Ron's Positions on Evolution & Abortion Need to be Clarifed, Because He's Losing Support!

[micahnelson]

We need the whole internet if this is going to work.

Ron Paul should do an AMA, or at least respond to an AMA request via an aide. It would give him massive cred on that site even if they disagreed with him on some issues.

 

[micahnelson]

He's "losing support"??? From liberal trolls on the internet???

Do you know MOST people in this country are creationists?

Most people in this country voted for George Bush, and the Voted for Barak Obama. Thankfully, facts aren't a matter of public opinion because most people also think Ron Paul is a kook. So... There you have it.

 

[Sentinelrv]

I edited my first post with this...

"I realize that atheists and people on Digg and Reddit are in the minority and that we should focus our time on converting larger groups of people to Ron. When I created this thread, I guess I just felt that every person voting for Ron counts, so we should still be prepared in case the subject comes up."

 

[RonPaulFanInGA]

Young atheists, like on Digg, make up what percentage of the Republican presidential primary? Less than 1% most likely.

It's people who 35 years old and over, and probably like 95% of them are Christians, that are going to decide Ron Paul's primary fate.

 

[WyoLiberty]

Abortion - the detractor.

I don't think RP is losing support - rather not gaining new support. I had this very same conversation with an Obamabot on the "What If?" video on YouTube... RP is not one to impose his belief's on anyone. He's an OB and he is pro-life...shocker. I tire of the quibbling over this...he's merely defined life and doesn't want public funds made available to end said lives. It would be disingenuous of Ron to change his stance on this. It's of public record, there really isn't anything to clarify. It's those that cannot get past the "religiosity" that have the problem, and you'll likely not make a convert of them anyhow. RP is defending the right of life...I know that right is in some hinkey document somewhere....

This is the point where libertarianism and I depart. I don't think there should be laws over what one does with their body.....Abortion is merely a detractor and doesn't affect most people's lives...those that it does affect - have to live with their conscience - laws don't make a conscientious person. BUT there are abortion factories that kill third trimester babies...I just cannot accept that passing though a vaginal canal is what qualifies as someone being a person. At which point is "fetal tissue" no more and it becomes a person? It's the line of what life is that becomes fuzzy to most. I'm pro-life from womb to the grave - without religious conviction.

 

[emazur]

Like the OP, I'm also atheist and I've never felt that Paul's Christianity would impose any problems on me b/c imposition is not what Ron Paul is all about. Anyway, these people are just partisan idiots - if Jimmy Carter or Obama are Christians, they look past it b/c they are leftist "humanitarians", but minimal government Christians are automatic right-wing kooks. Here was my post on reddit:
generic redditor #1: Rightwing Ron Paul believes a Christian god created man. He doesn't understand science. Bad!
generic redditor #2: So what if Obama believes a Christian god created the universe? At least he doesn't believe god created man, so he understands science. So what if Obama wants to use religion as justification to achieve socialist goals? Obama good!


As for clearing up the abortion issue, here's something I posted in a thread on Daily Paul the other day:

Most people should know by now that Paul is personally opposed to abortion - in "The Revolution" you can read his account as a med student who witnessed an aborted fetus dropped into a bucket that struggled to breathe until it died. He believes the Constitution does not authorize the federal government to legalize abortion. He also knows the Constitution does not authorize the federal government to ban abortion and has stated he would oppose such a federal law:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance194.html

Under the 9th and 10th amendments, all authority over matters not specifically addressed in the Constitution remains with state legislatures. Therefore the federal government has no authority whatsoever to involve itself in the abortion issue. So while Roe v. Wade is invalid, a federal law banning abortion across all 50 states would be equally invalid.

Constitutionally speaking, states do have the right to regulate abortion but in my opinion it wouldn't work very well for anyone looking to abolish abortion state by state. For one, I predict an anti-abortion law would be a very temporary victory for pro-lifers since it is such a tumultuous issue that has to be dealt with in a political arena. Also:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance133.html

It is unlikely that most states would enact a complete ban on abortions. In 2006, a comprehensive ban was put to the voters in South Dakota by means of referendum. The referendum failed in what is one of the most conservative states in the Union.

