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Ron Paul

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Ron Paul enjoyed significant support from the Rebel Alliance during his 2008 Presidential campaign.
You see, Mr. Powers, I love goooooold! The look of it! The taste of it! The smell of it! The texture! I love gold so much that I even lost my genitalia in an unfortunate schmelting accident.

Goldmember Ron Paul

Ron Paul is a Congressman from the 14th Congressional District of Texas. Having ended a bid for the Republican Party's nomination in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election on 8 March 2008 after obtaining only 15 delegates out of 2,360 (although he did garner 5.7% of the vote in the Republican primaries that year), Ron Paul loitered around the lunatic fringe before entering the 2012 Republican nomination process in 2010.

He has recently been gaining popularity thanks to the work of his fanbase, affectionately known as "Paulbots," "Paultards," or "Paulites", and most have, by now, seen the rabid shrieks of "RON PAUL 2008 2012!!1!!!" at least once on the Internet. Needless to say, if this surge actually turns out to be legitimate and he does face Barack Obama for the presidency, the United States will be in for one hell of a ride.

Hint: not in any particularly good way.

Contents

[edit] Political positions

Ron Paul can smell gold at ten kilometers.
Guide to:

U.S. Politics

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Persons of interest

Ron Paul is frequently described as a conservative with many libertarian ideas, which means that Ron Paul is a paleolibertarian/conservative.[1] He is a strict constitutionalist, and believes in "limited government"[2] to the point of abolishing the IRS and the income tax, slash most federal spending, reintroduce the gold standard, and abolish the Federal Reserve (not to mention that that would eliminate Medicare/Medicaid and castrate Social Security). He also voted against the Darfur Accountability and Divestment Act of 2007,[3] which would have banned federal contracts with firms doing business with the Janjaweed militia of Sudan.[4] He was the only congressman to do so.

On the other hand, he also wants to end the War on Drugs supports medical marijuana and wants to get the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Following the recent TSA act, he was the one standing up to say that taking nude photos of passengers, and feeling up people's grandmothers, is not making anyone safer.[5] He proposed a simple law which would essentially say that government officials have to go through the same screenings the rest of us do, in an effort to wake them up. He has even spoken in defense of WikiLeaks, a whistleblowing website that has exposed government corruption.[6]

However, even in areas of foreign policy, Paul has demonstrated that he is not to be trusted; a month after 9/11, he proposed H.R. 3076, which would place a $40 billion bounty on top Al Qaida members who were brought to the government dead or alive. Essentially, it would hire a group of private mercenaries to handle the Afghanistan War their own way.

For some reason, he seems to not like the idea of jus soli – the granting of citizenship to those born in America.[7]

[edit] Homosexuality and the Religious Right

It has been suggested that Paul is in league with the Dominionist and Christian Reconstructionist movements.[8] Paul introduced the We the People Act into the House of Representatives twice. This bill would strip the Federal courts of jurisdiction in cases involving abortion, same-sex marriage, privacy related to sexual behavior, and Establishment Clause issues, leaving them to the states...which is exactly what the Religious Right wants to do.

How does Ron Paul reconcile dominionism with libertarianism?[9] It seems he wants the church to be strong and the state to be weak:

The Founding Fathers envisioned a robustly Christian... America, with churches serving as vital institutions that would eclipse the state in importance.[10]

Ron Paul's radical views on "states' rights" also extends into homosexuality. Ron Paul believes that these rights include the ability to regulate sex, specifically arresting homosexual individuals for having sex. This is another case where he abandons the right to privacy for a group he doesn't like.

Ridiculous as sodomy laws may be, there clearly is no right to privacy nor sodomy found anywhere in the Constitution. There are, however, states' rights — rights plainly affirmed in the Ninth and Tenth amendments. Under those amendments, the State of Texas has the right to decide for itself how to regulate social matters like sex, using its own local standards.

