Posted on 04/30/2007 9:14:44 AM PDT by Austin Willard Wright
We published an analysis on “Dollar Myths” in which we criticized spending habits in Washington:
"Interestingly, nobody seemed to focus on the fact that there is an unconventional solution to foreigners holding too much of our debt: live within your means and do not issue debt. Such an old fashioned concept would indeed strengthen the dollar. Unfortunately, none of the presidential candidates at either side of the aisle seem to have heard of this notion."
We missed that there is indeed a presidential candidate who believes in the old fashioned view to “live within your means.” Our apologies go to Congressman Ron Paul, who threw his hat in the ring on March 12, 2007, announcing his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. Ron Paul is the one member of Congress who is a true fiscal conservative. As a member of the House Committee of Financial Services, he does not hesitate to speak out against inflationary policies. On his campaign website, Ron Paul 2008, he writes:
“Real conservatives have always supported low taxes and low spending.
But today, too many politicians and lobbyists are spending America into ruin. We are nine trillion dollars in debt as a nation… If we don’t cut spending now, higher taxes and economic disaster will be in their future – and yours.
(Excerpt) Read more at fxstreet.com ...
So you say. I don't know if he is or not.
So, you aren't backing anyone. Why waste your time bashing Dr. Paul?
Ron Paul is a symbol of pseudoconservative defeatism. While he is a joke as an individual politician, his counterproductive policy positions are more important than he is and more destructive.
Personally I think Dr. Paul is a man of character, he could be strong on Terror, although it would be in a different manner than what we see today, as would many of his plans and opinions.
He is manifestly not a man of character, as his wholesale abandonment of term limits indicates.
But that's less important than the fact that he does not take terrorism seriously at all. He is honestly more concerned about defense spending than he is about the welfare and morale of our fighting forces.
In this he is despicable and unforgivable.
And he inspires an insufferable cabal of "more conservative than thou" conservatives who believe that their personal, idiosyncratic view of the Constitution as an abstract ideal (as opposed to the real Constitution) trumps reality - they would rather allow terrorists to shape the battlefield than compromise their carefully-constructed dreamworld of perfect Constitutionalism.
Yet these are the same people who love Lysander Spooner.
He is pro-life, Pro-Gun and strong on immigration issues. More so then any of the others in the field currently and isn't afraid to say it.
Great. Not enough.
The voters have already spoken on a Ron Paul presidential candidacy.
If he can improve his showing this time by more than 25,000% he may have a shot.
But not on the GOP ticket.
So you believe that John Kerry had the whole thing figured out, oui?
I like the "bankrupt" hysterics - it has already been pointed out that our military expenditure as a percentage of our GDP is historically low, even for peactime comparisons.
Let’s see if they’re singing the same tune 5 years from not when the dollar collapses and their spending power and net worth is reduced by half as we are forced to devalue the dollar to be able to service our debt.
Wild-eyed prophesying indeed. I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is - I am massively long dollar-denominated assets and will be for the next 5 years.
Are you making a sizeable bet against the dollar? If so, how?
It was LBJ’s ‘great society’ programs and the Vietnam war costs that led to Nixon going off the gold standard and inflation to spiral thru the roof during the Ford and Carter administrations.
Even if this simplistic formulation were true (inflation quintupled three years before we went of the gold standard and halved the year after) - it has already been pointed out that defense spending as a percentage of GDP is declining - not increasing as it was in the Nixon era.
And we are not going off the gold standard anytime soon - we are already off of it.
So the two factors you are claiming don't exist in the current situation.
We can expect a repeat of those times coming up soon.
Your own arguments disprove your thesis, o Chicken Little.
Keep bashing Republicans. Is that your job?
The war in Iraq is not a battle he would fight. He would have us pull back to within our borders and fight the terrorists when they come to us, and possibly perform limited strikes against them if they were clearly an imminent threat.
As a libertarian, he's definitely fiscally conservative. He would simply gut the government. I support that to a great extent, but I cannot support his isolationism, and I think that he would be a horrible President for our country right now.
We cannot afford to retreat from the war on terror. Hiding at home will not make us safer.
Childish post.
The job of Republican basher is already taken by fair-weather Republican Ron Paul.
Is someone truly a Republican when they have run on the Libertarian ticket more often for more offices than they have run on the GOP ticket?
