After watching how they have treated a great American patriot like Ron Paul and after seeing how frantically rabid they all become over Vladimir Putin's reelection in Russia, I began to think about the entrenched political system in the United States. Therefore, I hope the reader does not mind the brief diversion I will take from this blog's geopolitical theme with my following comments.
I knew there was an active information war being waged against presidential candidate Ron Paul; I knew that they were smearing his name with the hopes of undermining his presidential bid; I also knew that there were some "irregularities" in the voting process during some Republican Primaries... but what I didn't realize was just how serious the campaign against Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul was. It now seems quite obvious that the political establishment in Washington blatantly stole the Iowa Republican Primary from Ron Paul. It was most probably done to unsure that the embattled presidential candidate remains marginalized. Please watch the following video report in its entirety (I have also posted several relevant news reports about this matter towards the bottom of this page) -
Electoral Fraud in America: This Hoax Affects Everyone - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OynCgwmD-HM
How many Americans know anything about this? Just image how such a thing would have been portrayed in the Western press had it occurred in a place like Russia for instance. Since it happened in the United States, in other words, since the culprits are the empire's establishment, the mainstream press very dryly featured several whitewashed articles and quickly moved on to covering what? You guess it, Russia!
Thanks in large part to the empire's controlled mainstream news media, a vast majority of Americans (and by extension the global populace) are relentlessly bombarded with stories about alleged "vote fraud" in Russia. Yet, a vast majority of Americans, and I'd venture to guess everyone outside the United States, are unaware of the electoral fraud that continues to take place in the United States. Although Washington arrogantly sticks its nose into other people's voting business, who, I ask, is monitoring the electoral process in America? In fact, the recent elections that placed Vladimir Putin back into power in Russia puts the electoral system of the United States to shame. But none of this matters to the typical Hollywood-struck peasantry of this world because in this age Globalism reality no longer seems to matter much. What we have today are legions of perception-dead idiots around the world automatically assuming that whatever Washington claims must be right.
This psychological grip the political West has over the simpletons of this world is the Western world's real power.
In final analysis, we have to see the campaign against Ron Paul for what it actually is: It's all about control. Simply put, the American empire is too vast, too wealthy, too powerful and too controlled by its oligarchy to be entrusted to the "democratic" whims of its undereducated and over-medicated population. Therefore, in the absence of a truly independent monitoring entity watching the process, politics in America will essentially remain a two ring circus.
The United States has long been hijacked by special interests (many of whom represent foreign interests). Republicans and Democrats today are merely two factions of this political/financial elite. John Kennedy's election was perhaps the last true election in America. Since Kennedy's assassination, American presidents have served as spokesmen for the empire's ruling oligarchy. Since Ronald Reagan's presidency in particular, the electoral process in America has been fully usurped. Today, the electoral process in the United States is more-or-less geared towards creating perception within general society and to simply manage the electorate's sentiments. Therefore, an unblemished American patriot like Ron Paul has absolutely no chance of becoming the president of the United States.
In allegorical terms, in the pseudo-democracy of America today, the empire's oligarchy decides what shirt the people will wear, the people are then simply given the choice of picking one of two colors.
Those of you that still think there exists "free and fair elections" in the United States should closely observe Ron Paul's presidential bid. After having observed the way the political establishment in the United States has treated Ron Paul, if you still think "free and fair elections" exists in the United States, please see a professional psychiatrist.
Several months ago I came across an Russia Today (RT) video report that claimed one of Paul's campaign managers had very rudely turned down a request by RT to interview him. I knew that Paul that happily done such interviews with RT in the past and I knew that Paul was not one of them All-American Russophobes that are so common in politics in Washington. Therefore, it seemed quite unusual to me that his staff would turn down an interview request in such a manner. I remember thinking to myself, could the campaign manager in question be a government mole that has infiltrated Paul's team and is attempting to either derail, subvert or co-opt his campaign?
More recently, I came across a mainstream news report in which Don Black (a well known White Supremacist leader who is probably linked to the FBI) more-or-less saying that racists love Ron Paul because of his political views. What a smart way to publicly promote your candidate, right? I immediately began suspecting that the entrenched system had begun targeting Ron Paul. Thus, when the following incident occurred, I was not in the least bit surprised. Please watch how CNN censored a Ron Paul supporter. The war veteran at the Ron Paul campaign rally touched the third rail of American politics, he brought up Israel -
Read the articles coming out against Paul in recent weeks. I have posted several such smear attempts following this commentary. Sure enough, the Washingtonian psychological warfare operations (psyops) and the media blitz against Ron Paul has officially begun. For a long time the empire's political/financial elite had been ignoring Paul, hoping that he would either remain a fringe individual or simply disappear into retirement. It didn't work out that way for them. Paul's politics represents much of what America should be about and he remains one of the few truly patriotic Americans in politics today. Paul's America-first stance, his libertarian wish to create smaller government and his rational approach to various geopolitical matters has been resonating within the American heartland. Paul's popularity was clearly on the rise in recent months and he was reported to have been gaining strength in certain areas of the nation. Faced with this, they clearly could no longer afford to continue ignoring him.
Although Paul's popularity continues to rise, let's not be naive enough to hold our breaths here for this is not the America we thought we knew. There will never be a President Ron Paul. But even if by some strange miracle Paul won the presidential elections, not much, if anything, will change in Washington. The empire's real leaders, its real power-brokers will make sure of that. The United States today is a global empire run by several very powerful special interest, and it is being run like a mega-corporation. Presidents are prepared/trained to become spokesmen/salesmen of those that are really in charge of the political system. Presidents with radical ideas and those who attempt to impose their political will on the entrenched system are in danger of suffering JFK's fate (a worst case scenario) or Nixon's fate (a best case scenario).
Yes, as Ron Paul states, America is indeed headed towards authoritarianism. The following patriotic expressions of concern is essentially why American patriots like Judge Napolitano and Ron Paul will be forced to remain on the fringes of America's political system -
Now, a little comment about the front running Republican presidential candidate, the All-American oligarch - Mit Romney. It's beginning to seem as if America's oligarchic establishment will be seeking a second term for incumbent president. Why do I suspect this? For one, the controlled mainstream news press continues to whitewash the nation's increasingly dire economic situation; when Occupy Wall Street movements were brutally crushed by military-style police force, not a single news outlet or political pundit placed the blame on Obama. Moreover, the character that was chosen to oppose Obama, Mit Romney, is clearly very vulnerable to severe criticism. Mit Romney is said to be responsible for tens of thousands of Americans losing their jobs. He is also deeply involved in the corruption that goes on in Wall Street. In other words, although Obama is unpopular, Mit Romney has a lot of baggage. Similar to how back in 2008 they placed a silly bimbo and an idiot on the very verge of senility to run against Obama, today, they are placing a nasty cut-throat money-man to run against him. They want to make sure that the establishment's favorite Uncle Tom gets "elected" again.
Nevertheless, it really does not matter who actually wins the presidential elections because the whole damn thing is rigged at its very core. As I have said many times in the past, politics in America is a two ring circus. The two entrenched parties are merely the two sides of the same coin.
Every four years the nation's ruling elite provides its sheeple with two options. We are in essence told what shirt we are to wear for the next four years and then we are given the democratic opportunity of picking between two colors. When Americans, and those awestruck by America, manage to wrap their minds around what I just said, everything else in American politics today would make much more sense.
Finally, this brings me to the thing we call "democracy". Britain's Winston Churchill is said to have once said - "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
In societies that are highly developed and established, the political process with which the ignorant masses can make political decision can in fact be managed and manipulated by the given society's elites via its education system, its laws, its entertainment industry and its news media. In the Western world, the democratic process is all about public relations and the management/conditioning of society through mass propaganda. In a sense, a truly educated populace is very undesirable for the leadership of most established democracies with the notable exception of perhaps some Germanic nations. Societies that are essentially just coming out of the middle ages and stepping into modernity (a vast majority of societies in the world today, including nations such as Russia, China, Iran and Armenia), the imposition of democracy, as per Western demands and standards, will only cause chaos, stagnation and decay.
This is the main reason why the political West imposes its democracy upon certain targeted nations (e.g. Serbia, Libya and Iraq) but gives its oppressive allies (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel) a pass. As it was in the past when empires ruled the world, the long-term/strategic purpose of bringing democracy (think of it as Christianity or Islam) to undemocratic nations of the world (think of them as heathens or infidels) is ultimately subjugation and exploitation, or in some cases destruction.
The following are various recent news reports about presidential candidate Ron Paul. Some of the featured pieces are by the mouthpieces of the nation's oligarchic establishment and some are by patriotic Americans concerned about the future of the United States. Although Paul is the only person of moral and intellectual integrity in the presidential race in America today, the intent of this commentary as well as the purpose of the articles posted below are not to discuss Paul's political beliefs. Although I fully support great many of Paul's ideas, I, nonetheless, also believe that his libertarian bent in American politics is flawed. Although I fully appreciate the core values of Libertarianism, I also recognize that such a system can only work for individuals or for small societies. In other words, Libertarianism cannot work for a nation as large and as complex as the United States. The primary intent of this blog post is simply to use plight of a great American patriot like Ron Paul to explain to the reader that the United States in far from being a democratic society. In other words, instead of dangerously meddling in other nation's domestic businesses, Washington should be placing its house in order.
Arevordi
March, 2012
***
Mutually Assured Destruction vs Mutually Assured Respect
The Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear bomb on August 29, 1949, leading to the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, shared by both the USA and the Soviets. The unwritten agreement by the two superpowers deterred nuclear war with an implied threat to blow up the world, if need be, to defend each of their interests.
I well remember the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, having been drafted into the military at that time. Mutually Assured Destruction had significant meaning to the whole world during this period. This crisis, along with the escalating ill-advised Vietnam War, made me very much aware of the problems the world faced during the five years I served as a USAF flight surgeon.
It was with great pleasure and hope that I observed the collapse of the Soviet Empire between 1989 and 1991. This breakup verified the early predictions by the free market economists, like Ludwig von Mises, that communism would self-destruct because of the deeply flawed economic theories embedded in socialism. Our nukes were never needed because ideas are more powerful than the weapons of war.
Many Americans at the time were boldly hopeful that we would benefit from a generous peace dividend. Sadly, it turned out to be a wonderful opportunity wasted. There was to be no "beating their swords into plowshares," even though history shows that without weapons and war there’s more food and prosperity for the people. Unfortunately, our leaders decided on another course that served the special interests who benefit from constant wars and the arbitrary rearrangement of national borders for control of national resources.
Instead of a peace dividend from ending the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction, US leaders opted for a foreign policy of American world domination as its sole superpower. It was all in the spirit of Woodrow Wilson’s idealistic goal of "making the world safe for democracy" by pursuing a war to end all wars.
The mantra became that American exceptionalism morally required us to spread our dominance world-wide by force. US world dominance, by whatever means, became our new bipartisan foreign policy. There was to be no peace dividend, though our enemies were virtually non-existent.
In many ways America had been "exceptional" but in an opposite manner from the neocon driven foreign policy of the last 20 years. If America indeed has something good to offer the cause of peace, prosperity, and liberty it must be spread through persuasion and by example; not by intimidation, bribes, and war.
Maintaining world domination is based on an intellectually and financially bankrupt idea that generates dependency, war, loss of civil liberties, inflation, and debt, all of which contribute to our economic crisis.
Saddest of all, this policy of American domination and exceptionalism has allowed us to become an aggressor nation, supporting pre-emptive war, covert destabilization, foreign occupations, nation building, torture, and assassinations. This policy has generated hatred toward Americans and provides the incentive for almost all of the suicide attacks against us and our allies.
To continue to believe the fiction that the militants hate us for our freedoms and wealth may even result in more attacks against us — that is, unless our national bankruptcy brings us to our knees and forces us to bring our troops home.
Expanding our foreign military intervention overseas as a cure for the attacks against us, tragically, only guarantees even more attacks. We must someday wake up, be honest with ourselves, and reject the notion that we’re spreading freedom and America’s goodness around the world. We cannot justify our policy by claiming our mission is to secure American freedoms and protect our Constitution. That is not believable. This policy is doomed to fail on all fronts.
The policy of Mutually Assured Destruction has been gone now for 20 years, and that is good. The policy of American domination of the world, as nation builder-in-chief and policeman of the world, has failed and must be abandoned — if not as a moral imperative, then certainly out of economic necessity. My humble suggestion is to replace it with a policy of Mutually Assured Respect. This requires no money and no weapons industry, or other special interests demanding huge war profits or other advantages.
