posted January 6, 2008
I would like to encourage all Chattanoogan.com readers to consider
supporting Congressman Ron Paul in the upcoming presidential primary.
While the mainstream media have done their best to ignore him, Ron Paul
raised almost $20 million in the fourth quarter of 2007 – more than any other Republican candidate.
Why is Ron Paul worthy of your vote? Here are a few highlights of his
experience during 10 terms in Congress. Ron Paul:
Never voted for a tax increase, an unbalanced budget, or to raise
congressional pay. He even declines to participate in the lucrative
Supports Second Amendment rights, a free and unregulated Internet, and a
return to sound monetary policies that will bolster our sagging economy
and strengthen the dollar.
Opposes intrusive government regulations, domestic spying, and any form of a national ID card.
Unlike many of the other candidates who are lawyers, Dr. Ron Paul is an
obstetrician who has delivered over 4,000 babies. He is pro-life and
pro-family; Ron has been married to the same woman for over 50 years and
they have five children and 18 grandchildren.
Ron Paul's reputation for honesty and integrity is unmatched in American
politics. Even one of his current opponents, Senator John McCain, once
told a Ron Paul staffer: "You're working for the most honest man in
Congress."
The primary election is Feb. 5 – less than a month away. Early voting runs from Jan. 16-31.
Joe Dumas
Signal Mountain
joe@joedumas.com
* * *
I appreciate Mr. Dumas' support for Mr. Paul and that he is an honest man. Being truthful is a major advantage for a politician and I have heard enough of him to know he believes in his positions. He is also very good at explaining them under pressure.
The problem I have with Mr. Paul is those positions, especially concerning fighting terrorists. He stated in the debate on Saturday that America has created terrorists by being in Arab countries and by parts of our culture expanding into other parts of the world. We are to blame for killers attacking us on 9/11 and the other attacks by them. This is a dangerous view of our world and our part in the world. We can do nothing right because our very living causing terrorist to come and kill us. It is like a beautiful girl is the cause of rapists or the rich man in his house is the cause of the thief who invades his home and kills him.
Our culture and technology has saved this world and made it a better place to live all over the world. I could give many examples such as the drugs we develop, the money we give to help in disasters, the protection we provide to countries in Europe, Korea, and many other places, the freedom we have secured to millions just in the past 60 years. Yes, there are negatives to our culture but we do not force women to live as slaves, to keep the people in Arab countries living mostly in dictatorships, little education for their children especially girls, and to turn away from any type of freedom of expression against the rulers. We also do not force people to want our type of freedom, but for some reason they keep coming here.
We are not the cause of butchers who cut off heads or put bombs on children to blow up other children. We do not teach children to hate everyone not like themselves and to believe they are going to heaven by killing yours and my family.
This is a terrible way of viewing ones own country and it is more dangerous today than any time in our history. The terrorist can kill thousands of us with just a few of them. We cannot sit back behind our open borders and wait for them to come to us or respond only when they attack. We have not been attacked since 9/11 because we attacked them after 9/11 and today. Also, Iraq is part of this war as we have killed may Al Qaeda and we continue to do so today. We do have our government watching us and them more and that is scary for freedom. But freedom does not exist without fighting for it. Yes, we have to continue to watch our government, but any Republican who views the world like the national Democrats is not a Republican we should support.
I am glad that Mr. Dumas has found someone he supports,but he is not a man who looks at the world realistically and I believe he should be rejected. There are other issues I would disagree with Mr. Paul, but this is the most important issue. He, like the Democrats, would like to talk to the killers and understand why they try to kill us. Then they will ask the FBI to arrest them even though they do not have legal evidence to arrest them. We also don't know when they may attack because he has disbanded the Patriot Act and he has brought the soldiers home so they are able to grow stronger without being attacked. They hate our freedom and they hate that freedom means change to their society. There may be a few other elements to their hate, but it isn't much more complicated than that.
We need a leader who will take the fight across the world and not give up. We don't need someone to surrender, but to find new ways to continue the fight because you can believe they are developing new ways to attack us.
Will this ever end? I don't know but tax policy, health policy, wage policy, marriage policy, abortion, and climate warming are meaningless if we do not exist as a country.
If millions of us are killed, then all those issues are just so small. We cannot forget 9/11 no matter how many out there want to do so.
Again I want to thank those military personnel, law enforcement, and their families for enduring this fight.
