Free Republic

>>>I am neither, so if that is some sort of back-handed slam, you’re talkin’ to the wrong person.

Oh and I haven’t intended to “slam” you or anyone in this thread. If you felt slammed, I’m sorry.

In that case I was speaking less individually about the sources of support for the Paulist petition.

>>>If you think RP is so ridiculous, shouldn’t want to see him self destruct.

I don’t really want to see that. I think the debates ought to be serious and we ought to be serious about who is them.

And it’s not because Paul is some kind of realistic threat for the nomination. Paul’s views, as I discussed earlier, aid the moderates more than anyone. The mods can defend the most default of the defaults in Republican positions and end up looking like conservative heroes (when they’re not). This is merely one dimension of the cheapening and equilibrating effect Paul exerts on debates. But of course, I’ve discussed all of this previously herein.

>>>Umm...I’m not signing any petition of this nature, but why exactly Paul? Pro-illegal, pro-abortion, pro-gay and anti-second amendment leftist fraud Rudy Giuliani is the worst candidate up there and no-doubt the one at odds most with the mainstream of the party.

Strictly on the 9/11 argument. For fun, you might put it this to see the point: Paul’s views are so outrageously out of step with the party, that even Rudy Giuliani (of all people) thinks they’re unacceptable. Rather than being a proof for Rudy’s exclusion, it actually proves the point in my opinion.

Even though I disagree with Rudy on just about every domestic political issue, like most Republicans, I applauded him without reservation when he correctly called Paul’s views out as absurd. You’ve got to be pretty far off the range for that and Paul is.

>>Facilitation of what?

Facilitation of Paul’s ignoble views.

>>>Call it a ban, a blockage, a squelching of open discussion—I don’t care.

There are presently about a dozen GOP candidates who are excluded from the debates. John Cox, who another poster here mentioned earlier, actually polls higher than Paul in some scientific opinion polls and for that matter, holds policy positions that are broadly aligned with the Republican party’s membership. Yet despite the fact that I’ve brought this up numerous times in the course of this thread, no Paulist in it has denounced the exclusion of these candidates as “censorship.”

The answer why that is so is obvious. They realize when it’s not their own candidate, that failure to invite someone to a party television debate does not represent censorship or “blockage,” by any loose definition you’d like to choose. Also, that putting an endless list of fringe candidates up there whose views are in many cases widely unpopular in the party, weakens the efficacy of any debate. The only thing they don’t realize, is that this is true of Paul as much as it is of the other candidates they don’t care about the exclusion of.

>>>The Censors

Sigh.

>>>The pro-Ron Paul petition is up to 15,700.

Yep, it’s easy to sign when you can’t distinguish between censorship and facilitation, as you can’t. Of course, that’s a frequent problem of Libertarians and Leftists generally.

Which isn’t surprising given that this petition is promoted all over leftist blogs and all we’ve got is basically an old FR thread. :-)

Then there’s stuff like this:

“Zionists are trying to kick Ron Paul to the curb!”
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?RPRNC08&101

Yeah man.

>>>Censorship is not hard enough!

This tautology is getting a little tiresome. It’s not censorship to not invite a candidate to a debate. Many candidates are not being invited to the debates and they’re not having their speech rights revoked because of it. See the dozen extended explanations by me and others earlier in this thread as to why, none of which have been successfully challenged.

>>And while we’re at it, we can burn books to make the fire! Globalism uber alles!

Amusing, given the grotesquely anti-semitic and crypto-fascist nature of much of the Ron Paul spam I and others daily receive.

>>Usurp OUR role and seize OUR territories in Asia? We had NO business in Asia, and our imperialism was as foolish as Japan’s.

Ha. With this logic you’ll end up saying we should have all stayed in England, or ultimately Africa. What right do we have to be in North America no?

We’re here, because we’ve a claim to an ideal that transcends geography. That’s why we’re here and that’s why we were there. As righteous as it is, it’s also self-interested. Had the United States ignored the pleas of her allies and abandoned Asia to be raped and murdered by one of the most despicable regimes that mankind has ever produced, it would not have stopped just off the California coast. Plans for the invasion of the continental United States had long been on the books of the Axis powers. Their ambitions were global and the world is eternally fortunate that ours were as well.

Defending a candle while the lights of the world went out would have been like hiding under a bedsheet, while burglars ransacked your neighborhood. Your house is on their list, the question is merely whether you’ve the foresight and courage to stop them in the street.

Supplemental note: Capitalization for screaming emphasis does not make your argument more persuasive. Thanks.

>>>Today it looks as though some people are trying to get all of the interventionists in one party and all of their opponents in the other.

I think this is actually a good point frankly. But it has nothing to do with Paul’s specific policies, which are the focus of this petition. It’s one thing to say the United States should be less interventionist abroad. It’s another entirely, to assign and then embrace the arguments of the enemy.

>>>Japan attacked Pearl Harbor after a U.S. embargo on Japanese oil recovery in the Sumatra crippled their economy. Another example of how the U.S. could’ve protected the lives and liberties of its citizenry by ignoring the advocates of globalism and by NOT GETTING INVOLVED in other nation’s troubles.

