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Ron Paul: Progressive?

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jamieboy
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02 May 2011, 5:23 am

Jacoby wrote:
jamieboy wrote:
Why should progressives settle for Paul when they can have Kucinich? Kucinich has Paul's foreign policy, Pauls social libertarian policies but unlike Paul he is also left wing on economic issues. So f**k Obama, f**k Paul give me Dennis.


Kucinich isn't running for president. Neither is Dean, Feingold, Sanders, etc. It appears nobody in the democratic party has the guts to stand up to Obama and hold him to his campaign promises. Unfortunately a lot of the antiwar left was just a partisan facade.

BTW Dox, what appeals to you about Gary Johnson? I don't trust him. I wish he ran for senate where he actually had a chance.


Their are other issues aside from war and peace though. David Duke is anti-war as it Pat Buchanan. I'd vote for Obama over both of those guys also. Why don't Ron and his supporters moderate some of their stances towards social spending if they are so keen to win the votes of Democrats?


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marshall
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02 May 2011, 6:53 am

Jacoby wrote:
His (recent)drug use and divorce is plenty baggage. His supposed "pragmatism" borders on unprincipled especially on foreign policy. Being pro-abortion is pretty much a completely non-starter and he's not a particularly inspiring speaker. He seems to have been pigeonholed as the "pot guy" too. He's still better than 90% of the GOP, don't get me wrong. Yea, he's younger but Rand Paul is even younger and able to attract "mainstream" conservatives. I hope after the initial debates that he will drop out and run for senate.

You just gave the answer to the OP article. The need to attract "mainstream conservatives" is exactly what turns off moderates and progressives.



Bethie
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02 May 2011, 11:03 am

Ron Paul as far as I know is a knee-jerk free-market proponent, a documented racist, and feels the rights of gay citizens are contingent on what state they live in.

As a leftist, what exactly does he advocate that wouldn't be repulsive to me?

Kucinich isn't pro-abortion...I've personally never heard of a pro-abortion advocate, let alone a politician,
who necessarily has to tiptoe around the wrath of diehard rosary-clutching abortion opponents to even get funding for low-income women's pelvic exams and access to family planning services.


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marshall
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02 May 2011, 11:48 am

Bethie wrote:
Ron Paul as far as I know is a knee-jerk free-market proponent, a documented racist, and feels the rights of gay citizens are contingent on what state they live in.

I'm also bothered by the "let the states deal with it" attitude. It seems "libertarians" of the conservative stripe use that as a cop-out in order to avoid taking a truly principled stance that might endanger their conservative following. They won't come out and say they favor gay marriage. Instead they play both sides by saying "I don't think that's the federal governments business, but we can let the states decide for themselves".



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02 May 2011, 11:58 am

Bethie wrote:
Ron Paul as far as I know is a knee-jerk free-market proponent, a documented racist, and feels the rights of gay citizens are contingent on what state they live in.
That was written under his name, it doesn't mean it was him. But yes I can't stand that state flip flopping crap. He wants abortion to be under state jurisdiction. wtf? Since when was it supposed to be okay in some areas and not in others? It's a universal matter.



Jacoby
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02 May 2011, 11:59 am

He's against the central government overstepping it's authority. It's not a cop out, he doesn't think the government should be involved in any marriage gay or straight or whatever else there is. If two people want to enter a contract with each other, there is no need for the government to be involved.



AceOfSpades
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02 May 2011, 12:08 pm

Jacoby wrote:
He's against the central government overstepping it's authority. It's not a cop out, he doesn't think the government should be involved in any marriage gay or straight or whatever else there is. If two people want to enter a contract with each other, there is no need for the government to be involved.
That's still flip flopping to me. You can't separate the Church and state in one state and then not do the same for another. You can't call a fetus a life in one state and then declare that it's not in another. Why shouldn't the government be involved in equal rights? Aren't the two roles of government supposed to be protecting the rights of citizens and national defense?



Jacoby
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02 May 2011, 12:22 pm

AceOfSpades wrote:
Jacoby wrote:
He's against the central government overstepping it's authority. It's not a cop out, he doesn't think the government should be involved in any marriage gay or straight or whatever else there is. If two people want to enter a contract with each other, there is no need for the government to be involved.
That's still flip flopping to me. You can't separate the Church and state in one state and then not do the same for another. You can't call a fetus a life in one state and then declare that it's not in another. Why shouldn't the government be involved in equal rights? Aren't the two roles of government supposed to be protecting the rights of citizens and national defense?


This isn't a unitary state. The states are sovereign entities and the federal government's powers are limited to what is laid out in the US Constitution. All marriage is, is a legal agreement between to people. I see no reason for the government to be involved. Gay or straight.



marshall
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02 May 2011, 12:52 pm

Jacoby wrote:
He's against the central government overstepping it's authority. It's not a cop out, he doesn't think the government should be involved in any marriage gay or straight or whatever else there is. If two people want to enter a contract with each other, there is no need for the government to be involved.