—Ron Paul, Federal Courts and the Imaginary Constitution

While he wants to abolish the death penalty at the federal level, apparently it doesn't matter when supporting extremist pastor Phillip Kayser who advocates the death penalty for gays.[11][12]

[edit] Extremism

There has been some controversy over support for Ron Paul by extremist groups, tax protesters, and neo-Nazi organizations such as Stormfront.[13][14] In fact, Stormfront.org administrator and noted white nationalist Don Black donated $500 to Paul's campaign.[15][16] Paul's campaign has expressed dismay over these associations, although critics hold that he has not adequately distanced himself from them.[17]

Ron Paul has also used his notability among fervent libertarians to endorse a number of candidates for office on more local level. One of the candidates he initially endorsed, Bill Johnson, turned out to be a white supremacist[18] who had written a proposed constitutional amendment that would have deported people based on racial criteria.[19] He endorsed the fundamentalist loon Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party in 2008[20] and in turn endorsed and was endorsed by noted crank Arthur Robinson.[21][22]

[edit] "Economics"

Paul is associated with the Austrian school of economics. Long-time Paul associate and staffer Lew Rockwell founded the Ludwig von Mises Institute, which runs columns by Paul. This is the reason for all of his goldbuggery and other crank economic ideas.

He doesn't just want to audit and end the Fed, but also to audit Ft. Knox's gold reserves, just in case someone replaced them with metal bars that are merely painted gold.[23]

On the positive side of the ledger, he was (along with Bernie Sanders of Vermont) a driving force behind the audit of the Fed that revealed its dirty dealings during the bailouts.[24]

[edit] The Ron Paul (insert descriptor here) Report

Soon after his election to Congress in 1978, Ron Paul began putting out a newsletter. Originally entitled the Ron Paul Freedom Report, then the Ron Paul Political Report,[25] and finally the Ron Paul Survival Report, it was full of homophobia, racism, sexism, and paranoia. The Ron Paul Report was roughly equivalent to the John Birch Society in its kookishness. The Report particularly seemed to hate Barbara Jordan, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela.[26]

Ron Paul has since said that he didn't write everything for the report, but a consistent pattern of writing for the better part of the late eighties and early nineties (i.e., when the nuttiest stuff was printed in the newsletter) suggests that he at least knew what was in it. Movement libertarians have fingered Paul staffer Lew Rockwell as the culprit who ghost-wrote the reports. He predictably denies authorship of the letters as well. However, in previous interviews he has defended several of the statements as both being written by himself and being "statistical" instead of racist.[27]

Nelson Linder, former president of the Austin division of the NAACP, has known Ron Paul for over twenty years and vehemently denies that he is a racist, and in fact admires his work in defense of blacks in the criminal justice system.[28] Naturally, the existence of a single African-American who thinks Ron Paul isn't a racist proves that he indeed isn't.

Ron Paul has made noises which suggest that he has backpedalled from the racism he embraced previously: "Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals. The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty, a limited, constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group claims."[29] Reconciling this with his views on homosexuality is left as an exercise for the reader.

All of this, and considering he's an opponent of the Civil Rights Act, leaves us with a couple of theories as to why Ron Paul seems to be a magnet for nuts:

  1. He's desperate for supporters;
  2. He's horribly ignorant of who he has ties to; and/or
  3. He's a horrible bigot and doesn't want to admit it.

[edit] Teabagger irony

Ron Paul was actually the first to start using the "Tea Party" iconography back in 2007 and during his "moneybomb" days. In a massively ironic and hypocritical move, the Teabaggers ran multiple candidates against him in the 2010 midterms.[30]

[edit] Electoral success

Ron Paul ran for President on the Libertarian ticket in 1988, and obtained about 0.5% of the popular vote. His running mate Andre Marrou ran again in 1992 and obtained 0.28% of the popular vote. After this poor showing, Ron Paul went back to the GOP with his tail between his legs.

Ron Paul is attempting to run for the Presidency a third time, and has gained more media attention than the first two times. Unfortunately for Paulbots, he has yet to win a single primary or caucus, though his supporters still insist that he is second in delegate count.[31]

Though his domestic policy views are hard to justify, it is amusing to see other Republican candidates getting owned on some matters of foreign policy and social issues in the debates.

