituents.

> To do nothing in the face of those advantages and documented
> cases of dumping of merchandise for less than the cost of
> production in order to destroy our domestic sources is the
> height of folly.

Why?

I want you to think about something here now. Imagine we were on a gold standard again, I know you right now have the urge to quit reading, but hear me out please.

If we were trading gold for physical goods, what would happen with a trade deficit? Eventually gold in the United States would become more scarce as more of it was shipped out of the country. This would cause deflation here, and inflation on foreign goods. Wages would actually go down, but at the same time, money would buy more stuff.

Foreign goods would slowly become more expensive, while domestic goods would continue to drop in price. That’s the point of having a hard monetary standard. It’s self balancing.

But we have a fiat standard. What happens then? The Chinese sell goods and get dollar bills back. These dollar bills cannot be spent in China, only the Yuan can be spent there, so what happens to these dollar bills the Chinese collect?

The dollars are re-invested into our economy. There are 5.3 trillion dollars worth of US dollars in foreign hands which are invested directly into our economy either in stocks, in banks (Abu Dabi), Treasury Bills, CDOs, and god knows what. When the dollars are invested into debt securities, because we have a fractional reserve banking system (just 15%), about 7 times the amount of money is loaned out again.

And this is the source of inflation today. As our trade deficit grows, our inflation grows and what is inflation?

It’s simply a tax on anybody that saves money.

This is why us nutcases want to get rid of the Federal Reserve and force congress to regulate foreign trade policy.

China, for example, has advantages based on a lack of regulation that results in an extremely polluted environment, wages that the U.S. can’t possibly match and a manipulated currency. The United States eliminating tariffs isn’t going to change any of that. To do nothing in the face of those advantages and documented cases of dumping of merchandise for less than the cost of production in order to destroy our domestic sources is the height of folly.

I’d like to humbly point out that Paul isn’t against free trade.

NAFTA, for example, isn’t free trade. It’s managed trade.

Free trade is when I can purchase an item from, say, China through the Internet, and not have to go through customs or request any sort of approval from my government to do it, in fact, the government wouldn’t even know I did it.

That’s free trade.

Paul has written extensively on the issue, not that anybody OTHER than the people you slander as being “unreasonable”, i.e. Paul supporters, have bothered to do the amazingly complicated task of typing into google:

“Ron paul free trade”

And clicking the very first link, which takes you here:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul254.html

In it, you’ll find this quote from Paul:

“We don’t need government agreements to have free trade. We merely need to lower or eliminate taxes on the American people, without regard to what other nations do. Remember, tariffs are simply taxes on consumers”

You guys are so incredibly lazy and then you have they hypocrisy to accuse us of being unreasonable.

I sit here perplexed as to how and why anybody would spend anytime writing a completely incorrect article making claims such as:

“He opposes free-trade agreements as infringements on American sovereignity. He specifically sees NAFTA as part of a master plan to form a North American Union with Canada and Mexico. He opposes the International Criminal Court, World Trade Organization, GATT, etc. He in effect opposes any practical agreement that will work in a multilateral world, where the only way you make progress is if you get buy in — and enforceability — from dozens or hundreds of nations. He also opposes nearly all forms of foreign aid, which besides providing humanitarian benefits is a crucial diplomatic tool.”

How would simply getting rid of tarrifs “not work”?

His opposition to NAFTA is not based on infringements of sovereignity, it’s based on it’s unconstutionality. Congress and ONLY CONGRESS regulates foreign trade, not the President.

Why not pick up the Constitution, and read it. Then next, find out how much involvement congress has over NAFTA?

You got an email address and after I correct your article, will you publish the article with the corrections?

Or is this just an excercise to get me to waste my time, as a little joke to demostrate to me how pointless it is to attempt to do this?

Just send me an email:

rich_e@navosha.com

You might want to include “spam” in the Subject header, I filter for that, since no actual spam ever includes that word in the Subject header.