An accurate and precise characterization.
We cannot afford to retreat from the war on terror. Hiding at home will not make us safer.
I believe the exact same thing.
Childish? Every single thread that comes out about Ron Paul, you bash and hi-jack it. Nothing he can say or do is to your standards. We get it, you don’t like him.
What are you afraid of that you have made this your mission?
Ron Paul’s thesis is that if we quit meddling into the internal affairs of other nations, the terrorists would no longer have reason to attack us. Does that mean Ron Paul would ignore imminent attacks? No. Taking out al queda and the Taliban who provided them sanctuary is one thing; nation building and trying to install democracy in the mideast is entirely something else. As a conservative, I prefer the most minimalist foreign intervention required to protect out interests.
No, just a joke.
Ron Paul is not a myth but he appears to be a legend in his own mind (and the minds of his supporters).
Who do you support?
Interesting.
When a post saluting and endorsing Ron Paul is posted I can often be found criticizing Ron Paul's garishly wrongheaded policies.
I'm not sure how discussing Ron Paul on a Ron Paul thread constitutes "hijacking."
This, it hardly needs repeating, is a discussion forum.
Nothing he can say or do is to your standards. We get it, you don’t like him.
I see. So only pro-Ron Paul comments are permitted on FR threads.
If a thread about Ron Paul consists of anything other than various worshipful paeans by Paul supporters to their hero, then the thread has failed.
Fascinating view of FR's function.
What are you afraid of that you have made this your mission?
I notice that you like to impute motives to me rather than argue objectively.
Your opening interlocution was to ask me which GOP candidate I supported. As if it really mattered - after all the thread is about Ron Paul, not other candidates. Had I responded by declaring support for the abortion-loving Rudy Giuliani or the flipflopping part-time conservative Mitt Romney, would you have accused me of "hijacking" the thread for either of those candidates?
After this gambit didn't pay off, you then implied that I am a paid enemy of the GOP.
Now you impute fear to me and allege that I have made dismantling Ron Paul boosterism a "mission."
Do you have an argument of any kind, however thin, rather than personal imputations?
Would you like it if I implied that you were a paid anti-GOP operative because you are encouraging support for the weakest general election candidate in the GOP field?
Or that you don't care what happens to American fighting men and women, just because Ron Paul's concern for them is practically nonexistent?
Or that you are somehow afraid of something or are on a "mission" for Ron Paul?
This mode of argumentation is childish.
I believe you like Ron Paul because you have specific reasons based on your political convictions and on Ron Paul's policy stances. I believe you are in grave error, but I do not believe your motives are sinister.
I believe that Ron Paul is wrong on key issues and that his policies are wrong and that if his foreign policy ideas gain any traction it will be to the detriment of the United States.
And I will articulate these views on their merits on any Ron Paul thread I please.
Yes.
It's stupid to think about global geopolitics and demographic reality. If we don't think about militant Islam, it will go away. All together the Islamic countries have no Navy to speak of. They have no long distance capable submarines. They have no long range bombers. They have no ICBMs. They have weak armies which we have defeated in days, not weeks, repeatedly. They have a demonstrated inability to organzie themselves in many realms, business, religion and yes, military.
Moslems are a small minority in the USA, and since 9/11 their immigration has been greatly slowed.
In retrospect the Soviets were a hollow threat. They never were as formidable as some of the hawks claimed, but they were none the less a world-spanning, first world superpower with all of the military attributes that the Moslem states lack.
Despite this we defeated them handily.
9/11 may well prove to be the highwater mark of their exploits. In the nearly six years since then they have failed to do anything that equals it. In fact, even on 9/11 a full quarter of their plot was defeated by a plane full of ordinary Americans armed with cell phones.
After 50 years Israel still exists, and they are surrounded by these idiots.
Toss around smart-sounding phrases like "global-geopolitics" all you want, but I just don't see the second coming of Ghengis Khan in the unwashed, semi-litterate, Moslem horde.
Ah, the old "root causes" logic so beloved of left-wing social theory.
Do you honestly believe that terrorism is grounded in reason?
Does that mean Ron Paul would ignore imminent attacks? No.
That's your claim on Paul's behalf. The reality is that Paul has opposed all measures to enhance the intelligence-gathering necessary to anticipate such imminent attacks.
