Why I don’t support Ron Paul
By Sean Aqui | Related entries in 2008 Election, Ron Paul
Hey, everyone! It’s been a while: I took a three-month hiatus from blogging when real life turned hectic. But I’m back now, and hope to resume regular posting here at Donklephant.
Recently a regular Midtopia reader who I greatly respect took me to task in this post for curtly dismissing Ron Paul as a nutty libertarian. It’s a fair point, so I decided to go into detail about why I think Paul is too far out there to be considered a good presidential candidate.
I think Ron Paul is great in some respects. I’ve got enough libertarian leanings that I voted for Jesse Ventura, and I certainly respect Paul’s commitment to principles. But I think he often follows those principles out the window. Further, he’s a strongly conservative libertarian, with whom I disagree on substantive policy issues.
Let’s just go through the positions he admits to holding, on his campaign web site:
FREE TRADE
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.
BORDER SECURITY
He’s strongly anti-immigration, which is fine, and his proposals aren’t actually nutty. But he elides over the cost of his plan, and I think his proposal to “eliminate welfare for illegal aliens” will have unintended and self-damaging consequences, particularly because he defines “welfare” as using hospitals, schools and roads, as well as social services.
DEBT AND TAXES
He supports low taxes and low spending, but he fetishizes the former as an absolute good and doesn’t spell out how he’s going to cut spending. He opposes the Federal Reserve system, mirroring conspiracy and gold-bug arguments that misunderstand the nature and function of the system and the money supply. He would return us to a gold standard, which is good for retirees but bad for economic growth unless it is jiggered to be essentially a fiat currency system like the one he decries.
(continued over at Midtopia)
This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 and is filed under 2008 Election, Ron Paul. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 19th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Don’t forget that he blames America for 9/11, that he has singled out Israel for complete withdrawal of foreign aid, That he believes the “Israel lobby” has bought out members of congress, and that he assumes third world exotic people are incapable of acting on their own fruition or ideology - but rather can only react to what white people or jews do to them - like insects responding to stimuli.
He is a dinosaur. He has no concept that America is at war with radical Islamists, because there is no UN-recognized country called “Terroristland” which you can point to on a map.
He will say that America “created” tyrants like Castro and the mullahs of Iran, and yet in the same breath he will say that he wishes to lift the embargo on Cuba and end sanctions on the terrorist-supporting regimes. Liberty for me, not for thee.
He would have opposed Lincoln and the civil war. He would have opposed Roosevelt and the wars of the pacific and the nazis. He would have cut a deal with Hitler. There is no reason to doubt that he would keep his word and try to appease terrorist fascist imperialist muslim fanatics by selling out the Jews to their destruction. F#$% Ron Paul.
December 19th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
I have done extensive homework on Ron Paul. How is he going to reduce spending ?
This is where he differs the most from other candidates. He will drastically reduce spending on our overseas military. Closing down approx. 700 bases in 120 countries will save us somewhere around one trillion dollars per year and make us safer at home by using some of those troops on OUR borders- a truly novel concept I must admit.
The military industrial complex is very worried about this- but as taxpayers we need this to happen . That is the only way to do away with individual income taxes and really reduce our out of control spending.
You can not reduce taxes without reducing spending - and politically you can not cut out the domestic programs- which only leaves us with military expenditures to cut out.
Why aren’t other countries worried about terrorists flying planes into their high rises? Because they are not occupying or invading Muslim countries.
This is just common sense- and we need to adopt Paul’s non-interventionist
policies. Read his book The Foreign Policy of Freedom . This book shows Paul’s deep grasp of the issues facing us today -much more so than Huckabee’s cutesy lil one liners or Romney wanting to build more Guantanamo’s.
Lets quit sneaking around the world trying to take other countries resources - like oil- and just buy it on the world market without using our military as a hammer.
December 19th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Thank you for engaging the issues, but you will still lose.
1. NAFTA is multilaterally managed trade. Paul supports national-sovereignty individually-negotiated trade.
2. Paul has paid for our border security many times over by his plan to stop securing Iraq’s and other countries’ borders.
3. He will cut spending by 40% simply by scaling back the budget 7 to 10 years. The cuts in foreign aid, war propagation, and Social Security privatization alone are significant and well-documented.
December 19th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Sean - you seem like a smart guy and I do respect your opinion. But I find it hard to read anything you said after this:
“He also opposes nearly all forms of foreign aid, which besides providing humanitarian benefits is a crucial diplomatic tool.”
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. Very little of the “allowances” we send to 3rd-world countries ever help the impoverished. No one with the State Dept. usually ever notes where the money goes, and certainly no one cares.
You either have no understanding of how (ahem) “humanitarian benefits” work, meaning your statement is made out of ignorance, or you do and support them anyway, meaning your statement is made out of a desire to build a world-wide empite based on money and power.
December 19th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
I disagree with his stance on immigration, as I guess is the general libertarian view. I don’t necessarily disagree with his position on the WTO, NAFTA, etc as many libertarians do who , rightly, favor free trade. What he objects to is being beholden to these International organizations. Free trade with all countries should be encouraged. But, I think correctly, we should avoid these types of political alliances, as much as we should avoid mutual protection arms agreements. It is not really conspiratorial, but there are people who would like somehting like the European Union, or even a One World. NAFTA, WTO are a step in that direction. I do not feel that is in America’s interest–we should have trade with everyone, without regard to the whims and mandates of these organizations.
On money–I know a lot of people think Paul would immediately dump the Federal Reserve and if we went to the local bank to get a loan we would have to wait until some prospector brought in a few gold nuggets from the hills. He is not really that naive..And he actually spelled his position more clearly on Glenn Beck last night.
Most money is created by the lending of money by banks, and ultimately the Federal Reserve. Ron Paul feels we are just “printing” money when the Fed reduces interest rates to keep the economy pumped. But with the incredible shrinking dollar, and the coming recession or stagnation, there is little doubt that something serious needs to be done to get a solid monetary policy, and a partial backing with gold and restraint in the printing of money is part of the whole picture (along with the national debt, the trade deficit, getting off foreign oil, and allowing true productive industries to dominate the GNP). Since we went off the gold standard in 1973 it has essentially been backed with oil, but that is now a stranglehold on the dollar.
December 19th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Though I’d usually take Jimmy’s comments as unworthy of response, they too are easy to respond to.
Paul doesn’t blame America for 9/11, he blames it for covering up its admitted prior intelligence failures after 9/11.
He doesn’t single out Israel for ending foreign aid, he would end foreign aid everywhere. Israel gets $3 billion, Egypt $2 billion, and the next 5 Arab countries much more than Israel’s total. Israel would be find with a hands-off approach. The Arabs would be required to fend for themselves too.
Paul doesn’t believe the “Israel lobby” has bought Congress. Many years ago there was a ghostwriter comment using the phrase “Israel lobby” that was attributed to Paul, but such a comment has been brushed off as a nonissue.
Paul doesn’t assume the third world is incapable, he affirms that they are entirely capable of handling their own affairs being weaned from our foreign aid. The warmongers, rather, isolate America by assuming the third world requires our aid and must react to what we tell them.
Etc.
December 19th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
This is probably futile, but I wanted to point out that the first two points in Jimmy’s post are false.
Paul does not blame America for 9/11, but he does say that our foreign policy of sticking our nose where it doesn’t belong is a contributing factor.
Paul has not “singled out” Israel for withdrawal of foreign aid. He has repeatedly said he wants to stop foreign add to ALL nations. Most foreign aid is a subsidy that props up dictators. We spend 3 times as much on foreign aid to Arab nations as we do to Israel, so in the end Israel comes out ahead. Israel is strong, and it’s time we let her be free of American interference.
December 19th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Sean,
Free Trade
Even the democrates agreed that trade agreements were a bad Idea and it mostly hurts americans and especially NAFTA.
Border Security
By limiting social services to Illegal immigrants ,They will be obliged to
1-first not bring their children or have children in USA (because there will be no education)
2-Buy health Insurance or Pay for Health Services (because there will get help and run )
Although this will not stop single illegal imigrants from flooding the border .
I personally think that they need to go after employers aswell.
DEBT AND TAXES
Ron paul was quite clear about spending and taxes .
if we stop the fed walfare programs,the wars , empire maintenance and let americans keep all their money (The federal income ofcourse)
I m sure the states can take care of the rest by raising their state tax a little bit to accomodate the new responsabilities.
December 19th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
He will drastically reduce spending on our overseas military. Closing down approx. 700 bases in 120 countries will save us somewhere around one trillion dollars per year
Considering that the entire federal budget is only $2.6 trillion, and the Defense Department’s share is about $550 billion, I think that projection is fantastical, to say the least.
1. NAFTA is multilaterally managed trade. Paul supports national-sovereignty individually-negotiated trade.
And my point is, rather than negotiating 100 separate trade agreements, it’s more productive, economically efficient and ultimately freeing to negotiate the overall framework of international trade, reducing protectionist barriers and persuading everyone to play by the same open rules.
He will cut spending by 40% simply by scaling back the budget 7 to 10 years. The cuts in foreign aid, war propagation, and Social Security privatization alone are significant and well-documented.
Good luck with that. I agree that the invasion of Iraq has squandered a lot of money that could have been spent elsewhere. But cutting foreign aid will save a pittance, at best, while harming our diplomatic standing and influence around the world. And as I note, Paul has simply adopted Bush’s SS privatization plan, while ignoring the up to $2 trillion in transitional costs such a plan entails.
December 19th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Trade Agreements - Ron Paul dismisses trade agreements, because it essentially helps all of those whom we trade with, but leaves no benefits for us. They are managed trade and not FREE by any stretch of the imagination.
Border Security - There really would be no cost to his plan, I mean the border guards would be coming home from Iraq, don’t need to to hire any new ones. Cutting off the welfare tit, that illegals come here to suck on, actually reduces cost, not increases.