After reading through all of these posts do you actually expect to be able to reason with Ron Paul supporters? You and I disagree about the benefits of free trade and aren’t likely to ever agree because I don’t think it’s possible to have free trade on anything approaching an equal basis with countries that have no environmental regulations, no labor rights, wages a tiny fraction of our minimum wage (And an even smaller fraction of an American middle class wage.) and no respect for intellectual property. But I’m not going to call you a traitor. I’m not going to deny that carefully researched facts are somehow incapable of being correct because Ron Paul disagrees.

I’ve pointed out that there are strengths and weaknesses to the idea of a gold standard to Paul supporters and that it is also something that has even more weaknesses if any one nation tries doing it on its own. I’ve provided links to articles. They pay no attention. It is a cult of personality with its focus being someone who provides great soundbite answers to complex questions. Different soundbites than the other candidates but still just soundbites that don’t really hold up to real research on the issues.

Actually, if you read what I wrote, I didn’t say his immigration policy was unreasonable. Only that it would have unintended consequences.

Illegal immigrants are here for jobs, not welfare, as a rule. They already don’t qualify for welfare. Withdrawing welfare benefits won’t suddenly make them leave. Only reducing the supply of jobs that pay better than what they can get in Mexico will do that. And that requires employer-side penalties and enforcement, to eliminate the incentive for crossing the border.

If you want to know what I think about immigration in depth, click here.

1) More localized (state-level) involvement in employment verification and a thinning of the availability of jobs for illegal immigrants (not gone, per se, just a thinning–which is a reasonable assumption, no?).
2) A lack of medical assurance for illegal immigrants.
3) A lack of educational assurance.
4) A lack of public welfare assurance.

And this leads us to believe that they will stay and live in destitution, disease, and no real hope for the next generation? Which is a public heath concern?

I think it more reasonable to say there are a few outcomes, first being that we’ll see a thinning of the illegal immigrant population (probably fewer children, mothers, elderly, etc.). Not a total lack, just a reduction in the total number through some demographics. We might still have a significant population of hardworking, healthy, illegal workers. They might still support families back home, but unlikely to be able to keep them here. A partial solution to immigration. I think we’d have some problems with public health, as you say, but very isolated ones–probably not statistically significant.

We might see a dramatic shift in how illegal immigrants survive here. Nothing, in a Paulian state, prevents a doctor or teacher or citizen from giving care, money, service, or assistance to the illegal–there might end up being a significant underground or black market for helping immigrants from private individuals on their own dime. But, aside from location, this would be little different than the charity donated by such individuals already–instead of sending it overseas, it’d be direct and “next door”.

Immigrants might communize more–providing their own healthcare or education through their own communities of illegal immigrants–making them a unique sub-society within our borders… but that seems cumbersome and unlikely, as much as them staying and suffering a state that gives them nothing.

I don’t know.

Why, again, is Ron Paul’s immigration policy unreasonable?

You are kidding right? Israel’s Arab neighbors receive more U.S. financial aid than Israel does? Please, check your facts before you start blurting out absolute rubbish like this.

“According to the authors of book: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, Israel is “the largest total recipient since World War II” of U.S. aid. “Total direct U.S. aid to Israel for this period amounts to well over $1.4 trillion from 1973 to 2003. Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is about one-fifth of America’s foreign aid budget.” The authors claim that “This largesse is especially striking when one realizes that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to South Korea or Spain.”

“Whilst US economic aid to Israel has diminished in the last ten years, the level of US military support to Israel has substantially increased. This includes financial military aid.”

“Until 2003, Israel received approximately one-third of the annual US foreign aid budget. In 2005, the US gave Israel more than $2.6 billion in aid, a budget exceeded only by US aid to Iraq. By comparison, Jordan received $683.6 million, Rwanda received $77 million, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories received $348.2 million.” - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Foreign_Policy

Scott, you say “Ron Paul’s proposed policy would increase Israel’s standing relative to its neighbors. It’s simple math.”

Sounds to me like you may suffer from illnumeracy because your statements don’t add up. Ron Paul has not endorsed Israel over it Arab neighbors in anyway. His point of view is clear, Israel should deal with its own problems and do so without meddling in U.S. internal affairs. Something Israel has been doing since the 1960s with their bribery of U.S.
leadership at the highest echelons. It’s called AIPAC.

