Ron Paul - The antebellum tentherist
"Ron Paul's little known bill, the We the People Act...clearly, is an attempt to block national redress of state tyranny. It makes it possible for individual states to create their own little theocracies, while it prevents anyone from taking this to an authority beyond those individual states. Obvious abuses come to mind and strike this reader as a return to pre-Civil War days, when "states rights" was an excuse to continue the practice of slavery. I find it an incredibly dangerous piece of legislation, and indicative of the mindset of Ron Paul. Indicative of the con game he's been playing as well. Champion of civil rights and civil liberties? Not if "states rights" trump them. "
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/30/1050145/-Ron-Paul:-States-Rights-before-Civil-Rights
Bruce Wolman blogs "...While Paul's anti-war stances and liberalism can attract adherents, if he were to become President those positions wouldn't necessarily have the consequences many supporters might think. Let's say Paul becomes President and does reduce US militarism, foreign interventionism, eliminate Federal drug laws, etc. His States Rights position would allow states to pick up the slack in all of these areas. From my reading of Paul, the Federal Government would stop supporting Israel, but he would have not hinder New York and California cutting their own deals with the Israelis if the states so chose...While US military aid would end, US defense corporations could sell their wares abroad without government control or intervention. While the Federal Government would restrict its own violations of civil liberties, the states would be able to run their own affairs and corporations would be without regulation or interference of their fundamental right to use their property and capital as they saw fit, including spending on political involvement. One of the reasons Christian extremists are attracted to Paul despite his libertarian positions is that they believe his states rights priority would allow them to regulate private behavior on the state level..."
http://mondoweiss.net/2011/12/more-responses-to-ron-pauls-surge.html
One comment of the above explains that under the constitution "No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation...enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded" Trade such as arms though is something different.
As individul economies California has a similar GDP as France. Texas’ economy compares to that of Canada. Florida is comparable to South Korea. Illinois – Mexico New Jersey – Russia Ohio – Australia New York – Brazil Pennsylvania – Netherlands Georgia – Switzerland North Carolina – Sweden.
The bottom 10 states are Delaware – Romania Utah – Peru New Hampshire – Bangladesh Maine – Morocco Rhode Island – Vietnam South Dakota – Croatia Montana – Tunisia North Dakota – Ecuador – Belarus Vermont – Dominican Republic Wyoming – Uzbekistan
Historically, state governments were some of the biggest supporters of the vilest discrimination in the United States. Federal laws were necessary because racist state politicians and local police were murdering, harassing and oppressing people in a regular and systematic fashion based solely on their race.
Q: But you would decriminalize it [drug laws]?
Ron Paul: I would, at the federal level. I don’t have control over the states.
"So all of you who believe that Ron Paul would release the millions incarcerated for the victimless crime of using drugs should realize that he would only release those held in federal prisons. If you're locked up in the State Penitentiary, he sympathizes, but thinks that States have a perfect right to do it. The total federal prison population in 2010 was around 200,000 people while the state and local prison population was about 1.5 million. Paul says there's nothing he can do about the latter and wouldn't dream of telling those states what they should and shouldn't do. That's his principle, not freeing the victims of the drug war."
"Just because you break up state power into fifty entities instead of one, it doesn't make their infringements on liberty ok, does it? On a philosophical and ideological level, libertarians should be clear that infringements of people's rights should never be subject to the whims of the state --- whether it's Hawaii or the United States of America. So why doesn't Ron Paul say this? He defends states' rights to infringe on individual liberty as being under the Constitution but what he's really defending are the Articles of Confederation. This isn't libertarianism. It's "tentherism" disguised as libertarianism.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/imposing-political-correctness.html
i have previously claimed Ron Paul is a propertarian and not a libertarian but this us the first time i have come across an alternative description of him - a tentherist, a constitutional theory that early twentieth century justices wielded to protect monopolies and strip workers of their right to organize
http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/148593/tentherism:_the_bizarre_ideology_behind_tea_partiers%27_plans_to_kill_social_security_and_child_labor_laws
He can also be described as a throw-back.
