Most of us are right there with you on Stormfront Ron, the candidate that will lead us right back to the 18th Century.

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky

And certainly not on this issue. I want out of Iraq, I want a less imperial foreign policy, but not at the price of having to support someone like Paul.

We need to all remember that when he speaks of the constitution and constitutional governance, his version of what that means leaves out a whole lot of Americans and every progressive goal won over the last century/

because I'll go all Bob Lilly on 'em.

You are not stupid.
You are prescient.

Ron Paul is dangerous.
Seriously, crazily, dangerous.

Having him in the WH would actually make things worse for most Americans (especially folks in New Orleans, although given his druthers he'd kill the I-35 Bridge repair funds, as he doesn't see the Interstate Hiway system as "constitutional").

He's one of the guys W was saying couldn't practice their love with American women.

Baiting Paulists? No problem.

can be found at Orcinus.

My blog post about this last week generated some interesting comments, including this one:

“Wake up, white people are afraid of black people for a reason. That reason is crime.

“Statistics do not follow the laws of political correctness, they just represent observed data. Are white people just supposed shut up and pretend it doesn't happen? Are they supposed to look at the "stop snitching" shirts and not be afraid?”

I also voiced concerns about Ron Paul’s pro-life position, which prompted a pro-lifer to respond (in all seriousness):

“The egg is alive, the sperm is alive ...”

And if that doesn't bring 'em out of the woodwork...

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

Ron Paul's appeal to the Nazi fringe apparently is due to his distaste for civil rights legislation, since he can see no justification for it under his narrow view of the Constitution. White supremacists (and many other libertarian fringe groups) figure that Paul would give them a green light to self-government.

A vote for Paul is basically a vote for dissolution of the Republic. The Stormfront Nazis can see this, even if candy-assed undergraduate Ayn Rand acolytes and naked hedonist pot-smoking bond traders cannot. Ron Paul is not going to win the GOP nomination, but after he breaks into double figures in Iowa and New Hampshire, the rest of America will finally realize that there are millions of people who want to do away with the federal government (except for mutual defense), and a lot of them are serious. If they had any sense, the Washington establishment would realize it's time to have a serious conversation with America; unfortunately, 2008 will only convince them further that the Village is under siege, and the walls will only be built higher.
...for the rest of us

What a joke.

You expect that every candidate must filter the money that comes to them from Individual supporters, for what they believe. What happened to the First Ammendment?

NO candidate does that.

Paul doesn't accept money from Lobbyists and Special Interest groups, only individual contributors.

***Facts***

Ron Paul is a constitutionalist.

Ron has never voted to raise taxes.
Ron has never voted for an unbalanced budget.
Ron has never voted for the Iraq War.
Ron has never voted for a federal restriction on gun ownership.
Ron has never voted to increase the power of the executive branch.
Ron has never voted to raise congressional pay.
Ron has never taken a government-paid junket.

Ron voted against the Patriot Act.
Ron votes against regulating the Internet.
Ron voted against NAFTA and CAFTA.
Ron votes against the United Nations.
Ron votes against the welfare state.
Ron votes against reinstating a military draft.

Ron votes to preserve the constitution.
Ron votes to cut government spending.
Ron votes to lower healthcare costs.
Ron votes to end the war on drugs.
Ron votes to protect civil liberties.
Ron votes to secure our borders with real immigration reform.
Ron votes to eliminate tax funded abortions and to overturn Roe v Wade.
Ron votes to protect religious freedom.

Or police. Or fire departments. Or disaster relief. Or a weather service. Or anything else you take advantage of every day but are too oblivious or stupid to realize the government has to do for you. Not gonna happen, trollie.

News: some people shouldn't have guns.

News: Roe v Wade is a good ruling. An embryo that hasn't got a nervous system has no brain and isn't a person. A woman with a future unwanted child trying to change that future is doing the right thing for herself and the child.

News: Ron Paul is only concerned with his version of civil liberties and religion, which is a whole lot different than the average American's view of civil liberties and religion.

News: everyone here immigrated at one time or another, one way or another, even the native americans. Talk to me about making the multinational corporations pay living wages world wide, and you might be talking about a real solution to "immigration problems".

Everything else is a lot of racist nationalistic hot air from the Stormfront candidate.

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky

Or maybe three minds:

1. The Orcinus School. This is the theory that Paul is a fascist meme transmitter, taking virulent right wing memes and attenuating them just enough so that they spread efficiently in the body politic. Evidence: Many of his supporters.

2. The Greenwald School. This is the perception that Paul--like Bruce Fein on impeachment on Bill Moyers--has a long and strongly held set of views on both the empire Constitutional issues that many who fear or percieve the loss of the Republic find attractive.* Evidence: His record; his campaign statements.

