Ron Paul raises $3.5 million in 1 day

[Japher]

The problem with Ron Paul is the name. He sounds like a cross-dressing porn star.

[Arrian]

This is from Wikipedia, so apologies if there is something incorrect in here...

Paul has been called conservative, Constitutionalist, and libertarian. He advocates non-interventionist foreign policy, having voted against the Iraq War Resolution, but in favor of force against terrorists in Afghanistan. He favors withdrawal from NATO and the United Nations; supports free trade, rejecting NAFTA as "managed trade"; and opposes amnesty and birthright citizenship for illegal aliens. Having pledged never to raise taxes, he has long advocated ending the federal income tax and reducing government spending by abolishing most federal agencies; he favors hard money and opposes the Federal Reserve. He also opposes the Patriot Act, the federal War on Drugs, and gun control. Paul is strongly pro-life, advocates the overturn of Roe v. Wade, and affirms states' rights to determine the legality of abortion

That, to me, IS a libertarian whacknut. Sorry.

Specifically:

Withdrawl from NATO & UN.

ending the federal income tax and reducing government spending by abolishing most federal agencies; he favors hard money and opposes the Federal Reserve.

I also disagree with him on some other things that I wouldn't characterize as bat**** crazy:

gun control
strongly pro-life

There are other things I'm unsure about (his concept of free trade).

-Arrian

[RGBVideo]

Specifically:

Withdrawl from NATO & UN.

ending the federal income tax and reducing government spending by abolishing most federal agencies; he favors hard money and opposes the Federal Reserve.

I also disagree with him on some other things that I wouldn't characterize as bat**** crazy:

gun control
strongly pro-life

There are other things I'm unsure about (his concept of free trade).

I am glad that you separated what you specifically considered to be crazy. Now if you have the time, can we analyze the bat****-crazyness of each one of those specifics with a simple question: Why?

[Arrian]

1. The UN benifits the United States. Withdrawl from it is shooting ourselves in the foot. That's nutty. Just because the current administration thinks diplomacy is yelling loudly at furriners in English doesn't mean that we should take our ball and go home. Again, this is self-destructive.

2. See #1.

3. Ending the income tax strikes me as insane, because even if he succeeds in cutting spending quite a bit (which is a big if, considering the President doesn't control that), there is going to be a shortfall that must be made up via other revenue streams (read: taxes). So, which ones? If the answer is "sales tax" I think it's nutty because that makes the tax system fundamentally regressive, and will allow the rich to get even richer. Yay!

Hard money... we're talking about the gold standard here, no? Considering that our current economic system is largely dependant on credit, going back to the gold standard and abolishing the Fed would be catastrophic. Ergo, bat**** crazy.

-Arrian

[Imran Siddiqui]

I consider any politician who advocates getting rid of the income tax as bat**** crazy. Yeah, yeah, I know, they want some utopian government that consists of only a handful of agencies and doesn't have that many people, but they need to join the 20th Century.

[Arrian]

By the way, I agree that our political system is designed to make this guy look even whackier than he is. The "debates" are a joke.

I've voted Libertarian before. But I stand by my positions above - he *is* whacky. Further, Rufus' response to the OP was great. It can be done with just about any candidate's talking points, of course.

-Arrian

[RGBVideo]

1. The UN benifits the United States. Withdrawl from it is shooting ourselves in the foot. That's nutty. Just because the current administration thinks diplomacy is yelling loudly at furriners in English doesn't mean that we should take our ball and go home. Again, this is self-destructive.

2. See #1.

...how exactly do they benefit the US?

NATO was designed to be a defensive alliance of democracies against the Soviet Union in the cold war, led by the United States. It was designed to fight a large conventional war against a large, conventional army opponent. All of it's army standards, it's organization, and it's articles were designed to fit the Soviet Union. If there is a threat (whether it be "islamofascism" or something else) against democratic nations bordering the Northern Atlantic, then start up a broad defensive alliance targeted against that new threat. As it works now, NATO is a massively inefficient and expensive organisation defending against a threat which doesn't even exist. The cold war is over, there is no need to keep a separate standing army of Americans in Germany.

UN doesn't get anything done. It makes pompous declarations about which nobody cares in the real world. Due to the way it's set up, it's controlled by a zillion small countries with small amounts of population. It has massive budgets of different organisations which mostly spend their money on keeping their bureaucrats on it's payroll. I know the word "United Nations" instantly triggers respect to many because of it's historical status as the diplomatic arena of the world during the cold war, but now it's just another relic. UNSC is an useful negotiating table of major powers of the world because it has permanent ambassadors which can be all called to their common forum within a short notice, but it could easily be re-set into a new organisation which wouldn't have a dozen sub-organisations with thousands of employees. I can easily understand why someone could suggest a withdrawal from the UN.