Glad you brought that up. What more needs to be said, really? Paulists don’t even support the US cause in World War II and will voluntarily defend the grievances of Imperial Japan. Pathetic is all that can be said about that.

Why was the US embargoing Japan? Was it because they were trying to impose a brutal fascist empire across Asia perhaps and had long sought to usurp our role and seize our territories there? I suppose we should have just allowed that to pass without objection and thus made our security all the stronger no? Ah yes, we should all yearn for the halcyon days of the Nanjing massacre. Moonbattery.

You guys are so fundamentally at odds with with an conception of what constitutes a sound or moral security policy it almost defies belief.

At the very least, it has no place in this party. Take it back to the LP and plug it in alongside the other nutballed Libertarian ideas like legalizing incest and privatizing sidewalks.

>>>My point was that historically a large part of the Republican Party hasn’t been that keen on foreign wars.

The only period in the party’s history where isolationism was ascendant was in the inter-war years. On either side of that period, you have the McKinley/Roosevelt and Eisenhower ages. And of course, no GOP isolationist made apologies for the motives of Japan, after it attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 like Paul does for Al Qaeda. Nor did they suggest we must withdraw from the Pacific to accommodate those motives. Paul’s views are a radical departure from that tradition.

In fact, he’s cloaking an extremely radical view in the coat of Robert Taft, who is unlikely to have agreed with him.

>>he has the right to express that view.

So you’re in favor of including all the other minor GOP candidates who are presently excluded, correct?

>>The only reason to ban him is because you are afraid of him.

As you can see in the thread, there are plenty of reasons to oppose Paul’s inclusion. Also, please see my checklist on post 138. Your critics are not “afraid” of a candidate who polls less than the margin of error. Be sensible about this please.

>>Paul isn’t anti-American, you are.

One does not become anti-American by opposing the inclusion of a fringe candidate in a party debate on commercial television. Apologizing for the motives of this country’s enemies....now that’s a different story altogether.

>>>I don’t agree with excluding Ron Paul from any future debates at this time.

Well, at least you’re open to the idea in future. That’s good enough for me. :-)

John Cox is another splendid example of an excluded candidate, you won’t hear the Paulists cry over anytime soon as a victim of “censorship.” And you right too, his positions on the terrorism and Iraq a heck of a lot more in accord with the Republican party, than this Libertarian gynecologist.

>>No, you are the child ignoring reality just like Al Gore. Ignore it if you must, but you can’t forever.

Well, you need a bit of work with this Sword, if you don’t mind my saying so. See, if I were ignoring your perception of reality I wouldn’t be speaking to you. What you want to say here instead, is that I’m in opposition to reality. That I’m resisting the truth. Excuse me, that I’m “resisting THE TRUTH!!” to write that properly for emphasis in the fanatical Paulist dialect.

As to how long that opposition will last, try permanently. Fortunately for my sake that’s likely to remain majority opinion for quite some time.

>>He won both debates, get over it sore loser. You sound just like Gore.

And you sound like a child with such insults. We’ll call it even.

As to winning the debate, I’ll give you a tip on that. The debate winner, is not self-declared by the candidate’s supporters. Not now, not ever.

>>>I still maintain that eliminating anybody from the debates simply because you don’t agree with their positions is a stupid idea. And dumb. And un-American. But hey, be my guest.

Maintain it all you like. I’ll invest my own indignation in the fact that excusing the motivations of Al Qaeda is un-American. Comprehensively and utterly un-American.

In my view, to find greater objection in not inviting someone to a television debate, than in forgiving and providing a platform for Paul’s apologies for salafists, is to insult yourself as American.

>>You are mistaking an explanation, which Dr. Paul gave, for a justification, which he did not.

Of course he thinks it’s justified. His description of what he believes Al Qaeda’s motives to be and his on policy goals (remove the US from the region) are completely identical. There is no way to argue that they are different, given his own formulation.

To maintain your argument and allege that if Ron believes Al Qaeda is motivated by our Iraq policy to damage us and that by consequence, he wants to comply with that motivation by withdrawing us from influence in Iraq, and yet he does not believe their motivation is justified, is just not credible.

>>>Ron Paul’s foreign policy positions are right out of Cheech and Chongs Space Odyssey.

Yup.

>>>But I don’t, so I see no reason to limit the debates at this point to Rudy, McNut and Romney.

So we include the other GOP candidates who are not presently included as well too? Anyone who shows up is the rule?

>>But that’s up to folks sponsoring the debates I suppose.

Correct! Hence, petition.

Sure, you don’t have to sign it of course. I’m glad to hear too, that you’re not voting for this character.

But if this doesn’t matter then the debates don’t matter. So we can just 86 all discussion about them right? I’m afraid that just isn’t true. The debates matter. This matters.

>>>He didn’t say that. But you knew that.

Yes he did. But you knew that.

Good argument, thought I’d use it too.