Why Does John McCain Hate America? And Who Will Defend the Honor of Ron Paul?
by KTKSeptember 2nd, 2008
New reports have it that McCain is actively pursuing his former Republican primary rival Ron Paul for an endorsement, to discourage Paul’s supporters from voting for Libertarian candidate Bob Barr and splitting the right-wing vote. This raises a couple of questions for me.
First, Paul ran for Congress, and this year for president, on the GOP ticket, but is also a Life Member of the Libertarian Party and ran for president in 1988 on that party’s ticket. He remains closely affiliated with that party, and was the focus of a major campaign by LP members to endorse his run on the GOP ticket. As one supporter put it:
Ron Paul is not the choice of Republican voters either: 95% of Illinois Republicans rejected Ron Paul in the primary.
Ron Paul is the choice of Libertarians: 95% of Libertarians support Ron Paul.
[emphasis original]
Now, the libertarians are well-known laissez-faire whackos. Their official party platform says, among other things:
[W]e oppose all government interference with private property, such as confiscation, nationalization, and eminent domain . . .
Free markets and property rights stimulate the technological innovations and behavioral changes required to protect our environment and ecosystems. . . .
We call for the repeal of the income tax, the abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service and all federal programs and services not required under the U.S. Constitution. We oppose any legal requirements forcing employers to serve as tax collectors. Government should not incur debt . . .
We favor free-market banking, with unrestricted competition among banks and depository institutions of all types. Individuals engaged in voluntary exchange should be free to use as money any mutually agreeable commodity or item. We support a halt to inflationary monetary policies, the repeal of legal tender laws and compulsory governmental units of account. . . .
Education, like any other service, is best provided by the free market . . .
We favor restoring and reviving a free market health care system. . . .
We favor replacing the current government-sponsored Social Security system with a private voluntary system. The proper source of help for the poor is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals. . . .
They not only oppose the use of government to do anything to create or maintain civilization, and are content to see every aspect of life - education, healthcare, wages, retirement, infrastructure development, environmental protection - condemned to a market transaction (they actually have an explicit section in their platform endorsing monopolies), they are anti-government conspiracy nuts as well. The platform is filled with references to “the cult of the omnipotent state” and “seizing the fruits of our labor”, under those conditions “where governments exist” (that’s apparently an open question for the Libertarian Party). They oppose ordinary government functions like eminent domain, military draft, and legal tender currency. (Yep - they’re the pro-wampum party.) They are for regressive taxes only, and insist that taxes can only be lowered, never raised, for any reason, in addition to which they prohibit all public debt under all circumstances: the combination of the two policies means, inevitably, that the first time the country faces an unplanned expense - war, disaster, recession - it will go bankrupt by official policy. They want to prohibit government regulation or oversight of banks, and government guarantees for bank deposits - that’s right, they’re officially in favor of a less reliable banking system than the one in place before the Great Depression. (Remember: this is their official platform. They’ve thought about this. And two former and current Republican members of Congress were their official presidential campagin nominees in 1988 and this year.)
In short, they’re capitalist-anarchist whackaloons who, like all libertarians, assume they’ll be the ones on the top of the heap of the inevitable state-of-nature free-for-all that would result from their policies, and simply don’t give a shit about anyone else. But note more specifically, they are essentially anti-government. They claim to be US Constitution strict constructionists, but they go farther than even the most rabid right-winger in that regard. They even regard money as illegitimate. And Ron Paul is a party member and former presidential nominee, and heavily involved in their current campaign for president. In Congress, though nominally Republican, Paul is unquestionably libertarian - he was the only Republican to oppose the Iraq war, on the general principle of no “foreign entanglements”.
So, my first observation is: McCain is now closely negotiating for support with someone who is not merely an out-of-the-closet libertarian RINO (that’s his business), and not merely a let-them-eat-cake “small government” enthusiast (not a surprise), but who is officially affiliated - and not in a small way - with a party that opposes almost every function not only of the United States government but of government in general: someone who is, in fact, an all-but-police-and-militia anarchist.