Taking out al queda and the Taliban who provided them sanctuary is one thing; nation building and trying to install democracy in the mideast is entirely something else.
You speak as if these were discrete, compartmentalized concerns. They are not.
Remove the Taliban. Go home and leave a vacuum of power in Afghanistan. Wait for the next attack. No thanks.
As a conservative, I prefer the most minimalist foreign intervention required to protect out interests.
Sometimes we have to admit that the least intervention required is much more intervention than we would prefer.
Underestimating your enemies is best gift they could hope for.
The Imperial Japanese Navy depended on the Czar to do just that.
Moslems are a small minority in the USA, and since 9/11 their immigration has been greatly slowed.
Islam is not genetic.
Only because we never treated them as such.
If you take small problems seriously they never become big problems.
And that, you believe, is purely luck. Fascinating world you dwell in.
After 50 years Israel still exists, and they are surrounded by these idiots.
And how did Israel manage this feat? By being aggressive and interventionist.
You don't need a bath or a spelling bee medal to operate an AK-47 or drive a tanker truck full of chlorine.
21 out of 55 posts here on this thread are yours. Roughly 40%, That’s my definition of a thread hijack.
You have some sort of vendetta against Ron Paul.
BTW by telling falsehoods about his policy, voting record, party affiliation and his views you aren’t discussing the candidate at all. You are bashing him.
I honestly don't think there is anything to debate.
Giving the government-dependent classes in our society a big freebie has -never- done anything to reduce their appetite.
I vote for conservatives because I expect them to change the direction of the socialist drift, not just drift more slowly.
Just to stick up for wideawake, we are in the middle of an interesting debate that has nothing to do with Ron Paul. Threads evolve, that’s what makes them interesting. His comments to me are thoughtful and free of invective. Him having 40 posts on the thread might just indicate he’s got several other conversations like ours going on.
BTW: I’m a huge Ron Paul fan, but even he has said his real job is as an educator, not as a normal politician. He’s not going to win. You have to have access to millions of dollars to win, he does not.
None the less his participation in the early round of debates should be interesting.
I think RP is wrong on some things and right on others. I do appreciate his at least reading the Constitution and keeping it in mind when legislating. Most of Congress (both parties) ignores the Constitution with impunity.
I think that Bush got the equivelent of a declaration of war in the “Resolution to Use Force”. What the hell do you want? We phrase things differently these days, but even Bush’s harshest critics will admit that Congress gave the OK in voting for the authorization. I think it meets both the letter and spirit of the law, and is in keeping with the tradition of legislative approval for major military operations.
I don’t agree with his staunch opposition to the war, anymore than I agree with Reids, Murthas, Pelosi’s, Obabma’s or others. I realize it’s from a different point of view, but at this point the effect is pretty much the same. The terrorist leaders in Iraq are not keeping track of who is against the war due to paleo-conservative leanings, vs. liberal pacifist leanings, vs. libertarian leanings.
True enough. Got LINK? Blackbird.
Then you don't understand the term. A thread is hijacked when someone changes the thread's topic.
I was pinged many times to this thread - in fact, twice to a single post of mine by the same poster.
Responding to posts that ping you, and responding on topic, is hardly "hijacking" - I would have even more posts on this thread if I responded to every single ping.
You have some sort of vendetta against Ron Paul.
Yawn. I am already on to your "secret motives" spiel.
I don't like Congressional cowards like Murtha, Paul, Waxman, Wu, Pelosi, Reid, etc. who stab our troops in the back to further their own pet agendas.
I'm quite open about it.
BTW by telling falsehoods about his policy, voting record, party affiliation and his views you aren’t discussing the candidate at all.
If I had told a falsehood about him, you would be able to document it.
instead, you prattle on and on about some mysterious secret agenda.
Facts about Ron Paul's policy and voting: He votes to disable our intelligence-gathering apparatus of the tolls it needs to fight terror. He also votes against giving our troops the equipment and funding they need to complete their mission. He also votes against measures for honoring our war dead.
Wiggle your way out of that one. Paul still hasn't figured out a way to.
Fact abour Ron Paul's party affiliation: He switches back and forth between the Libertarian and Republican tickets as it pleases him.
Just because you don't want these facts discussed in the light of day doesn't mean they are not true.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.