[edit] Science

Dr. Paul neither knows nor cares about science. He believes that a lack of understanding of basic science shouldn't matter in choosing a president.[32] Although an MD, he has said evolution is "just a theory" and that he does not accept it.[33][34] He's also a climate change denier.

[edit] Woo promotion

"Already, Paul introduced a bill (The Health Freedom Protection Act) that would strongly and positively affect Mercola.com and many other natural health organizations and advocates, along with the field of natural health in general." – Dr. Joseph Mercola

"Only Ron Paul believes in genuine health freedom. He's the creator of the Health Freedom Protection Act, a bill that would reestablish Free Speech provisions for makers of superfoods, herbs, nutritional supplements and other natural remedies." – Mike Adams of NaturalNews[35]

In other words, Paul, who is an actual MD, supports freeing the chains that bind the sellers of quack remedies and unproven nostrums from lying to their potential customers. It is recommended that you go to the link in the footnote and read it. You can skip all the stuff about Stormfront and neo-Nazis to get to the quackery report.

[edit] His son

His son, Rand Paul, is a Republican Senator from Kentucky. If anything, he's even crazier than Ron.[36] Surprisingly, Rand Paul is apparently not named after Libertarian icon Ayn Rand.[37]

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

  1. Snow, Nancy (2006). The Arrogance of American Power: What U.S. Leaders Are Doing Wrong and Why It's Our Duty to Dissent. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 32.
  2. Baldwin, Chuck (2007-11-06). "An Appeal To My Fellow Pastors". NewsWithViews.com. Retrieved 2007-11-07.
  3. Record of Congressional votes on the Darfur Accountability and Divestment Act
  4. Fact Sheet on the Darfur Accountability and Divestment Act
  5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwsdq69AHnw&feature=related
  6. Ron Paul Defends WikiLeaks (The Young Turks)
  7. Straight from the horse's website!
  8. http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/10/is_ron_paul_a_dominionist.php
  9. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/12/us-usa-campaign-paul-idUSTRE80B25J20120112
  10. http://www.examiner.com/humanist-in-national/ron-paul-wrong-for-atheists-wrong-for-secular-america
  11. http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2011/12/29/395688/paul-campaign-touts-endorsement-of-preacher-who-advocates-death-penalty-for-gays/
  12. http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/12/ron-paul-hired-anti-gay-activist-to-run-iowa-campaign.php#Scene_1
  13. [1]
  14. Index of Ron Paul-related threads at Stormfront
  15. Source: Federal Election Commission database
  16. Story from Lone Star Times
  17. Story from Huffington Post
  18. http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2008/05/ron-paul-statem.html
  19. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-johnson5-2008may05,0,5776432.story
  20. Ron Paul Endorses Chuck Baldwin for President, ronpaul.com
  21. Official Endorsements for Ron Paul, Ron Paul Forums
  22. Art Robinson endorsements
  23. Is Gold in Fort Knox Real? Ron Paul Wants to Know, CNBC
  24. http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=1416
  25. CNN story relating to "his" Political Report
  26. http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=e2f15397-a3c7-4720-ac15-4532a7da84ca
  27. http://www.criticalreactor.com/ronpaul/newsletters/1996_Dallas_Morning_News.html
  28. http://www.nolanchart.com/article1134-naacp-president-ron-paul-is-not-a-racist.html
  29. http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=353
  30. A Ron Paul Tea Party poster and Tea Party Betrays Ron Paul.
  31. http://www.dailypaul.com/214504/the-real-delegate-score-romney-93-paul-82
  32. http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/12/ron_paul_rejects_evolution.php
  33. http://www.reason.tv/roughcut/show/215.html
  34. [2]
  35. These two quotes were secondarily mined from http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/12/ron_paul_quackery_enabler.php
  36. Rand Paul part of AAPS doctors group airing unusual views
  37. No, Rand Paul is NOT named after Ayn Rand


United States 2012 Presidential election articles on RationalWiki
Topics: 2012 U.S. Presidential Election - Democratic Party - Debate:Religious beliefs and public office - Republican Party - Same-sex marriage - United States Electoral College
Candidates: Newt Gingrich - Mitt Romney - Rick Santorum - Ron Paul - Barack Obama (incumbent)
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