Debt and Taxes - He absolutely explains his position in every interview he gives. We eliminate our “empire.” That alone will save in the hundreds of billions up to trillions of dollars. With that you use half of the money to pay of the debt, and the other half to temporarily fund the welfare entitlements, so that they are not being funded by the young people who can get off the programs. Aside from that, not having the young folks using those programs will save them in costs, and less (unaffordable) expenditures by the feds.
His positions are rooted in the constitution - It is not the role of the Federal government to provide welfare, it is however, allowed for the states to play a role. If you don’t like that, then try and get some amendments passed.
As to your dismissal of the gold standard, Paul says again, in just about every interview that we cant just get rid of the fed, while that might be the end goal, he simply wants to legalize what the constitution says and allow for currency backed in gold or silver and then let the free-market decide what is the better currency.
December 19th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Fools and their rights are soon parted.
Boiling the frog applies.
If not now then when?
I vote for virtue; I vote for Ton Paul.
December 19th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
This is not true. Paul has not adopted the Bush plan on social security. Unlike Bush, he would let workers drop ENTIRELY out of the system. The transitional costs would come from closing down our foreign empire, including hundreds of foreign bases
December 19th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Paul’s free trade approach (which rejects managed trade) has bene tried before. It is not a new idea. The British, as Paul would recommend for us, had unilateral free trade for a century. They were able to do without any agreements. These were some of the most prosperous years for Britain.
December 19th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
He does not blame America for 9/11. If you payed attention to what he said its the foriegn policy that is defective not the people’s fault. You need to do your homework. I always find it amusing when people attack his views and take things totaly out of context or have no real grasp of the issues. Every thing you just ranted about, Jimmy, is weak and the solutions are presented in Paul if you dug a little deeper.
We incite hatred in Islamic countries, the best defense is securing our borders first, not bombing Iraq which incites more hatred in the muslim world.
Civil War, if you actually studied Paul you would find that your argument is baseless, every other country in the world abolished slavery with out a civil war and if you payed attention in high schol the civil war wasn’t entirely about slavery. :)
The bigget kicker is when people say he is an isolationist. I want to smack them. Which is more of an isolationist:
A.) Spreading military bases in “holy land” inciting hatred, imposing sanctions and embargos and not being directly involved in negotiations
or
B.) Stop spreading our “goodness” through force and setting an example here at home and trading with countries and negotiating and talking with countries and being diplomatic and not resorting to economic sanctions everytime you can’t figure something out.
Never does he mention that he wants to cut off ties with countries or not give aid to a country that asks for our help. So I dont understand the thought process of someone when they say he is an isolationist, you will find that the charge is completely illogical.
But go ahead, vote for you fake candidate, one who panders to the crowd and tells them what the want to hear. Every other candidate sounds like a used car salesmen who consistantly refers to religion because they have nothing else. At least I know my candidate, Ron Paul, speaks the truth and has consistent priciples. He would rather be right than president.
December 19th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Why bother to correct the misconceptions when I know you won’t change your mind or correct your article anyhow.
I’m tired of people “explaining” what Paul’s stances are, by either misrepresenting the stances or reporting them incorrectly through genuine misunderstanding. The media has become such a joke today that reading an article on a person gives me less correct information and takes more time than simply reading a wikipedia entry which is community created and more correct.
I don’t know if the author didn’t do basic research or is intentionally misrepresenting - who cares really anyhow?
December 19th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Why bother to correct the misconceptions when I know you won’t change your mind or correct your article anyhow.
Um, my main source was Paul’s campaign web site. I’m simply reading what he wrote.
If there’s an error, please point it out. Even if I don’t correct it, your statement will be in the comments for all to see.
December 19th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
To the author: Ron Paul is against most if not all foreign aid for two reasons.
1.) The Constitution doesn’t grant our federal government the authority to give American citizens’ tax dollars to foreign governments.
2. ) With the condition that our economy is in, we don’t have any business loaning out or giving any money away.
Regarding “eliminating welfare for illegals”, removing these incentives for people to immigrate illegally is but one step to securing our borders. Before the welfare state came to be, it was churches and charities that stepped in to help the needy and the sick. When the government stepped in and started mandating certain types of care and preferential treatment, the hospitals had to shut down because they couldn’t afford to operate that way. It’s highly likely that they’ll be glad to resume this role should the need arise.
To Jimmy:
1.) He doesn’t blame America for 9/11: he blames our flawed foreign policy.
2.) After sifting through all of the race-baiting in your nasty comment, I’ve discovered that you haven’t read the 9/11 Commission Report; you should do so immediately, to prevent embarrassing yourself any further. Captured terrorists involved in the 9/11 plot have cited U.S. involvement in Middle East affairs as one of the big reasons for terrorism against the U.S.
3.) To be treated as an adult, you have to avoid activities like calling people names such as “dinosaur”. It makes you sound like you’re 10 years old.
4.) Diplomatically, the U.S. isn’t in a position to sanction people without serious economic consequences. Also, the Constitution grants no authority for our President to tell another country how to run their government.
5.) Forgetting all of the other verbal diarrhea you spewed in your post, Israel can take care of herself. Any country that’s stupid enough to attack Israel does so at their own peril. Why do _you_ think it’s ok for Americans to die fighting Israel’s battles?
December 19th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Well, Sean Aqui ought to go back to Sean Alli, because he’s still wrong for not supporting Dr. Paul. He can take Dimmy Jimmy with him, too.
But to Sean’s credit he actually did research, which is miles better than most Paul critics and bashers.
But it’s actually very simple: peace, propserity, sovereignty, and liberty. You do this by rolling back the things that threaten these things: war, fiat currency and taxation, multilateral “free” trade agreements, and “War-on-fill-in-the-blank-here”.
Now, tell, me Sean, WTF IS WRONG WITH THOSE IDEAS?
Oh yeah, those are Main Street USA ideas, too…
Off to the next blog…
December 19th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
I think there are many supporters of Paul (myself included) who would not want to see his entire agenda implemented. However, it’s fair to ask: what direction to you want to go in? A smaller federal government, less overseas spending, more transparency, a weakened executive, and a renewed respect for civil liberties all sound good to me. Even though there are specific pieces of Paul’s platform I don’t like, I don’t have another candidate as an option if I want the aforementioned things. And some of the more radical planks aren’t going to be implemented without the cooperation of Congress, so I don’t worry too much about them.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Considering you haven’t even addressed many of the good points made by others here, I must agree with Richard. You choose to ignore those points which you have no argument against. Instead of being a man and admitting your mistakes, you simply ignore them or make snide remarks such as “Good luck with that.” If you wish others to engage in conversation and debate with you, you must be willing to listen to them and leave your mind open to change. When you close yourself off like you have, nobody except those equally close-minded on the other side of the argument will be willing to engage you.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
The foreign aid budget of in excess of $14-billion is hardly a pittance, even at the currently low value of the US dollar against the Euro. And neither is a federal budget of $2.6-trillion.
Israel is perfectly capable of defending itself. But it has the United Kingdom and France to call on, if need be.
America cannot afford its foreign policy running at close to a trillion dollars a year. Or more accurately, American tax payers cannot in the face of arrest and criminalization for not doing so as per an unspecified federal law. Ron Paul simply advocates restricting the defence commitment to America’s borders where any threat from radical Islam towards America, for example, can be best fought. Other nations, especially in Europe and Africa, will be motivated to do likewise, or suffer the consequences.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
SeanAqui did not do research.
2 trillion in transitional costs?
What the hell are you talking about?
Ron Paul’s plan is to just simply allow people to opt out of social security. Those that want to get a private plan can, those that don’t want any plan don’t have to pay into something they do not want.
You listed the huge US budget as 2.6 trillion. Half of that budget is payroll taxes. Payroll taxes are meant for Social Security and Medicare etc.
Military spending is not limited to the DoD. I don’t know the exact figures, but I think that Ron Paul probably isn’t flat out lying either when he says it costs close to 1 trillion to maintain all our activities overseas because those expenditures aren’t limited to the DoD budget.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Poster, Please research monetary policy before endorsing fiat currency. Its how people get f’ed. Please read “The Creature From Jekyll Island”, and tell me you still want the Federal Reserve Around.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Wow, Jimmy… you clearly are letting your emotion cloud your vision.
Ron Paul does not “blame America” for 9/11. He says that policymakers have made bad decisions which incite hatred. If we believe our policymakers are beyond reproach, and that the resulting policies do not piss people off, we have a real problem. Our system of government was designed so that we could throw out bad leaders and put in good ones. It is pointless and detrimental to defend the policies of our politicians at all costs. It is the least patriotic of all things to act in this way.
Ron Paul does not “single out” Israel. He opposes foreign aid to any country. Currently, Israel’s Arab neighbors receive more US aid than Israel does. Ron Paul’s proposed policy would increase Israel’s standing relative to its neighbors. It’s simple math.
Ron Paul would not have “cut a deal with Hitler”. He has stated many times that he supports war as a tool of defense. He was in favor of WWII (we were attacked), and he supported going after Bin Laden as well (again, we were attacked). What he opposes is preemptive strikes upon nations that “might” be a threat in the future.
The “war on terror” that you describe is a sham. 9/11 did not expose that we face a strong terrorist threat as a nation. It exposed that we are over-extended overseas, and that we have a shamefully inadequate defense at home. It also exposed that the people in the world who hate our country because of our intrusive policies are increasing in number and in passion every day.
It -is- patriotic to question and replace our leaders when they take our country down the wrong path.Show patriotism toward the country, not its leaders.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Bbartlog: That is the most reasoned response I’ve heard yet for supporting Paul. And it’s one I could get behind, 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.
Then there are the things like abortion and public education where I disagree with him simply because he is far more conservative than me.
Yes, the alternatives aren’t very enticing. That exact scenario is why I ended up voting for Jesse Ventura. But that was for governor, and my thinking was “How much harm can he do, anyway?” The stakes are a lot higher with the presidency.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Ron Paul has been very specific about where he would cut spending, on numerous occasions. He would save hundreds of billions by bringing our troops home from Iraq, Korea, Germany, the UK, Italy, and pretty much everywhere else. He would eliminate the Departments of Education and Energy, and greatly reduce the Department of Homeland Security. He would discontinue all foreign aid.