"Libertarians who believe that "statism" is ok if comes from state of California but not the US government are not only living in the early 19th century, they are basically saying that their only real beef is if the government abridging individual freedom is the federal government. Tyranny on a smaller scale isn't their concern. And that isn't liberal or libertarian. It's just plain old antebellum era American politics -- which is what Ron Paul truly believes when you see his positions on issue after issue. The antebellum south is where his philosophy really comes from --- and where it leads"
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/antebellum-libertarianism.html
Historically, state governments were some of the biggest supporters of the vilest discrimination in the United States.
"Paul's Christian Reconstructionist friends, seek the destruction of the federal government for the opportunity to implement "God's law" on earth. Ron Paul seeks to shrink the federal government to minimal size not because it intrudes in the lives of individuals, but because it stands in the way of allowing the states and localities to enact laws as they see fit -- even laws that govern people's behavior in their bedrooms."
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/devolution-for-some-of-people.html
"WALLACE: You talk a lot about the Constitution. You say Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid are all unconstitutional.
PAUL: Technically, they are.…
WALLACE: Congressman, it’s not just a liberal view. It was the decision of the Supreme Court in 1937 when they said that Social Security was constitutional under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
PAUL: And the Constitution and the courts said slavery was legal to, and we had to reverse that.
That's interesting because Paul's philosophy really says that the constitution doesn't have the authority to declare slavery illegal..."
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/third-partys-charm-ron-pauls-nod-to.html
Many do not endorse all of Ron Paul's views and policies, yet by not saying anything critical of those and preferring to simply ignore them, becoming complicit in a cover-up.
Obama/Paul - Repeating mistakes
The fact that our class enemies fall out amongst themselves over what they consider the better policy in their overall interest does not mean we support them. Genuine libertarian communists are vehemently anti-capitalist, but we do not support the Establishment, or Leninists and Trotskyists, nor the fascist so-called anti-capitalists. We do not employ the same arguments as other Republicans or the pro-Obama parties, nor the MSM against Ron Paul.
A vote for Ron Paul is vote for capitalism and the illusion that capitalism can change its spots. Capitalism is in the end an ideology; everything it does, all of its workings, all of it is a human product, constructed in the minds of humans, and obeyed because it presents itself as the natural law, as the real world, and the realm of the possible. Money itself is the example par excellence of ideology at work; it is a sign, an idea, used to cover up the contradictions in property society. Money presents itself as the natural and only way of dealing with property relations, and as a socially neutral object, and not as a way of controlling poverty and inequality in favour of a small minority, which it really is. To fail to reveal the ideology, to de-mystify and explain it, means to remain within it.
Many “anti-capitalist” personalities have indeed in the past urged people to support one of the two main capitalist parties, the Democrats, on the grounds that they are a “lesser evil” compared with the Republicans. Now they insist the lesser evil is to vote for is Ron Paul. The socialist response is straightforward. If you want to get somewhere, aim for that destination directly, rather than going on detours and trusting that you will eventually, by however roundabout a route, arrive at where you want to be.
I do not deny that in some ways or in some situations it may be better to have Ron Paul rather than Obama in the White House. After all, isn’t it worthwhile just to reduce, even if not eliminate, the probability of an attack on Iran? In that case, helping them into office does ward off a greater evil. But only in the short term. For once in office, Paul would come under irresistible pressure from his capitalist masters to break his “populist” promises, to disappoint, disillusion and betray the people who placed their trust and hope in him. Some capitalist politicians are totally subservient to the oil, gas, and coal corporations and recklessly oblivious to the looming danger. In their hands we are doomed. Other capitalist politicians are a little less subservient, show a limited awareness of the situation, and try to do something to mitigate it. Something, but much less than is absolutely essential. In their hands we are still doomed. Hoping that Ron Pauo will behave differently is a utopian – expectation. Any politician who tries to run capitalism gets his hands grubby, as a matter of course, in what is a very dirty business.
The main difference between them is Paul admits to being a swine, Obama lies about it!!
It is good that so many of Obama’s followers are disillusioned. It seems, though, that many of those who describe themselves as disillusioned are accusing Obama of breaking his promises, rather than blaming themselves for falling prey to a naïve illusion. The idea that Obama has broken his promises can only seem valid to those who – against all the evidence he himself provided – fashioned an image of him as the country’s progressive saviour
Obama made no secret during his election campaign of his “moderate” political outlook. A central theme of his campaign, in fact, was the need for bi-partisanism to counter the trend towards politics becoming too “ideological”. Those who now criticize Obama for being yet another spineless Democrat were not paying adequate attention to the statements he made during the campaign. Obama made no secret of his deeply-held principle of never sticking to any principle. He has never claimed to be anything but a “pragmatist”, which is a nicer way of saying “opportunist”. Obama has not budged from his belief that the solutions to the problems plaguing the United States can be found lying in the middle of the political road, so to speak, just waiting to be picked up. This is the belief he wrote about back in 2006, and his policies in office have been based on it.
