Flada Blog

I’ve been a Dr. Ron Paul fan for many years. I first heard of Congressman Paul in 2000(ish) in a Yahoo Politics Chat room. One of the other conservative libertarians in the room asked me what I thought of Ron Paul and I had to confess that I’d never heard of him. So my chat buddy pointed me to a few links and I read up on the Congressman and was very impressed with what I read.

At the time, most of the self-professed conservatives in the chatrooms liked what they heard about Dr. Paul as well. Such statements as, “If you hear that there were 434 votes in Congress for a bill and only 1 vote against, you can be pretty sure that the one vote was cast by Ron Paul and that it was an unconstitutional bill.” were often read.

Another frequent comment was, “Wow, there’s actually someone in Congress who does more than just talk about smaller government.”

What a difference 7 years make. I was a member at Freerepublic from sometime in 1997 until about a month ago. Now, I’ve taken the unprecedented step of blocking Freerepublic on my wireless router. This is primarily because the comments about Dr. Paul have changed from the above. Now, even the owner of Freerepublic is on record actually saying that Ron Paul and all of his supporters are traitors. This post is dedicated to debunking some of the whoppers written about Ron Paul on that and other sites.

So here are a few of my favorite lies about Dr. Ron Paul (in no particular order).

Ron Paul is an isolationist

This is the one that McCain used during the Youtube debate to wedge his foot in his mouth. Dr. Paul did a pretty decent job of responding (considering he only had 30 seconds). His reply was that McCain doesn’t understand the difference between isolationism and non-interventionist policies. It is unfortunate that Dr. Paul had so little time to reply, because it’s impossible to say too much about this.

Historically, conservatives have been major proponents of non-interventionist policies. Unfortunately, their elected representatives (as well as those of their Democrat opponents) often seem to govern exactly the opposite from this stated ideal. Interventionism has led to a common belief that we can go anywhere in the world and do anything we want as long as we claim that our intent is to spread democracy or freedom. Unfortunately, you can’t hold a gun on someone and force them to be free. The only way is to lead by example. Be the shining city on the hill that Reagan spoke about. Be an example of freedom, justice, self-reliance, responsibility.

Yet, instead of trying to improve the example we set, we send armies in and decrease our levels of freedom at home. Just the opposite of what we should try to do. Ron Paul would fight terrorism by showing them something better that they could strive for and by destroying trade barriers. Guiliani, McCain, Thompson, and Romney would increase terrorism by giving large numbers of people more reasons to hate Americans–unless they somehow think they can kill them all (which may explain why each of them have stated that they would even consider pre-emptive nuclear strikes).

Isolationists are people like Pat Buchanan who would be happy if we built a huge wall completely around our country to keep immigrants out and to keep our companies from sending jobs to places where labor is less expensive. Ron Paul would like to encourage more trade by keeping the government on the sidelines. Ron Paul would like to encourage companies to keep jobs here by lowering (to zero) the taxes that both the companies and their laborers pay. He would also lower the regulatory costs involved in providing jobs here in the United States.

Ron Paul wants Federal dollars to go to the shrimping industry

This one is about as ridiculous as they get, but many of the ronpaulophobes were trying to gain traction with the claim. The claim started when Congressmen were asked to publicly release their requested earmarks. One of the few who actually released such information (because of his principled stance of full disclosure) was Dr. Paul. The problem is that few people understand what earmarks are so it’s easy to attempt to smear a good man.

Spending bills determine what kind of program the money will be spent on, and Ron Paul votes against every unconstitutional spending bill. Despite his vote, the spending bills ultimately pass, bills that are loaded with money for unconstitutional programs (like farm subsidies), and nothing Ron Paul does will effect or change that. Requesting earmarks is not ADDING anything unconstitutional to the bill, it is simply determining exactly how the money in that unconstitutional spending bill will be spent. Without the earmarks, the complete decision goes to the executive branch on how to spend the money in the unconstitutional bill. Effectively, all Ron Paul does, is pass along earmark requests from his constituents.

His explanation compares earmarks to any other unconstitutional spending. For example, if a constituent needed help with a medicare claim, Ron Paul’s job is not to tear up the constituent’s claim despite the fact that medicare is unconstitutional.

Some might even argue that Dr. Paul has a responsibility to try to bring some of the money that has been stolen through taxation back to his constituents, although he doesn’t make that argument.

He can’t possibly win

I used to believe this one myself. Despite being a huge supporter and fan, I firmly believed that the power structure was built in a way that our continuous slide into more socialism, less individual liberty, and less individual autonomy was inevitable. However, recent events have changed my mind.

Ron Paul became the recipient of the largest single-day campaign fundraising in Republican history. On November 5, his campaign brought in $4.2 million. I, unfortunately, failed to contribute that day, but on Dec. 16 there will be another fund drive and I will be donating this time.

Especially among young people, Dr. Paul seems to be a huge favorite. I guess young people still like the idea of freedom. I’m in a position where I work with thousands of young military enlistees and many of them intend to support Ron Paul.

With enough people talking about him, enough people sending money, and enough people who actually feel they have a reason to care about politics again–he most certainly can win.