You get the picture? That’s several hundred billion dollars in cuts, while no one else has identified any. Romney and Thompson and Giuliani talk about cutting domestic discretionary spending a little, but would increase military spending even more. Huckabee would increase both.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Ron Paul opposed Bush’s privatization plan, he supports cutting the SS Tax and allowing citizens to privately invest that money themselves, not have it go through the government to do so.
“We must also address the desire of younger workers to save and invest on their own. We should cut payroll taxes and give workers the opportunity to seek better returns in the private market.”
From ronpaul2008.com
NAFTA is to free trade what the Clean Air act is to clean air.
In Hong Kong John Stossell opened a business in a day by filling out a single form. In New York city the same business takes weeks to open because of forms, permits, fees, and B.S. Odd, that a tiny country with no natural resources is such an economic powerhouse . . .
You can ask Ron Paul your questions directly, he’ll be in New Hampshire or Iowa a lot in the coming weeks, and he’ll be the closing speaker at the 2008 New Hampshire Liberty Forum on Jan 6th as well.
http://www.freestateproject.org/libertyforum
December 19th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
“The stakes are a lot higher with the presidency.”
Exactly why I support Paul in a time when all of the other choices seem to have the intention of spending us into a Greater Depression. Whether or not you agree with Paul’s foreign policy… we can’t -afford- the luxury of the alternative. Not until we get the country back on track.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
But it’s actually very simple: peace, propserity, sovereignty, and liberty. You do this by rolling back the things that threaten these things: war, fiat currency and taxation, multilateral “free” trade agreements, and “War-on-fill-in-the-blank-here”.
Now, tell, me Sean, WTF IS WRONG WITH THOSE IDEAS?
Nothing…. if I thought that the first four things were meaningfully connected to the elimination of the second five things, and I didn’t have to worry about the independent actions of other nations and actors.
I largely agree with Paul on undeclared wars and preemptive war. I just flatly disagree with him about the evils of fiat currency and free trade and the practicalities of isolationism — and I think his absolutist positions on those issues push him to embrace extreme and self-damaging policies.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Oops, ok I should have said previously:
Payroll taxes are being used as part of the overall budget.
Payroll taxes would drop once people opted out.
Lots of money would be saved overseas, close to 1 trillion according to Ron Paul. Not just from DoD spending.
Ron Paul also wants to get rid of other departments. any estimated 2 trillion dollar costs are better then just allowing some sort of social security apocalypse, and the only ways to fix this is to raise taxes a lot or cut spending a lot.
If 1 trillion can really be cut then eventually we can definetely allow people to opt out. After the transition is complete and if we have a smaller government as it should be, then we could cut the income tax or make it very very small.
Perhaps have small uniform tariffs, a small national sales tax, or something else.
He has said time and time again that there has to be a transitional period, and that government has to shrink A LOT in order to do those things so he would not do them unless he had the money to because he is not in favor of borrowing money or implementing a large inflation tax by printing money.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Ron Paul does NOT advocate isolationism, he advocates non-interventionism. Trade with everyone and show them the benefits of Democracy via trade, not the barrel of a gun.
Read the Creature from Jekyll Island to learn the history of the Federal Reserve. If we paid off the national debt, our currency would collapse, not that it isn’t doing a pretty good job on that front right now.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
If the existance of Israel incites hatred, than its better to be hated. If Ron Paul can’t deal with that than he shouldn’t be president.
“Going after Bin Laden” is not enough. All global terrorist organizations who openly and diligently plan terrorist attacks against us or our allies must be engaged. If the Taliban, or Saddam Hussein, or the Mullahs of Iran or any terror-supporting regime refuses to do their job and persecute the trans-national terrorists in their midst, then we have no choice but to do it for them. Otherwise we wait until we are attacked, and respond by “going after” individuals responsible, until they elude capture - and then we give up. As Ron Paul has explicitly stated about his intention of leaving Afghanistan.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
If you abolish all tariffs unilaterally you have free trade with the entire world without having to sign a single treaty. That’s how Hong Kong did it, the most free trade place in the world.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
The country was founded on Libertarian philosophies and the country did quite well without the Fed and the IRS. In fact, through 1957 the IRS collected only a tiny fraction of what they collect today before it started going dramatically up.
Why abolish the Fed?
JFK issued currency in 1963 under Executive order 11110.
This order allows the US to print money without having to pay interest to the Federal Reserve.
Within months of printing this money, JFK was assassinated.
JFK was the only the second president to print money using Executive Order 11110, the other was Lincoln. John Wilkes Booth testified before he was hanged that the international bankers paid him to shoot Lincoln. International bankers are primary owners of the Federal Reserve.
WHY ARE WE PAYING THE FEDERAL RESERVE INTEREST ON THE MONEY IT CREATES OUT OF THIN AIR WHEN THE US GOVERNMENT HAS THE CONSTITUTIONAL POWER TO ISSUE CURRENCY WITHOUT DEBT ATTACHED TO IT? WHY?
Ron Paul wants to save our country from ‘interest on the national debt’, restore sound money, and bring honest prosperity back for all Americans.
What do you have against the principles of the Constitution that made us a great nation?
December 19th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Ron Paul has no clue that people other than white people or Jews can be warmongers. Dark-skinned third worlders who gather in the millions chanting “Death to America!” - just a reaction. It will all go away once we appease the fascist religious nuts of the middle east.
Every friday, millions of young muslim men are inspired by sermons which proclaim that the entire world belongs to them, that Allah has commanded them to fight non-believers until all of the world is for Allah, just as the Mujahideen, for thousands of years earlier have marched their armies across North Africa and into South Asia.
Yes Ron Paul, brown people can have imperialist aims of their own, inspired by religious dogma, and will sacrifice their lives to kill as many non-muslims as they can, even if it takes 1000 years to achieve their goals. They are the warmongers…If he can’t see that, he is either supremely ignorant or racist.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
“Considering that the entire federal budget is only $2.6 trillion, and the Defense Department’s share is about $550 billion, I think that projection is fantastical, to say the least.” -Sean Aqui
This is not correct. This is the budget not including the off-budget items. For instance, every couple months the Congress and President go at it about how much more to fund the troops. That is all off budget. Also, much defense spending appears in the form of other budgets (CIA, DoHS, NASA…).
Staying out of Iraq, which we would have accomplished had Paul been President, would have saved us 2.4 trillion dollars (according to Congressional Budget Office) over 6 years. 2.4 trillion divided by 6 years is about 400 billion per year. And remember this in addition to the cuts Paul would make to the normal budget expenses.
This is not that unusual when we deal with the real world of business. When a new CEO comes in because a business has been run into the ground by previous directors, companies are often cut to the bone to make them competitive. The reason that Paul is gaining traction is because the shareholders (US citizens) are ready for this country to become more competitive in the world. We are tired of sliding, and we see that the leaders of this nation are trying to pull and Enron. We are voting for a new CEO who is willing to take the measures necessary to return us to the #1 spot. We got there with bravery, freedom, and the Constitution; we’ll return there with bravery, freedom, and the Constitution.
December 19th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
I’m Canadian and have researched Dr Paul’s policies and I am shocked as to how misinformed you are. I conclude you’ve been listening to too many 30 second sound bytes which is not enough time for Dr Paul explain his articulate and logical ideas. I suggest you listen to John Stossel’s full interview n ABC.com and take a second look at the good man.
December 19th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
I have a few problems with the way the information is presented in this blog–that isn’t to say you’re /wrong/, per se, just that you may be skewing or inadvertantly misrepresenting some things.
First, the cost to implement young people opting out of Social Security are laughably low–at worst. Ron Paul’s frequently stated position on Social Security is not the same as Bush’s “roll the whole thing over” plans (remember, Bush had more than one proposed plan). Paul has said, and simply, that people who are not dependant on SS, not expecting to recieve it (as the program is bloating and overdrawing), and not interested in letting the government manage their retirement (even in part) should be allowed to simply opt out. That is not expensive nor complex. The underlying message and principle is that I shouldn’t have to pay for someone else’s retirement–certainly not if I don’t want anyone paying for mine.
On free trade, I do understand the intention behind things like NAFTA–and your argument… that a broad, multilaterally agreed upon playing field is safe for many businesses and keeps those who want to rig the game in check. But, the internet has been a great example of what unrestricted trade can produce (let’s not call NAFTA and the like “free trade”, they are at best “confederately managed trade”)… are websites in the US hindered in their selling, or hurt by the market, to such an extent that we need governmental (and hyper-governmental) regulation to impose guidelines on what one can do and what one can’t? Would we see undue and traumatic hassles when a small business wants to sell their products to or buy their products from France–given that the government isn’t setting guidelines for them? And does a broad-blanket oversight really address the finer needs and wants of businesses? Isn’t this simply a difference between central planning and a free market? Personally, I don’t see my local small businesses being hurt by the ability to determine the worth and costs of their market. I don’t see eBay falling apart. I don’t see anything but more competition, and an information age that lets me take advantage of it as a consumer (and businessman).
As for Immigration… it is an unfortunate thing to say, but Paul’s stance has been consistent and philosophically sound–though hard on the conscience of the people. We, as people, may offer food and shelter and medicine and services and education and assistance to anyone we want–in a free society. We may, individually, embrace charity and generosity and assist the needy as we see fit. But, the government is not so tasked or able. The question is… when we say “no more welfare for illegal immigrants”, it is saying, at its core, “the state does not pay for anything but the state and its subscribers”. If doctors want to choose to treat anyone, regardless their legal status–its a free market, they may do so. But to spend /my/ money, as a citizen, on something like that is purely an overextension of governmental authority. I pledge citizenship to the US, by its Constitution, which means when the government chooses to offer my fellow citizens public education and health care and welfare–that is something I agreed to let them do (through my duly appointed representatives and “promoting the general welfare” of /this/ country, as it is defined as its principles and people). If there are starving children in Africa or China or England… or Mexico… or non-citizens in Texas… it is not my problem, and I will participate in charity on my terms, not someone else’s. I think that is much Paul’s position–the burden of expense is placed on those with the money, the people, as is the burden of decision. Rightly so.