This has to be one of the most naive, ignorant, and ridiculous things I’ve ever heard. We currently use humanitarian aid as a “diplomatic tool” to prop up some of the most cruel and despotic regimes in the world.

That’s a criticism of how it has been used, not a reason to abandon it altogether.

Ron Paul feels we are just “printing” money when the Fed reduces interest rates to keep the economy pumped.

But money is only created in response to market demand, unlike with a centrally controlled money supply where the supply has little or nothing to do with economic realities, and a lot more to do with political realities.

a partial backing with gold and restraint in the printing of money is part of the whole picture

But there’s nothing magical about backing it with gold, especially partially. The value of that backing will depend on how much gold we pull out of the ground, which is even more remote from actual economic realities than central control of a fiat system. If we’re unable to mine enough gold, the economy is unable to grow; if we mine too much, we get inflation.

Even the democrates agreed that trade agreements were a bad Idea and it mostly hurts americans and especially NAFTA.

I disagree, both on principle and in practice. With free trade, some Americans go t hurt: those in industries that couldn’t compete in a free and open market. That’s as it should be; the whole point of free trade is to lower barriers to trade and limit protectionism.

NAFTA is a convenient populist bogeyman, but according to the CBO it’s effect has been extremely minor — which only makes sense, given the tiny size of the Mexican economy compared to ours. But the effect, small as it is, has generally been positive: boosting U.S. exports to Mexico by 11.3%, U.S. imports from Mexico by 7.7%, and boosting overall U.S. GDP by a fraction of a percent — exactly what it was designed to do.

The foreign aid budget of in excess of $14-billion is hardly a pittance,

It is when you’re talking about the kind of money needed to cut taxes, rescue SS, eliminate the deficit and start paying off the national debt.

2 trillion in transitional costs? What the hell are you talking about?

Social Security has been likened to a Ponzi scheme, because benefits to current retirees aren’t paid from their invested payroll taxes, but from the payroll taxes being paid by current workers.

So if you eliminate payroll taxes, you cut off the stream of money being used to provide benefits to current retirees. If you want to keep paying those benefits (protecting the “sacred promise” of SS), you need to come up with that money. During the debate over Bush’s plan to *partly* privatize SS, the cost was put at about $2 trillion. Paul’s plan to entirely privatize SS would cost even more.

I am interested in how you morally justify this idea - “if I didn’t worry that he would largely abandon our global responsibilities — something he could do largely on his own authority, and something that I think would be a mistake in this day and age.”

Our global responsibilities are twofold: historical and moral.

Historically, we’ve had a large hand in building the current global status quo. It would be irresponsible to simply walk away from it.

Morally, we are the only existing superpower. That means we have capabilities nobody else has. Thus we always have choices: whether to act or not in a given situation. Meaning we are morally entangled in much that goes on around the world, because choosing *not* to act is a moral choice just as much as choosing to act.

We could simply step off the stage, downsize our military and become just another Switzerland. That’s appealing. But doing so has three very serious consequences:

1. It gives the wolves of the world more freedom to go after the sheep.

2. It leaves the door open for another country to grow into a superpower. None of the candidates for that title — China, for instance — strike me as countries we want to see throwing their weight around on a global scale.

3. As we pull in our horns our global influence declines, while our global interests do not. Our economy is global. We get our energy and other raw materials from far-flung places; we get a lot of manufactured goods from far-flung places. Much of our own economic activity involves goods exported to far-flung places. Turning inward would leave us still economically dependent on those far-flung places, without any serious means to influence what goes on in those places. We’d be like Japan is today: entirely dependent on MidEast oil, without any options of things go sour there. If Iran were to close the Straits of Hormuz, for instance, Japan would largely shut down. Do you want to be in that situation?

Countries like Japan can get away with not having a military because we make sure the Straits stay open. Yes, that’s a pain in the butt, and yes, it often feels like other nations are taking advantage of us or getting a free ride. But in the end, I’d rather have us be the sole superpower making sure things run *our* way, rather than take my chances on some other country’s capabilities or goodwill.