Although I'd consider myself to be pro-choice, I'd hope to make abortion obsolete and I think it would become so in a free society with an abundance of wealth, which is exactly the kind of society Ron Paul would help bring about. I can certainly agree with pro-lifers that the government should have no business in providing public funding for abortions http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JC9W7EL2xg Finally, consider these words from Dr. Paul:

A pro-life culture can be built only from the ground up, person by person. For too long we have viewed the battle as purely political, but no political victory can change a degraded culture. A pro-life culture must arise from each of us as individuals, not by the edict of an amoral federal government.

 

[Sola_Fide]

Young atheists, like on Digg, make up what percentage of the Republican presidential primary? Less than 1% most likely.

It's people who 35 years old and over, and probably like 95% of them are Christians, that are going to decide Ron Paul's primary fate.

Yes^^^

If anything, Ron is seen as "not conservative enough" to most of the people who will vote him in or out of the Republican primary.

The last thing we need to do is to try to make Ron more palatable to atheist trolls on the internet. The true test is the inroads we must make with CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN PRIMARY VOTERS. THAT IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE WE FACE.

 

[ProBlue33]

Well these are two points people will just have get over, our life experience formulate much of our belief structures by the time we get to Ron Paul age.
Nobody is in a better position to defend the freedom of the unwanted unborn than a doctor who has delivered over 4000 babies, his opinion is worth so much more than most other peoples.
Because of this, him saying turn it over to the states and let the local people decide what they want to, speak volumes about the man not wanting to enforce his own personal opinions on others, even though he really does know he is right on a very important issue. And he is personally very much against abortion.

As to the evolution issue, once again the man is correct, hardcore atheists and evolutionists will not be supporting Ron Paul, so what.
They won't be able to get past that ideology, I know I have interacted lots with them on the Net, they think people that believe in God and creation are ignorant fools.
Some are very arrogant people.

 

[emazur]

This is the point where libertarianism and I depart. I don't think there should be laws over what one does with their body.....Abortion is merely a detractor and doesn't affect most people's lives...those that it does affect - have to live with their conscience - laws don't make a conscientious person. BUT there are abortion factories that kill third trimester babies...I just cannot accept that passing though a vaginal canal is what qualifies as someone being a person. At which point is "fetal tissue" no more and it becomes a person? It's the line of what life is that becomes fuzzy to most. I'm pro-life from womb to the grave - without religious conviction.

I consider Peter Schiff to be pretty hardcore libertarian. You might agree with his position on abortion:

 

[Zack]

I agree with everyone that this kind of thing is unlikely to hurt Paul at all in the primaries.

However, if he were somehow to win the nomination, the media would understand that Paul is the only Republican that can challenge Obama for the antiwar/youth vote, and they will set up "gotcha" style questions in order to get a scientifically embarrasing quote from Paul in order to lower his popularity among rationalists and young people.

Bush was invulnerable to this, because his political brand was built from the ground up with the understanding that rational/scientific/logical voters were a wash. Of course, that's not the case with Paul, who's civic principles are completely based on what is rational. Paul would have to build a very, very different coalition than other Republicans. A coalition with little wiggle room to lose voters. We would need those votes. This IS the kind of thing that could lose (the deciding) millions of votes in a general election if the media gets the quote out of Paul they want, so hopefully he and his team would have politically sophisticated responses that appease everyone. He couldn't just point out, even if correctly, that this is a sideshow designed to distract from the real civic issues. That wouldn't cut it, politically.

 

[Sola_Fide]

I consider Peter Schiff to be pretty hardcore libertarian. You might agree with his position on abortion:

What Peter says in this video is a problem most libertarians have: they can't see that the fiscal breakdown in our society is a SYMPTOM of our moral breakdown.

If you look throughout history, you will always see that nations collapse MORALLY before they collspse FINANCIALLY. You cannot be fiscally sound as a country without being morally sound. Money itself is property, and property is a MORAL issue.

 

[Sentinelrv]

Great video. I agree with Peter and that's what I was trying to explain to that guy on Reddit. Why focus on the petty things when our entire society is collapsing around us? They need to understand that the economy, the war and other issues like it take priority over everything else. If we don't elect somebody to office that has a solid understanding of the root causes of these issues and how to fix them, we're going to end up having riots in the streets and total chaos.