As for debt? Paul is the only candidate proposing actual debt-reductions, as opposed to just moving the money around. Actual spending cuts. Actual decreases in the size of government. His voting record is the second part of that. If Paul stays true to his words and history (which is a hypothetical, truly), I think we can expect /many/ vetoes on pork (millions and hundreds of millions of dollars), the concentration and withdrawal of the US military empire (I use the term only because what else describes our bases and occupations?), and a greater impetus on State Governments to fund their projects. We can say “oh, but that’s not enough”–but then, given the choices, who’s going to do more? I think Paul will have a hard time getting the government he wants, but I don’t think he will fail to curtail spending and return us to more feasible economics.
December 19th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Ron Paul’s main issues page which you reference only provides the briefest of explanations. If you truly wish to research and understand his positions on the issues, you need only read some of Dr. Paul’s writings:
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/articles/
Here is one example that helps explain some of the issues you have raised with his position on immigration.
Ron Paul on immigration:
“Without a welfare state, we would know that everyone coming to America wanted to work hard and support himself. Since we have accepted a permanent welfare state, however, we cannot be surprised when some freeloaders and criminals are attracted to our shores. Welfare muddies the question of why immigrants want to come here.”
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/articles/131/amnesty-and-the-welfare-state/
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/articles/129/immigration-reform-in-2006/
There’s plenty of other articles “straight from the horses mouth” providing detailed explanations of the issues you’ve raised. It takes a little more time, but researching these articles will answer many of your questions and counter many of your objections. Thank you for your article and your considered opinion, but please take another good look before you make your conclusions.
December 19th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
“If the existance of Israel incites hatred, than its better to be hated.”
And if the likes of you deny the existence and creation of the Palestinian state, then its better for the Palestinian nationalists to be killed in their cause of self-determination, THEN HAVE A F’ING PRO-ISRAELI LOBBY TROLL tell them they have no rights to freedom.
Paul is truly the only hope for America in a system of 2 political parties, subservient to the powerful Israel-first institutions, lobbies, and think tanks like AIPAC, AJC, ZOA, COPMJO, UJC, CUFI, MEMRI, AEI, HERITAGE, CAMERA, MEF, etc. etc. etc.
WAKE UP AMERICA, SEE THE 5TH COLUMN OF NEOCONS THAT AFTER IRAQ WANTED TO DRAG US INTO ANOTHER WAR WITH ISLAMIC IRAN, AND ISLAMIC SYRIA.
Then we wonder why do they hate us?
December 19th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
I think Sean just posted this blabber to get website traffic like Stu at Stanford.
Pssst Sean…go back on hiatus
Also…starting off with Um makes you look dUMb
Speaking of dumb…Ron Paul wishes to dismantle the Department of Education which perpetuates ignorance and war for centuries.
Ronnie Raygun was going to dismantle the Dept Of Ed…but then he got shot 73 days into office,and we didn’t hear any more about that.
I dare you the psuedo intellectuals here to visit Charlotte Iserbyt’s <~ Reagan whistleblower on the Department of Education’s technique of hustling money to make dummies.
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com
I will take the liberty of posting another advocate of the dismantling the Department Of Education …John Taylor Gatto
I know this will shock you pseudo-intellectuals as you are probably mired in your Prussian Educational Model SkOoLiN’
hehehe
Don’t be ignerint vote for Ron Paul
CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES:
THE TYRANNY OF COMPULSORY SCHOOLING
by John Taylor Gatto
Reprinted from The Sun:
Twenty-six years of award-winning teaching have led John Gatto to some troubling conclusions about the public schools.
A seventh-grade teacher, Gatto has been named New York City Teacher of the Year and New York State Teacher of the Year. Praised by leaders as diverse as Ronald Reagan and Mario Cuomo, he’s a political maverick whose views defy easy categorization.
Gatto is also a local legend on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where he grows garlic, plays chess, writes songs - and once won a Citizen of the Week Award for coming to the aid of a woman who had been robbed. A collection of his essays - Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum Of Compulsory Schooling - was published earlier this year by New Society Publishers.
Gatto has appeared twice before in The Sun: “Why Schools Don’t Educate” [Issue 175] and “A Few Lessons They Won’t Forget” [Issue 186]. Nothing else we’ve printed has generated as many reprint requests.
Let me speak to you about dumbness because that is what schools teach best. Old-fashioned dumbness used to be simple ignorance: you didn’t know something, but there were ways to find out if you wanted to. Government-controlled schooling didn’t eliminate dumbness - in fact, we now know that people read more fluently before we had forced schooling - but dumbness was transformed.
Now dumb people aren’t just ignorant; they’re the victims of the non-thought of secondhand ideas. Dumb people are now well-informed about the opinions of Time magazine and CBS, The New York Times and the President; their job is to choose which pre-thought thoughts, which received opinions, they like best. The élite in this new empire of ignorance are those who know the most pre-thought thoughts.
Mass dumbness is vital to modem society. The dumb person is wonderfully flexible clay for psychological shaping by market research, government policymakers; public-opinion leaders, and any other interest group. The more pre-thought thoughts a person has memorized, the easier it is to predict what choices he or she will make. What dumb people cannot do is think for themselves or ever be alone for very long without feeling crazy. That is the whole point of national forced schooling; we aren’t supposed to be able to think for ourselves because independent thinking gets in the way of “professional” think-ing, which is believed to follow rules of scientific precision.
Modern scientific stupidity masquerades as intellectual knowledge - which it is not. Real knowledge has to be earned by hard and painful thinking; it can’t be generated in group discussions or group therapies but only in lonely sessions with yourself. Real knowledge is earned only by ceaseless questioning of yourself and others, and by the labor of independent verification; you can’t buy it from a government agent, a social worker, a psychologist, a licensed specialist, or a schoolteacher. There isn’t a public school in this country set up to allow the discovery of real knowledge - not even the best ones - although here and there individual teachers, like guerrilla fighters, sabotage the system and work toward this ideal. But since schools are set up to classify people rather than to see them as unique, even the best schoolteachers are strictly limited in the amount of questioning they can tolerate.
The new dumbness - the non thought of received ideas - is much more dangerous than simple ignorance, because it’s really about thought control. In school, a washing away of the innate power of individual mind takes place, a “cleansing” so comprehensive that original thinking becomes difficult. If you don’t believe this development was part of the intentional design of schooling, you should read William Torrey Harris’s The Philosophy of Education. Harris was the U.S. Commissioner of Education at the turn of the century and the man most influential in standardizing our schools. Listen to the man.
“Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred,” writes Harris, “are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom.” This is not all accident, Harris explains, but the “result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.” Scientific education subsumes the individual until his or her behavior becomes robotic. Those are the thoughts of the most influential U.S. Commissioner of Education we’ve had so far.
The great theological scholar Dietrich Bonhoeffer raised this issue of the new dumbness in his brilliant analysis of Nazism, in which he sought to comprehend how the best-schooled nation in the world, Germany, could fall under its sway. He concluded that Nazism could be understood only as the psychological product of good schooling. The sheer weight of received ideas, pre-thought thoughts, was so overwhelming that individuals gave up trying to assess things for themselves. Why struggle- to invent a map of the world or of the human conscience when schools and media offer thousands of ready-made maps, pre-thought thoughts?
The new dumbness is particularly deadly to middle and upper-middle-class people, who have already been made shallow by the multiple requirements to conform. Too many people, uneasily convinced that they must know something because of a degree, diploma, or license, remain so convinced until a brutal divorce, alienation from their children, loss of employment, or periodic fits of meaninglessness manage to tip the precarious mental balance of their incomplete humanity, their stillborn adult lives.
Listen to William Harris again, the dark genius of American schooling, the man who gave you scientifically age-graded classrooms:
The great purposes of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places than in beautiful halls. It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world.
Harris thought, a hundred years ago, that self-alienation was the key to a successful society. Filling the young mind with the thoughts of others and surrounding it with ugliness - that was the passport to self-alienation. Who can say that he was wrong?
II
I want to give you a yardstick, a gold standard, by which to measure good schooling. The Shelter Institute in Bath, Maine will teach you how to build a three thousand square-foot, multi-level Cape Cod home in three weeks’ time, whatever your age. If you stay another week, it will show you how to make your own posts and beams; you’ll actually cut them out and set them up. You’ll learn wiring, plumbing, insulation, the works. Twenty thousand people have learned how to build a house there for about the cost of one month’s tuition in public school. (Call Patsy Hennon at 207/442-7938, and she’ll get you started on building your own home.) For just about the same money you can walk down the street in Bath to the Apprentice Shop at the Maine Maritime Museum [now in Rockport - ed.] and sign on for a one-year course (no vacations, forty hours a week) in traditional wooden boat building. The whole tuition is eight hundred dollars, but there’s a catch: they won’t accept you as a student until you volunteer for two weeks, so they can get to know you and you can judge what it is you’re getting into. Now you’ve invested thirteen months and fifteen hundred dollars and you have a house and a boat. What else would you like to know? How to grow food, make clothes, repair a car, build furni-ture, sing? Those of you with a historical imagination will recognize Thomas Jefferson’s prayer for schooling - that it would teach useful knowledge. Some places do: the best schooling in the United States today is coming out of museums, libraries, and private institutes. If anyone wants to school your kids, hold them to the standard of the Shelter Institute and you’ll do fine.