It’s not just Sarah Palin who’s the darling of the anti-government fringe. McCain himself is seeking lists of supporters and pledged delegates from a person who is simultaneously a flagship leader of an extremely radical fringe party and also a member of McCain’s own party. Both halves of the McCain-Palin ticket are tied to groups that explicitly seek to repudiate the United States government entirely, or almost all of its functions - and McCain is apparently offering inducements to the latter for his endorsement of McCain’s own “small government” platform. Not only are McCain and Palin both on record as courting secessionist and anti-government groups, but the GOP is fine with having two of that group’s presidential nominees in its own ranks, and McCain’s platform is apparently close enough to the anti-government party’s platform to enable an endorsement.
Also, there is this:
[Ron] Paul has refused to endorse Mr. McCain, and Mr. McCain’s operatives have refused to let him address the Republican National Convention. . . .
Earlier negotiations to have Mr. Paul address the convention fell through because the congressman would not change his position on the war in Iraq, which he opposes as needless and self-defeating for the United States.
Hmmm . . . Ron Paul - who is not merely a member of the Republican party, but a declared Republican candidate for President who has won delegate votes in the primary elections and has delegates officially committed to him in the nomination vote tally - is being refused a speaking slot at the party convention because he has publicly refused to endorse the candidate who has the party nomination locked up and opposes one of the central planks in the party nominee’s official platform, on which the nominee himself has invested much of his political credibility.
But wait! - I thought it was somehow immoral, and a tremendous slap in the face, to insist that your convention speakers should actually support your candidate and agree not to use their speaking slot to embarrass the candidate and undermine the party’s official platform? Paul is not merely an obscure obstructionist state governor who conducts personal vendettas against his own party members - he was an official candidate for the nomination McCain has received, and he commands pledged votes at this convention, as well as being a state delegate in his own right. Unlike whiney pseudo-martyrs of years past, Paul actually has an official role in the convention in which he is seeking a speaking slot, and is an official candidate in the race which does not, technically, end until the nomination vote is taken. But he has been shut out entirely for the small matter of seeking to overturn his own party’s campaign. Surely Republican commentators are going to be shaking their heads over this horrible display of fanatical extremism by the GOP convention organizers, for at least 16 years, right?
But it’s the same old story, of course. Nothing Republican politicians do is ever taken as actual evidence of their fitness for office or the acceptability of their beliefs or plans. And they are never held to any standard of consistency for their lying, demonization of opponents, and constant, reflexive distortions of facts and history. Obama is trashed relentlessly for months for things other people said in non-political settings, but Palin and McCain have gotten, and certainly will get, no scrutiny at all for their own membership in, or open courting of endorsements from political parties with platforms that explicitly call for the rejection or crippling of the very government that McCain and Palin are seeking to lead.
It is not illegal to seek to replace or eliminate the government of the United States (or its powers and functions) by peaceful means. But it should certainly be an absolute disqualification for the presidency. Note that McCain’s party is the one that staged a years-long witch hunt to destroy the careers of ordinary government employees - and entirely private citizens - who had merely attended meetings of the perfectly legal Communist Party, which had a (very broadly) similar agenda; McCain’s party is now the political home of two presidential campaign nominees of the Libertarian Party and is courting the endorsement of one of them for its own presdential campaign, while its VP nominee was herself a member of a secessionist party.* As for the Republican convention, it apparently applies the same (obvious and reasonable) rules for selecting speakers as the Democrats did in 1992, but will surely be spared not merely the unremitting criticism, but the continually falsified reporting, that that decision received from the Republicans when it was a Democratic speaker. And again, nothing whatsoever will come of this, because there is no standard of truth, consistency, or honor that applies to Republicans (or which, in fact, they could meet).
* Update: The membership issue is strangely complicated, but it is clear Palin has ongoing relations with the AIP - relations close enough that the AIP’s own leadership thinks she was a member. It appears now that she never had an official AIP voting registration, but party officers still continue to refer to her as having been a member. There is also a history of overlap between the Alaskan GOP and AIP (much like the GOP and the Libertarian Party): former Alaskan Governor Walter Hickel was elected as an AIP candidate in 1990, then ran for re-election as a Republican in 1994, and later endorsed Palin in her own bid for the Governorship. Some say Hickel’s AIP membership was only political opportunism, while AIP members say exactly the same thing about Palin’s GOP membership; at the very least, few people seem to think that membership in one of those parties precludes close ties with the other. George Clark, Vice Chair of the AIP, says Palin “is pretty well sympathetic to her former membership.” There is an ongoing disagreement whether Palin attended the AIP 1994 convention, though it is known that she attended their convention in 2000, and sent a recorded video message to their convention this year. In addition, her husband’s only political party registrations have been with the AIP; he has been registered as “Independent” since 2002, when Sarah Palin first went into electoral politics, and has apparently never been a registered Republican.