I don’t see how any student of history could seriously say that our inept and immoral foreign policies aren’t to blame for the current state of the Middle East.

That was Jimmy’s claim, not mine. I agree that our actions contributed to the situations and chain of events that led to 9/11. That doesn’t justify 9/11, of course, but it’s silly to try to portray terrorists as just nasty people who woke up one day and said “Hey, I think I’ll fly a plane into a skyscraper.”

if you look back over some of my older letters, you’ll see that I predicted that he would see to it that all patriotic endeavors are directed down blind alleys where they end in frustration and discouragement. And, as I predicted, he did. But you know, that was not a difficult prediction to make. Anyone who has bothered to learn even a little about Mr. Aqui could have made the same prediction.

If you’ve been following me for so long, how come I’ve never heard of you?

Oh, wait, that’s a satirical or bot-generated post that you simply cut and pasted my name into, isn’t it?

Korea alone is estimated to cost about 25 billion a year.
By whom?

The CBO, in a letter (pdf) to Sen. Kent Conrad, mentions that the incremental cost of maintaining our forces in Korea is about $1 billion a year — which I think is the figure *before* considering Korean offset payments.

The $25 billion figure is for maintaining a Korea-sized force in combat conditions in Iraq — where very little can be procured in the local economy, so everything would have to be shipped in.

Missed this one, sorry.

When “welfare” is defined to include hospitals and schools, then I think denying those services to illegal immigrants is a case of cutting off our nose to spite our face.

We end up spending more money on health care when we wait until the condition is acute and serious before treating it, not to mention turning the illegal immigrant community into a reservoir for diseases. Public health policy shouldn’t care whether you’re an immigrant or not: it’s about protecting the public health, which necessarily includes all of us.

Similarly, preventing the children of illegal immigrants from getting schooling just helps produce a permanent underclass of the uneducated, leading to more crime and less economic growth. Universal K-12 education, like public health, isn’t done as a favor to taxpayers; it’s done because a well-educated populace is good for the country.

That’s what the CPI calculator says.
http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/data/us/calc/

Now, that’s for a market basket of goods. Some things (like gas and health care) are a lot more expensive; some things are cheaper. This is just an average for a representative sampling of goods. But it’s the best number we’ve got.

It doesn’t address whether *buying power* has gone up or down. That’s a function of personal income (and its distribution) as well as prices. And I’ll grant you that many people have (or feel they have) less buying power today than in 1995, because most income growth has gone to the wealthy, so a lot of people’s incomes haven’t kept up with the cost of living.

But inflation itself has been pretty tame.

Same for the rest of your faux-learned pronouncements. You must work at a university, or perhaps for the government, where anything may be believed if it is uttered with pomposity.

O-o-o-kay.

By the way, I really enjoy your writing and I’m glad to see you’re posting again!

Well, it’s what the CBO concluded. Their numbers are usually pretty good.

The reason is that, unless you cut actual troop numbers, you still have to put the troops somewhere, whether its at home or overseas. So you’re not cutting base *capacity* very much, merely shifting it from abroad to the States. One thing the CBO considers is that bringing the troops home will pretty much put a halt to further domestic base closings.

Then, you have to consider that many countries pay us to help cover the cost of our bases in their country.

So the savings are marginal because you’re still housing the same number of troops, and you’re giving up the foreign support payments.

Read 1984 retard, and convince yourself there isnt a problem.

Wow. I know I’m convinced now….

He’s a bit of a maverick, but most of his views fit more comfortably with the conservative side of the spectrum. Antiabortion, small government, cut taxes, cut spending, tight immigration control…. all classic conservative positions.

A panel that only has the power to judge whether countries are living up to rules *they agreed to abide by.* Without something like that, there’s no enforcement mechanism to ensure nobody is cheating.

It doesn’t take away our rights. We can always withdraw from the treaty if we don’t like how it’s affecting us.

I’m glad you recognize the amount of inflation we’ve had since 1995.

Not much. Something that cost $10 in 1995 would cost $13.54 today.

Never mind that controlled inflation actually contributes to economic efficiency, by automatically eroding the effects of bad decisions in the past. Things automatically get (relatively) cheaper as time goes by; price and pay increases must be continually rejustified.