As long as we’re questioning public schooling, we should question whether there really is an abstraction called “the public” at all, except in the ominous calculations of social engineers. As a boy from the banks of the Monongahela River in western Pennsylvania, I find the term insulting, a cartoon of social reality. If an institution that robs people of their right to self-determination can call itself “public”, if being “public” means it can turn families into agents of the state, making parents spy on and harass their sons and daughters because a schoolteacher tells them to; if the state can steal your home because you can’t pay its “public” school taxes, and state courts can break up your family if you refuse to allow the state to tell your children what to think - then the word public is a label for garbage and for people who allow themselves to be treated like slaves.
A few weeks is all that the Shelter Institute asks for to give you a beautiful Cape Cod home; a few months is all Maine Maritime asks for to teach you boat-building and rope-making, lobstering and sail-making, fishing and naval architecture. We have too much schooling, not too little. Hong Kong, with its short school year, whips Japan in every scientific or mathematical competition. Israel, with its long school year, can’t keep up with Flemish Belgium, which has the shortest school year in the world.
Somebody’s been lying to you. Sweden, a rich, healthy, and beautiful country, with a spectacular reputation for quality in everything, won’t allow children to enter school before they’re seven years old. The total length of Swedish schooling is nine years, not twelve, after which the average Swede runs circles around the over-schooled American. Why don’t you know these things? To whose advantage is it that you don’t?
When students enroll in a Swedish school, the authorities ask three questions: (l) Why do you want to go to this school? (2) What do you want to gain from the experience? (3) What are you interested in?
And they listen to the answers. Can you build a house or a boat? Can you grow food, make clothing, dig a well, sing a song (your own song, that is), make your own children happy, weave a whole life from the everyday world around you? No, you say, you can’t? Then listen to me&emdash;you have no business with my kid.
In my own life, with my own children, I’m sorry I lacked the courage to say what Hester Prynne, the wearer of the scarlet letter, said to the Puritan elders when they tried to take away her daughter. Alone and friendless, dirt poor, ringed about by enemies, she said, “Over my dead body.” A few weeks ago a young woman called me from Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania to tell me the state had just insisted she stop home-schooling her little girl, Chrissie. The state was going to force her to send Chrissie to school. She said she was going to fight, first with the law, although she didn’t know where the money would come from, and then by any means she had. If I had to bet on this young, single mother or the State of Pennsylvania to win, I’d bet on the lady because what l was really hearing her say was, “Over my dead body.” I wish I’d been able to say that when the state came to take my own children. I didn’t. But if I’m born again I promise you that’s what I will say.
A few days ago I got a call from a newspaper that wanted some advice for parents about how to launch their children into school. All the reporter wanted was a sound byte from a former New York State Teacher of the Year. What I said was this:
Don’t cooperate with your children’s school unless the school has come to you in person to work out a meeting of the minds - on your turf, not theirs. Only a desperado would blindly trust his children to a collection of untested strangers and hope for the best. Parents and school personnel are just plain natural adversaries. One group is trying to make a living; the other is trying to make a work of art called a family. If you allow yourself to be co-opted by flattery, seduced with worthless payoffs such as special classes or programs, intimidated by Alice in Wonderland titles and degrees, you will become the enemy within, the extension of state schooling into your own home. Shame on you if you allow that. Your job is to educate, the schoolteacher’s is to school; you work for love, the teacher for money. The interests are radically different, one an individual thing, the other a collective. You can make your own son or daughter one of a kind if you have the time and will to do so; school can only make them part of a hive, a herd, or an anthill.
III
How did I survive for nearly thirty years in a system for which I feel such disgust and loathing? I want to make a confession in the hope it will suggest strategy to other teachers: I did it by becoming an active saboteur, in small ways and large. What I did resolutely was to teach kids what I’m saying here - that schooling is bad business unless it teaches you how to build a boat or a house; that giving strangers intimate information about yourself is certainly to their advantage, but seldom to your own.
On a daily basis I consciously practiced sabotage, breaking laws regularly, forcing the fixed times and spaces of schooling to become elastic, falsifying records so the rigid curricula of those places could be what individual children needed. I threw sand in the gears by encouraging new teachers to think dialectically so that they wouldn’t fit into the pyramid of administration. I exploited the weakness of the school’s punitive mechanism, which depends on fear to be effective, by challenging it in visible ways, showing I did not fear it, setting administrators against each other to prevent the juggernaut from crushing me. When that didn’t work I recruited community forces to challenge the school - businessmen, politicians, parents, and journalists - so I would be given a wide berth.
Once, under heavy assault, I asked my wife to run for school board. She got elected, fired the superintendent, and then punished his cronies in a host of imaginative ways.
But what I am most proud of is this: I undermined the confidence of the young in the school institution and replaced it with confidence in their own minds and hearts. I thumbed my nose at William Torrey Harris and gave to my children (although I was well into manhood before I shook off the effects of my own schooling) what had been given to me by the green river Monongahela and the steel city of Pittsburgh: love of family, friends, culture, and neighborhood, and a cup overflowing with self-respect. I taught my kids how to cheat destiny so successfully that they created a record of astonishing success that deserves a book someday. Some of my kids left school to go up the Amazon and live with Indian tribes to study on their own the effects of government dam-building on traditional family life; some went to Nicaragua and joined combat teams to study the amazing hold of poetry on the lives of common people in that land; some made award-winning movies; some became comedians; some succeeded at love, some failed. All learned to argue with Fate in the form of social engineering.
IV
I hope you saw the news story a while back about a national milk price-rigging scheme in schools from Florida to Utah. Fifty-six arrests have already been made in a caper that’s existed most of this century. Schools pay more for milk than any other bulk buyer. Does that surprise you? Ask your own school administrator what unit price he pays for school milk and he’ll look at you like your marbles are gone. How should he know, why should he care? An assistant principal once said to me, “It’s not your money. What are you getting excited about?”
What if I told you that he was the second best school administrator I met in thirty years? He was. That’s the standard we’ve established. The waste in schools is staggering. People are hired and titles created for jobs nobody needs. There’s waste in services, waste in precious time spent moving herds of children back and forth through corridors at the sound of a horn. In my experience, poor schools waste much more than rich schools, and rich schools waste more than you could believe.
The only public aspect of these places is that they function as a jobs project, although large numbers of these jobs are set aside as political patronage. Public schools can’t understand how the average private school can make profit on a per-seat cost less than half the “free” public charge; they can’t understand how the average religious school makes do on even less. Homeschooling is the biggest puzzle of all. A principal once said to me, “Those people must be sick to spend so much time with children and not get paid for it!”
Consider the fantasy of teacher certification. Teachers are licensed and paid as though they are specialists, but they rarely are. For example, a science teacher is almost never actually a scientist - a man or woman who thinks about the secrets of nature as a private passion and pursues this interest on personal time. How many science classes in this country actually make any serious attempt to discover anything or to add to human knowledge? They are orderly ways of killing time, nothing more.
Kids are set to memorizing science vocabulary, repeating well-worn procedures certain to work, chanting formulas exactly as they have been indoctrinated to chant commercials from TV. The science teacher is a publicist for political truths set down in state-approved science textbooks.
Anyone who thinks school science is the inevitable precursor of real science is very innocent, indeed; of a piece, I think, with those poor, intelligent souls who, aware that television destroys the power to think by providing pre-seen sights, pre-thought thoughts, and unwholesome fantasies, still believe somehow that PBS television must be an exception to the rule.
If you would like to know how scientists are really made, pick up a wonderful book called Discovering, published in 1989 by Harvard University Press. In it you’ll learn from a prominent scientist himself that not one major scientific discovery of this century, including exotica like superconductivity, came from an academic laboratory; or a corporate or govemment laboratory, or a school laboratory. You could have guessed the last, but I surprised you with the others, didn’t I? All came from garages, attics, and basements; all were managed with cheap, simple equipment and eccentric, personalized procedures of investigation. School is a perfect place to turn science into a religion, but it’s the wrong place to learn science, for sure.
HARRIS THOUGHT, A HUNDRED YEARS AGO, THAT SELF-ALIENATION WAS THE KEY TO A SUCCESSFUL SOCIETY. WHO CAN SAY THAT HE WAS WRONG?
The specialists in English, math, social studies, and the rest of the rainbow of progressive subjects are only marginally more competent, if at all. If three million teachers were actually the specialists their licenses claim, they would be a major voice in national life and policy-making; if we are honest, we must wonder how it is possible for an army so large to be so silent, of such little consequence, in spite of the new hokum being retailed about “schoolbased management.” Don’t misunderstand me: teachers are frequently good people, intelligent people, talented people who work very hard. But regardless of how bright they are, how gracefully they “schoolteach,” or how well they control children’s behavior (which is, after all, what they are hired to do; if they can’t do that, they are fired, but if they can, little else really matters) - the net result of their efforts and our expense is surely very little or even nothing indeed, often it leaves children worse off in terms of mental development and character formation than they were before being “taught.” Schools that seem to be successful almost always are made to appear so by selective enrollment of self-motivated children.
The best way into the strange world of compulsory schooling is through books. I always knew real books and schoolbooks were different, but I didn’t become conscious of the particulars until I got weary one day of New York City’s brainless English curriculum and decided to teach Moby Dick to mainstream eighth-grade English classes. I discovered that the White Whale is too big for the forty-five-minute bell breaks of a junior high school. I couldn’t make it “fit.” But the editors of the school edition of Moby Dick had provided a package of prefabricated questions and nearly a hundred interpretations of their own. Every chapter began and ended with a barrage of these interventions. I came to see that the school edition wasn’t a real book at all but a disguised indoctrination. The book had been rendered teacher-proof and student-proof.
VI
This jigsaw fragmentation, designed to make the job site safe from its employees, is usually credited to Frederick Taylor’s work of sinister genius, Scientific Management, written at the turn of this century. But that is wrong. The system was really devised before the American Revolution, in eighteenth-century Prussia, by Frederick the Great, and honed to perfection in early nineteenth-century Prussia after its humiliating defeat by Napoleon in 1806. A new system of schooling was the instrument out of which Prussian vengeance was shaped, a system that reduced human beings during their malleable years to reliable machine parts, human machinery dependent upon the state for its mission and purpose. When Blucher’s Death’s Head Hussars destroyed Napoleon at Waterloo, the value of Prussian schooling was confined.