Categories: General, Libertarian Problem Solving, News & Current Events, Politics |
First of all, McCain doesn’t hate this country. He is the only candidate who was tortured and literally came close to dying for this country. Just because he may have made some efforts at winning Ron Paul’s endorsement, doesn’t mean that he approves of everything that the Ron Paul types believe in. As far as Sarah Palin is concerned, she hasn’t and isn’t tied to any radical group opposed to the US Government. You may be getting her mixed up with her husband. Anyway, she is a fine pick that will bolster our efforts with the womens vote. You see that we just don’t talk about women moving foward in this male dominated world, we show our committment to it by selecting her to be the VP along side John McCain as president. She is in fact a NRA member. She is pro second amendment right supporter. She isn’t like Obama who went on record as favoring the Disrict of Columbia and their efforts to deny people their constitutional right to bear arms. But, then, he turns around to say that he believes in the 2nd amendment. Is this another flip-flop of Obama’s? Also, I noticed that you didn’t mention Obama and his ties with the domestic terrorist (William Ayers) who attacked this country and the Anti- American Jeremiah Wright who hates whites, Jews,and the US Government. Why didn’t you mention that when you were mentioning radical groups who you say McCain and Palin were tied to that repudiate the US entirely - which isn’t true of course.
Oh, where to start? The tone of the article is to suggest that reducing the size of the government is somehow seditious. In a democracy, of course, this is a ridiculous notion.
Also, factual inaccuracies are spread with abandon. One, of course, is that Libertarians are against money. They are not. As a matter of fact, the constitution gives the federal government the right to coin and print money, but also says that such money should be of gold and silver. I am actually an anarcho-capitalist, so I believe in ‘free money’ rather than regulated money, where people are free to trade in whatever substance they see fit. The Libertarian party, however, is of the opinion, merely, that the government should not be allowed to mint money freely and that any money proceeding from the government follow the letter of the constitution and be ‘of gold and silver’. Anything else is inviting inflation, as no system constructed of fiat money has ever endured the test of time.
All of that being said, I do agree with your statement on the moral bankruptcy of the Republican establishment. I was a Paul supporter who currently supports Bob Barr because to support McCain or Obama would be to surrender my principles.
How does “no foreign entanglements” equate to somehow being a negative principle? It was a good policy for the first several decades of our government’s existance–what has changed? How does following principles of The Constitution equate to being whackos or whackaloons? It was our own apathy and complacency during past and current generations that allowed the continued straying from The Constitution that has put us in this situation in the first place. More of the same bullshit isn’t going to save us. I embrace the principles of The Constitution–regardless of who is repeating them. Let yourself be ashamed or embarrased for not recognizing the peril our nation is in and continuing to be a part of the problem.
Those who are willing to sacrifice their basic liberties to assure their security deserve neither. –Benjamin Franklin
“I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” –Thomas Jefferson
This article is so full of innaccuracies it’s amazing. The writer should be ashamed of his lack of knowledge of nearly every aspect of party platforms and economics. I would explain why but from what you’ve written I don’t think you’re capable of understanding it. So I will just say may god have mercy on your poor soul and I hope noone comes here to learn anything because they will become dumber. If someone really wants to learn something read Rothbard, Mises, or Hayek.
“They not only oppose the use of government to do anything to create or maintain civilization” — The Federal government has clear roles as defined in the Constitution, the states their own roles in their areas. You seem to be confusing anarchists with Libertarians. You really should become more educated, you are doing a serious disservice to your readers.
This article isn’t leaning left, it’s leaning stupid.
Oops. Boy was that a mistake. I forgot that writing about libertarians brings out the libertarians. Oh, well . . .
Let me simply note that almost everything I said about the Libertarian Party is a direct quote or close restatement of their official party platform. (OK - it doesn’t literally mention “wampum” - but they would accept such a medium under their platform as written.)