 

[KurtBoyer25L]

Ron hinted at a more tolerant abortion stance the day after CPAC. I'm pleased, because I've thought for years that the social ultraconservative/freaky religious image is the only thing holding Ron back from massive far-left support. If that sounds trivial or undesirable let's remember that Barack Obama was the favored-by-hippies candidate in 2008. It helps.

As for Creationism, it's not Ron's Christianity that folks would object to, but it's a sign of intelligence in a politician when his religious views do not directly contradict a) his other ideas and b) his common sense. When I found out that Mike Huckabee thinks "God put fossils here to trick us and test our faith," it made me take him less seriously as a person. So "mystical" Creationist views are a political issue for very good reason. If you say the Sun is really the Moon, you lose a few votes.

But there are other types of Creationists. If you're Christian it's a contradiction to say that God did *not* create the Earth and the galaxy! I'm intrigued by those who think the "days" in Genesis were actually a word for "epochs" or "lengths of time." I would be surprised if Ron Paul didn't share in such views as those, that adhere to the Bible without defying the obvious.

 

[robert68]

I consider Peter Schiff to be pretty hardcore libertarian. You might agree with his position on abortion:

Peter Schiff is spot on, and lives in the real world.

 

[emazur]

Great video. I agree with Peter and that's what I was trying to explain to that guy on Reddit. Why focus on the petty things when our entire society is collapsing around us? They need to understand that the economy, the war and other issues like it take priority over everything else. If we don't elect somebody to office that has a solid understanding of the root causes of these issues and how to fix them, we're going to end up having riots in the streets and total chaos.

On top of that, if we did have the economic collapse that we are on track for, it's reasonable to assume that the number of abortions would greatly increase due to the inability to raise a child in a poor and chaotic environment, or that mothers would simply give birth and then abandon their babies for the same reasons. I pay more attention to animal welfare issues than many people here and I often come across articles in newspapers about how people are abandoning pets or farm animals b/c of economic conditions and that shelters and sanctuaries are having a hard time keeping up, so that gives you a good idea of what would happen to babies in a full-on economic collapse.

 

[Eric21ND]

A substancial number of atheists support Ron, myself included.

 

[kah13176]

WHY do his views on evolution even matter?! He doesn't want the federal government controlling curriculum anyways!

It would be different if he were a big DOE/NCLB/big-government politician.

 

[StilesBC]

The general theme of this thread is spot on. The notion that "it doesn't matter" in the primaries is ridiculous. If Ron wins the GOP primaries, it will be because a huge swathe of previously independent voters (or non-voters) have registered Republican solely to vote for him. It's the Islamophobic, homophobic, aging "don't touch my SS", neo-cons that are the real group to write off.

Most of RPs fans know about his positions on abortion: that a) it doesn't matter what the government says, because you can't stop a girl from drinking tea the day after forgetting to use a condom, b) it is not for the federal gov't to decide - leave it to the states, and c) nobody should be forced to pay for clinics - they should be funded privately if the states choose to allow it. But these stances definitely DO need to be clarified (again and again), because so many people are under the impression that its one or the other. They probably don't understand his constitutional starting point.

If it is made clear by Ron himself that he will never advocate: a) unilaterally banning abortion federally, and b) using the executive branch to force religion on school curricula, I'm pretty sure that would be enough to placate voters that would otherwise be terrified of him. If the "scary" part is taken away, I'm sure many (like myself) could be convinced to support him based on other issues. But ya gotta remove the fear. People vote based on their emotions, and these emotional, divisive issues evoke fear.

 

[>shaw]

Just wanted to point out that reddit does have a libertarian subreddit

http://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/

/r/ politics does not make up the political views of the whole site. Thats the great thing about reddit and why I love it so much more then digg they have subreddits for almost all opposing views.

 

[R3volutionJedi]

I like his views on both Evolution (being just a theory) and Abortion = An act of aggression, murder. Pro-Life is my #1 Issue. What we need to do with these haters is educate them that THESE things do NOT make him bad. In all seriousness, this makes him even more prone to defending Life & liberty.