Ron Paul would address that problem as well.

Yeah…. by stifling economic growth.

What I find interesting is that Paul is a small government type. Yet he rails against the Fed, which is practically a prototype of small government in action. With the Fed, the government sets interest rates and lets the market determine money supply; Paul wants to essentially reverse that, by having the government set money supply and let the markets determine interest rates. Which is a much bigger government intrusion into the economy, because the flexibility of the money supply is a key to economic growth. With the government in control of the supply, it’s far too easy to let short-term politics dictate supply decisions — leading to such evils as overexpansion, which leads to hyperinflation. Or you have the other problem: central decisionmakers can’t respond to economic changes quickly enough, so they don’t expand the money supply enough to keep up with economic growth.

Either way, it hurts the economy.

Inflation sucks; economic stagnation — and wild booms and busts — suck more. Which is why the Fed’s reason for being is to keep inflation under control, while letting the money supply rise and fall based on market forces.

From the Iranian state-run news service: Mahmoud Amadinajad declares that it is the goal of Islam, and the goal of the Iranian revolution to establish a “global Islamic government.”

Thank god he is not a neocon or a zionist, and rather an exotic third-worlder, so we can safely ignore what he says. He cannot possibly have imperialist ambitions, even though he says that he does, because he is not a white person or a jew, and therefore doesn’t have the intellectual capacity of an American or Israeli elite.

Criticize military policy all you want, but to build a strawman called “the imperial U.S. military,” when it simply doesn’t exist, is slander.

Stop putting your personal opinion above the opinions of the soldiers who risk their lives for us.

I’m sure the majority of American soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan consider themselves to be imperial shock troops, conquereors and oppressors. I’m sure they think that the work they do is harming America, and that they themselves are utter failures. Particularly those who are re-enlisting in record numbers.

At the risk of repeating myself, I must reiterate that if we let Mr. Aqui sow the seeds of sensationalism we’ll be reaping the crop for quite a long time. We have to start talking with one another honestly, in honest language. I state these facts only to give a bit of personal background as to why he has certainly never given evidence of thinking extensively. Or at all, for that matter. Given the amount of misinformation that Mr. Aqui is circulating, I must really point out that when one examines the ramifications of letting him prey on people’s fear of political and economic instability, one finds a preponderance of evidence leading to the conclusion that if you look back over some of my older letters, you’ll see that I predicted that he would see to it that all patriotic endeavors are directed down blind alleys where they end in frustration and discouragement. And, as I predicted, he did. But you know, that was not a difficult prediction to make. Anyone who has bothered to learn even a little about Mr. Aqui could have made the same prediction.

Be careful not to be charmed by Mr. Aqui’s treatises. All they do is take away what few freedoms we have left. A recent series of hearings, lawsuits, and media reports demonstrates that Mr. Aqui should work with us, not step in at the eleventh hour and hog all the glory. Now, perhaps you think I’m imagining things. Perhaps you think that he really isn’t going to rot our minds with the hallucinatory drug of charlatanism. Well, I wish it were just my imagination. But you know, if we don’t take off the kid gloves and vent some real anger at him, our children will curse us in our graves. Speaking of our children, we need to teach them diligently that at this point in the letter I had planned to tell you that Mr. Aqui’s efforts to sensationalize all of the issues have touched the lives of every person in this country. However, one of my colleagues pointed out that perennial crybabies like Mr. Aqui wouldn’t fare well without a legal skirt to hide under. Hence, I discarded the discourse I had previously prepared and substituted the following discussion in which I argue that the irony is that his most larcenous philosophies are also his most slatternly. As the French say, “Les extremes se touchent.”

Mr. Aqui’s opuscula are based on two fundamental errors. They assume that an open party with unlimited access to alcohol can’t possibly outgrow the host’s ability to manage the crowd and they promote the mistaken idea that it’s okay to inspire a recrudescence of sick fatuity. Mr. Aqui’s pledge not to seize control over where we eat, sleep, socialize, and associate with others is merely empty rhetoric, invoked on occasion for theatrical effect but otherwise studiously ignored. Mr. Aqui’s modes of thought are an integument of officialism. And let me tell you, Mr. Aqui is the type of person that turns up his nose at people like you and me. I guess that’s because we haven’t the faintest notion about the things that really matter such as why it would be good for him to jump on everything that is written, said, or even implied and label it as either contumelious or bad-tempered.