Bruce Caldwell
Signal Mountain
sarmatt25@comcast.net
* * *
After reading Mr. Cadwell's response to Mr. Dumas, I had to reply. Mr. Caldwell has grossly misinterpreted Paul's foreign policy stance. To even compare it to a beautiful woman at fault for being raped is ludicrous. Dr. Paul has never said that that our culture had anything to do with the attacks on 9/11, nor has he blamed the American people. He has stated however, that our presence in Arab nations over the last 60 years is partly to blame. We have military bases already on the Arab peninsula and are building 14 more in Iraq that the Iraqi government is opposed to. Osama Bin Laden himself has said that our presence in Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations was the reason for the attacks on 9/11. A thirty second Youtube.com search can lead you to video of him stating this. The former head of the CIA's Bin Laden Unit, Mike Scheuer, has backed Paul on his stance. I think Mr. Scheuer may be more informed on the matter then Mr. Caldwell. Mr. Scheuer even spoke at a press conference Paul lead after the debate Mr. Caldwell is speaking of, where Dr. Paul suggested that former mayor Giuliani read the 9/11 Commission Report. Seems as though Mr.Caldwell might benefit from reading such a book instead of getting his information from Fox News or Jihad Watch. I'd also like to add that Ron Paul has received more donations from the military then any other candidate on either side. Clearly his position resonates with our fighting men and women. They deserve to come home.
"Cliches about supporting the troops are designed to distract from failed policies, policies promoted by powerful special interests that benefit from war, anything to steer the discussion away from the real reasons the war in Iraq will not end anytime soon." - Ron Paul
"The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people." - Ron Paul
Briann Lambert
briann.lambert@gmail.com
East Ridge
* * *
Bruce Caldwell's response to Joe Dumas was typical of so-called Republicans and right out of the playbook. People posing as conservatives, criticizing those that really are. His myopic view of politics dominated by one all-encompassing issue shows just how big a threat Ron Paul is to a left-lurching Republican Party. The problem the Republicans have is not that Ron Paul is to far left on one issue (Iraq). The problem remains that he is too conservative on other issues.
The latest Gallup poll of Republicans shows that although 72% still think Iraq was a good idea, 28% think it was a mistake. The Republicans who think it was a mistake are a significant increase from last year. If that 28% are one-issue voters like Mr. Caldwell, the GOP might as well stay home this election. Instead of insulting them, they should be cultivating them and listening.
Ron Paul has outed many psuedo-conservatives by making them take a stand on vital issues. Trying to paint libertarians and true conservatives as being "unrealistic" is not going to wash anymore. You are just helping them get more and more Republican conservatives. If you want "unrealistic" just look at someone trying to impose Western-style democracy on a culture with no history of this and with a religion of fanaticism.
Tim Price
jat-55@msn.com
* * *
There are many things in Mr. Caldwell's response that are said out of emotion and cannot be said truthfully about Ron Paul's campaign. However, the one thing that sticks out the most is "He, like the Democrats, would like to talk to the killers and understand why they try to kill us."
Comparing Ron Paul to a Democrat is wrong. It's one thing to call him an isolationist (which is also untrue), but to compare to a Democrat is nothing short of irrational. He doesn't want "to talk to the killers and understand why they try to kill us". He's read the 9/11 reports. He has paid attention to Middle Eastern politics and has taken note of historical responses. He's not interested in talking to them to find out how society has wronged them. He knows why they attacked us and it isn't because we are rich and free, it's because we were over there first. We sold the defense weapons to Iraq in the 80s. We've been meddling over there for over 20 years. It's time we stopped.
Ron Paul is not into nation building. He's a conservative, a true conservative. He's unlike any Democrat anyone will ever come across.
Carrie Cardona
Lookout Mountain, Ga.
* * *
Bruce Caldwell has revealed a very interesting point about the way Ron Paul's message has been aggressively twisted by competing GOP candidates, particularly Rudolph Giuliani, and by some members of the media, especially at Fox News. He writes that Ron Paul blaming the U.S. for 9/11 is equivalent to blaming a beautiful woman who is raped, or a rich man who gets robbed and killed. He says it is a dangerous view to believe that our merely living causes terrorism. He is absolutely correct in that sentiment, and also absolutely wrong to think that Ron Paul holds this position.
Ron Paul subscribes to a well-published theory called "blowback." Essentially, our actions overseas can have unintended consequences that can return to haunt us and our interests. This is both straightforward and logical.
If we take any action in the internal affairs of another country we must encroach on that country's sovereignty. This is not always a terrible thing, but it is a thing which Ron Paul believes, as do I, that the United States does far too lightly, as if a country's right to run its own affairs is some little thing that we should be allowed to disregard any time it inconveniences us.
I invite Mr. Caldwell to consider how we would be upset if, say, Rossville became the new North American base of operations for the Chinese military. Rightly or not, we would see it as an attack on our sovereignty. How much more would we be upset if another country's military overthrew our government and installed one it considered more agreeable. It takes no great leap of deduction to see that when we take these sorts of actions around the world we will inevitably create some enemies.
What I consider preposterous every time I hear a politician say it, and which Mr. Caldwell himself parrots even after his analogies, is to think that the terrorists hate us because we are free. Which makes more sense, to think that we incite hatred because we are free, or because we meddle in the affairs of other countries? I could try to come up with a better metaphor than the ones he used, but what would be the point? To think that our freedom is somehow to blame for terrorism is about as sensible as blaming a beautiful woman for being raped, or a rich man for being killed. In fact, it is less sensible, as even in those two analogies, you can at least picture how the crime might be motivated by the unfortunate victims. With the ridiculous viewpoint that freedom incites terrorism, that motivation cannot even be imagined.