The problem is government is involved in prohibiting gay marriage. Whether it is state or federal law that prohibits it makes little difference in the principle of the matter.



mcg
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02 May 2011, 2:09 pm

AceOfSpades wrote:
Jacoby wrote:
He's against the central government overstepping it's authority. It's not a cop out, he doesn't think the government should be involved in any marriage gay or straight or whatever else there is. If two people want to enter a contract with each other, there is no need for the government to be involved.
That's still flip flopping to me. You can't separate the Church and state in one state and then not do the same for another. You can't call a fetus a life in one state and then declare that it's not in another. Why shouldn't the government be involved in equal rights? Aren't the two roles of government supposed to be protecting the rights of citizens and national defense?
Why must we have legal homogeneity across all states? Different people, with different subjective values, live in different states.



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02 May 2011, 3:02 pm

Jacoby wrote:
He's against the central government overstepping it's authority. It's not a cop out, he doesn't think the government should be involved in any marriage gay or straight or whatever else there is. If two people want to enter a contract with each other, there is no need for the government to be involved.


There's a societal interest in preserving marriage as the most stable healthy children-producing institution.

Idealistically, he might think marriage a private affair. Realistically, I'm sure he realizes it's government-condoned and -incentivized nature is here for the time being, and thus selective protection of said right is un-Constitutional.


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02 May 2011, 3:04 pm

mcg wrote:
Why must we have legal homogeneity across all states? Different people, with different subjective values, live in different states.


Because "equal protection before the law" says we must.

For the gay person oppressed, harassed, and disenfranchised as a result of state policies, those policies might as well be federally-IMPOSED.

Individual rights outrank any supposed "right" to police people who offend you with the power of the mob.


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02 May 2011, 3:20 pm

Bethie wrote:
mcg wrote:
Why must we have legal homogeneity across all states? Different people, with different subjective values, live in different states.


Because "equal protection before the law" says we must.

For the gay person oppressed, harassed, and disenfranchised as a result of state policies, those policies might as well be federally-IMPOSED.

Individual rights outrank any supposed "right" to police people who offend you with the power of the mob.
Exactly. What reason is there to leave marriage between consenting couples to the discretion of the state? What justifies such a small scale of jurisdiction over a universal issue that can't simply co-exist with bigotry and the imposition of a family model that is nothing more than social construction?

The talk about government influence is pretty irrelevant since we're not talking about whether or not marriage itself should be left to the discretion state. We are talking about a right that is guaranteed to straight couples and this same right left to the discretion of the state for homosexual couples.



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02 May 2011, 3:29 pm

Bethie wrote:
mcg wrote:
Why must we have legal homogeneity across all states? Different people, with different subjective values, live in different states.


Because "equal protection before the law" says we must.

Why should a gay person's right to marry be determined by where he or she is born whereas a straight person's is not?


it can go both ways tho, what would you think if the government passed a federal gay marriage ban and your state had legalized it? There are ton of other examples that you can use, the government cannot supersede state law where it does not have the constitutional authority. I believe the applies to federal drug laws.



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02 May 2011, 3:38 pm

Jacoby wrote:
it can go both ways tho, what would you think if the government passed a federal gay marriage ban and your state had legalized it?

I wasn't asserting supreme Federal power.
I was asserting that the right to marriage,
if government sanctioned and incentivized for straight people,
should be protected,
by federal legislation if necessary,
for gays as well,
because this is what the Constitution requires.
Jacoby wrote:
There are ton of other examples that you can use, the government cannot supersede state law where it does not have the constitutional authority. I believe the applies to federal drug laws.

State laws cannot infringe upon Constitutionally-protected rights of the citizens. That is the issue.


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02 May 2011, 8:29 pm

NeantHumain wrote:
I concur with Ron Paul's views on the war and national security issues, but I think he sometimes of has somewhat different rationales for his opposition than progressives. His views are based on a certain libertarian reading of the Constitution that probably most progressives would not share. From a left-of-center point of view, Ron Paul has too much baggage coming from his paleoconservative and libertarian ideological roots.



Which is why I'll vote for him if he makes it to the polls in 2012. He's right both in foreign policy and economic policy. The current system is 100% screwed because there is a federal reserve that operates like a mafia system. Remove the reserve, remove the IRS and income tax and tax people on what they purchase and consume not on what they already own or how much they make.

While he may tout the return to a gold standard thats not practical given that no country in the world uses it anymore.. but there could be substitutes for it or amalgam systems that can be used in its stead. The endless lending and making money out of thin air pyramid scheme only perpetuates the widening gap between the rich and the not-so-fortunate and creates market bubbles.

The BIG problem in the future is China. Few people understand that their monopolized, state-controlled, self-protectionist capitalist system is going to bury the US and European economies not too far in the future. When that happens it wont matter how strong the US is militarily or technologically because industrial and economic power of China will wear down the US economy to the point where it will be impossible to sustain said military and technological superiority..hell for the past 40 years China has been BUYING advanced technology from the west and putting it to good use (bullet trains anyone? seen any of those around the US of late?).

IMO the US is in a downfall spiral and it will not be able to pull itself out of it because everything that needs to be changed in order to do so is too ingrained in the perpetuation systems of the wealthy elite... who are loyal to their profits not to a flag/culture/people.