Mr. Aqui is penny wise and pound foolish. To a lesser degree and on a smaller scale, Mr. Aqui is trying hard to convince a substantial number of illaudable, crotchety pop psychologists to instill a subconscious feeling of guilt in those of us who disagree with his platitudes. He presumably believes that the “hundredth-monkey phenomenon” will spontaneously incite clueless tax cheats to behave likewise. The reality, however, is that Mr. Aqui keeps trying to deceive us into thinking that he has answers to everything. The purpose of this deception may be to legitimate irresponsibility, laziness, and infidelity. Or maybe the purpose is to empty the meaning of such concepts as “self,” “justice,” “freedom,” and other profundities. Oh what a tangled web Mr. Aqui weaves when first he practices to deceive.

I want to keep this brief: I believe I have found my calling. My calling is to bring Mr. Aqui to justice. And just let him try and stop me.

Mr. Aqui recently stated that he can override nature. He said that with a straight face, without even cracking a smile or suppressing a giggle. He said it as if he meant it. That’s scary because the first thing we need to do is to get him to admit that he has a problem. Mr. Aqui should be counseled to recite the following:

I, Sean Aqui, am a superstitious propagandist.
I have been a participant in a giant scheme to torment, harry, and persecute anyone who crosses Mr. Aqui’s path.
I hereby admit my addiction to Dadaism. I ask for the strength and wisdom to fight this addiction.
Once Mr. Aqui realizes that he has a problem, maybe then he’ll see that I’ve heard of treacherous things like voyeurism and obscurantism. But I’ve also heard of things like nonviolence, higher moralities, and treating all beings as ends in and of themselves — ideas which his ignorant, unthinking, rude brain is too small to understand.

Actually, Mr. Aqui will probably never understand why he scares me so much. And he unmistakably does scare me: His methods of interpretation are scary, his goals are scary, and most of all, I want to unify our community. Mr. Aqui, in contrast, wants to drive divisive ideological wedges through it. He divides the organization of his supercilious monographs into two halves that, apparently separate from one another, in truth, form an inseparable whole. The first half seeks to agitate for indoctrination programs in local schools, while the second half is yet another daft blend of muddleheaded phallocentrism and addlepated cannibalism. Here’s an extraordinary paradox: All of the impolitic leeches who shouldn’t be allowed to operate in the gray area between legitimate activity and fatuitous statism invariably want to. Mr. Aqui wants his cowardice and irresponsibility to be regarded as prudence. I won’t dwell on that except to direct your attention to the feral manner in which he has been trying to commit all sorts of mortal sins — not to mention an uncountable number of venial ones.

Am I being too idealistic — a Pollyanna — when I suggest that all we need to do is make this world a kinder, gentler place? I don’t think so. Admittedly, the downward spiral of society and the concomitant growing threat of terrorism are the natural results of his self-pitying adages, but creating needed understanding is best achieved in a calm, rational environment. That’s self-evident, and even Mr. Aqui would probably agree with me on that. Even so, only the impartial and unimpassioned mind will even consider that he plans to regiment the public mind as much as an army regiments the bodies of its soldiers. The result will be an amalgam of callow sesquipedalianism and cocky masochism, if such a monster can be imagined. Mr. Aqui is a pitiful specimen of a disorganized exponent of feudalism. Think about it, and I’m sure you’ll agree with me.