I support Ron Paul because he is the first serious candidate I've heard who thinks we ought to mind our own business. Let's quit spending trillions of increasingly devalued dollars on war and on trying to maintain our Cold War empire, and instead start simply talking to other countries, trading with them, and leaving them to run their own affairs. Dr. Paul isn't saying we should simply quit sharing our culture with the world, or that we should cease to involve ourselves on the world stage, just that we shouldn't use our military to impose our will or try to tell other countries how to run their own affairs. The world isn't going to fall apart because we stopped trying to run it, and the terrorists won't keep finding a steady supply of eager recruits simply because we're free.
Mason Wolf,
New Market, Va.
* * *
I think Ron Paul is an honest man and has a vision for America, albeit a nineteenth century vision: America protected by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, a standing army to rival that of Norway, a return to the Gold Standard (boy, now there's a big vote-getter), a woman brandishing a parasol, a boy chasing a barrel hoop with a stick and a conductor on the steam train calling "All aboard! Next stop...Willoughby!"
I'm kidding, of course. My observation about Dr. Paul's candidacy is something I saw here at home long before the campaign went into the caucus and primary phase: he apparently doesn't care at all what unprincipled fanatics serve as the tip of his spear, and as is evidenced in the caucus and primary phase, he has zero control over them.
When I was a young guy, a friend of a friend had a political flirtation with a man named Lyndon LaRouche , then the Chairman of the National Caucus of Labor Committees. I attended a meeting, was photographed by two total strangers. Later he would go on to run for Prez under different banners. If you remember him for nothing else, he accused the Queen of England of being a world-class drug dealer....yes, that Lyndon LaRouche.
What LaRouche had then and Ron Paul has now is this quality of appearing to the true believer as whatever they want to see him as. Like the Great Oz. To me he (Paul) is a very bright but flinty old patriot (strictly interpreted) with some good views and some highly idiosyncratic ones. If you interview a few of these true believers, asking them the identical question, you're going to find out that one loves Ron Paul because he is to the left of the issue, and the next guy will tell you he loves him because he falls down to the right of it. That's not unusual, what is is that they love the man. This is a sign of fanaticism. If you drive around town you'll see the odd Ron Paul Revolution campaign sign, the one where the letters "e-v-o-l" are sort of transposed backwards into "love?" All the times I've watched and listened to Ron Paul speak, I've never made that "love" connection. What's that about? Maybe the person who coined it is a sixty-something former hippie wanting his last dance with his interpretation of Woodstock Nation?
A couple generations ago a brilliant man named Eric Hoffer wrote a deep, deep book, "The True Believer." As he was a New York City longshoreman, not a degreed academic, he phrased things in insightful yet very understandable terms, and I highly recommend Hoffer to anyone who wants to understand what motivates the fanatic mind. Read this and dwell on it a little and you'll have a good foundation what to watch for the rest of your life.
My local experience with Paulies is best described by an exchange I had with someone who contacted me personally months ago, in response to something I said on this forum he didn't like (I always post my email address so dissenters can bless me out). I was startled that someone who felt as he does would even consider that Ron Paul could be a Republican. As I recall, he took his nine-year-old child along to heckle George Bush during his Chattanooga visit last February, and as gravy got to bless-out a Pro-Lifer who came out to call attention to her beliefs (in front of his nine-year-old child). When I asked him if he would support another Republican candidate, should Ron Paul's candidacy fail, the response was something akin to "No Way!".....I've really, really cleaned that up. I still have all the old emails, and out of respect to the nine-year-old hope miraculously grows up without being warped, no names mentioned, but you have only to scroll up.
I'm very uncomfortable that someone so militant could be calling himself a Republican....not Ron Paul, personally, but his brownshirts... I expect militancy from far-left Democrats, not Republicans, not any kind of Republicans. We've got the Ahnold Republicans out west and in the northeast, and what they think is always their right to choose, and I don't see any other degree of Republicans wanting their heads. If Sen. McCain, or Rudy ultimately becomes the standard-bearer in this campaign, or Huckabee, I'll hold my nose and fill in the space and hope for the best. But Paulies are a breed-apart. In the last several days in New Hampshire they have snowballed and thrown other objects at any media people they perceive as threats. They throw more F-bombs than a Bush supporter to Air America receives. They act like drunken football fans who've been tailgating for six hours, then go on to shower the visiting team with cups, sometimes filled with stuff we don't want to think about.
This is why I worry about Ron Paul being taken seriously. He's got $20,000,000 in the bank and can campaign indefinitely, or start a third party campaign anytime with it. If that's his end-game, then so be it, but don't call yourself a Republican, Dr. Ron. The Republican Party didn't accept David Duke, and most of us wouldn't vote for you. You can't control the worst of your own, so what possible appeal could you have to a wider audience?
I hope all you people considering Ron Paul as a serious candidate will consider this.
Bring on the insults. As before.....if this is all Ron Paul supporters have to offer. Yikes.
John R. Smickle
Chattanooga
jsbottomfeeder@juno.com
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