By 1819, Prussian philosophy had given the world its first laboratory of compulsory schooling. That same year Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, the story of a German intellectual who fabricated a monster out of the parts of dead bodies: compulsory schooling was the monster she had in mind, emblemized in the lurching destruction caused by a homeless, synthetic creature seeking its maker, a creature with the infinite inner pain that ambiguous family brings.
In the nineteenth century, ties between Prussia and the United States were exceedingly close, a fact unknown these days because it became embarrassing to us during the World Wars and so was removed from history books. American scholarship during the nineteenth century was almost exclusively German at its highest levels, another fact conveniently absent from popular history. From 1814 to 1900, more than fifty thousand young men from prominent American families made the pilgrimage to Prussia and other parts of Germany to study under its new system of higher education based on research instead of “teaching.” Ten thousand brought back Ph.D.’s to a then-uncredentialed United States, preempting most of the available intellectual and technical work.
Prussian education was the national obsession among American political leaders, industrialists, clergy, and university people. In 1845, the Prussian emperor was even asked to adjudicate the boundary between Canada and the United States! Virtually every founding father of American compulsory schooling went to Prussia to study its clockwork schoolrooms flrsthand. Horace Mann’s Seventh Report To The Boston School Committee of 1844 was substantially devoted to glowing praise of Prussian accomplishments and how they should become our own. Victor Cousin’s book on Prussian schooling was the talk of our country about the same time. When, only a quarter-century later, Prussia crushed France in a brief war and performed the miracle of unifying Germany, it seemed clear that the way to unify our immigrant classes - which we so desperately sought to do - was through Prussian schooling.
By 1905, Prussian trained Americans, or Americans like John Dewey who apprenticed at Prussian-trained hands, were in command of every one of our new institutions of scientific teacher training: Columbia Teacher’s College, the University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins, the University of Wisconsin, Stanford. The domination of Prussian vision, and the general domination of German philosophy and pedagogy, was a fait accompli among the leadership of American schooling.
You should care about this for the compelling reason that German practices were used here to justify removal of intellectual material from the curriculum; it may explain why your own children cannot think. That was the Prussian way - to train only a leadership cadre to think.
Of all the men whose vision excited the architects of the new Prussianized American school machine, the most exciting were a German philosopher named Hegel and a German doctor named Wilhelm Wundt. In Wundt’s laboratory the techniques of psychophysics (what today we might call “experimental psychology”) were refined. Thanks to his work, it took only a little imagination to see an awesome new world emerging - for Wundt had demonstrated convincingly to his American students that people were only complex machines!
Man a machine? The implications were exhilarating, promising liberation from the ancient shackles of tradition, culture, morality, and religion. Adjustment became the watchword of schools and social welfare offices. G. Stanley Hall, one of Wundt’s personal protégés (who as a professor at Johns Hopkins had inoculated his star pupil, John Dewey, with the German virus), now joined with Thorndike, his German-trained colleague at Columbia Teacher’s College, to beat the drum for national standardized testing. Hall shrewdly sponsored and promoted an American tour for the Austrian doctor Sigmund Freud so that Freud might popularize his theory that parents and family were the cause of virtually all maladjustment - all the more reason to remove their little machines to the safety of schools.
In the minds of disciples of German educational thought, scientific education was primarily a way of forcing people to fit. With such a “technical” goal in mind, the future course of American schooling was determined, and with massive financial support from the foundations - especially those of the Rockefeller and Carnegie families - new scientific colleges to share teachers were established. In Prussia these were aptly called “teacher seminaries,” but here secular religionists were more discreet: a priesthood of trained professionals would guard the new school-church and write its canonical text into state law. Thus the Torah of twentieth century compulsory schooling was in its Ark by 1895, one third of the way through the reign of William Torrey Harris as U.S. Commissioner of Education.
Teacher training in Prussia was founded on three premises, which the United States subsequently borrowed. The first of these is that the state is sovereign, the only true parent of children. Its corollary is that biological parents are the enemies of their offspring. When Germany’s Froebel invented Kindergarten, it was not a garden for children he had in mind but a garden of children, in which state-appointed teachers were the gardeners of the children. Kindergarten is meant to protect children from their own mothers.
The second premise of Prussian schooling is that intellectual training is not the purpose of state schooling - obedience and subordination are. In fact, intellectual training will invariably subvert obedience unless it is rigidly controlled and doled out as a reward for obedience. If the will could be broken all else would follow. Keep in mind that will-breaking was the central logic of child-rearing among our own Puritan colonists, and you will see the natural affinity that exists between Prussian seeds and Puritan soil - from which agriculture our compulsory schooling law springs. The best-known device to break the will of the young, practiced for centuries among English and German upper classes, was the separation of parent and child at an early age. Here now was an institution backed by the police power of the state to guarantee that separation. But it was not enough to compel obedience by intimidation. The child must be brought to love its synthetic parent. When George Orwell’s protagonist in 1984 realizes that he loves Big Brother after betraying his lover to the state, we have a dramatic embodiment of the sexual destination of Prussian-type schooling; it creates a willingness to sell out your own family, friends, culture, and religion for your new lover, the state. Twelve years of arbitrary punishment and reward in the confinement of a classroom is ample time to condition any child to believe that he who wields red pen-power is the true parent, and they who control the buzzers must be gods.
The third premise of Prussian training is that the schoolroom and the workplace shall be dumbed down into simplified fragments that anyone, however dumb, can memorize and operate. This solves the historical dilemma of leadership: a disobedient work force could be replaced quickly, without damage to production, if the workers required only habit, not mind, to function properly. This strategy paid off recently during the national strike of air traffic controllers, when the entire force of these supposed “experts” was replaced overnight by management personnel and hastily trained fill-ins. There was no increase in accidents across the system! If anyone can do any particular job there’s no reason to pay them very much except to guarantee employee loyalty and dependency - a form of love which bad parents often extort from their young in the same way.
In the training ground of the classroom, everything is reduced to bits under close management control. This allows progress to be quantified into precise rankings to track students throughout their careers - the great irony being that it’s not intellectual growth that grades and reports really measure, but obedience to authority. That’s why regular disclosures about the lack of correlation between standardized test scores and performance do not end the use of these surveillance mechanisms. What they actually measure is the tractability of the student, and this they do quite accurately. Is it of value to know who is docile and who may not be? You tell me.
Finally, if workers or students have little or no idea how their own part fits into the whole, if they are unable to make decisions, grow food, build a home or boat, or even entertain themselves, then political and economic stability will reign because only a carefully screened and seasoned leadership will know how things work. Uninitiated citizens will not even know what questions should be asked, let alone where the answers might be found.
This is sophisticated pedagogy indeed, if far from what mother and father expect when they send Junior to school. This is what the religious Right is talking about when it claims that schooling is a secular religion. If you can think independently of pre-thought thoughts and received wisdom, you must certainly arrive at the same conclusion, whatever your private theology. Schooling is our official state religion; in no way is it a neutral vehicle for learning.
The sheer craziness of what we do to our children should have been sufficient cause to stop it once the lunacy was manifest in increased social pathology, but a crucial development forestalled corrective action: schooling became the biggest business of all. Suddenly there were jobs, titles, careers, prestige, and contracts to protect. As a country we’ve never had the luxury of a political or a religious or a cultural consensus. As a synthetic state, we’ve had only economic consensus: unity is achieved by making everyone want to get rich, or making them envy those who are.
Once a splendid economic machine like schooling was rolling, only a madman would try to stop it or to climb off its golden ascent. True, its jobs didn’t seem to pay much (although its contractors did and do make fortunes), but upon closer inspection they paid more than most. And the security for the obedient was matchless because the institution provided the best insurance that a disturbing social mobility (characteristic of a frontier society) could finally be checked. Horace Mann, Henry Barnard, William Harris, Edward Thorndike, William James, John Dewey, Stanley Hall, Charles Judd, Ellwood Cubberly, James Russell - all the great schoolmen of American history - made endless promises to industrialists and old-line American families of prominence that if the new Prussian scheme were given support, prospects of a revolution here would vanish. (What a great irony that in a revolutionary nation the most effective motivator of leadership was the guarantee that another one could be prevented!)
Schools would be the insurance policy for a new industrial order which, as an unfortunate by-product of its operations, would destroy the American family, the small farmer, the landscape, the air, the water, the religious base of community life, the time-honored covenant that Americans could rise and fall by their own efforts. This industrial order would destroy democracy itself, and the promise held out to common men and women that if they were ever backed into a corner by their leaders, they might change things overnight at the ballot box.
I hope you can see now that this Prussian theory of workplaces and schools isn’t just some historical oddity, but is necessary to explain customary textbook structure and classroom procedures, which fly in the face of how people actually learn. It explains the inordinate interest the foundations of Rockefeller and Camegie took in shaping early compulsory schooling around a standardized factory model, and it sheds light on many mysterious aspects of modem American culture: for instance, why, in a democracy, can’t citizens be automatically registered at birth to vote, once and for all?
Compulsory schooling has been, from the beginning, a scheme of indoctrination into the new concept of mass man, an important part of which was the creation of a proletariat. According to Auguste Comte (surely the godfather of scientific schooling), you could create a useful proletariat class by breaking connections between children and their families, their communities, their God, and themselves. Remember William Harris’s belief that self-alienation was the key to successful schooling! Of course it is. These connections have to be broken to create a dependable citizenry because, if left alive, the loyalties they foster are unpredictable and unmanageable. People who maintain such relationships often say, “Over my dead body.” How can states operate that way?