This requires simply tolerance of others’ cultures and their social and religious values, and the giving up of all use of force to occupy or control other countries and their national resources. Many who disagree choose to grossly distort the basic principles shared by the world’s great religions: the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, and the cause of peace. Religions all too often are distorted and used to justify the violence engaged in for arbitrary power. A policy of Mutually Assured Respect would result in the U.S.:
Treating other nations exactly as we expect others to treat us.
Offering friendship with all who seek it.
Participating in trade with all who are willing.
Refusing to threaten, bribe, or occupy any other nation.
Seeking an honest system of commodity money that no single country can manipulate for a trade advantage. Without this, currency manipulation becomes a tool of protectionism and prompts retaliation with tariffs and various regulations. This policy, when it persists, is dangerous and frequently leads to real wars.
Mutually Assured Respect offers a policy of respect, trade, and friendship and rejects threats, sanctions, and occupations.
This is the only practical way to promote peace, harmony, and economic well-being to the maximum number of people in the world.
Mutually Assured Respect may not be perfect but far better than Mutually Assured Destruction or unilateral American dominance.
Source: http://original.antiwar.com/paul/2011/12/09/mutually-assured-destruction-vs-mutually-assured-respect/
Marginalizing Ron Paul
It is official now. The Ron Paul campaign, despite surging in the Iowa polls, is not worthy of serious consideration, according to a New York Times editorial; “Ron Paul long ago disqualified himself for the presidency by peddling claptrap proposals like abolishing the Federal Reserve, returning to the gold standard, cutting a third of the federal budget and all foreign aid and opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
That last item, along with the decade-old racist comments in the newsletters Paul published, is certainly worthy of criticism. But not as an alternative to seriously engaging the substance of Paul’s current campaign—his devastating critique of crony capitalism and his equally trenchant challenge to imperial wars and the assault on our civil liberties that they engender.
Paul is being denigrated as a presidential contender even though on the vital issues of the economy, war and peace, and civil liberties, he has made the most sense of the Republican candidates. And by what standard of logic is it “claptrap” for Paul to attempt to hold the Fed accountable for its destructive policies? That’s the giveaway reference to the raw nerve that his favorable prospects in the Iowa caucuses have exposed. Too much anti-Wall Street populism in the heartland can be a truly scary thing to the intellectual parasites residing in the belly of the beast that controls American capitalism.
It is hypocritical that Paul is now depicted as the archenemy of non-white minorities when it was his nemesis, the Federal Reserve, that enabled the banking swindle that wiped out 53 percent of the median wealth of African-Americans and 66 percent for Latinos, according to the Pew Research Center.
The Fed sits at the center of the rot and bears the major responsibility for tolerating the runaway mortgage-backed securities scam that is at the core of our economic crisis. After the meltdown it was the Fed that led ultra-secret machinations to bail out the banks while ignoring the plight of their exploited customers.
To his credit, Paul marshaled bipartisan support to pass a bill requiring the first-ever public audit of the Federal Reserve. That audit is how readers of the Times first learned of the Fed’s trillions of dollars in secret loans and aid given to the banks as a reward for screwing over the public.
As for the Times’ complaint that Paul seeks to unreasonably cut the federal budget by one-third, it should be noted that his is a rare voice in challenging irrationally high military spending. At a time when the president has signed off on a Cold War-level defense budget and his potential opponents in the Republican field want to waste even more on high-tech weapons to fight a sophisticated enemy that doesn’t exist, Paul has emerged as the only serious peace candidate. As The Wall Street Journal reported, Paul last week warned an Iowa audience, “Watch out for the military-industrial complex—they always have an enemy. Nobody is going to invade us. We don’t need any more [weapons systems].”
As another recent example of Paul’s sanity on the national security issues that have led to a flight from reason on the part of politicians since the 9/11 attacks, I offer the Texan’s criticism this week of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The act would allow the president to order indeterminate military imprisonment without trial of those accused of supporting terrorism, a policy that Obama signed into law and Paul opposes, as the congressman did George W. Bush’s Patriot Act. Paul said:
“Little by little, in the name of fighting terrorism, our Bill of Rights is being repealed. ... The Patriot Act, as bad as its violation of the 4th Amendment, was just one step down the slippery slope. The recently passed (NDAA) continues that slip toward tyranny and in fact accelerates it significantly ... The Bill of Rights has no exemption for ‘really bad people’ or terrorists or even non-citizens. It is a key check on government power against any person. This is not a weakness in our legal system; it is the very strength of our legal system.”
That was exactly the objection raised by The New York Times in its own excellent editorial challenging the constitutionality of the NDAA. It should not be difficult for those same editorial writers to treat Ron Paul as a profound and principled contributor to a much-needed national debate on the limits of federal power instead of attempting to marginalize his views beyond recognition.
Source: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/marginalizing_ron_paul_20111229
Can Ron Paul Be Tamed?
You know you’ve hit the big time when the Establishment comes knocking on your door with an offer to sell out. It means you’re drawing blood: that your campaign, or whatever, is having an effect — and not one that pleases the Powers That Be. They want to defang you, if not shut you up, and they’re willing to offer you what Satan offered Jesus up there on that mountain:
"Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him."
If Ron Paul isn’t exactly Jesus, many of his supporters treat him as if he is indeed the incarnation of Liberty in human flesh: the media routinely describes them as "fanatical" – or, more charitably, "devoted" – and I don’t blame them for their enthusiasm (indeed, I share it). Paul is undoubtedly a messianic figure, although he is the last one to give himself that kind of aura, and that’s because we are indeed living in a time of woe, from whence a great many people are seeking deliverance. Ron is their one hope, a bright spot in an ever-darkening and increasingly scary world – and our elites don’t like that one bit.
What they especially don’t like are his foreign policy views, which are routinely described in the lame-stream media as "isolationist" – as if minding our own damned business and not trying to dominate the world would be an isolating act. And of course none of these geniuses ever described, say, Eugene McCarthy, or George McGovern as an "isolationist" – they were "antiwar" candidates because they were on the left, and because no one on the right can ever be against wars of aggression for moral reasons. Yet the 76-year-old country doctor and presidential candidate defies those stereotypes – and, in the process, delegitimizes them as standards of the American political lexicon. He has succeeded in creating a movement that truly transcends the tired old categories of "left" and "right."
This false left-right dichotomy, which does nothing to accurately map the landscape of 21st century American politics, is one of the main weapons in the War Party’s well-stocked arsenal. Because whatever liberals and conservatives disagree about, when it comes time to unleash the dogs of war both the "left" and the "right" have been equal in their bloodthirstiness. To keep up the illusion of conflict, these two wings of the War Party alternate their warmongering schedules: during the Vietnam war era, it was the right that wanted to obliterate the Soviets militarily and the "left" that took up the anti-interventionist banner – although liberal support for the war made the occupation of Vietnam possible, at least initially. In the1930s, their positions were reversed, with conservatives making the case for "isolationism" (i.e. opposition to empire-building): the warmongering was left to the liberals and the extreme left, notably the American Communist Party.
In both cases, the War Party was able to take advantage of the left-right split. In the Thirties, it was the Eastern seaboard Republicans, the Wendell Wilkie group, that absconded with the GOP presidential nomination and sold out the anti-interventionist cause on the campaign trail, never pushing the issue of FDR’s ill-disguised enthusiasm for getting us into the European war. After the election, Wilkie went over to the enemy completely, becoming one of FDR’s biggest supporters, and a tireless advocate of "internationalism," i.e. an American empire on which the sun never sets. His book, One World, is a veritable manifesto of left-sounding globaloney. Behind Wilkie were the big investment banks, the Anglophile elite whose cultural loyalties – and investments in the bonds of European governments – naturally led them into the pro-war camp.
In the 1960s, pro-war Democrats played the key role in getting us into Vietnam and keeping us there long after that disaster had begun to unfold. Back then, we were all chanting "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?!" That was what antiwar protesters were shouting in the streets as they demanded the withdrawal of US troops from Southeast Asia. Pro-war liberals, known today as neoconservatives, were an ideological bulwark protecting a Democratic administration against a massive and growing antiwar movement – a role that earned them the well-deserved animus of the New Left. The little group around Senator Henry Jackson (D-Boeing) which organized the "Committee for the Free World," provided most of the intellectual firepower behind this rearguard action. After the victory of the McGovernites, they threw up their hands and joined the Republicans: today, we know them as the neoconservatives.
The left-right mindset has another key advantage for the War Party: it keeps anti-interventionists out of the GOP. If the right is inherently warlike, and conservatives have a war gene, then anti-interventionists have no place else to go other than the Democratic party. Which means not only that they must buy into the party’s domestic agenda, but also be reduced to pleading when it comes to, say, reducing the "defense" budget, or refraining from intervening to plant the flag of "democracy" in some godforsaken wilderness. Opponents of our foreign policy of global intervention are entirely dependent on the Democratic leadership to implement their agenda, and keeping these people out of the GOP has been one of the key tasks of the neocons, a job they did with some efficiency until the Ron Paul movement came along.
Paul and his movement are onto the War Party’s games, and they are consciously fighting this left-right illusion — with amazing success. The time is right for it: the nation faces a crisis on a scale not seen since the 1930s. Once again we face the twin specters of an economy in collapse and a world at war. Paul cuts through the ideological fog and in doing so breaks with all the conventions, the worn and now useless political labels that have misled us for so long.
Smearing him hasn’t worked, mockery has just added to his fame, and ignoring him has seriously backfired on the mainstream media, which has made itself more hated by the Republican rank-and-file than it already is — no mean feat. Their last hope is to co-opt him – or, at least, co-opt his movement. And we are seeing the first signs of such an attempt in a front page story in the Washington Post, which posits the existence of a "strategic alliance" between Mitt Romney and Paul.
Let’s get this out of the way before we get to the really disturbing stuff: there is no such "alliance," strategic or otherwise. Reporter Amy Gardner states categorically that "Mitt Romney and Ron Paul haven’t laid a hand on each other." This is demonstrably and even brazenly untrue. How does Ms. Gardner explain this, and this, and this, and especially this? I could go on, but you see my point.
The piece goes on to note Romney and Paul "became friends in 2008," and "so did their wives." This confuses friendship with cordiality, and, again, proves nothing. Undeterred, Ms. Gardner presses ahead with the punch line:
"The Romney-Paul alliance is more than a curious connection. It is a strategic partnership: for Paul, an opportunity to gain a seat at the table if his long-shot bid for the presidency fails; for Romney, a chance to gain support from one of the most vibrant subgroups within the Republican Party."
So what’s this "strategic partnership" based on? Certainly on nothing Paul has ever said or done – but the people around him are a different matter, and here’s where it gets interesting. After citing various anonymous "senior GOP aides" who advise against alienating either Paul or the Paulians, we are given the following inside information:
"Romney’s aides are ‘quietly in touch with Ron Paul,’ according to a Republican adviser who is in contact with the Romney campaign and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss its internal thinking. The two campaigns have coordinated on minor things, the adviser said — even small details, such as staggering the timing of each candidate’s appearance on television the night of the New Hampshire primary for maximum effect."
Yes, well, so what? That’s hardly a "strategic partnership": if anything, it’s a tactical convenience that has nothing to do with any policy or real political issues. On this front, Romney has little or nothing to offer Paul, but that doesn’t stop wily old Satan from taking Jesus up to the mountain, and offering him the following:
"’Ron Paul wants a presence at the convention,’ the [GOP] adviser said — and Romney, if he is the nominee, would grant it.
"What Paul and his supporters would demand, and what Romney would offer, are subjects of some speculation. One Paul adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk freely, said prime-time speaking slots for Paul and his son Rand, the junior senator from Kentucky, are obvious goals. On the policy front, Ron Paul’s priorities are reforming the Federal Reserve and reducing federal spending. So promises to audit the Fed and to tackle deficit reduction seriously could appease the congressman and his supporters, the adviser said.
"Less likely are concessions on foreign policy, where Paul’s non-interventionist stand is at odds with that of Romney and most other Republicans."
So here is the bargain: give up this non-interventionist foreign policy stuff and we’ll let you speak at the convention, maybe let your son speak – all in exchange for an endorsement of Romney. We may even pay lip service to some of your economic views: maybe we’ll set up a Gold Commission, as was done some years ago under Reagan. Just shut up about foreign policy.