There was, of course, that promise Obama made about bringing about some sort of change. Things have changed – just not for the better. He left many Bush Administration policies intact; and even his healthcare reform that leaves the parasitic insurance companies in place and even presents them with opportunities for expansion.
“I believe in the free market, competition, and entrepreneurship, and think no small number of government programs don’t work as advertised…I think America has more often been a force for good than for ill in the world; I carry few illusions about our enemies, and revere the courage and competence of our military…"
Yet how can Obama be blamed for all those false expectations? The signs that Obama was more of a wolf in sheep’s clothing were there.
His views on foreign policy, for example, an area where the views of the “anti-war” candidate Obama were thought to differ sharply from the hawkish approach of Hillary Clinton (now his Secretary of State!), not to mention the belligerent policies of Bush and McCain. Obama made it perfectly clear in The Audacity of Hope that he would deploy US troops when necessary, because “like it or not, if we want to make American more secure, we are going to have to help make the world more secure”. Rather than rejecting Bush’s absurd and counter-productive “war on terrorism”, Obama wrote that “the challenge will involve putting boots on the ground in ungoverned hostile regions where terrorists thrive”. And lest the reader imagine that such military force would only be used in retaliation, Obama claims that “we have the right to take unilateral military action to eliminate an imminent threat to our security”. It is something of a mystery how Obama managed to convince so many that he was a foreign policy “dove” while at the same time publishing such views.
Few of his thoughts are in harmony with the views of his leftwing supporters, who worked so hard to get him elected. People went from the naïve view that Bush is the root of all evil to the equally simplistic idea that Obama could uproot that evil. And now we have a sense of disillusionment due to the persistence of deep-rooted problems despite the election of Obama. Yet the idea that Obama has betrayed us is based on the initial illusion that he could rescue us from problems that are deeply rooted in capitalism itself. This notion, in turn, is no different from the superficial idea that those problems arose from Bush’s stupidity or mendacity. It is pointless to transform Obama from a saviour into a new scapegoat.
The Socialist Standard wrote at the time of his election:
"If Obama apologists think President Obama will put a halt to the blood letting they are going to be sorely disappointed. Make no mistake; whilst the left are fond of castigating Republicans as the masters of war, the truth is that historically the Democrats have started far more wars than the GOP. More recently, under the last Democrat to hold office, President Clinton, one million Iraqis are said to have died under US enforced sanctions, 500, 000 of them children. Sorties over Iraq were flown every single day Clinton was in power. Yugoslavia was mercilessly bombed and a much needed pharmaceutical plant in Sudan was bombed on the pretext that it was manufacturing Chemical weapons, and villages in Afghanistan were flattened because Bin-Laden was presumed to be living there. And who could forget the US invasion of Somalia, with troops storming the beaches live on prime time TV!...Not only is Obama incapable of ushering in significant change, bar a few miserly reforms, but neither is there anyone he can bring to his administration capable of bringing the change that was so promised in his election campaign for no other reason that changers do not get confirmed by the Senate. There exist quite influential interest groups – the AIPAC, the military security complex, Wall Street etc to hinder the advancement of such undesirables The hope many have in Obama to implement policies that will benefit the class that matters is misplaced. His political rawness means he will be manipulated by more experienced advisers, little different from the neo-cons, maybe even key figures from the Bush administration, and pressured by a corporate elite who funded his victory to execute policies that fit in with their own agenda.
The outcome of US elections carries one truth: namely that whichever candidate becomes president, he has but one remit once in office – to further the interests of the US corporate elite.It’s just not a feasible option for any newly elected president to entertain any idea other than guaranteeing a safe playing field for the domestic profit machine and doing what’s needed to try to ensure the US maintains its global hegemonic status "
Now it is Paul who is providing illusion that one single politician can transform a rotten social system.
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