3. The Gavin School. This is the realpolitik view that "It's all good!" The Republicans would nominate Paul when pigs fly--the sticking point would be, not stormfront supporters, but the fact that Paul might have actual principles--and Paul becomes a useful idiot, in that he (a) splits the Republican Party and (b) smashes the Overton Window by introducing both the empire and the restoration of Constitutional government into the discourse in a way that our [cough] beloved Democrats haven't been able to do. Evidence: N.A.

And I find myself agreeing, in part, with all of these view. It's not fair, for example, to characterize Glenn as a "single issue" voter. Surely the restoration of Constitutional government, though technically single, really is a systemic issue that implicates all others? (I grant that other single issue voters would make the same case; but characterizing a discussion over changing the actual form of our goverment as a single issue is unfair; if true, the American Revolution would have been a single issue.)

Nor is it fair to characterize Paul entirely on the basis of his supporters. Hey, let's thank our lucky stars that the Storm Front guys are voting! And flip it over: I imagine most of us think the corporations basically own most members of both parties, and that's a big problem. If it's the case that most of Paul's money isn't corporate, that makes him distinct from, say, Romney or, I might add, Hillary.

And as for the realpolitik school... If our political institutions are as weak as, say, those of Weimar in the 30s, the Von Papens of the Village, and our various realpolitical strategists, could turn out to be wise fools, and Paul could end up changing the game in a very, very bad way.

I guess I'm handicapped on this by knowing nothing whatever of winger kultur--especially the dog whistles. (I suspect Glenn has the same weakness.) However, it does seem to me that rather than simply calling the man crazy--we've been called crazy, remember--we need to construct a strong picture of what a Paulista government would look like. I suspect it would look a lot like Snow Crash, but maybe that's just me. [Although Snow Crash seemed to have completely unrestricted immigration--when you have no government, patrolling the border is, I suppose, privatized...]

NOTE I'm still not sure of Paul believes corporations are persons, or not. That's the litmus test for me -- if the Federal Government became a libertarian Fantasy Island, then it would rapidly be invaded and taken over by oligopolists--even worse than it is now, since there would be no countervailing forces at all.

NOTE * I've always felt that the penumbra of privacy was to be found in the rationale for a prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Forced pregnancy surely falls into that category. No, that's not the rationale the court used. Suffice to say that I don't think abortion need be a matter for constitutional amendment, should not be left to the states, and any school of interpretation that forces pregnancy is a school I reject, "principled" or no.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

As Dave/ Trefayne point out, there are 161 pieces of legistlation sponsored or supported by Paul that belie much of what he seems to stand for in public.

Greenwald forgets: politicians lie.

It would be nice to think that somewhere, in some bubble of the multiverse, there is a Lincolnesque Republican. It isn't this one, and it isn't Ron Paul.

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky

I cannot help but contrast the linky goodness of Orcinus on Paul's legislative record with the link-free list provided by our Paul advocate:

Here's a clue, Paultard: If you claim slander, you have to show evidence. This is the blogosphere, not the wingosphere; frothing and footstamping doesn't work. Sorry.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

Lambert, no doubt you would find many of Ron Paul's supporters in each of the three schools of thought you mention. It's my opinion, though, that Ron Paul himself falls in none of those camps.

Ron Paul is an Antifederalist, plain and simple. Were he around in 1787, he would have opposed the Constitution and defended the Articles of Confederation. Had Ron Paul been President in 1861, he would have let the South walk without firing a shot. Were he running the country in 1933, Douglas MacArthur would have deposed him in a coup. Today, the Constitution is America's secular Bible, and Paul has to say he honors it if he wants to be taken seriously by anyone for more than five minutes. Yet if Ron Paul had his way, he would strip the Constitution of any real meaning until it became all but non-existent.

To reiterate, this sits well with the Nazis, the Johnny Rebs, the hippie dopers, the naked bond-traders, and anyone else who hears in Paul's words the promises of autonomy and self-government. With our upcoming electoral choices between corrupt, incompetent Republicans and corrupt, spineless Democrats, a lot of people are going to find seductive the option of bulldozing the entire Village into the Potomac. Ron Paul's vision of America is "Let 'er rip, and to hell with the consequences".

...for the rest of us

dr sardonicus,

I'm not sure where you're getting this.

When I read his voting record over twenty years, he consistently supports the constitution, specifically it's separation and enumeration of powers. I've included a link to it here. http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html

He's for federal intervention only into issues specified in the constitution. His voting record is remarkably consistent as such.

It's easy to forget under Bush's policies for expanded presidential power. The constitution provides for a House, a Senate, and a Judiciary to defend against a potentially all-powerful executive.

Ron Paul's positions are much more nuanced than simply pro-this and anti-that. A national politician needs to fight for all our interests and sometimes that means that may run counter to my personal interests. Overall, his method of problem solving based on constitutional soundness is more attractive to me than the idea of a single president wielding total effective control over war, spending, and civil liberties.