Just to add a little more perspective, if one dares to criticize even a single tenet of Mr. Aqui’s roorbacks, one is promptly condemned as brutish, filthy, stubborn, or whatever epithet Mr. Aqui deems most appropriate, usually without much explanation. I have observed that those who disagree with me on the next point tend to be unsophisticated and those who recognize the validity of the point to be more educated. The point is that those of us who are still sane, those of us who still have a firm grip on reality, those of us who still allege that I am burning to know what classes of devious, twisted reasons exist in the heads of those who quote me out of context, have an obligation to do more than just observe what Mr. Aqui is doing from a safe distance. We have an obligation to get people to sign a petition to limit Mr. Aqui’s ability to cause trouble. We have an obligation to refute his arguments line by line and claim by claim. And we have an obligation to give peace a chance. Most people don’t realize this, but he has, in fact, presented evidence in support of his claim that he understands the difference between civilization and savagery. Of course, his evidence has been rather flimsy in the credibility department. It’s generally a lot easier to find evidence that the type of commercialism that Mr. Aqui preaches is a sort of moral gonorrhea. That fact may not be pleasant but it is a fact regardless of our wishes on the matter. Mr. Sean Aqui pretends to put power into the hands of the people while actually putting blasphemous thoughts in our children’s minds. Do give that some thought.

I find that figure -very- hard to believe.

Traitor.

Read 1984 retard, and convince yourself there isnt a problem.

The $1 billion figure is not about Iraq but the other bases in other countries that Paul and his supporters want to eliminate. It’s the magnitude of those cost savings that Sean is addressing.

Criticizing the policies of politicians is hardly slander of our armed forces. Quite the contrary… it shows them support when we want to do what we consider is best for them and for this country. Don’t ignore the fact that the two candidates who raise the most money from active military are Ron Paul and Barack Obama. There is a very good reason for this. Stop putting your personal opinion above the opinions of the soldiers who risk their lives for us.

Is this a typo? Congress just approved another $40 billion for Iraq and another $30 billion for Afghanistan. And your saying bringing the troops home would save only $1 billion per year? You lost me on that one.

On immigration, as Paul himself has said, it would be a different matter if we had a fine economy and money to burn. We don’t. Health care costs are shooting up fast, and becoming a major concern for citizens and a major cost for everyone, including the government. We are 9 trillion in debt and paying over $400B a year in interest. We are not in a position to offer free services to illegal immigrants. There are, of course, massive ethical dilemmas…so it really needs to start with controlling the border and having a more effective immigration policy and enforcement. As for paying for it…Paul has more then covered that with his spending cuts.

Paul wants to cut defense spending, mostly in foreign lands, and cut foreign aid dramatically. You claim it is important for “diplomatic reasons”, by which I assume you mean us effectively using bribes, rewards, etc., to manipulate foreign governments. The problem is we have a horrible record with these things, and we often create more problems and finance people who, in the long run, we shouldn’t have. See Iraq, Osama, Pakistan, Iran, and on and on. As for humanitarian aid…a worthy cause, but only after we can afford it. If we don’t have the money, we shouldn’t be spending it. Further, government should not mandate it’s citizens to make donations to worthy causes. For one thing, the government mucks it up (see Katrina). For another, individual citizens rise to the cause in international situations, and would far more if their tax burden was far less. Nonetheless, it is not the role of government to be mandating citizens to aid other countries, which is essentially what that is.

Still on cutting, Paul wants to allow people to opt out of Social Security, thus beginning to phase it out and lessening the country’s entitlement debts. He wants to close down entire agencies of the government (such as Homeland Security, as worthless as they come) and scale back spending in all areas to the levels of a previous decade (roughly). I would be content if he was able to freeze all spending levels while chopping back in a few select areas.

As an above poster mentioned, Paul would head us in the right direction again. No one, not Paul, not anyone, would perfectly implement all of this…some of it simply would be DOA in Congress. But Paul would move us the right direction, and start the right national discourses (on national debt, spending, how big federal government should actually be and what it’s roles are). Further, Paul would scale back the powers of the presidency, which is far too powerful now.

On foreing issues…if Congress made some strong actions, Paul would enforce them (such as declaring war, etc.). Paul would not lead like Bush…blind to the Congress.

You raise some valid concerns, but ultimately I think you over-estimate the danger Paul could do (because under a Paul Presidency, Congress would be able to be the check it was constitutionally supposed to be upon the exectutive) and because you underestimate the international damage our current foreign policy, over the course of the last century, has damaged our world standing and backed us into corners.