It isn’t going to happen: unless it’s a wide-open convention, Paul will not be given a speaking slot of any prominence, because he won’t endorse Romney. Period. But there are other ways to influence the candidate, who is after all conducting more of an educational and movement-building campaign within the GOP, as opposed to a conventional candidate-centered campaign. In the Paul camp, the focus is on the message, not the candidate – but there are ways to influence the manner in which that message reaches the general public.
Ron himself is incorruptible: indeed, he is far more radical on foreign policy than I ever expected him to be. When the subject is economics, he always brings it back to foreign policy, pointing out the indissoluble link between a free and growing economy and a peaceful foreign policy. He is constantly saying that if only we would get rid of the Empire, we could begin to reform our domestic entitlement programs and deal with all the problems we have right here at home.
They can’t influence Ron – but they can influence his organization. Gardner reports that after Ron’s son, Rand, won the Kentucky primary against an Establishment opponent, "Then, quite strangely, the establishment and the Pauls came together":
"At [Sen. Mitch] McConnell’s request, the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent an adviser to Kentucky to watch over Rand Paul’s general-election campaign — ‘to be the grown-up in the room,’ according to one Washington Republican who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly.
"The adviser, Trygve Olson, developed a friendship with Rand Paul, and the two realized that they could teach each other a lot — to the benefit of both candidate and party. Olson showed Paul and his campaign establishment tactics: working with the news media, fine-tuning its message. And Paul showed Olson — and by extension, McConnell — how many people were drawn to the GOP by his message of fiscal responsibility…. And at Rand Paul’s suggestion, Olson joined his father’s presidential campaign this year, basically to do what he did for Rand: help bring the Paul constituency into the Republican coalition without threatening the party. It’s probably no small coincidence that the partnership helps Rand’s burgeoning political career, too."
Who is Trygve Olson? A former official of the International Republican Institute (IRI), a tax-funded "regime-change" operation under the rubric of the National Endowment for Democracy, Olson was involved in several of the "color revolutions" that swept Eastern Europe and the central Asian former Soviet republics during the Bush years. This New York Times article reports on his activities in Belarus meddling in their internal politics and plotting to overthrow its thuggish President, Alexander Lukashenko: he also played a part in stirring up similar trouble on Washington’s behalf in Serbia and Poland.
At a meeting of the New Atlantic Initiative, another semi-official interventionist outfit, in 2004, Olson appeared on the same podium as various government apparatchiks of the old Cold Warrior/Radio Free Europe type, who gave seminars on the ins-and-outs of successful "regime change." While others gave talks on Lukashenko’s "links" to Saddam Hussein and Israel’s other enemies in the region, Olson gave a presentation on polling results in the country. A particular area of concern was the possibility of an economic or political union with Russia, which was seen by the participants as the main threat to "democracy" and Europeanization in Belarus. And while meddling in Eastern Europe appears to be his specialty – his wife, Erika Veberyte, served as chief foreign policy advisor to the Speaker of the Lithuanian parliament – this biography on the web site of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University says:
"Mr. Olson has helped advise political parties and candidates in numerous countries throughout the world including nearly all of Central and Eastern Europe, Indonesia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Serbia."
The "color revolutions" of the Bush era were brazen attempts to overthrow regimes deemed unfriendly to the US, and absorb the scattered pieces of the former Soviet Union into the Western sphere of influence. Of course, these efforts all backfired: in Georgia, for one example, our chosen candidate set up a veritable dictatorship, jailed his opponents for "treason," and launched a disastrous war against Russia. In Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, too, our sock puppets set themselves up for a backlash: both US-installed regimes have since been ousted, either by being unceremoniously voted out of office or by force. In Venezuela, the US government has long sought to overthrow the blustering caudillo, Hugo Chavez, and our meddling has only played into his hands, enabling him to muster nationalist resentment against the democratic opposition. The same is generally true elsewhere. These "strategic" deployments of "soft power" never work, and wind up hurting our interests rather than advancing them.
Another aspect of these "soft power" deployments is the inevitable involvement of the American intelligence community in some form or other, engaging in covert operations with no real congressional oversight and without the knowledge or consent of the American people. This can lead to all kinds of abuses that inevitably impact on our domestic politics – an area where the CIA is supposedly forbidden from entering, although that has never been the case.
In the New York Times piece on the Belarussian operation, the reporter describes a meeting attended by Olson and Belarussian dissidents as "a meeting of the freedom industry," a telling description because that’s exactly what it is: an industry, one in which Olson is a player. It’s the "regime change" industry that has flourished in this country ever since the start of the cold war. The necons played a key role in staffing the organizations and semi-official front groups into which billions of our tax dollar flowed: Reagan gave the National Endowment for Democracy to them as a sort of playground, where they were out of the way and free to think they had some real influence on the administration. In the post-cold war world, the NED took on added importance – and more tax dollars – as the US tried to cash in on the Soviet collapse by sponsoring "color revolutions" throughout the former Soviet bloc. It didn’t matter that the very reason for launching these cold war institutions was no longer in existence: as one needn’t explain to a Ron Paul supporter, government programs have a life of their own, and killing them is akin to driving a stake through the heart of a vampire – a difficult and often impossible feat.
So we have a major player in the "regime change" industry as a "senior advisor" to the Paul campaign: and not only that but a pedagogical relationship between Olson and Rand Paul. The latter has presumably learned from the former why draconian sanctions on Iran – deemed an "act of war" by his father – are a good idea and ought to be supported. Paul recently joined ninety-nine other similarly clueless US Senators in voting "aye" on what is in effect an economic blockade against Iran.
The Establishment’s strategy is clear: get to the father through the son, whose political career can be imperiled by the GOP elders, like McConnell (although that didn’t stop Paul from getting elected over McConnel’s opposition). If the Paul campaign is "infiltrating" the GOP, as Gardner puts it, then the GOP Establishment is intent on infiltrating the Paul campaign at the highest levels.
So if you wondered why the official Paul for President campaign ads devote almost no time to foreign policy issues, then perhaps now you have your answer. Of course, that hasn’t stopped several independent political action committees from making strong anti-interventionist statements on Paul’s behalf: but still, that this end run is even necessary raises all sorts of questions, one of which is surely the exact nature of Olson’s role.
The libertarian movement has been through this sort of thing before. Back in 1980, the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate, Ed Clark, and his handlers at the Cato Institute, tried to pass off libertarianism as "low tax liberalism." The scheme failed miserably: as Murray Rothbard put it at the time: "They sold their souls for a mess of pottage, and then didn’t even get the pottage!" A similar effort to sell libertarianism as a marginally less belligerent version of conservatism isn’t going to do much better – and certainly Paul himself would have nothing to do with such an effort. As we all know, however, Paul isn’t a hands-on manager: he tends to trust people to carry out his wishes. That hands-off tendency has gotten him in trouble before.
The GOP Establishment fears – and, yes, hates – Ron Paul, and they have good reason to feel that way. It is hardly beyond comprehension that they would attempt to influence – and, ultimately, derail – the campaign and the movement it represents in this covert manner. I don’t think they are stupid enough to believe they can somehow finagle Paul into endorsing Romney, or whoever the GOP candidate might be: what they rightly fear, however, is that the Paul campaign will not end in Tampa – that Paul will launch a third party bid.
That’s what this wheeling and dealing, these shadowy movements in the background, are all about. Whether they will succeed remains to be seen. The signs, however, are not good. Gardner cites Jesse Benton, Paul’s campaign manager, as saying:
"You can dress in black and stand on the hill and smash the state and influence nobody, or you can realize the dynamics and the environment and get involved in the most pragmatic way to win minds and win votes and influence change. That’s what we’re trying to do."
This is the classic argument for a sell out. The irony is that there is nothing pragmatic about it. The American people stand shoulder to shoulder with Ron when it comes to foreign policy, as every poll has shown. The question is whom do the Paulians want to "influence" – the American people, or the very Establishment they’ve been fighting all these years? The alternative to standing on a hill and making a fashion statement isn’t selling out libertarianism’s anti-imperialist heritage: it’s making that heritage understandable and attractive to the American majority, which is already with us in spirit.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
The plan, apparently, is to push Rand Paul for the Vice Presidential nomination. These people are deluding themselves – but, then again, that’s how the sell out starts.
Source: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/02/02/can-ron-paul-be-tamed/
Army Considering Reprimanding Soldier Who Appeared With Ron Paul
Fresh figures once again show Paul received more military donations than all other candidates combined
The US Army said Wednesday that it is considering disciplining Reserve Corporal Jesse Thorsen, the soldier who spoke out against a militaristic foreign policy at Ron Paul’s post-Iowa caucuses rally. After being cut short during a CNN interview Thorsen, who has served two tours in Afghanistan and was due to head back for a third, was invited on to the stage by Paul himself to address Paul’s cheering supporters.
“If there’s any man out there that’s had a vision out there, it’s definitely [Ron Paul],” Thorsen said. “His foreign policy is by far, hands down better than any other candidate’s out there, and I’m sure you all know that. We don’t need to be picking fights overseas and I think everybody else knows that, too.”
Apparently someone within the military infrastructure did not take kindly to Thorsen’s remarks, and set about attempting to punish the 10-year veteran for his words. Detractors are now going to great lengths to point out that because Thorsen was in uniform, he was technically in breach of military protocol when he praised Paul’s foreign policy positions.
Department of Defense Directive 1344.10 permits troops to attend political activities so long as they are not in uniform. “It’s not in keeping with the spirit of the letter of the DoD directive,” Army spokesman George Wright said in a statement, without directly addressing the issue of Thorsen’s appearance.
“The soldier that spoke tonight on behalf of Ron Paul is gonna be in a bit of trouble,” wrote Paul Rieckhoff, founder of the veterans’ advocacy organization Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “Politics in uniform is a big no-go. And Paul and his campaign should know better. Troops are bound by the (Uniform Code of Military Justice).” Rieckhoff added. The Department of Defense policy states that active duty troops wearing a uniform are expected to avoid activities that “imply official sponsorship, approval, or endorsement” of political figures.
The directive also states that active duty uniformed soldiers may not “speak before a partisan political gathering, including any gathering that promotes a partisan political party, candidate, or cause” or “participate in any radio, television or other program or group discussion as an advocate for or against a partisan political party, candidate or cause.” Those who wish to see the Army throw the book at Thorsen may be disappointed, however, given that he is not currently on active duty.
Maj. Angel Wallace, a spokeswoman for the Army Reserve command, said Thorsen was not on active duty as of October, according to the available records. Still, she said, his commanders are in the process of determining which regulations, if any, were violated, and what the penalty might be. His chain of command, Wallace said, is “determining the next steps.”
As we noted yesterday, CNN cut short an interview with Thorsen when he praised Ron Paul and began to speak out against an aggressive military stance abroad. As started to explain that he felt Israel is capable of looking after itself when it comes to Iran, “static” interference interrupted the feed. Watch Alex Jones break down the incident on last nights edition of Infowars Nightly News:
Meanwhile, in related news, it has once again been confirmed that Ron Paul received more campaign donations from active duty military personnel than any other presidential candidate, including Barack Obama. Paul has collected $95,567 from individuals who listed their occupation as one of the branches of the US military or US Department of Defense.
| Donor | Obama | Romney | Gingrich | Paul | Santorum |
| National Guard | $1,262 | $0 | $0 | $4,068 | $0 |
| US Air Force | $9,785 | $4,400 | $4,400 | $23,736 | $0 |
| US Army | $15,600 | $3,500 | $250 | $24,503 | $250 |
| US Coast Guard | $6,002 | $0 | $0 | $3,716 | $0 |
| US Dept of Defense | $27,613 | $2,150 | $0 | $9,527 | $0 |
| US Marine Corps | $1,700 | $250 | $0 | $7,662 | $0 |
| US Military | $200 | $0 | $0 | $2,083 | $0 |
| US Navy | $10,454 | $3,000 | $250 | $20,272 | $500 |
| TOTAL | $72,616 | $13,300 | $4,900 | $95,567 | $750 |
The latest analysis from the Center for Responsive Politics updates previous figures to cover the period between January to September 2011, and will be further updated to include the fourth quarter after the candidates file their year-end reports on Jan. 31.