By pushing decision-making back to the states and to the house and senate, in many cases, he simply makes a president's decisions opinions much less relevant. That's a good thing.

On some issues:

Ron Paul believes that Congress and not the president should declare war if we go to war. And if so, so be it. If not, go home.

He thinks abortion should be a state issue, which might stop the deadlock between "a woman's right to her body" and murder. At a federal level, that means instead of supporters needing to convince the whole country to go one way, you only need to convince a state. Makes the president's opinion not relevant. It's not a central government's place anymore.

The constitution provides for the right to bear arms. I live in a city in Caliornia. Rifles are more ridiculous here than if I lived on a farm in Kansas like my inlaws.

Ron Paul proposed a flag-burning amendment and promptly voted against it, in order to force a vote on it.

He believes the more you concentrate spending power in washington instead of distributing it to the states and to the people, the more washington becomes a target for lobbyists and so he votes against most spending.

and so on....

He's smart, he's sane, and he has a shot.
All these attacks are a good thing. If he didn't have a chance, people wouldn't be commenting on him at all. It's worth reading his website to understand his point of view. I can at least understand his principles where it's not clear to me at all what principles Hillary, Romney, Guilliani, etc. are using at all to make their decisions.

We're not asking for links to the US Constitution; we know where to find it.

We're asking for links and quotes from Paul's actual positions (as we supplied above).

I'm sure you'll be the first to understand that we've been dealing with, well, a class of people who view words, shall we say, instrumentally, for some considerable time on this site. IOW, I'd trust an unsupported statement by a Republican about as far as I could throw a piano--a concert grand. We just can't take your word for it; we need evidence.

And no, I'm not going to do your work for you by going through Paul's site to fact-check you; I'll do that for my own purposes at a time of my choosing, if indeed I feel the need to do it. So far, I don't feel the need, based on your showing.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

a woman's right to control her body = something in dispute, to be put in quotes, and in a false dichotomy with murder.

that's really "libertarian" of you, pardner.

Yikes.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

Back in the 70's Ron Paul used to harp on the dollar's impending destruction, to be replaced by some other currency. The "amero" nuts are simply recycling an old conspiracy theory.

He also has more plans than to let states decide on abortion. from another board: If you examine his website, you will find the text of his proposed legislation (that) defines a fetus as a "person." Once a fetus achieves "person" status, it then becomes subject to the Fifth Amendment which states that "No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law." From his website: "In Congress, I have authored legislation that seeks to define life as beginning at conception, HR 1094." HR 1094 reads (1) the Congress declares that--

(A) human life shall be deemed to exist from conception, without regard to race, sex, age, health, defect, or condition of dependency...

-----

Oh, and that birdbrain, Elizabeth Kucinich, backs up her soul mate's joke that he would choose Ron Paul as a running mate. She calls Ron a "great truth teller." For sure Kucinich and Paul supporters are CULT-mates.

You forgot to go over on that fudge thread and say that the Kucinich recipe makes lousy fudge. Try to be a little more thorough, could you? Thanks.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

Just Biden my time. I could hardly choke through all the anti-marshmallow posts! But now that you bring it up, I think Congress needs to pass a bill praising all fudge with marshmallow in the recipe and banning the use of the name "fudge" for dubious knockoff concoctions which use corn syrup, or lordhelpus, confectioners sugar, in its place. It would be the most important legislation since they ruled that tomatoes can be labeled vegetables. Kucinich would, of course, abstain from this vote as he will be influenced by that time by his New Age Spouse and will have succumbed to the teachings of her fellow keynote speakers at the Raw Foods conference and, knowing that plant life does indeed scream when pulled from the earth, become a Breatharian.

Here's the link, and speaking of thorough, please add the dachshund-beating Dobson and mule-humping Horsely to your list of animal abusing Republicans.

http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/arch...

Whatever is happening with Dennis Kucinich, Elizabeth Kucinich is clearly going to be right at the center of the Breatharian supernatural New Age nonsense. Elizabeth Kucinich will be giving her speech shortly after a Breatharian sun gazing exercise led by Wayne Purdin, who claims that “Science has proven that some Sun Yoga practitioners can live for months or even years without eating food, and that tremendous healing light is given by our physical sun and the cosmic light rays it emits.”

Of course, science has proven no such thing. That’s not stopping people at the Raw Spirit Festival from making such extravagant claims, of course. They’re relying on the people attending Raw Spirit to suspend their ordinary abilities of critical thinking.

The Kucinich for President campaign ought to be ashamed to be associated with this kind of fraudulent absurdity. That Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich continue to associate the Kucinich 2008 campaign with the Raw Spirit Festival, and its many frauds, is an indication in itself that Dennis Kucinich is not fit to hold the power of the Presidency.