[Arrian]

The UN is not controlled by the little countries. It is controlled by the elite (original) club of nuclear powers, of which the USA is one.

The UN, at least at times, provides a forum for the smaller countries, with the powerful countries around at least pretending to listen. Those powerful countries can prevent anything they REALLY don't like from happening by vetoing.

As for NATO - ok, I agree that the threat it was designed to counter is gone, or at least (mostly, beware the LORD GOD!) dormant at the moment. But having a large alliance of (mostly) like-minded nations with most of the world's military power, with us at the head, is bad for us how?

-Arrian

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Arrian
2. See #1.

Re NATO: Where's our glorious allies help in Afghanistan? The burden there is being shouldered by a grand total of 3 countries out of the entire alliance. Given the invoking of the self-defense portion of the treaty after 9/11, I would expect more help if only to justify its continued existance.

is bad for us how?

When it refuses to carry its weight.

[Arrian]

The alliance might have worked a little bit better after 9/11 if our President and those in his administration had the slighest bit of diplomatic ability. The current composition of the forces in Afganistan isn't all on them, but they've had something to do with it.

-Arrian

[DinoDoc]

What does Iraq (Where the vast majority of them have no troops) have to do with the Alliance refusing to fill the commitments they promised to or placing so many conditions on the use of their troops as to keep them out of combat with the enemy?

[RGBVideo]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
I consider any politician who advocates getting rid of the income tax as bat**** crazy. Yeah, yeah, I know, they want some utopian government that consists of only a handful of agencies and doesn't have that many people, but they need to join the 20th Century.

3. Ending the income tax strikes me as insane, because even if he succeeds in cutting spending quite a bit (which is a big if, considering the President doesn't control that), there is going to be a shortfall that must be made up via other revenue streams (read: taxes).

See, this is why I asked the question "Why?". I get to post a video


The figure is wrong, btw. Income tax forms 42% of the US federal budget income, 9 percentage points higher that the the video says.

Hard money... we're talking about the gold standard here, no? Considering that our current economic system is largely dependant on credit, going back to the gold standard and abolishing the Fed would be catastrophic. Ergo, bat**** crazy.

Credit existed and will exist even with a gold standard. Abolishing gold standard was largely a question of US government having to default because of loan-based growth (constant spending by just printing more dollars without having gold to back them up) in the 1960s. Gold standard would just mean that there'd be deflation whenever there'd be economic growth. It would have broad implications as there'd be no pressure to invest because cash would retain it's value, but it would not be catastrophic.

Now I'm going to probably surprise you, Arrian. If I were you, I wouldn't vote for Ron Paul. I don't think he could get anything done but to veto spending with the current people you have in Congress and I also don't think that he's realistic enough. There's a better candidate who also has a chance to win. So no, my point is not that OMG RON PAUL ROXXORS VOTE FOR HIM DUMB YANQEES, but it's that when a charicature of a candidate is formed, a lot of people just eat it up without questioning whether any of the suggestions of the candidate are actually valid. Out of UN? Of course it's insane!... never mind what the UN actually does or how inefficient it has become as of late, never mind considering what would happen if a founding nation of UN would quit it. Image is the main thing, not rationality. Now, this is dangerous. It's dangerous because an increasingly small elite gets to decide what opinions are valid and what are bat**** insane, and the population just eats it up. Over time, the result is that even a lessening portion of population will get it's interests served by the functioning government, which will result in an ever increased voting apathy.

[RGBVideo]

Originally posted by Arrian
It is controlled by the elite (original) club of nuclear powers, of which the USA is one. The UN, at least at times, provides a forum for the smaller countries, with the powerful countries around at least pretending to listen. Those powerful countries can prevent anything they REALLY don't like from happening by vetoing.

No. This is UN security council, UNSC. In general assembly, one nation has one vote. This means that you will see interesting situations such as Libya heading the UN commission of Human Rights.

I shouldn't be surprised that you don't know how exactly the UN works, because I presume that you won't get taught about it in your standard school curricula.

[Arrian]

Where is the power (such as it is)? The UNSC. The General Assembly has very little. Do you assert otherwise?

I shouldn't be surprised that you don't know how exactly the UN works, because I presume that you won't get taught about it in your standard school curricula

*restrains self*

I don't understand how the UN works, huh? Because I disagree with your version? The UNSC holds the power. The general assembly is mostly for show.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Sorry, can't watch a video here at work.

Income tax forms 42% of the US federal budget income

A very large percentage. Right...

This makes abolishing it (and replacing it with ??) good how?

As I am not an economist, I don't really know what the full impact of going back to the gold standard would be. I'm not sure you do either, though.

-Arrian