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LgLOURj4XI&feature=player
Ron Paul gets endorsement from five members of Romney’s family
Texas Rep. Ron Paul on Monday announced that five distant relatives of rival Mitt Romney’s family are endorsing his Republican presidential campaign. A news release from the Paul campaign boasts of having the support of Ty Romney, Travis Romney, Chad Romney, Jared Romney and Troy Romney. Three of the Romneys — who live in Idaho — will speak on Paul’s behalf during the state’s caucuses on Tuesday.
“I support Ron Paul because he defends the Constitution, loves America and understands what it means to be an American, including the right to live your life any way you want as long as you respect others,” said chiropractor Travis Romney, a second cousin once removed from Mitt Romney. This isn’t the first time a family member of one of Paul’s rivals announced support for the libertarian-leaning candidate from Texas. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum’s nephew, John Garver, penned a column for The Daily Caller endorsing Paul.
Source:http://news.yahoo.com/ron-paul-gets-endorsement-five-members-romney-family-181551623.htm
Ron Paul’s Flinty Worldview Was Forged in Early Family Life
His parents married two days before the crash of 1929. He was reared on nightmarish stories of currency that proved worthless, told by relatives whose patriarch had fled Germany in the dark of night when his debts were about to ruin him.
Hard times, and fear of worse, were constants in Ron Paul’s boyhood home. His father and mother worked tirelessly running a small dairy, and young Ron showed the same drive — delivering The Pittsburgh Press, mowing lawns, scooping ice cream as a soda jerk. He also embraced their politics, an instinctive conservatism that viewed Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman as villains and blamed Democrats for getting America into wars.
As a young doctor in training, dissecting cadavers or practicing surgery on dogs, he would tell all who would listen about how the country was headed down the wrong path, about the urgency of a strict gold standard and about the dangers of allowing government too much power over people’s lives.
“Once that got ingrained, that became his religion,” said his brother Jerrold, a minister and a psychotherapist. “He says he preaches the ‘gospel of freedom’ — that’s the money quote. Politics became his crusade.”
But for the silver hair, the baggy eyes and the grandchildren, the 76-year-old man running for president today — carrying the torch for a gold-based currency, agitating to “end the Fed,” warning of threats to personal freedom and prophesying imminent economic collapse — is almost indistinguishable from the Ron Paul of half a century ago.
Supporters and detractors often marvel at his consistency since entering politics in 1974, citing it as evidence of either levelheadedness or lunacy. It contrasts sharply with some of the rivals he is trailing in the Republican primaries, including Mitt Romney, who is often accused of ideological flip-flopping.
While the Austrian economists who deeply influenced Mr. Paul have gone in and out of fashion among conservatives, his own fidelity to them has never wavered. Even his investment portfolio, nearly two-thirds of which is in gold and precious-metal stocks, shows the same commitment to principle — not to mention preparation for a financial catastrophe.
Now, with a solid third-place showing in Nevada and ardent grass-roots support expected to help him in caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota, Mr. Paul is likely to command greater attention for his inimitable mix of doom-saying and doses of folksy, homespun humor. But to Mr. Paul, his candidacy is just another step in a lifelong quest “to find the plain truth of things.”
“I like to think that’s what I do,” he said in an interview. “Imperfectly — but most people don’t even care. Do you listen to these debates? Are they seeking the plain truth of things? I think that’s why people sense I’m somewhat different.”
What jumps out most from interviews with Mr. Paul and scores of his relatives, friends and colleagues is not only how different his ideas are, but also how early in life he developed his worldview — one that appears to have guided nearly every political and financial move he has made ever since.
Hard Times, Hard Work
Social Security, a pillar of the New Deal, was signed into law a week before Ronald Ernest Paul was born in 1935. But his family believed Roosevelt’s economic policies were a threat to capitalism and an affront to the values of hard work and private charity.
From a young age, Ron, the third of five, and his four brothers earned pennies picking raspberries that their grandfather, a farmer, sold in Pittsburgh, and plucking dirty milk bottles from the crates of empties in their basement. Yet they saw their parents let customers short on cash slide on paying their bills for months at a time.
“I think Ron reflects that,” Jerrold Paul said. “He’s fiscally frugal, but he’s also a generous guy.”
Raising five sons born in the space of seven years, Howard and Margaret Paul worked every day but Christmas, spoke English at home but swore at their sons in German and were the last in the neighborhood to buy a TV set.
“We were poor, but we didn’t know it,” said David Paul, a brother who, like Jerrold, is a Lutheran minister (the other two brothers are a retired math professor and an accountant).
The boys were free to do what they wanted, up to a point. When Billy Graham brought his crusade to downtown Pittsburgh, Ron, a teenager, headed off to the revival on his own. But when he shot a BB gun at a neighbor’s passing car, he lost the gun for good.
His parents did not impose their politics on their sons. But family lore about hyperinflation, property as the safest investment and a great-grandfather’s escape from crushing debt in 19th-century Germany all made an impression. As did a grade-school janitor who hired young Ron to paint the walls and ranted about bankers being “the source of our problems,” as Mr. Paul recalled in one of his books.
Wartime rationing also left a mark. When he saw a local butcher shop ignoring the rules on Saturdays and selling “all the meat you wanted, at a price,” Mr. Paul wrote, it was “my first real-life experience in the free market solving problems generated by government mischief.”
A high school athlete — he wrestled opponents 20 pounds heavier and won the Pennsylvania championship in the 220-yard dash — he was offered a full athletic scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh, even after an injury and crude surgery severely damaged his knee. But he turned down the offer, saying it would be wrong to accept given his doubts that he could compete. In private, he despaired of ever racing again — and railed against a God who, as he told Jerrold, “would give me something and then take it away.”
He went off instead to Gettysburg College, where he paid his way washing dishes and managing a campus coffee shop, the Bullet Hole. His brothers in Lambda Chi Alpha took note of his rectitude. “You’d go out for a beer, and he’d have a Coke,” said James Fuller, a classmate. “He never missed church. He was a very straight shooter.”
“Peer pressure wasn’t going to change him,” said Samuel Blackwell, another classmate. The same went for his politics. Mr. Fuller said he pegged Mr. Paul as “to the right of Attila the Hun.” Others said he was so opinionated that the fraternity’s cook — a local farmer and a liberal Democrat — took delight in goading him into political arguments.
Mr. Paul was pre-med, but he gravitated to economics and political science classes, though he said his college instructors mainly caused him to doubt his own instincts. “They were always trying to beat them out of me,” he said. By the time he graduated, Mr. Paul was sprinting again (he is tied for fifth on Gettysburg’s all-time list in two sprint events) and had married Carol Wells, who had asked him to escort her to her 16th birthday party. He had never dated anyone else.
Life-Changing Books
At the Duke School of Medicine, the Pauls had the first two of their five children. But even with the demands of medical school and a family, Mr. Paul found time to plow through “Atlas Shrugged” and “Doctor Zhivago,” new best sellers that would inspire generations of conservatives and libertarians.
If the Ron Paul who had arrived at Gettysburg was a bundle of visceral conservative political impulses in search of an intellectual framework, he found it at Duke through his extracurricular reading.
It was “The Road to Serfdom” by Friedrich Hayek that became the ur-text of Mr. Paul’s emerging ideology, introducing him to Austrian economics and its Manichaean choice between laissez-faire capitalism and a government-run economy destined for disaster. (Mainstream economists have long dismissed the Austrian school, but it retains a devoted following among libertarians and some conservatives.)
On his visits home, his brothers noticed, Mr. Paul began sharing what he was learning. His father, a man with an eighth-grade education and a steel handshake, and his mother, who dreamed of teaching but never attended college, beamed with approval. “My parents would say, ‘He really articulates what we think,’ ” Jerrold Paul remembered. “What was instinctive for them became intellectual for him.”
Fellow medical students, too, still remember his exhortations about the gold standard and the encroaching welfare state. “He believed in not too much federal government,” said Siegfried Smith, a classmate. “And this was a time when we didn’t have a lot.”
Jerrold Paul, who said he broke with his brother politically over Ron’s early advocacy for Barry M. Goldwater, recalled that Ron — who today opposes foreign aid and military intervention of almost any kind — also started adopting nationalist, or at least noninternationalist, views. When Jerrold announced plans to move to Egypt as a missionary in 1959, he said, Ron urged him to reconsider, saying, “We need people in this country.”
The young Dr. Paul worked as an intern in Detroit before being drafted as an Air Force flight surgeon around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. After two years based in San Antonio, where he befriended two doctors who regularly invested in silver dollars, he returned to Pittsburgh for a residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Magee-Womens Hospital.
Abortion was still illegal, but, increasingly, legal exceptions were being made for psychiatric reasons. Mr. Paul traces his opposition to the procedure to the time when he wandered into an operating room there and saw a pregnancy terminated by Caesarean section, with a 2-pound fetus, delivered alive, left in a corner to try to breathe, try to cry, and die.
Other co-workers from that time, however, recalled that women butchered by back-alley abortionists were frequent patients; some did not survive. Mr. Paul said he never came across such a patient in his three years. Despite long hours and heavy demands, Mr. Paul never lacked the energy to preach, recalled Dr. Sheldon Weinstein, a fellow obstetrics and gynecology trainee.
“He was always talking about how much gold there was in Fort Knox, how we shouldn’t be in Vietnam,” Dr. Weinstein said. “For me, it was novel — he was an oddball. He was worried about the monetary system; I didn’t have any pennies, let alone dollars.”
Planning for the Worst
Dr. Weinstein and other residents recalled whispering that Mr. Paul must be a member of the John Birch Society, the ultraconservative group whose views on the monetary system, economics and foreign policy Mr. Paul has described as much like his own.
Mr. Paul denies ever belonging to the group, though he was listed as a subscriber to its magazine, American Opinion, according to Birch records in Brown University’s archives. And when he planned his first run for office in 1974, he has said, the first person he called for advice was Larry McDonald, a right-wing congressman who was later president of the group. Mr. Paul and the John Birch Society are also 50-50 co-owners of a 3.8-acre property in Sweeny, Tex., that was bequeathed to them by a constituent of the congressman who died in 2010; Mr. Paul’s campaign said it was surprised by the gift, and the group said the property would be sold off. In the interview, Mr. Paul said he parted ways with the John Birch Society over its emphasis on conspiracy theories — “that 12 or 15 people for hundreds of years get together and plan the world.”
But he hastened to say that conservatives’ rejection of the society, as far back as the 1960s, was wrong. “I’ve known these people, and I saw them as mostly strict constitutionalists,” he said. “To turn that into something radical and mean is not fair.”
Mr. Paul jumped at the chance to return to Texas in 1968 after learning of an obstetrician who was retiring in an area with no competition. The leap paid off. Before long, he had amassed a farm outside town, an Olympic-size swimming pool, a beach house and other real estate investments.
In 1971, however, President Richard M. Nixon’s abandonment of the gold standard propelled Mr. Paul to buy gold for the first time — and to embark on a new career. He saw it as a “declaration of bankruptcy for our country,” he later wrote.
The so-called Nixon Shock was an unimaginably grave threat to ultraconservatives, said Chip Berlet, a historian of the ultra-right wing. Many “saw it as a sign that a conspiracy had penetrated the Republican Party — as subversion from within,” he said. Mr. Paul ran for Congress in 1974 and lost, then won a special election in 1976. To keep up his medical practice, he took on a young partner, Jack Pruett.
In their first meeting, Dr. Paul laid down two conditions: They would perform no elective abortions, and they would not participate in Medicare or Medicaid. They treated poor women at a discount or free, Dr. Pruett said, sometimes receiving vegetables or eggs instead of cash.
But Mr. Paul’s mind remained focused elsewhere. His medical office was lined with economics textbooks, Dr. Pruett recalled. And when they closed the books one year and found that they had $60,000 left over to split, Mr. Paul proposed that they invest in gold coins.
“I still have my Krugerrands,” Dr. Pruett said. “We paid $132 apiece. They’re worth about $2,000 today.”
Mr. Paul continues to invest according to his principles, and he has outperformed the stock market. From 2001 to 2011, his holdings in gold, silver, mining companies and other bets on an economic collapse more than doubled in value, an analysis of his Congressional disclosures suggests, to between $1.6 million and $3.5 million. His entire portfolio is now worth between $2.4 million and $5.4 million.
He also continues to maintain his medical license, for the same apocalyptic reason that he urges young people to learn a trade. “That is the ultimate protection,” he said, even safer than stockpiling gold. “Even if you have to live in a totalitarian society, somebody’s going to want your skills.”
