Joshua2585
Member
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2011
- Messages
- 62
This was part of a discussion I was having with one of my Obama supporting, liberal acquaintances and why he said he wont vote for Ron Paul. I am now planning on researching each one of these individual "complaints" and responding to them in detail (I don't have anything better to do). I figured it would be a good idea to post it here, not only to potentially aid others but in hopes of some additional jewels of information from this very informed community. As soon as I get my response typed up, I will make sure to post it here.
"Apologies for what is about to be a wall of text filled, no doubt, with typos. I am on my tablet and cant format or spell check effectively. if it were a movement centered around policy, I might buy that, but instead its a movement around a person, which is dangerous because when that person is gone, it falls apart or becomes chaos (see India/Pakistan after the death of Ghandi) But no, my experience has been very different. The average ron Paul supporter that i meet (and granted, these have been, like, people on the street with signs or someone I see with a bumper sticker on their car) cannot coherently articulate his policies, why they are the right thing, or how they are constitutionally justified.
More often I find that they are simply libertarians who don't like government as a rule and are meer breaths away from simply being anarchists. But to be fair, if I judged a public figure solely by the behavior or beliefs of their supporters, I could certainly not support the President either, so let me be clear. I don't support ron Paul because I generally don't like someone who approaches public policy from a solely ideological perspective and that is what I believe is most true about Dr. Paul. The merits, likely success, or necessity of a proposal is meaningless to him. He supports it or not based only on his narrow filters of what can and can't be done. But what's worse, is that when you leave the rhelm of fiscal policy and move into social policy, all of that ideolical consistency that concerns me and is valued by others, suddenly flied to the wind.
His social policy is not just inconsistent, its frightening. He plays both sides of the fence on the gay rights debate, including attempting to prohibit federals courts from ruling on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage act, while simultaneously claiming that its not a federal issue. He said that don't ask don't tell was a "decent policy" in 2007, then voted for its repeal in 2011. He believes that Texas should have been allowed to keep a law making it illegal to be gay (or rather to act on that fact with another person) and to punish 'offenders' however they saw fit. He is supposedly against civil rights violations, but has also stated repeatedly that he doesn't believe the constitution provides a right to privacy, meaning that he's OK with a state government reading your emails, just not the federal government.
He claims that the federal government should not have a role in banning or condoning abortion, yet he has voted multiple times in congress to limit abortion rights. He is supposedly against the death penalty as part of his "pro life stance" but supports a states right to execute people. He has actively campaigned to abolish public schools, financial aid for college, and in fact the entire department of education. He's managed to score a perfect 0 for environmentalism (according to the LCV). He opposes the voting rights act and the civil rights act. He wants to take away the peoples right to vote for their us senators by repealing the 17th amendment and uphold the electoral college which has repeatedly resulted in the winner of a presidential election being the candidate with fewer votes.
And finally, his answer to sexual harassment in the workplace is to simply quit your job and get a different one, something we can see is very easy to do these days. When someone can give me a coherant justification, constitutional or otherwise, for that trainwreck of policy positions, maybe I won't be so hard on the guy. But it hasn't been done yet."
"Apologies for what is about to be a wall of text filled, no doubt, with typos. I am on my tablet and cant format or spell check effectively. if it were a movement centered around policy, I might buy that, but instead its a movement around a person, which is dangerous because when that person is gone, it falls apart or becomes chaos (see India/Pakistan after the death of Ghandi) But no, my experience has been very different. The average ron Paul supporter that i meet (and granted, these have been, like, people on the street with signs or someone I see with a bumper sticker on their car) cannot coherently articulate his policies, why they are the right thing, or how they are constitutionally justified.
More often I find that they are simply libertarians who don't like government as a rule and are meer breaths away from simply being anarchists. But to be fair, if I judged a public figure solely by the behavior or beliefs of their supporters, I could certainly not support the President either, so let me be clear. I don't support ron Paul because I generally don't like someone who approaches public policy from a solely ideological perspective and that is what I believe is most true about Dr. Paul. The merits, likely success, or necessity of a proposal is meaningless to him. He supports it or not based only on his narrow filters of what can and can't be done. But what's worse, is that when you leave the rhelm of fiscal policy and move into social policy, all of that ideolical consistency that concerns me and is valued by others, suddenly flied to the wind.
His social policy is not just inconsistent, its frightening. He plays both sides of the fence on the gay rights debate, including attempting to prohibit federals courts from ruling on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage act, while simultaneously claiming that its not a federal issue. He said that don't ask don't tell was a "decent policy" in 2007, then voted for its repeal in 2011. He believes that Texas should have been allowed to keep a law making it illegal to be gay (or rather to act on that fact with another person) and to punish 'offenders' however they saw fit. He is supposedly against civil rights violations, but has also stated repeatedly that he doesn't believe the constitution provides a right to privacy, meaning that he's OK with a state government reading your emails, just not the federal government.
He claims that the federal government should not have a role in banning or condoning abortion, yet he has voted multiple times in congress to limit abortion rights. He is supposedly against the death penalty as part of his "pro life stance" but supports a states right to execute people. He has actively campaigned to abolish public schools, financial aid for college, and in fact the entire department of education. He's managed to score a perfect 0 for environmentalism (according to the LCV). He opposes the voting rights act and the civil rights act. He wants to take away the peoples right to vote for their us senators by repealing the 17th amendment and uphold the electoral college which has repeatedly resulted in the winner of a presidential election being the candidate with fewer votes.
And finally, his answer to sexual harassment in the workplace is to simply quit your job and get a different one, something we can see is very easy to do these days. When someone can give me a coherant justification, constitutional or otherwise, for that trainwreck of policy positions, maybe I won't be so hard on the guy. But it hasn't been done yet."