Regarding monetarism, it’s true that a “hard money” policy is not the same as a non-monetary policy, but the Libertarian Party does not have a hard-money policy. Their platform explicitly states “We support . . . the repeal of legal tender laws . . .” and that any substance can be used as money, by agreement of the trading partners. (Hello, wampum lovers!) That is, they deny that there should be any official currency whatsoever. (And by the way, the Constitution does not specify gold or silver as the medium of exchange. It explicitly grants the power “to coin money” in the section on powers of Congress, without specifying on what basis. It further states, in a completely separate section focused entirely on powers of the individual states, that “No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts . . .”. Note that here, and in subsequent sections, it explicitly enumerates specific powers and stipulates whether the states do or do not have those powers. Many of the powers that are denied to the states are not denied to Congress (coining money, granting letters of marque, imposing import/export tariffs, etc.). States may not grant letters of marque - but Congress certainly can. States may not enter into foreign treaties - but Congress certainly can. And, states may not coin money - but Congress is explicitly given the right to; states may also not make anything but gold or silver legal tender within their states, but Congress has no such restriction in the section on its powers of coinage.And this is the only place in the entire Constitution that gold or silver coinage is mentioned. Again, that is only for the purpose of limiting the states’ rights to declare legal tender - no such limitation is placed on Congress. Hope That Helps. Thank You For Playing. Have A Nice Day.)
Regarding “following the principles of the Constitution”, as I pointed out, the Libertarian Party’s policies are far more minimalist than even the strictest reading of the Constitution. As noted twice already, they reject any form of legal tender - the privilege of declaring legal tender is granted in the Constitution. They reject any form of eminent domain - the power of eminent domain is explicitly acknowledged in the Constitution. They reject the military draft or national service - the power of the draft was assumed at the time of ratification of the Constitution, and has always been held to be valid. They reject the income tax - an amendment authorizing income tax was passed almost 100 years ago (or do they reject all the amendments, too? - does that include the Bill of Rights, or just those amendments they don’t happen to like?). The list could go on at length.
Apparently they support only the specific Constitutional principles they happen to approve of - not the ones, you know, written into the Constitution. Shocking.
And, thanks for the references to the standard roster of cranky eat-the-poor laissez-faire economists. (What - no Ayn Rand?) But if there are any misunderstandings here, take it up with the Libertarians. As already noted, again twice, my remarks consist almost entirely of a partial summary of their official party platform. It’s not my fault they’re crazy.
So, how many IP addresses were used in the last 5 comments, and if the answer is less than 2, can we just ban Fred again now, instead of later?
It’s sad when people allow themselves to be manipulated the way most Americans are today. The end result of course will be complete failure. Just remember our enemies have been paying attention to our political process and are learning how to use it. I believe fully that Barack Obama is brought to us by our enemies with the full intent of destroying our country. $1 billion gets the job done and trust me our enemies have $1 billion to spare.
The only way to protect ourselves is to go all the way back to our roots and depower our elected officials.
Wow, if only I had invested in tinfoil hats a few years ago, before the boom started…
The comments posted by “The Truth” and “Vincent” come from the same IP, so they do indeed appear to be sock puppets of one another. The others come form different IPs, and all appear to be from disparate wackos (or, worst case, one wacko clever enough to access from different networks, since a couple of the other IPs track to the same geographical area).
Disparate desperate despicable wackos? Thufferin’ thuccotash!!
Which is kinda sad; it’s not like IP proxies are really that difficult. I’ve used at least three different ones myself recently, and I’m sticking to one username.
I’ve got no particular interest in defending the bits and pieces of big-L libertarian theology, but I think, KTK, that you might be stating things in a slightly biased manner. I also dunno if it’s just my reading or if you did this by mistake, but the method of writing you picked makes it look as though the Constitution-party-affiliated AIP is similar in policy to big-L libertarians. They’re fairly economically libertarian, but socially heavily conservative.
Please do try and make it a large issue. I’m certain that, of all the policies out there, you really want to make the election about Obama’s AmeriCorps 2,000,000.0, complete semiautomatic gun bans, and abortion against a Republican ticket that will try its damnest to be about reasonably small government, lawful gun ownership, and against irresponsible sex. Those are the strong points of the Democratic movement, resonating with all modern voters.
That seems a particularly bad idea when the best arguments against the concept you can provide takes a post the average viewer would mark tl;dr.
I don’t know why any of this was so hard to understand; maybe you’re right - I didn’t present it properly. Or maybe it’s the libertarian thing - it tends to cause disputes. I dunno.