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/us/politics/for-ron-paul-a-distinctive-worldview-of-long-standing.html
Ex-Aide: Ron Paul Foreign Policy is 'Sheer Lunacy'
Ron Paul is not having the best holiday season. First the media discovered racist, anti-Semitic newsletters that went out under Paul’s name in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s. Then the New York Times did a story about the support Paul draws from white supremacists and anti-Semites. Now there’s former Paul staffer Eric Dondero purporting to describe the ins and outs of Paul’s positions on everything from Israel (it shouldn’t exist) to Hitler (we shouldn’t have fought him) to 9/11 (U.S. authorities may have known about the attacks) to Afghanistan (we shouldn’t have invaded). He calls Paul’s foreign policy “sheer lunacy.”
Or, as the conservative Weekly Standard summarized in hits headline: “Ex-Aide Says Ron Paul Is a 9/11 Truther & Isolationist Who Thinks U.S. Shouldn't Have Fought Hitler.” In his 2,100-word piece, posted at RightwingNews.com, Dondero says he held several campaign and Capitol Hill posts with Paul from 1987 to 2003. At his own website, LibertarianRepublican.net, he said he was revealing much of the information for the first time. “Much of what I have to say will not please the liberal media hacks. Though, the Ron Paul diehards will find much objectionable, as well,” Dondero wrote.
Paul campaign manager Jesse Benton, in a statement circulated to the media, called Dondero “a disgruntled former staffer who was fired for performance issues. He has zero credibility and should not be taken seriously.” Still, Dondero’s bill of particulars was getting wide pickup on Twitter and on conservative sites such as the Standard, National Review and HotAir.
Dondero goes out of his way to say that Paul is not anti-Semitic or a racist. He said Paul has hired many black and Hispanic employees and “I never heard a racist word expressed towards Blacks or Jews come out of his mouth. Not once.” In fact, Paul’s current campaign spokesman, Gary Howard, is black. Still, any way you cut it, the picture Dondero paints isn’t pretty. Among his contentions:
--Paul is anti-Israel. “His view is that Israel is more trouble than it is worth, specifically to the America taxpayer. He sides with the Palestinians, and supports their calls for the abolishment of the Jewish state, and the return of Israel, all of it, to the Arabs.”
-- “He is not all bigoted towards homosexuals. He supports their rights to do whatever they please in their private lives. He is however, personally uncomfortable around homosexuals” and refused to use a bathroom in a gay supporter’s home.
-- “Ron Paul was opposed to the War in Afghanistan, and to any military reaction to the attacks of 9/11.” He planned to vote against the invasion despite threats of staff resignations and a constituent uproar, Dondero says; he changed his mind at the last minute.
“If Ron Paul should be slammed for anything, it’s not some silly remarks he’s made in the past in his Newsletters. It’s over his simply outrageously horrendous views on foreign policy, Israel, and national security for the United States. His near No vote on Afghanistan. That is the big scandal,” he concludes. Paul has said he did not know what was in the newsletters. The Times looks at the newsletter issue more broadly, and gets Paul to comment on his less savory supporters. He told the newspaper that he rejects their extremist views but not their backing.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ex-aide-ron-paul-foreign-policy-sheer-lunacy-144730256.html
Paul Builds Campaign on Doomsday Scenarios
The man who might win the Republican Party's first presidential nominating contest fears that the United Nations may take control of the U.S. money supply. Campaigning for the January 3 Iowa caucuses, Ron Paul warns of eroding civil liberties, a Soviet Union-style economic collapse and violence in the streets. The Texas congressman, author of "End the Fed," also wants to eliminate the central banking system that underpins the world's largest economy.
"Not only would we audit the Federal Reserve, we may well curtail the Federal Reserve," Paul told a cheering crowd of more than 100 in this small Iowa city last week. Paul, 76, is facing questions for racist writings that appeared under his name two decades ago, which he has disavowed as the work of "ghost writers."
But Paul's dark-horse presidential bid ultimately could founder, analysts and others say, because of increasing questions about how his unorthodox vision of government would work in the real world. Republican rivals criticize his anti-war, isolationist approach to foreign policy as dangerously naive, and object to his plans to slash the Pentagon's budget and pull back U.S. troops from overseas.
Non-partisan analysts say his economic proposals - drastic spending cuts, elimination of the Federal Reserve and a return to the gold standard - would plunge the country back into recession. "Paul appeals to people whose knowledge of major issues is superficial (and) he sees conspiracies where there are none," said Greg Valliere, chief political strategist at Potomac Research Group, an analysis firm. "If he does well in Iowa, which is likely, it will be an enormous embarrassment to the Republicans."
However, Paul's calls for a dramatically limited government and a hands-off foreign policy are resonating among voters who have grown deeply alienated from Washington after a decade of war and nearly five years of economic malaise. "Obama got into office and I can't tell the difference between him and Bush," said Deanna Pitman, a homemaker from Bloomfield, Iowa, citing President Barack Obama's support for policies such as the Wall Street bailout and the war in Afghanistan that began under George W. Bush.
Polls show Paul jockeying for the lead in the Iowa caucuses, and political observers say his organization in the state is unmatched. His campaign stops draw hundreds of enthusiastic supporters, along with undecided voters who are giving him a look. On the campaign trail, he reaches out to Tea Party supporters on the right and Occupy Wall Street supporters on the left. Some potential supporters from the left have been put off by Paul's uncompromising support for the free market.
At a campaign stop in this small city of about 7,000, Paul told breast cancer survivor Danielle Lin that insurance companies should not be required to offer coverage to people who are already sick. "It's sort of like me living on the Gulf Coast, not buying insurance until I see the hurricane," said Paul, whose Galveston-based district was devastated by a hurricane in 2008. "Insurance is supposed to measure risk."
The response left Lin in tears. While her insurance covered her treatment, she said, several of her friends were not so fortunate. "I watched three friends die because they didn't have insurance," said Lin, a registered Democrat who is looking for a Republican candidate to support this time. "Nobody can afford private insurance, nobody can. And they're dead."
APOCALYPTIC SCENARIOS
Paul can wax apocalyptic as he warns of the dangers of a diluted currency and a deeply indebted government. His doomsday scenarios often are incomplete, leaving listeners room to fill in the blanks. He draws parallels between the current situation in the United States and that of the former Soviet Union, whose economy collapsed amid the union's breakup and civil unrest in 1991.
Paul acknowledges that his proposal to avoid that outcome - an immediate, $1 trillion spending cut that would slash the federal budget by more than one-third and eliminate the departments of Education, Energy, Commerce, Interior, and Housing and Urban Development - could have some unpleasant side effects.
"I'm afraid of violence coming," he told a crowd of more than 600 in Bettendorf, Iowa. "When you see what the government is preparing for, and the arrests and military law, and the demonstrations in the streets, some people aren't going to be convinced so easily that you don't owe them a living."
At the earlier stop in Washington, he said the Federal Reserve was poised to "bail out" the Euro zone, a move that he said ultimately would cause the United States to surrender control of its own currency to the United Nations.
"This monetary crisis is well known by the international bankers. They want the U.N. to come in and solve this problem," he said. "The dollar will probably eventually disintegrate and be taken over. But I don't want the U.N. issuing that currency."
Economists note that Paul's long-standing proposal to return the dollar to a gold standard would force the United States to relinquish control of its currency. "We would still have monetary policy - it would be set by gold miners in South Africa and Uzbekistan, rather than bureaucrats in Washington," said Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist with JPMorgan Chase.
"If you like what OPEC means for oil prices, you'd love what the gold standard would do to financial markets."
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/26/us-usa-campaign-paul-idUSTRE7BK0PE20111226
Paul Disowns Extremists’ Views but Doesn’t Disavow the Support
The American Free Press, which markets books like “The Invention of the Jewish People” and “March of the Titans: A History of the White Race,” is urging its subscribers to help it send hundreds of copies of Ron Paul’s collected speeches to voters in New Hampshire. The book, it promises, will “Help Dr. Ron Paul Win the G.O.P. Nomination in 2012!” Don Black, director of the white nationalist Web site Stormfront, said in an interview that several dozen of his members were volunteering for Mr. Paul’s presidential campaign, and a site forum titled “Why is Ron Paul such a favorite here?” has no fewer than 24 pages of comments. “I understand he wins many fans because his monetary policy would hurt Jews,” read one.
Far-right groups like the Militia of Montana say they are rooting for Mr. Paul as a stalwart against government tyranny. Mr. Paul’s surprising surge in polls is creating excitement within a part of his political base that has been behind him for decades but overshadowed by his newer fans on college campuses and in some liberal precincts who are taken with his antiwar, anti-drug-laws messages. The white supremacists, survivalists and anti-Zionists who have rallied behind his candidacy have not exactly been warmly welcomed. “I wouldn’t be happy with that,” Mr. Paul said in an interview Friday when asked about getting help from volunteers with anti-Jewish or antiblack views.
But he did not disavow their support. “If they want to endorse me, they’re endorsing what I do or say — it has nothing to do with endorsing what they say,” said Mr. Paul, who is now running strong in Iowa for the Republican nomination. The libertarian movement in American politics has long had two overlapping but distinct strains. One, backed to some degree by wealthy interests, is focused largely on economic freedom and dedicated to reducing taxes and regulation through smaller government. The other is more focused on personal liberty and constraints on government built into the Constitution, which at its extreme has helped fuel militant antigovernment sentiment.
Mr. Paul has operated at the nexus of the two, often espousing positions at odds with most of the Republican Party but assembling a diverse and loyal following attracted by his adherence to libertarian principles. Mr. Paul’s calls for the end of the Federal Reserve system, a cessation of aid to Israel and all other nations and an overall diminishment of government power have natural appeal among far-right, niche political groups. Aides say that much of the support is unsolicited and that it is unfair to overlook the larger number of mainstream voters now backing him.
But a look at the trajectory of Mr. Paul’s career shows that he and his closest political allies either wittingly or unwittingly courted disaffected white voters with extreme views as they sought to forge a movement from the nether region of American politics, where the far right and the far left sometimes converge.
In May, Mr. Paul reiterated in an interview with Chris Matthews of MSNBC that he would not have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawing segregation. He said that he supported its intent, but that parts of it violated his longstanding belief that government should not dictate how property owners behave. He has been featured in videos of the John Birch Society, which campaigned against the Civil Rights Act, warning, for instance, that the United Nations threatens American sovereignty.
In the mid-1990s, between his two stints as a Texas congressman, Mr. Paul produced a newsletter called The Ron Paul Survival Report, which only months before the Oklahoma City bombings encouraged militias to seek out and expel federal agents in their midst. That edition was titled “Why Militias Scare the Striped Pants Off Big Government.” An earlier edition of another newsletter he produced, The Ron Paul Political Report, concluded that the need for citizens to arm themselves was only natural, given carjackings by “urban youth who play whites like pianos.” The report, with no byline but written in the first person, said: “I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self-defense. For the animals are coming.”
Mike Holmes, former editor of The American Libertarian, who has known Mr. Paul from libertarian circles since the 1970s, contended that the newsletters did not “rise to the level of hate speech.” He added: “It goes more to the level of social commentary. There was no use of any ‘N’-words. It amounted to the style of foul-mouthed punks trying to get inside the gang of paleoconservatives.”
Those newsletters have drawn new scrutiny through Mr. Paul’s two recent presidential campaigns. The New Republic posted several of them online in 2008 and again recently, including a lament about “The Disappearing White Majority.” The conservative Weekly Standard ran an article highlighting the newsletters last week. Mr. Paul has long repudiated the newsletters, contending that they were written by the staff of his company, Ron Paul & Associates, while he was tending to his obstetrician’s practice and that he did not see some of them until 10 years later.
“I disavow those positions,” he said in the interview. “They’re not my positions, and anybody who knows me, they’ve never heard a word of it.”
But production of the newsletters was partly overseen by Lew Rockwell, a libertarian activist who has been a close political aide and adviser to Mr. Paul over the course of decades. At the same time that he was a director for Mr. Paul’s company, Mr. Rockwell called on libertarians to reach out to “cultural and moral traditionalists,” who “reject not only affirmative action, set-asides and quotas, but the 1964 Civil Rights Act and all subsequent laws that force property owners to act against their will.”
Mr. Rockwell and Mr. Paul came to know each other as followers of the free-market Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich A. Hayek, who argued against socialism and centralized economic planning, a spokesman for Mr. Paul said. They joined with the libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard in the 1970s and 1980s during the early attempts to forge libertarianism into a national party.
