This post contains my friend’s—The Neocon’ s—response (January 17) to my original email (January 13), and my reply (January 23) to his response. I have chosen to break them into pieces, alternating between his email and mine, so that the whole exchange is easier to follow. Needless to say, this is where our discussion ended. I don’t think he even read my reply.
The Neocon: Idk dude. I don’t feel like making enemies. Political debates all go bad between friends. I also know that I have been in the ring with many of his supporters and needless to say its been a year and I still have a bad taste in my mouth for them. They debate worse than liberals. Many of his followers (many = majority) believe that 9/11 was our fault. When questioned on this RP did not deny that he thought it was so. His supporters also believe it to be an inside job. He does not deny he thinks so as well.
Me: I agree. Many of his followers do believe that 9/11 was our fault. But by ‘our’, they mean something entirely different than what is generally thought or implied. The ‘our’ is not ‘We’ the People. The ‘our’ is not ‘us’ as Americans, conservatives, or Christians. The ‘our’ is not ‘our’ troops, ‘our’ way of life, or ‘our’ civilization. The ‘our’ are ‘our’ government, i.e., the same policy-makers, politicians, and bureaucrats that conservatives are perfectly content to blame for failures in education, fiscal and monetary policy, health care, energy, environment, airport security, and a whole host of other legitimate grievances. But as soon as the subject turns to foreign policy and the unintended consequences thereof, mainstream conservatives rend their clothes and scream ‘foul’. this is the epitome of hypocrisy, and is unbecoming of conservatives, be they social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, traditional conservatives, libertarian conservatives, or moderate conservatives. Ron Paul and the majority of his supporters do NOT believe that 9/11 was an inside job. But they do believe that our foreign policy was directly related to the attacks. When you make generalizations, such that paint all of his supporters as believing something so untenable, you engage in nothing less than smear tactics. I suspect that being called out for such tactics is what you truly hate about debating Ron Paul’s supporters.
The Neocon: RP supports legalizing illegal drugs. He says it will increase commerce. Yeah. Ok. Whatever.
Me: Ron Paul does not advocate legalizing “illegal” drugs. He supports decriminalizing drugs on the FEDERAL level, but supports the rights of individual STATES to make substances illegal that they deem to be sufficiently harmful. If no amendment is present to give the Federal government the prohibitive power over substances, then the Tenth Amendment grants this authority to the States. If a specific State chooses not to make certain substances illegal, then the responsibility falls to the people, as codified by the Ninth Amendment. The day individuals and their friends and families and churches and employers and teachers can no longer control themselves or their component parts is the day we deserve to have the government control us from cradle to grave. The War on Drugs in fact encourages both the use and sale of drugs.
The Neocon: RP may be pro life, but his stance on issues says he wont care and will repeal laws for and against it under the guise of “you cant legislate morality”.
Me: Abortion, until an amendment to the United States Constitution states otherwise, is a State issue. That is why Santorum and Bachmann both advocate a Right to Life Amendment.
See what else I have written on this subject, originally to another friend who misunderstood Paul’s position, here.
The Neocon: Ron Paul’s supporters take after to kill anyone that criticizes RP more so than BHOs media attack dogs.
Me: Damn straight. I will take after anyone that uses proven falsities to smear a candidate, the opponents of whom acknowledge him to be the most consistent and least corrupt member of Congress as well as of the GOP candidates. The sum total of Ron Paul’s baggage is a few newsletters that he didn’t even write, and which are used to smear the man only when taken entirely out of context. So-called conservatives have chosen big government liberals for the GOP nominee for decades, so any attack made by them should automatically undergo extra scrutiny, especially if that attack is aimed at the man that even most of them acknowledge to be sincere and consistent. Phony conservatives, AKA Neocons, who pick and choose when they want to uphold the Constitution, have no credibility and I view them with little less vitriol than the Revolutionaries viewed the Loyalists.
Ron Paul is the only candidate that has to take on the media attack dogs from both sides of the aisle. To compare some anonymous guy at the other end of the internet to Obama’s media attack dogs is absurd on its face. As Ron Paul said to Santorum, perhaps “You’re overly sensitive”.
The Neocon: Ron Paul’s face makes me sick, his supporters for the most part are blind and short sighted and I cant stand their debate tactics and their precious leader is more left than the left is on many issues. Ron Paul is a chameleon and will say and do anything for support as long as it doesn’t require him to change his views drastically down the road. I do not, will not and never will support Ron Paul. He scares me almost as much as Obama.
Me: I bet your grandfather’s face makes you sick as well.
What is blind and short-sighted about saving money, upholding the Constitution, and correcting past wrongs? We cannot afford to do otherwise, no matter how good our intentions supposedly are.
Debate tactics are basically the same across the political spectrum. Perhaps you only notice it when someone you disagree with uses them. It is a common enough fallacy to assume one and the expounders of ones own ideas to be among the only ones capable of debating properly. And as highly as I regard my own skills, it is still a fallacy that I make great strides to put out of my mind.
Ron Paul is so precious because he does not want to be the leader (in Italian: Il Duce, in German: Der Führer, in Japanese: Mikado), he wants to serve. Our so-called leaders were never intended to be so. That does not mean they shouldn’t lead, but their chief role is that of a public servant. It is the People themselves that are sovereign. Ron Paul is the only candidate to have acknowledged it not only in some whacky libertarian theory, but as among the most important of our Founding Principles.
There is not a single important issue or subject on which Ron Paul has said anything different than or inconsistent with what he has been saying or advocating for a good thirty years and more. There is not a single thing of import from his mouth that is not demonstrably consistent with the philosophy he has held for decades, which is a philosophy of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, and is firmly rooted in moral principles, each of which can be found in the Bible and the writings of Christian philosophers from Augustine to Locke and beyond.
All this should scare you even more than Obama does, because it is a radical set of ideals. Obama is really not all that scary. He is the status quo. There is not a single thing he has done that the GOP did not also do or attempt to do at certain times.
The Libertarian Liquidationist 