I have been visiting this website for about 2 years and have agreed with a number of your housing-related posts. However, I find myself taking exception to your recent statements about Ron Paul. I will try to address each of them, one-by-one, so please be patient.
* A moderately xenophobic nut job who's sole claim to fame is that he wants to bring back the gold standard and abolish the FED.
When you begin your arguments with such language as “nut job”, you have already set yourself up for failure. You list 6 bullet points in your argument, and your very first one is not one based in fact, but rather more of a personal attack…you immediately start off on the wrong foot.
* He has demonstrated that he has no deep appreciation for the current fiscal crisis, other than that we have had a lot of inflation in our currency over the last 90 or so years.
Surely you must be kidding here. Out of all of the candidates, either Republican or Democrat, Ron Paul is THE ONLY ONE who has addressed our current fiscal crisis with any sort of real substance. I cannot count how many videos I have seen where he explains that the cause of our many problems, such as the housing bubble and out-of-control health care costs, are due to our flawed monetary policy and inflation. Dr. Paul is well steeped in the teachings of Ludvig von Mises and the Austrian school of economics. Perhaps you have some other information to back up your statement.
* He thinks foreigers of all stripes are untrustworthy dogs, yet Americans are made of gold.
What!? What sort of backing do you have to make such a claim? Just because he is pushing for maintaining our national sovereignty does not mean that he is against foreigners. You need to do a better job in backing up such flippant remarks.
* He sees an internationalist/liberal/(insert pejorative here) conspiracy behind almost every treaty we have signed.
Like your previous flippant statements, you do not cite any specific instances here, so I will do my best to fill in the large blanks. One of the more glaring treaties is that between the United States and Japan upon the close of World War II. This treaty, in a nutshell, stated that the United States is to provide for the defense of Japan. In other words, the US is to maintain forces “in and about Japan so as to deter armed attack upon Japan.” – http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/japan/japan001.htm This essentially means that the US is responsible for the defense of Japan. We have similar arrangements with other nations such as Germany, Korea, and Afghanistan, where we set up bases and a prolonged military presence – even if there is no IMMINENT threat to our own national security. All the while, maintaining this sort of global presence carries a cost and does not come for free. The American taxpayer ultimately ends up paying for it.
* His campaign website is extremely light on details of how he could accomplish ANY of the things he says he wants to do.
Ron Paul’s website clearly explains his stance on the various problems of our time, as well as his solution to solving them. He is the only candidate that has said that the president, alone, is not enough to solve these problems. – that it takes a majority of those in Congress. All of the other candidates say they will immediately do this or do that; knowingly (or unknowingly) believing that they have the Constitutional right to do so.
* His belief set while strongly libertarian in economics is equally strongly Christian conservative in social politics.
You are basically saying that he is Laissez-Faire for economic policies, but Conservative for social policies. The economic policies affect all demographic strata: the very wealthy AS WELL AS the down-on-their-luck-single-moms who are contemplating whether or not to bear their child. In terms of social policies, Ron Paul (and many Libertarians) believe against an act of aggression
. An abortion, performed by the permission of a woman (for argument’s sake), is an act of aggression against an unborn person. This brings the argument down to the level of when a person actually becomes a person. The argument that Ron Paul makes is that, as an OB-GYN doctor, he had a responsibility to deliver babies. If he screwed up, he could be sued. Scott Peterson was recently convicted of double homicide for murdering his wife who was 8 months pregnant. It was alright for the courts to give Scott ONE death sentence for his wife and ONE death sentence for his 8-month unborn child. Meanwhile, it is OK for doctors to carry out late-term abortions without being in violation of the law? This is the classic definition of a double standard. How can we consider an unborn person a victim of murder; yet not consider them worthy of the right to life?