Think of govemment schooling as a vast behavior clinic designed to create a harmless proletariat, the most important part of which is a professional proletariat of lawyers, doctors, engineers, managers, government people, and schoolteachers. This professional proletariat, more homeless than the poor and the sub-poor, is held hostage by its addiction to luxury and security, and by its fear that the licensing monopoly might be changed by any change in governance. The main service it renders - advice - is contaminated by self interest. We are all dying from it, the professional proletariat faster than anyone. It is their children who commit literal suicide with such regularity, not the children of the poor. …
VII
Printing questions at the end of chapters is a deliberate way of dumbing down a text to make it teacher-proof. We’ve done it so long that nobody examines the premises under the practice or sees the permanent reduction in mental sovereignty it causes. Just as science teachers were never supposed to be actual scientists, literature teachers weren’t supposed to be original thinkers who brought original questions to the text.
In 1926, Bertrand Russell said casually that the United States was the first nation in human history to deliberately deny its children the tools of critical thinking; actually Prussia was first, we were second. The school edition of Moby Dick asked all the right questions, so I had to throw it away. Real books don’t do that. They let readers actively participate with their own questions. Books that show you the best questions to ask aren’t just stupid, they hurt the intellect under the guise of helping it, just as standardized tests do.
Well-schooled people, like schoolbooks, are very much alike. Propagandists have known for a century that school-educated people are easier to lead than ignorant people - as Dietrich Bonhoeffer confirmed in his studies of Nazism.
It’s very useful for some people that our form of schooling tells children what to think about, how to think about it, and when to think about it. It’s very useful to some groups that children are trained to be dependent on experts, to react to titles instead of judging the real men and women who hide behind the titles. It isn’t very healthy for families and neighborhoods, cultures and religions. But then school was never about those things any-way: that’s why we don’t have them around anymore. You can thank govemment schooling for that.
VIII
I think it would be fair to say that the overwhelming majority of people who make schools work today are unaware why they fail to give us successful human beings, no matter how much money is spent or how much good will is expended on reform efforts. This explains the inevitable temptation to find villains and to cast blame - on bad teaching, bad parents, bad children, or penurious taxpayers.
The thought that school may be a brilliantly conceived social engine that works exactly as it was designed to work and produces exactly the human products it was designed to produce establishes a different relation to the usual demonologies. Seeing school as a triumph of human ingenuity, as a glorious success, forces us to consider whether we want this kind of success, and if not, to envision something of value in its place. And it forces us to challenge whether there is a “we,” a national consensus sufficient to justify looking for one right way rather than dozens or even hundreds of right ways. I don’t think there is.
IX
Museums and institutes of useful knowledge travel a different road than schools. Consider the difference between librarians and schoolteachers. Librarians are custodians of real books and real readers; schoolteachers are custodians of schoolbooks and indentured readers. Somewhere in the difference is the Rosetta Stone that reveals how education is one thing, schooling another.
Begin with the setting and social arrangement of a library. The ones I’ve visited all over the country invariably are comfortable and quiet, places where you can read rather than just pretend to read. How important this silence is. Schools are never silent. People of all ages work side by side in libraries, not just a pack of age-segregated kids. For some reason, libraries do not segregate by age nor do they presume to segregate readers by questionable tests of reading ability. Just as the people who decoded the secrets of farming or of the forests and oceans were not segregated by age or test scores, the library seems to have intuited that common human judgment is adequate to most learning decisions.
The librarian doesn’t tell me what to read, doesn’t tell me the sequence of reading I have to follow, doesn’t grade my reading. Librarians act as if they trust their customers. The librarian lets me ask my own questions and helps me when I need help, not when the library decides I need it. If I feel like reading in the same place all day long, that seems to be OK with the library. It doesn’t tell me to stop reading at regular intervals by ringing a bell in my ear. The library keeps its nose out of my home, too. It doesn’t send letters to my mother reporting on my library behavior; it doesn’t make recommendations or issue orders on how I should use my time spent outside of the library.
The library doesn’t have a tracking system. Everyone is mixed together there, and no private files exist detailing my past victories and defeats as a patron. If the books I want are available, I get them by requesting them - even if that deprives some more gifted reader, who comes a minute later. The library doesn’t presume to determine which of us is more qualified to read that book; it doesn’t play favorites. It is a very class-blind, talent-blind place, appropriately reflecting our historic political ideals in a way that puts schools to shame.
The public library isn’t into public humiliation the way schools seem to be. It never posts ranked lists of good and bad readers for all to see. Presumably it considers good reading its own reward, not requiring additional accolades, and it has resisted the temptation to hold up good reading as a moral goad to bad readers. One of the strangest differences between libraries and schools, in New York City at least, is that you almost never see a kid behaving badly in a library or waving a gun there - even though bad kids have exactly the same access to libraries as good kids do. Bad kids seem to respect libraries, a curious phenomenon which may well be an unconscious response to the automatic respect libraries bestow blindly on everyone. Even people who don’t like to read like libraries from time to time; in fact, they are such generally wonderful places I wonder why we haven’t made them compulsory - and all alike, of course, too.
Here’s another angle to consider: the library never makes predictions about my general future based on my past reading habits, nor does it hint that my days will be happier if I read Shakespeare rather than Barbara Cartland. The library tolerates eccentric reading habits because it realizes that free men and women are often very eccentric.
And finally, the library has real books, not schoolbooks. Its volumes are not written by collective pens or picked by politically correct screening committees. Real books conform only to the private curriculum of each writer, not to the invisible curriculum of some German collective agenda. The one exception to this is children’s books - but no sensible child ever reads those things, so the damage from them is minimal.
Real books are deeply subversive of collectivization. They are the best known way to escape herd behavior, because they are vehicles transporting their reader into deep caverns of absolute solitude where nobody else can visit: No two people ever read the same great book. Real books disgust the totalitarian mind because they generate uncontrollable mental growth - and it cannot be monitored!
Television has entered the classroom because it is a collective mechanism and, as such, much superior to textbooks; similarly, slides, audio tapes, group games, and so on meet the need to collectivize, which is a central purpose of mass schooling. This is the famous “socialization” that schools do so well. Schoolbooks, on the other hand, are paper tools that reinforce school routines of close-order drill, public mythology, endless surveillance, global ranking, and constant intimidation.
That’s what the questions at the end of chapters are designed to do, to bring you back to a reality in which you are subordinate. Nobody really expects you to answer those questions, not even the teacher; they work their harm solely by being there. That is their genius. Schoolbooks are a crowd-control device. Only the very innocent and well-schooled see any difference between good ones and bad ones; both kinds do the same work. In that respect they are much like television programming, the function of which, as a plug in narcotic, is infinitely more powerful than any trivial differences between good programs and bad.
Real books educate, schoolbooks school, and thus libraries and library policies are a major clue to the reform of American schooling. When you take the free will and solitude out of education it becomes schooling. You can’t have it both ways.
[This is the text of Gatto Speech in Texas)
—-
Ron Paul can fix this.
December 19th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Jimmy the Dhimmi, you can choose to believe this or not, but I am an Orthodox Jew and live in the “West Bank”, and am a very big fan of Ron Paul (as well as an American citizen).
I will grant that I too believe that Paul is, in some ways, naive in his views about the Mideast, but he is NOT wrong when he says America has created some of the problems that come back to haunt it. That is not the same as saying that America deserved 9/11 or anything like it. Osama bin Laden was supported by America. America did place military bases in Saudi Arabia which were wildly unpopular to Arabs and Muslims all over.
Sanctions against regimes (like Iran or Cuba) do nothing to bring the regimes down and everything to hurt the people living there (I used to think differently). Sanctions have been in effect against Iran for almost 20 years and against Cuba for almost FIFTY years, to absolutely no effect whatsoever.
An America that is militarily over-extended all over the world will be incapable of defending itself at home against a genuine threat. It has no business being in Iraq, Italy (Italy?!), Germany, Korea, or any of the hundred-odd other countries it has a presence in, often propping up unpopular regimes.
Regarding Israel, Paul has said many, many times that Israel gets a bad deal from the aid, that America restrains Israel from acting in its best interest. Paul was one of the few politicians who openly supported Israel’s right to unilaterally act and bomb Iraq’s Osirak reactor, at a time when it faced nearly unanimous condemnation from left and right. Israel’s economy is many times larger than any of its enemies. It can easily absorb the loss of that aid, which for decades has allowed the government here to avoid needed and painful reforms from a still largely socialist outlook.
An America that returns to its roots as a Constitutional Republic, something only Paul proposes, would have a FAR greater and more positive effect than all the military misadventures which every other candidate for president wants to continue.
December 19th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
“and we see that the leaders of this nation are trying to pull an Enron. We are voting for a new CEO who is willing to take the measures necessary to return us to the #1 spot. We got there with bravery, freedom, and the Constitution; we’ll return there with bravery, freedom, and the Constitution.”
cheers!
December 19th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
You’re either for free trade or you’re not. Ron Paul is for free trade. NAFTA and the other managed trade systems are not free trade. Its not a legitimate argument to say “oh, I want free trade” and then complain that doing what it would take to have free trade is “economically inefficient.” Guess you didn’t really want free trade after all.
Do you think that government spending was too small in 1995? That’s what Ron Paul’s policies would gradually take us back to. Clearly we have spending that could be cut such that we’re back to 1995 levels (which were too high even then).
Why should illegals get welfare services? Why should the federal government mandates that states provide such services against their will. If you have a legitimate reason to think that illegals should profit from American tax dollars then please explain it.
December 19th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
This is the budget not including the off-budget items. For instance, every couple months the Congress and President go at it about how much more to fund the troops. That is all off budget. Also, much defense spending appears in the form of other budgets (CIA, DoHS, NASA…).
I’ll deal with Iraq below.
As far as shutting down overseas bases, the best estimate I’ve found come from the Congressional Budget Office (scroll down to see Plan 3A and 3B). It concludes that bringing all the troops home would save about $1 billion a year — hardly enough to make Social Security solvent, even after paying off the $7 billion in moving costs.
As for the defense spending appearing under other guises (CIA, NASA) are you now saying Paul will gut our intelligence budgets and NASA? As for the Department of Homeland Security, most of its functions will still be around (and paid for), given that one rationale for bringing the troops home is increased border protection. Sure, the more obnoxious provisions of the Patriot Act will be eliminated; but that won’t save much actual money.
