I'm trying to convince my dad to vote Ron Paul.
He doesn't want to because he thinks the Patriot Act, National ID card and things like that are necessary.
His arguments are that:
- In times of war you have to give up some privacy to the government to be safe.
- Liberals (to him anyone not pro-war) are self-haters and blame America first even though usually America does what's right as Christians defending Israel so you have to trust your government because we are a good, Christianity spreading force in the world and everyone else is decieved and therefore hates us and Israel.
- When we are attacked by terrorists again no one will want Paul's policies and everyone will say "Oh, why didn't we support these things to keep ourselves safe"
Now that I've written his arguments down he seems pretty hard to convince... but any suggestions would be nice...
I've read the Strong Defence thread, but my dad thinks the Patriot Act is
vital to our security.
He mentioned Christianity and "blame America first" in the same sentence?
Retort with Matthew 7:3. This has nothing to do with self-hate - it has everything to do with casting off arrogance and having the humility and true self-confidence to admit when our policies are flawed and to correct our mistakes. As far as Israel is concerned, well...Israel's government does a lot of stupid and reckless things (probably without the real consent of its people, kind of like ours), and since we have such unconditional support for them, we are blamed for those actions as well. Although there's a lot more to this issue, the bottom line is that we need to treat the country of Israel like an adult, not like a 51st state. They have 40 nukes and a strong military (their enemies are puny in comparison), and just about everyone in their population is trained in the military. They may very well have the most resilient population on the entire planet. Although they can handle themselves just fine, our unconditional backing of them does provide them an unhealthy feeling of complete invincibility, which gives them an incentive to be reckless and heavy-handed in their dealings with their neighbors. Along with the fact that we often just get in the way, this is a real obstacle against Israel working with Arab nations to establish a lasting peace. Ironically, although we do back Israel militarily, the
only thing this does for them is contribute to that feeling of invincibility in the event of an attack. At all other times (when Israel isn't being attacked), we actually give the Arab nations three times as much aid, so Israel would do a lot better on the balance if we had a non-interventionist foreign policy. However, the government of Israel doesn't want this (and their government has an extremely strong lobbying presence in the US). Why? It's very simple: Just like over here, their politicians are corrupt and their politics are dominated by special interests! At the expense of the long-term well-being of their people, their government will take free money from the US anyday (to feed their own military-industrial complex), no matter who else we're funding or how it affects long-term peace efforts.
As far as the Patriot Act goes, explain that the so-called "war on terror" is by nature endless (and in fact, it fans the flames, so it perpetuates itself), so this "time of war" your dad's talking about will last forever unless we just say, "Enough is enough." In other words, he's willing to give up Constitutionally guaranteed inalienable rights - permanently. Ask him how many liberties he is willing to give up...for instance, would he be completely okay with the government
reading all of his email, Internet searches, and file transfers? When government excesses go this far, is it really so difficult to see that something's just not right about what's going on?
Historically, "national security" and "this is a time of war" are always the pretexts that governments have used to trample the rights of the people. As Hermann Goering once said,
Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
Our Constitution was written precisely to prevent government abuses like this, and I think he needs to be reminded that the Patriot Act is quite simply unconstitutional and therefore illegal with respect to the supreme law of the land (I honestly can't understand why people don't realize that the argument should end right there). As Benjamin Franklin once said, "They that would give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Our Founders were very wise to write a Constitution which restrains the government from becoming tyrannical, and they were very wise to mistrust and fear the growth of government power. It is a shame that people today have become so complacent as to actually
trust their government. It seems that the human race will never learn from its own history...
Your dad should be aware that even if Paul is elected, we WILL continue to be attacked for quite some time (as we will if Paul is not elected): Paul will probably not make us much safer in the short-term than anyone else, but it's the long-term that really counts. The fact is, our past and current policies will continue to have blowback for a few generations to come. Our past policy was bad enough, but this "war on terror" has amplified anti-American sentiments around the world by an order of magnitude. However, that is no reason to continue the same policies that have made us so many enemies in the first place. If we
ever want to live in a time of peace again (instead of perpetuating this cycle), we need a serious paradigm shift in our foreign policy. When the inevitable attacks do come, the correct response is to issue letters of marque and reprisal to capture or kill the guilty parties, not to go on an endless witch hunt in an entire region of the world.
P.S. 9/11 could not have been prevented by a government police state and surveillance culture (which is what the Patriot Act contributes to, though every day the government gains some new power that propels us even further in this direction). Despite this, some in our government clearly want such a thing, and that should raise a red flag. However, the really tragic thing is that 9/11 probably
could have been prevented if the government wasn't so short-sighted in trying to keep such tight control over everything: If airline security was left entirely to the airlines and pilots were permitted by law to carry guns, those attacks NEVER would have happened. Considering the pilot can kill absolutely everyone on the plane whenever he wants (just by crashing it), I don't think it's unreasonable to trust him with a gun.