Mr. Rockwell was listed in business filings as a director of Ron Paul & Associates from its founding in 1984 through its dissolution in 2001, and was a paid Paul campaign consultant through at least 2002, according to federal campaign records. He was Mr. Paul’s chief of staff during the congressman’s first period in Congress, which began in the 1970s, and championed his successful bid in 1988 for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination.
During that nominating battle, a flier produced by Mr. Paul’s opponents accused him of gay-baiting by reporting in one of his newsletters that the government was “lying” about the threat of AIDS and that the virus could be transmitted through “saliva, tears, sweat.” It said that some “AIDS carriers — perhaps out of a pathological hatred — continue to give blood.” Mr. Paul said Friday “that was never my view at all,” and again blamed his staff. Still, that same year he was quoted in The Houston Post as saying that schools should be free to bar children with AIDS and that the government should stop financing AIDS research and education.
As the Libertarian standard bearer, Mr. Paul won less than 1 percent of the vote. After the election, as libertarians searched for ways to broaden the appeal of their ideology, Mr. Rockwell and Mr. Rothbard advocated a coalition of libertarians and so-called paleoconservatives, who unlike hawkish “neocons” were socially conservative, noninterventionist and opposed to what they viewed as state-enforced multiculturalism.
In the Rothbard-Rockwell Report they started in 1990, Mr. Rothbard called for a “Right Wing Populism,” suggesting that the campaign for governor of Louisiana by David Duke, the founder of the National Association for the Advancement of White People, was a model for “paleolibertarianism.” “It is fascinating that there was nothing in Duke’s current program or campaign that could not also be embraced by paleoconservatives or paleolibertarians,” he wrote.
Arguing that too many libertarians were embracing a misplaced egalitarianism, Mr. Rockwell wrote in Liberty magazine: “There is nothing wrong with blacks preferring the ‘black thing.’ But paleolibertarians would say the same about whites preferring the ‘white thing’ or Asians the ‘Asian thing.’ ” Their thinking was hardly embraced by all libertarians. “It was just something that we found abhorrent, and so there was a huge divide,” said Edward H. Crane, the founder of the Cato Institute, a prominent libertarian research center.
Mr. Crane, a longtime critic of Mr. Rockwell, called Mr. Paul’s close association with him “one of the more perplexing things I’ve ever come across in my 67 years.” He added: “I wish Ron would condemn these fringe things that float around because of Rockwell. I don’t believe he believes any of that stuff.” Mr. Paul said in the interview that he did not, but he declined to condemn Mr. Rockwell, saying he did not want to get in the middle of a fight. “I could understand that, but I could also understand the Rothbard group saying, Why don’t you quit talking to Cato?” he said.
Mr. Paul described Mr. Rockwell and Mr. Rothbard as political provocateurs. “They enjoyed antagonizing people, to tell you the truth, and trying to split people,” he said. “I thought, we’re so small, why shouldn’t we be talking to everybody and bringing people together?” Nonetheless, Mr. Paul’s newsletters veered into language that would most likely appeal to Mr. Duke’s followers, including the suggestion in 1994 that Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
He said he did not discuss the content of the newsletters with Mr. Rockwell because readers never complained. “I was pretty careless about what was going in my own newsletter — that was my biggest fault,” he said. Mr. Rockwell did not respond to interview requests. Carol Moore, a libertarian opponent of his at the time, said he and his allies had “all evolved” and moderated their views since. Still, the newsletters had a lasting appeal with the audience Mr. Rockwell and Mr. Rothbard talked about reaching.
Mr. Black of Stormfront said the newsletters helped make him a Ron Paul supporter. “That was a big part of his constituency, the paleoconservatives who think there are race problems in this country,” Mr. Black said. “We understand that Paul is not a white nationalist, but most of our people support him because of his stand on issues,” Mr. Black said. “We think our race is being threatened through a form of genocide by assimilation, meaning the allowing in of third-world immigrants into the United States.”
Mr. Black said Mr. Paul was attractive because of his “aggressive position on securing our borders,” his criticism of affirmative action and his goal of eliminating the Federal Reserve, which the Stormfront board considers to be essentially a private bank with no government oversight. “Also, our board recognizes that most of the leaders involved in the Fed and the international banking system are Jews.”
Mr. Paul is not unaware of that strain among his supporters. Mr. Crane of the Cato Institute recalled comparing notes with Mr. Paul in the early 1980s about direct mail solicitations for money. When Mr. Crane said that mailing lists of people with the most extreme views seemed to draw the best response, Mr. Paul responded that he found the same thing with a list of subscribers to the Spotlight, a now-defunct publication founded by the holocaust denier Willis A. Carto.
Mr. Paul said he did not recall that conversation, which was first reported in the libertarian publication Reason, and doubted that he would have known what lists were being used on his behalf. Yet he said he would not have a problem seeking support from such a list. “I’ll go to anybody who I think I can convert to change their viewpoints — so that would be to me incidental,” he said. “I’m always looking at converting people to look at liberty the way I do.”
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/us/politics/ron-paul-disowns-extremists-views-but-doesnt-disavow-the-support.html
Ron Paul invokes the ... Millard Fillmore doctrine?
Let's face it. When Millard Fillmore, the undistinguished, uninspiring 13th president of the United States, comes up in political conversation these days, it's usually as the butt of jokes. "When five of your six candidates could not be elected president if they were running against Millard Fillmore, I think you can presume there will not be much serious issue discussion," New York Times columnist Gail Collins quipped last week in a primer on the upcoming South Carolina primary. If only the rags-to-riches Whig, whose 212th birthday was recently celebrated with much fanfare in his native Western New York, were around to defend his record.
But last night, during the GOP debate in South Carolina, Ron Paul issued a full-throated endorsement of Fillmore's approach to foreign policy, whether he realized it or not. "If another country does to us what we do to others, we aren't going to like it very much," Paul explained in the context of his opposition to war with Iran. "So I would say maybe we ought to consider a Golden Rule in foreign policy," he continued placidly, as he was eaten alive by boos and jeers. "We endlessly bomb these other countries and then we wonder why they get upset with us?" Paul has trotted out this Golden Rule line several times during the campaign, drawing laughter in New Hampshire after asking, "What if the Chinese came into the Gulf of Mexico and took over the Gulf of Mexico? I know we in Texas would be pretty annoyed."
Among the acknowledged rights of nations is that which each possesses of establishing that form of government which it may deem most conducive to the happiness and prosperity of its own citizens, of changing that form as circumstances may require, and of managing its internal affairs according to its own will. The people of the United States claim this right for themselves, and they readily concede it to others. Hence it becomes an imperative duty not to interfere in the government or internal policy of other nations; and although we may sympathize with the unfortunate or the oppressed everywhere in their struggles for freedom, our principles forbid us from taking any part in such foreign contests. We make no wars to promote or to prevent successions to thrones, to maintain any theory of a balance of power, or to suppress the actual government which any country chooses to establish for itself. We instigate no revolutions, nor suffer any hostile military expeditions to be fitted out in the United States to invade the territory or provinces of a friendly nation. The great law of morality ought to have a national as well as a personal and individual application. We should act toward other nations as we wish them to act toward us, and justice and conscience should form the rule of conduct between governments, instead of mere power, self interest, or the desire of aggrandizement. To maintain a strict neutrality in foreign wars, to cultivate friendly relations, to reciprocate every noble and generous act, and to perform punctually and scrupulously every treaty obligation -- these are the duties which we owe to other states, and by the performance of which we best entitle ourselves to like treatment from them; or, if that, in any case, be refused, we can enforce our own rights with justice and a clear conscience.
So, what was Millard Fillmore's foreign policy? While his term in office was dominated by a congressional debate over slavery, Fillmore did adopt a "foreign-policy agenda that emphasized expanding trade while limiting American commitments outside the Western Hemisphere," according to the University of Virginia's Miller Center (Ron Paul claims he's not isolationist because he's a free trader who simply doesn't want the United States to be the "policemen of the world"). Fillmore cultivated closer commercial ties with Japan, (ineffectually) opposed a Bay of Pigs-style invasion of Cuba, and refused to confront oppressive imperial governments in Eastern Europe -- all stances Paul might have taken had he been in Fillmore's shoes (we're not sure where Paul would have come down on securing bird dung from Peru, which Fillmore pursued zealously).
Might Paul have pacified the crowd by explaining that, hey, he was only echoing Millard Fillmore? Something tells us he wouldn't have received a standing ovation. But bewildered silence might have done the trick.
Source: http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/01/17/ron_paul_invokes_the_millard_fillmore_doctrine
Paul: U.S. "slipping into a fascist system"
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul warned the U.S. is "slipping into a fascist system" dominated by government and businesses as he held a fiery rally Saturday night upstaging established Republican Party banquets a short distance away. The Texas congressman drew a couple thousand standing and chanting people to Kansas City's Union Station as the party's establishment dined on steak across the street at the Missouri GOP's annual conference. Kansas Republicans were holding a similar convention in a suburb across the state line.
Paul staged his rally near the nation's World War I museum, asserting that the U.S. got off track about 100 years ago during the era of President Woodrow Wilson, who led the nation through World War I and unsuccessfully advocated for the nation's involvement in a forerunner of the United Nations. "We've slipped away from a true Republic," Paul said. "Now we're slipping into a fascist system where it's a combination of government and big business and authoritarian rule and the suppression of the individual rights of each and every American citizen."
Although campaign aides were aware, Paul told reporters after his speech that he did not know his rally was coinciding with long-established Missouri and Kansas Republican Party events, where Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell — a vice presidential prospect — was the keynote speaker. Several Republicans slipped away from the banquets to join the Paul rally. Among them was Ralph Munyan, a Republican committeeman in Kansas City's home county, who said he agreed with Paul's warnings of a "fascist system" and his pledge to the end nation's involvement in wars overseas and against drugs. "His foreign policy is one of peace," Munyan said.
Paul repeatedly denounced President Barack Obama's recent enactment of a law requiring military custody of anyone suspected to be associated with al Qaeda and involved in planning an attack on the U.S. Obama said when he signed the legislation that his administration would not authorize the indefinite military detention of American citizens without a trial.
Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57380947/paul-u.s--slipping-into-a-fascist-system/
***
Iowa Vote Fraud Official
It’s official, or is it? Once again the establishment is showing it’s cards in an obvious attempt to defraud Ron Paul of the nomination, as Iowa GOP ‘officials’ purposely disrupt and permanently invalidate the 2012 Iowa Caucus. The official Caucus website, in conjunction with the Des Moines Register, had to come forward Thursday to claim the official results can “never be certified” after, at least, 8 different precincts turn up invalid results due to “missing votes” and changing stories.
Other missing or “uncounted” votes were expected to be heavy Ron Paul supporting, major populated areas and college town precincts, now leaving the true winner forever in question. Originally, the results had Romney winning by 8 votes over Santorum with 30,015 votes. Now the establishment’s media claims new ‘official’ results show Santorum winning by 34 votes over Romney with 29,839 votes, but oddly 168 votes fewer than the ‘official’ total he was previously given, 30,007. Additionally, Iowa’s establishment politicians now say 121,503 people voted overall, strangely down from the 122,255 it had originally reported. This could be due to new official results not including the 8 precincts that showed skewed results in the new final totals, but the truth may never be fully understood.
As if that’s not odd enough, hidden within all the commotion, even though many votes were missing, uncounted, and changed, including the official result totals for both Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, no mention at all has been given to the new total Ron Paul should now have and if his votes were also miscounted or left out like the two ‘front-runners” votes were reported to have been. Especially considering how close Ron Paul came to winning, one would think his totals would be just as important to review as well.
The Ron Paul camp, as usual, has downplayed the situation for fear of being an easy target and giving the establishment an excuse to label him and his supporters conspiracy "theorists," a very common tactic used by the establishment and it's media throughout Paul’s career. Instead, he’s tried to remain humble and look at the bright side in saying, "a strong third is still pretty good and still sends a message to the establishment and the American people."
However, as was pointed out on CNN Thursday, even if the new results are legitimate, “It’s hard to take back that initial surge given to Romney. It’s hard to overcome the amount of hype and exposure he received as the evening progressed.” It was treated as a monumental moment as he was declared the winner, while his party and constituents celebrated in great joy…All while questionable results trickled in.