Staying out of Iraq, which we would have accomplished had Paul been President, would have saved us 2.4 trillion dollars (according to Congressional Budget Office) over 6 years. 2.4 trillion divided by 6 years is about 400 billion per year. And remember this in addition to the cuts Paul would make to the normal budget expenses.
Getting out of Iraq would save a ton of money (though your math is funky. The *long-term* cost of the war is projected be about $2.4 trillion. We haven’t spent that much in six years). But it’s all borrowed money. Is deficit-hawk Paul really suggesting that we should go on borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars, but simply put it into SS instead of Iraq?
December 19th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Sorry, here’s the link to the CBO study on base closings.
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=21432&archive=true
December 19th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
I find it amazing that you would characterize a policy of free trade, which manifests itself in the simple and exclusively morally licit manner by merely repealing tarifs, customs and other trade barriers, and non-intervention, which actually takes into account the Christian teachings of peace and friendship and recognizes the historical lesson (the dialectic if you will) that military might never creates long-term peace, as “extreme” and “self-damaging.”
What has our political culture come to? There is a wonderful quote by Adam Smith about how Americans enjoy war because it comes at such a slow and incremental cost and yet provides much enjoyment in the papers while maintaining an air of unreality that I really ought to track down and post here someday.
Dealing out death and judgment with brute force, mobilized thugs and gun-toting college-age minions CANNOT be a Godly purpose. Self-defense is rational. Hegemony through force and threat of force is not.
And don’t get me started on your ignorance re: fiat currency. Rather than argue economics, I find it amazing that the idea of creating money out of thin air doesn’t just completely clash with the common sense I *thought* everyone was born with.
December 19th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
You’re either for free trade or you’re not. Ron Paul is for free trade. NAFTA and the other managed trade systems are not free trade.
So bilateral agreements are free trade, but multilateral agreements aren’t? That makes no sense. Establishing a framework of common rules under which everyone conducts trade facilitates trade and reduces protectionism, which is pretty much the definition of “free trade.”
Do you think that government spending was too small in 1995?
In some areas, not in others. But you ignore inflation, as well as the fact that we have more people and a larger economy than we did then. Across the board cuts sound great, but you have to look at whose ox is being gored before deciding whether a given set of cuts is a good idea.
December 19th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
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.”
What are “our global responsibilities”. Many countries seem to have no global responsibilities, the Swiss for one, and they are quite wealthy. The statement you make smacks of an inherent belief in world government, whether this is a white mans burden type thing, a Neocon US hegemony is good argument, or the more collectivist ideas of world socialism, and the view that wealth and strength is privilege, and should be rejected as if the US were Mother Theresa. Without knowing exactly what you mean by our global responsibilities, it is hard to make an exact argument, other than to say, that beyond adhering to certain treaties, we don’t have any.
December 19th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
The problem with managed trade is that it isn’t just a common set of rules. We have to go bow before foreign panels to adjudicate disputes. Our business law is altered to suit the needs of foreigners. None of these things would happen if we engaged in true free trade (multilateral treaty’s would be fine; its the creation of supernational organizations to govern trade that is the problem).
I’m glad you recognize the amount of inflation we’ve had since 1995. Ron Paul would address that problem as well.
December 19th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
“As far as shutting down overseas bases, the best estimate I’ve found come from the Congressional Budget Office (scroll down to see Plan 3A and 3B). It concludes that bringing all the troops home would save about $1 billion a year”
Sean you’re missing the point.
Shutting down bases will in addition to saving money show Americans that 1) There is no threat, indeed our threat is increased when do build bases and embassies on foreign soil when others don’t want us there and/or are uncomfortable. Case in point: Puerto Rico, Iraq, Saudi Arabia (they requested their Sultan Air base back and we complied and moved our CentCom to Qatar, where the public still resents the unpopular decision by their Emir: Khalifa Al-Thani.
2) Show Americans that our half a trillion dollar budget for “Defense” is unwarranted since there is no immediate threat from any power since the US has enough conventional weapons (not nuclear) to blow up the world 300 X over. No wonder Bush wants to cut nuclear weapon stockpiles.
3) Expose the Military-Industrial Complex as the corporate sham they are robbing us taxpayers with constant threats of stateless and angry “Islamic extremist.” This is where Ron Paul shines, he knows no one can take down America save America’s stupid politicians beholden to the pro-Israeli lobby and recklessly spending our way into economic collapse.
Therefore closing of bases will show the world we are not a power willing to throw our military and weight around just for the hell of it, and are not in Empire/nation building in Iraq/Afghanistan/Lebanon/Israel, etc. but WILL defend ourselves when attacked.
Some food for thought. Take care…
best,
TJ
December 19th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Sean,
You do your homework and respond to people’s questions which I admire. I disagree with some of your math but I’m going to need time to find my links on budget issues.
Your “Stars and Stripes” CBO article assumes all troops brought home are simply shifted to stateside bases and so the savings are, consuquently, rather small. I honestly question the sheer magnitude of our imperial standing army. It’s precisely the kind of army most of the Founding Fathers rebelled against and wrote against. America would neither be gutted or subject to attack by even a rather sizeable cut in concurrently serving troops. We have a similar situation with our troops to that which was oft-discussed in the 80’s with our ability to entirely annihilate the world 1300 times over.
What has truly weakened America’s defenses is our tireless defense of global Empire. Is it not isolationist to simply scale your forces back to defending your borders and not policing the entire world.
Likewise, much of the so-called ‘foreign aid’ we currently engage in is not humanitarian in nature but military hardware that later we face off against. Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China, etc. have much hardware of American origin — largely gifted to them (or their allies) during crazy alliances wherein we very temporarily weaponize ‘the enemies of our enemies’. I am certain true humanitarian aid would be unaffected by cuts in send F-16’s to Pakistan.
Finally, and this is my main question for you:
You say you “largely agree with Paul on undeclared wars and preemptive war”. What other Presidential candidates even come close to a position like that? To my knowledge all of the Democratic candidates, for instance, agreed in a recent debate that Iran was certainly still in their crosshairs and US occupying forces were likely to still be in Iraq in 2012 even if they were elected.
December 19th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Talking about Ron Paul in your blog will definitely get you hits. Saying you won’t vote for him will definitely get you a response. You’re just an Internet troll.
RON PAUL 2008.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
Sean Aqui,
Damn right 911 was America’s fault, at least in part. A trillion dollar defense and it can’t prevent an amateur pilot from plowing into the Pentagon headquarters ? At the very least, that’s unpardonable incompetence on the part of our Air Force. One can wonder then, why General Meyers was promoted instead of being forced into retirement in shame. But we all know there’s something rotten in the State of Denmark about the whole deal, and you want to pretend the elephant in the room doesn’t exist.
But I guess the incompetence is understandable, since nobody “had any inkling whatsoever that the people were going to fly airplanes into buildings”. Funny though, the tv show “The Lone Gunman” had a lot more than an inkling about it 6 months before 911.
Just type “Lone Gunman 911″ into Google videos and you’ll know what I’m talking about.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Oh, yeah, another comment. Rumsfeld admitted that 2 trillion dollars was missing from the Defense Department budget the day on 910. The next day that end of the Pentagon happened to hit by an “airplane”. Yet you quote Defense Department statistics as if they had any reliability at all.
Let’s face it folks, all those crazy John Birchers have been far, far closer to the truth than the mainstream hacks you’ve been listening to all these years. The New World Order really does exist, and it’s run by a bunch of criminals who also have taken over the power structure of the United States. It’s time to grow up and start considering this a possibility. But don’t listen to me, listen to George HW Bush, he told you all about it during Gulf War I.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
The United States Government funded and trained Al Qaeda. You are a moron and are completely ignorant if you think that these people are committing suicide to hurt us for no reason. Ron Paul is the only man who seems to understand this, and that’s pretty plain to see. The elite running our country don’t care about how many people get killed. We’ve been meddling in affairs in the middle east for decades. Halliburton, Monsanto, and many other private contractors (Blackwater) just to name a few, are profiting immensely off the war in Iraq. 12,000+ U.S. military suicides serving in Iraq/Afghanista, 70% of military wanting to come home, country going toward bankrupcy and more and more people hating us. Is it worth just waving the white flag and watching our nation collapse or should we risk a change in policy? I’d rather fight and risk anything than watch our country go down the drain. RON PAUL ‘08
December 19th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Sean, et al,
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. All too often we ignored our own principles of democracy, the ideals espoused in the Declaration of Independence, and the freedoms enshrined in our beautiful Constitution. It isn’t surprising that people are angry with these policies, and skeptical of our motivations. Let me list a few examples.
Iran - 1970s. We supported the Shah of Iran against a growing democractic movement in his country. The people were rising up en-masse, hungry for revolution. We used our clout and military hardware to prop up one person, ignoring the wishes of the population. As a result, a democratic movement was hijacked by militants under the cover of Shia Islam. Look where we are with them today, our government won’t even formally speak or conduct diplomacy with them.
Afghanistan - 1970s. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan. We convince the Pakistanis to help us funnel arms and money into Afghanistan, via the CIA and Pakistani ISI. We convince the Afghan tribes that they must embrace jihad against the Godless Soviet Communists. Madrassas sprung up in Pakistan, especially in the border areas. We encourage the influx of Pakistani and Arab “freedom fighters”. The nation is awash in landmines, jihad, and Stinger missiles. The Soviets leave. We do too, right after the Russians, leaving that nation broken, and with the Pakistani intelligence services enjoying this new militant army they’ve helped create….which oh yeah, ultimately produced the Taliban movement. Before 9-11, these Taliban leaders were guests of some oil company executives, both at their homes in Texas, and in DC. They wanted to build gas pipelines from the Former Soviet Republics and Iran down through Afghanistan, Pakistan, and into India. They were all right then, huh? The vacuum we left there allowed these militant groups saf