At any rate, I thought my point was fairly simple. McCain and Palin are each loosely, but significantly, linked to radical (in the literal sense) parties that are deeply opposed (in the “want to do away with” sense) to fundamental aspects of the basic system of American government. It’s more than just guilt-by-association, as with Obama’s pastor: each of them explicitly sought endorsement by people who had run for the highest executive offices as official candidates of parties dedicated to repudiating all or most of the functions of the US federal government, and who then retreated back to, and were officially embraced and nominated for office by, the “mainstream” party that McCain and Palin are now part of. Palin has herself given invited addresses at a secessionist party’s official convention, at least three times, including twice while serving as a governor elected from the Republican party, and her husband was a member for years..
The two parties in question are very different, but the common element is that both halves of the GOP ticket - now standing as candidates for President and Vice-President of the United States - are linked to, and have sought or received endorsement by candidates of, secessionist or quasi-anarchist parties. In addition, their political party has repeatedly made itself the home of former Libertarian Party candidates who hold that many of the ordinary and traditional functions of the US government are actually illegal, one of whom is still closely linked to that party while also an official GOP primary-race candidate for president.
My suggestion is not that the two parties’ platforms are alike in particular detail, but only in that they both largely repudiate the US government - and McCain and Palin have both flirted with those parties knowing they take those positions. In light of this, and their own constant harping on “smaller government”, I think we are entitled to ask about McCain and Palin’s commitment to the US government as a legitimate repository of authority, and their plans for using that authority if it is granted to them. I think we are entitled to ask why anyone who, at least implicitly, endorses or consorts with a political party whose basic platform is that the US government is illegitimate should be given top executive power within that government. I don’t care about the AIP or the Libertarian Party - they are radically opposed to our nation’s political system, but as political forces, they’re negligible. I do care that the President and VP candidates of the party currently in power seem to share the beliefs and goals of those parties - which makes them very much non-negligible - and I want answers about that.
My apologies, TG, I couldn’t actually stomach reading the posts I asked about and jumped to the conclusion that, like the first one, they were all Fred sock puppets. Silly me for forgetting that “liber”tarians are so knee-jerk.
Ron Paul follows the Constitution (which you obviously have never read) more closely than anyone else out there.
If you’ve read the Federalist papers, and the writings of Thomas Jefferson, you would know that the Founders were skeptical of government power, as am I.
Government is not your mommy! It says it wants to use your tax dollars to help the poor, but in reality it enriches the corporations and the military industrial complex. Government is Force! You think it’s bad if the government can’t borrow? How about our $9.5 TRILLION DOLLAR DEBT????
How about if instead of forcibly taking money from our pockets, the government can ask for donations, and anyone who wishes to donate to the Treasury for “ABC Government Program For the Children” can donate.
KTK, I’ll make it really simple for you. The government is like Ted Bundy. It’s actually worse because its powers of force and confiscation have killed millions of people in Iraq and around the world.
Do you want this evil powerful Leviathan to be responsible for helping the poor?
The Constitution was designed to limit the size and scope of the Federal government! People need to learn some history.
Nice little snide jab at “anti-government conspiracy nuts” there…
Some history for you, for those who don’t believe that governments stage false flag incidents (including terrorist attacks on their own buildings and people):
1. Most historians now believe that the Reichstag fire of 1933 was an inside job, done by the Nazis themselves and blamed on Van Der Lubbe.
2. The Gleiwitz Incident, in which Germany dressed up dead Polish soldiers at the German-Polish border and said they attacked a German radio tower (a false flag incident), was how Germany invaded Poland.
3. Mukden Incident - Japan blows up part of its own railroads and blames it on China. This serves as the pretext for their invasion of Manchuria.
4. Northwoods Document of 1962, declassified. In it, some Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed killing American citizens and blaming it on Cuba to start a war with Cuba. Thankfully (due to Kennedy) this never got implemented.
5. Gulf of Tonkin never happened.
Yeah, our Founders were idiots too right and our Constitution is a living document isn’t it, asshat? If you don’t want to live in a country whereas the Constitution is (at least supposed to be) the law of the land, move to China, they’ll be happy you love government so much.
Am I the only one that sees this piece as satire? It would be impossible for anyone to be that familiar with the libertarian platform and oppose it at the same time.