If the actual winner was to have been Ron Paul, should the votes have been counted fairly, the results would have likely been unprecedented momentum for the Ron Paul campaign, which would have likely been impossible for the other candidates to overcome, especially considering Ron Paul’s overall success, despite the constant barrage of negative and totally unfair coverage, if and when he gets coverage at all.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the circumstances, when it’s all said and done, is the repeating pattern of open censorship and total demonization toward Ron Paul’s campaign by the media. He’s always referred to as “unelectable, racist, or dangerous,” or any number of attacks, while generally making a mockery of his ideals and supporters, even though his anti-war, pro-civil liberty, limited-constitutional government, and sound economic policies are all very popular in general with the American people.
What people are most impressed with, when it comes to Ron Paul, when people are actually given the chance to find who he really is and what he really stands for, are things like realizing he’s held those exact same ideals and shows a perfectly aligned voting record to go along with those ideals since he started in government over 40 years ago. Something the other candidates couldn’t even fathom with all the criminal activity and flip-flopping on the issues, many of them have done routinely, throughout their careers.
The troops feel Ron Paul is the best candidate for America, as well. For the second White House bid in a row, active military personnel give double the amount of organic campaign contributions to Ron Paul than all the other candidates combined, including Obama’s totals. This renders the war-mongering establishment's multi-party line, that Ron Paul's foreign policy ideals are "dangerous," when even the military overwhelmingly agrees with Paul, as more examples of pro-establishment rhetoric aimed at fooling the people into thinking anti-war sentiments are irrational. The totally bias media is constantly using suggestive terms like, “he can’t win,” or, “he won’t win,” as if they are the ones who decide what the people are supposed to think about the candidates.
Frighteningly, it’s commonplace to witness the open attempt to sway public opinion in favor of the candidates with pro-war and pro-establishment views, despite the fact that Ron Paul has scored very high or first in almost every independent political poll since his second White House bid in 2007, while establishment funded polls always strangely show Paul in second, third, or even more oddly, yet just as commonly, not being included in the poll at all. This, despite that fact that he’s always the landslide victor in almost every internet poll he’s been in, including post-debate analysis for every debate since the 2012 GOP nomination race began, both on TV and on almost all internet polling analysis.
One of the reasons for a general establishment disdain for the strict Libertarian is because he’s has always been a real thorn in the establishment’s side, going back as far as his first run for President in ’88 when he exposed CIA drug running on local Texas TV. Now he’s doing it on the national stage, and although he’s wisely being a lot more politically correct in front of a national audience, the establishment still doesn’t like him now, seemingly more than ever.
Bringing us to the evening of the Iowa Caucus itself, where early entrance/exit polls had Paul in first place, which included an Anderson Cooper jolting Paul win in the first couple official precincts reported. As the evening progressed, the leaders went back and forth like a jumbo-tron race during halftime, with the first two hours of results seeing no clear leader, and a double digit amount of lead changes, despite Paul’s #1 live exit poll rankings, shown on every network.
All night long national news coverage analyzed the incoming numbers, showing Paul having a real shot, either leading or in a dead heat for much of the first part of the evening, with promising young voters and college student heavy precincts yet to be counted, something the pundits were claiming “looked very good for Paul” and had the other candidates, “very nervous,” according to live election coverage analysts.
After all this, what’s extremely frightening about the situation is that fact that neither the establishment and it’s media, nor is anyone in any policing agency doing anything about it, as if it’s no big deal that the official election results in the Iowa caucus were tampered with, rendering the results of the election forever compromised, potentially putting the future of the caucus and elections processes, this nation, and Ron Paul’s call for liberty, freedom, and the rule of law in serious jeopardy.
Just as concerning to Ron Paul supporters and supporters of freedom and fairness in general, which may or may not be a majority of the country, although we obviously can’t be sure with the current national media that's in place, is the fact that precincts around the country that aren’t still using paper ballots, are now using electronic voting machines, also said to be even easier to manipulate, admitted under oath in court by an electronic voting machine software developer. In addition to a very shady Diebold upper management history, potentially rendering the entire election system a total hoax, which exists, as Judge Napolitano recently stated, “to merely perpetuate the fake, corporate controlled, ‘two-party’ system of political slavery.”
Under the circumstances, if no one does anything about it, and the people remain largely oblivious to the actaul magnitude of the circumstances, the only way Ron Paul and his supporters have any shot at getting the nomination, and thus swinging the preverbal political pendulum back toward the direction of freedom and liberty, is via total landslide victories in many of the remaining primaries. To the point that not even pro-establishment vote counters and jimmy-rigged Diebold voting machines, and their unfairly manipulated software, can overcome the sheer magnitude of votes, forcing the establishment's media to take notice, forcing it into public discussion.
UPDATE (01/31/12): WQAD, Des Moines, Iowa: Iowa GOP Chairman to resign
Sources:
Official Iowa Caucus Site showing “permanently unverifiable” results: http://caucuses.desmoinesregister.com/2012/01/19/register-exclusive-2012-gop-caucus-count-unresolved/
Recount: Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/19/recount-gives-santorum-edge-iowa-caucuses/
Newser: Secret Vote Count Location: http://www.newser.com/story/136343/iowa-gop-to-count-caucus-votes-at-secret-location.html
Alex Jones: Secret Vote Count Location: http://www.infowars.com/tonights-iowa-vote-count-to-take-place-at-secret-location/
CNN Admits moving count site: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/28/iowa-republicans-to-move-counting-due-to-security-concerns/
Alex Jones: Media Cover-up: Ron Paul’s Standing Not Discussed in Iowa Vote Reshuffle: http://www.infowars.com/media-cover-up-ron-pauls-standing-not-discussed-in-iowa-vote-reshuffle/
KC Star: Officials got votes wrong, won’t declare a winner: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/01/19/3378878/republicans-set-to-release-official.html
7 of 8 missing precincts were Romney ’08 Losers: http://www.impeachobamacampaign.com/7-of-the-8-missing-iowa-precincts-voted-against-romney-in-2008/
Ron Paul’s 30 years of successful predictions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ujNI1UZ0Ww&feature=related
Ron Paul receives more campaign contributions from the military than all other candidates combined: http://www.examiner.com/conspiracy-in-denver/support-the-troops-by-supporting-ron-paul
Elections, straw polls, and reports proving Ron Paul is the most popular candidate in America:
CNN: Ron Paul Is Far And Away The Most Popular Candidate of ALL On Twitter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDu31AdNPKE&feature=related
Ron Paul WINS GOOGLE Search POLL! (1.5million) AMAZING!!!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJGr-Dz7q-Q
CNBC QUICKLY DELETES POLL SHOWING RON PAUL WINNING LAST NIGHT'S DEBATE: http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?read=221248
Ron Paul Wins Saddle Up Texas Straw Poll: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxs6bqw2kn4
Ron Paul Wins Values Voter Summit Straw Poll!! (Media Coverage): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIyss2K40Yc
Ron Paul Wins Illinois Straw Poll!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0_GlYj-zvk
Ron Paul Wins Ohio Straw Poll With 53% Of The Vote!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTHWqsH17yA
Ohio Swing State Straw Poll Results - RON PAUL WINS WITH 53.5%!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKEDNUd0A5s
Ron Paul Wins NFRA Straw Poll With A Landslide 82%!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAKC6jkmIxY
Ron Paul Wins California Straw Poll! CNN Puts its Typical Spin on it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mfmWG9d8cE
Ron Paul WINS Miami Straw Poll (complete ownage): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F2fNWfuwcw
RON PAUL wins The Ohio Swing State Straw Poll - THE EVENT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWuwOEy8wZg
Ron Paul Wins R.L.C. Straw Poll Overwhelmingly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPZf2r4GFhw
Ron Paul Wins Republican Party of Los Angeles County Straw Poll: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NbMffuz4E
FOX NEWS COVER UP: Ron Paul Wins FOX News Poll: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRozwnDeaTA
Ron Paul Won Straw Poll: Bachmann Bought More Than 6,000 votes!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cuVY43rv-o
Ron Paul Wins Charleston and San Diego GOP Straw Polls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oml9BNo5tfQ
Ron Paul Wins Person of the Year 2011 Poll - Time Magazine Makes Up Their Own Results: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djzk1wyNU-Q
Ron Paul Wins Idaho straw poll - Matt Shea speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y8gCQpY-gI
Ron Paul wins Polls Across America despite what the media say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiyapKeZPVQ&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL8AABEA82823C1072
Ron Paul winning CBSNews.com After-Debate Poll - 11/14/11 - 8 Minute Time Lapse of Results: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hst8_K49r-I
CNN Makes Excuses For Ron Paul Winning CPAC Straw Poll: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8qpZmddhME&feature=autoplay&list=PL8AABEA82823C1072&lf=results_main&playnext=1
Who Cares That RON PAUL Wins Straw Polls? LOL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jQgGUZxADY
Ron Paul and others expose the mainstream media: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVaHFgjXjsA&feature=related
RON PAUL WINS CBS POST DEBATE POLL!!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0k1QBwWiJE
RON PAUL is EXPLODING (REMASTERED) - Jon Stewart Trust Today 2012: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0mnATGwCkY&feature=related
Clint Eastwood likes Ron Paul's message: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUFbvUWbA_0&feature=related
John Stewart Shows How Ron Paul Is Feared By media: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb5aGgQXhXo&feature=related
Negative/Unfair Ron Paul Coverage/Comments:
Media Scared Ron Paul is Winning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoZbVqZGHKE
RON PAUL 2012 AND BRAINLESS CNN & FOX MEDIA (Jon Stewart) – YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSbkFpAA4CA&feature=related
Atlantic Wire: Anti-Ron Paul media bias confirmed in PEW Research study: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/10/ron-paul-media-blackout-confirmed/43747/
VIDEO: FOX News caught completely excluding Ron paul from post debate analysis, viewers force station to re-air coverage, this time, including Ron Paul: http://12160.info/group/ronpaulforpresident2012/forum/topics/fox-news-ron-paul-debate
Ron Paul 2012 Exposed Media Censorship of Ron Paul and His Supporters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyNsAp93R_A&feature=related
CBS Omits Ron Paul From Latest New Hampshire Poll: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0qPKrwIwPs&feature=related
Why the Media Ignores Ron Paul: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JViVLY_BRz4&feature=related
Letterman On Ron Paul And His 89 Seconds At The GOP Debate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSrF6qPFVbs&feature=related
FOX News: "If Ron Paul wins tomorrow it will be a black eye for Iowa" says Donald Trump.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k83bizOq5s&feature=related
UnfairCoverage.com: Ron Paul vs. the Machine: http://www.unfaircoverage.com/archive-content.html
Huckabee claims Ron Paul “can’t win”: http://newscastmedia.com/blog/2011/12/28/mike-huckabee-ron-paul-cant-win-his-supporters-are-too-fanatic/
RON PAUL Polls First ::: WINNING IOWA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu_-ByajyT8
Foxnews Cuts Off Ron Paul's Iowa Straw Poll Speech While He's Talking Patriot Act & Foreign Polic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajoO1lfyuVY&feature=related
CNN’s Dana Bash receives an earful for unfair coverage of Ron Paul: http://www.infowars.com/cnns-dana-bash-gets-earful-for-unfair-coverage-of-ron-paul/
Pew Study confirms: mainstream media ignores Ron Paul: http://ivn.us/news/2011/10/18/pew-study-confirms-mainstream-media-ignores-ron-paul/
CNN is “WORRIED” about Ron Paul’s success: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zQKtslBonM&feature=related
CNN cuts off soldier then Ron Paul brings him on stage to let him finish talking!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alioRM1mAuY&feature=related
Hillary Clinton is reminded by colleague not to encourage Ron Paul: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrAexgCHz9A&feature=related
Eye Witness Testimony / Vote Fraud Analysis
Ron Paul Robbed-Cesspool of Fraud Iowa Caucus: http://youtu.be/M7Cp6OYC9b8
Illinois eye witness: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vGqMeqPV74&feature=related
Local Iowa TV News covers eye witness: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIQcbWJpcOk&feature=related
Ron Paul's brother, Wayne Paul talks about Iowa vote fraud: http://www.prisonplanet.com/wayne-paul-talks-about-voting-fraud-in-iowa.html
Major Voting Fraud at Iowa Caucus Robs Ron Paul: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3Cx_rnZ4Rs&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PLFE56909DF579A281
Total Blatant Criminal Voter Fraud at Iowa: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur4ieO8M2RI
Iowa vote was a fraud Ron Paul Won that one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB7_QLF9Py0&feature=related
Ron Paul "IOWA VOTING FRAUD" "IOWA CAUCUS": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN45r2n3d3c
Karl Rove Iowa Voter Fraud 1/05/12: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKO3IeRsSbM&feature=related
Karl Rove: Mitt Romney has won Iowa by 14 votes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD09uVFQs9M&feature=related
Iowa Vote Count Observer Claims Fraud Helped Romney Win http://www.wnytruthers.com/archives/8394
Activist Post: There's Something very odd about the pre-polling and vote: http://www.activistpost.com/2012/01/theres-something-very-odd-about-gop.html
Witnesses Document Potential Vote Fraud in S.C. Primaries: http://www.activistpost.com/2012/01/witnesses-document-potential-vote-fraud.html
Reasons why the establishment/elite hates Ron Paul:
Ron Paul The American Power Elite He Called our Future 13 yrs ago! part 1 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=floYIiTW9MY&feature=related
Ron Paul The American Power Elite He Called our Future 13 yrs ago! part 2 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MautB6JmB_E&feature=related
Ron Paul The American Power Elite He Called our Future 13 yrs ago! part 3 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68LI8Rorp7Y&feature=related
Ron Paul The American Power Elite He Called our Future 13 yrs ago! part 4 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib5j70upRqo&feature=related
Ron Paul The American Power Elite He Called our Future 13 yrs ago! part 5 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIg32L_cDV8&feature=related
Pre-Election Analysis and Successful Predictions
How did they know the election would be stolen?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxkkItpNGRE&feature=related
Alex Jones: How were gonna try stop fraud in Iowa? 3.jan.2012: http://youtu.be/T7Tx-_wgPJY
Mike Rivero predicts election fraud on Iowa Caucus morning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW4jQm_ySLM&feature=related
Diebold Electronic Voting Machine Whistle Blowers:
Vote Fraud - Diebold Whistleblower Speaks Out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_rMpQKqZhM&feature=related
Vote Fraud Smoking Gun Banned From CNN, FOX & NBC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdzlnwWsAAU&feature=related
FOX: Diebold Electronic Vote Fraud Confirmed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4FPuLNjvAc&feature=related
Whistleblower Charged with Three Felonies for Exposing Diebold's Crimes: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-soby-jr/whistleblower-charged-wit_b_16411.html
Diebold’s shady past:
Who is counting your vote? Diebold & Bush vs. the public interest: http://www.peoplesworld.org/who-is-counting-your-vote-diebold-and-bush-vs-the-public-interest/
Exec at NH's Diebold Vote Counting Firm Convicted of Narcotics Trafficking: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5537
2 felons' roles in county elections questioned: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2001855390_felons11m0.html
Diebold Gets Free Passes In Both California And North Carolina?: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20051201/1548203.shtml
Ohio Diebold lobbyist biz partners w. organized crime convicts: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x370287
WIRED: Con Job at Diebold Subsidiary: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2003/12/61640
Diebold: How deep does the voting machine scandal go?: http://www.helium.com/items/311435-diebold-how-deep-does-the-voting-machine-scandal-go
Source: http://www.examiner.com/conspiracy-in-denver/iowa-vote-fraud-official#ixzz1om7UoeJV
NPR: 8 Precinct Vote Totals Missing From Iowa Caucuses
Transcript:
You may have thought Iowa was done counting its votes a few weeks ago. Well, then came the news this week that based on further review, Rick Santorum actually won more certified votes than the declared winner, Mitt Romney. The problem is the tallies from some precincts remain lost. And yesterday, Iowa's GOP chairman called the overall results inconclusive. We'll wait to see if this news changes the game for Romney or Santorum. But all this could hurt the reputation for the first voting state. Iowa Public Radio's Kate Wells has more.
KATE WELLS, BYLINE: Say what you will about whether Iowa deserves to have the first-in-the-nation caucuses. No one is arguing these things are an exact science.
MATT STRAWN: The Iowa caucuses are almost an exclusively voluntary-run operation. So these precinct chairs in the 1,774 precincts are all volunteers.
WELLS: That's Iowa GOP chairman Matt Strawn. He says this was an unbelievably close vote, but there was human error. And over the past two weeks, as the party certified the vote, stuff turned up. Precinct captains had made typing errors, some finalized counts got lost in the mail, as Strawn detailed yesterday.
STRAWN: So what we announced was the certified final results that show Rick Santorum leading, had led, won, the certified vote total by 34 votes.
WELLS: But before Santorum could get out that belated confetti, Iowa's GOP added: Eh, we're still not totally sure what really happened on caucus night because eight precincts' final tallies are just lost.
STRAWN: We just weren't able to announce a hundred percent of certified precincts.
WELLS: That vagueness is a big part of why both Santorum and Romney still disagree about who won Iowa.
DAVID KOCHEL: We've said from the beginning that, you know, the Iowa result was a virtual tie.
WELLS: David Kochel is an Iowa advisor for the Romney campaign.
KOCHEL: So this doesn't change anything in the trajectory of the race.
WELLS: Needless to say, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum's campaign disagrees. Hogan Gidley is their national communications director.
HOGAN GIDLEY: The narrative that Mitt Romney was 2-0 heading into South Carolina is no longer the narrative. We've won one. He's won one.
WELLS: Now, all this is a bit ironic, actually, because the caucuses are more accurate than ever. There's more training and better precinct counts. But the actual vote-casting is still low-tech. Think of a vote for class president, then picture that happening all across the state all at the same time. So for Craig Robinson, former political director of the Iowa GOP, the problem isn't that there are revised results.
CRAIG ROBINSON: The problem is, is I think Chairman Strawn's spinning of the results. He's saying it's inconclusive and he can't declare a winner. I think that's a crime. The vote is either certified, which it is, or it isn't. Strawn is out there saying, well, it isn't. We don't really know who won because of these eight precincts. I think it's horrible for the caucuses and I think it's very damaging for the future of the Iowa caucuses.
WELLS: But maybe in the future a little less hype about the caucuses wouldn't be such a bad thing, says Dennis Goldford of Iowa's Drake University.
DENNIS GOLDFORD: Given the fact that the caucuses have become such a media event and bear more political weight than they really should, it's probably about time that this happened to the caucuses.
WELLS: So while Iowa may have an asterisk this year, come 2016, candidates will likely troop back out to the state's pizza joints and pancake breakfasts, armed with the knowledge that in Iowa anything can happen. Even after all the votes are in.
Source: http://www.npr.org/2012/01/20/145500170/8-precinct-vote-totals-missing-from-iowa-caucuses
Iowa GOP moving vote-count to 'undisclosed location'
Threats to disrupt the Iowa Republican caucuses next week have prompted state GOP officials to move the vote tabulation to an "undisclosed location," POLITICO has learned. The state party has not yet told the campaigns exactly where the returns will be added up, only that it will be off-site from the Iowa GOP's Des Moines headquarters. The 2008 caucus results were tabulated at the state party offices, which sit just a few blocks from the state capitol.
Activist groups including the Occupy movement have indicated that they'll attempt to interrupt rallies in the closing days before next Tuesday's caucuses. The AP reported today that Occupy is making plans to even attend some caucuses and vote "no preference," but not disturb the voting process.
But Iowa Republicans are also bracing for other threats, sources say, including hacking. Iowa GOP Chair Matt Strawn wouldn't comment on the plan to move the vote-counting except to say they're increasing security measures. "The Iowa GOP is taking additional safeguards to ensure the Caucus results are tabulated and reported to the public in an accurate and timely manner," Strawn said. "We are not commenting on specific security procedures."
Source: http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/2011/12/iowa-gop-moving-votecount-to-undisclosed-location-108812.html
***
Why Ignorance Is Democracy's Bliss
The Iowa caucuses marked the official beginning of the presidential election cycle. For the next 10 months or so, the American public will endure polls, pundits, canned stump speeches and negative ads—the media circus that passes for 21st-century democracy. Despite this flood of coverage, one troubling feature of our elections will go largely unmentioned: The typical American voter is uninformed about political basics. Consider these facts:
• The vast majority of voters can't name their congressman or a single congressional candidate.
• 45% of adults don't know that each state elects two senators.
• 40% of Americans can't name the vice president.
• 63% can't name the chief justice of the U.S.
This isn't a recent phenomenon. In 1964, at the height of the Cold War, only 38% of Americans knew that the Soviet Union wasn't part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In December 1994, a month after the Republican takeover of Congress, 57% of Americans had never heard of Newt Gingrich. As Winston Churchill once said, "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
Yet despite this, voting remains the best way to elect leaders. Churchill, as usual, said it best: "Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
Why are democracies so vibrant even when composed of uninformed citizens? According to a new study led by the ecologist Iain Couzin at Princeton, this collective ignorance is an essential feature of democratic governments, not a bug. His research suggests that voters with weak political preferences help to prevent clusters of extremists from dominating the political process. Their apathy keeps us safe.
To show this, Dr. Couzin experimented on a rather unlikely set of subjects: fish. Many different species, such as schooling fish and flocking birds, survive by forming a consensus, making collective decisions without splintering apart. To do so, these creatures are constantly forced to conduct their own improvised elections.
The scientists trained a large group of golden shiners, a small freshwater fish used as bait, to associate the arrival of food with a blue target. They then trained a smaller group to associate food with a yellow target, a color naturally preferred by the fish. Not surprisingly, when all the trained golden shiners were put in one aquarium, most of them swam toward the yellow dot; the stronger desires of the minority, fueled by the shiners' natural preference, persuaded the majority to follow along.
But when scientists introduced a group of fish without any color training, yellow suddenly lost its appeal. All of a sudden, the fish began following the preferences of the majority, swimming toward the blue target. "A strongly opinionated minority can dictate group choice," the scientists concluded. "But the presence of uninformed individuals spontaneously inhibits this process, returning control to the numerical majority."
Of course, many political scientists have criticized this extrapolation from golden shiners to democratic government, noting that not all independent voters are ignorant—some are simply moderate—and that a minority doesn't always represent an extreme view.
Nevertheless, this research helps to explain the importance of indifference in a partisan age. If every voter was well-informed and highly opinionated, then the most passionate minority would dominate decision-making. There would be no democratic consensus—just clusters of stubborn fanatics, attempting to out-shout the other side. Hitler's rise is the ultimate parable here: Though the Nazi party failed to receive a majority of the votes in the 1933 German election, it was able to quickly intimidate the opposition and pass tyrannical laws.
So the next time a poll reveals the ignorance of the voting public, remember those fish. It's the people who don't know very much who make democracy possible.
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203471004577140713653796308.html |
Thank you so much for writing this! As a citizen of the United States, I see this happening and can only get frustrated because I feel there is really nothing I can do. I personally feel it is time for the PEOPLE of the world to rise up against big government officials of the United States and tell them we are NOT going to let them trample on our liberties! We need help from people from other countries! Our law enforcement will do nothing for us. This is a cry for help from an American citizen who fears his government has lost their way!
ReplyDeleteIn your opinion, what does a liberty-minded American do?
ReplyDeleteHi Nancy.
ReplyDeleteAs simple as your question may be, there are no easy or comprehensive answers for it.
In a nutshell, Americans will have to somehow figure out a way to fight the nation's "special interests". These interests are currently destroying this nation. The United States has gone from being a republic beloved by all of humanity to a global empire feared and/or despised by mankind.
The main actors in America's decline are Jewish/Zionist interests that control the nation's financial institutions (including the Federal Reserve), entertainment industry and mainstream news media; the Anglo-American political establishment that gradually developed after the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945; the hegemony of the US Dollar; the military industrial complex; and the oil lobby.
As you can see this may just be a fight that we the people wont be able to even undertake, let alone win. Thanks to our brain-numbing television programming, mind-conditioning school curriculum, government controlled news-press and decadent POP culture, Americans today are one of the most controlled/brainwashed/zombified peoples on earth.
Sadly, there aren't enough genuine American patriots in existence today to make a noticeable difference. In other words, I do not think there is much Americans can do anymore. As Americans slept comfortably for the past sixty-seventy years, the nation's power-centers were systematically hijacked by those interests that have gotten us here.
I have lost hope in Americans. I reserve hope, however, for nations such as Russia and China. Ironically, new superpowers on the global stage maybe exactly what America needs to cure its ailment. In particular, I want to see Russia become a serious counter-balance to Anglo-American-Zionist global order. Unfortunately, only with a series of defeats on the global stage will Washington come to its senses.