After the latest “let’s eat our own” moment in the Republican Party by South Carolina’s Jim DeMint I have a suggestion for the GOP. Pssst… it has to do with Ron Paul.
First, here are DeMint’s scathing words (from CNN):
“We have to be honest, and there’s a lot of blame to go around, but I have to mention George Bush, and I have to mention Ted Stevens, and I’m afraid I even have to mention John McCain,” he said.
DeMint offered a long list of complaints about McCain’s record in the Senate and on the campaign trail.
“McCain, who is proponent of campaign finance reform that weakened party organizations and basically put George Soros in the driver’s seat,” DeMint said. “His proposal for amnesty for illegals. His support of global warming, cap-and-trade programs that will put another burden on our economy. And of course, his embrace of the bailout right before the election was probably the nail in our coffin this last election. And he has been an opponent of drilling in ANWR, at a time when energy is so important. It really didn’t fit the label, but he was our package.”
Bush and Stevens, he said, had corrupted the party brand by expanding the size of government and engaging in wasteful government spending. Had Republicans not strayed from their core beliefs in recent years, DeMint argued, the election results might have been different.
“Americans do prefer a traditional conservative government,” he said. “They just did not believe Republicans were going to give it to them.”
DeMint said he would introduce a Senate resolution next week to boot Stevens out of the Republican caucus, and “force votes” on Senate seniority rules that have allowed certain members to hold onto power. However, DeMint twice confused Ted Stevens with Ted Kennedy, drawing chuckles from the audience of Republicans, who hold neither senator in particularly high regard.
“One of our principles is that power corrupts, and you need to disperse it,” DeMint said. “And if our own party allows ourselves to be destroyed by this idea, and are not willing to stand up, then we have to change everyone at the top.”
Senator DeMint, I agree and have a suggestion for you. Put Ron Paul at the top, or at the very least, in some kind of leadership role. Once he’s there, listen to the man, and follow his example. He has the power to lead the Republican Party out of these dark days.
Of course, this is yet another hopeless dream. You won’t do such a thing. You, nor your party peers, have the guts. At the very least you have a severe lack of smell. The answer is right under your nose within your own party, but some kind of neo-conservative misfiring synapse is blocking your nose from smelling liberty.
Seek a doctor for what ails you. Seek Dr. Ron Paul.
With the Republican Party in the process of choking to death on its own imperialistic big government vomit, I’m reminded of a true Ron Paul classic demonstrating yet again his penchant for delivering a blunt required message rather than the usual party line candy-coated message we get from his lawmaking peers. Ron Paul is an economic and political rainmaker.
When he rises to deliver a speech in the House of Representatives he knows his words will be delivered to an echo chamber, but he does it anyway. He does it for the cause of human liberty and we love him for it.
If there is anyone out there who can make the following happen, please do so:
Gather all Republican lawmakers and governors together.
Strap them in theater seats.
Play Ron Paul’s “We’ve Been Neo-Conned” speech from 2003 on the screen.
When the speech ends, start it over again.
Repeat number 4 until they all reject their evil ways and embrace the Constitution.
Lady Liberty is wielding her paddle and the GOP have been very bad children. With each THWACK the only response should be, “Thank you, may I have another.”
Someone is responsible, and it’s important that those of us who love liberty, and resent big-brother government, identify the philosophic supporters who have the most to say about the direction our country is going. If they’re wrong – and I believe they are – we need to show it, alert the American people, and offer a more positive approach to government. However, this depends on whether the American people desire to live in a free society and reject the dangerous notion that we need a strong central government to take care of us from the cradle to the grave. Do the American people really believe it’s the government’s responsibility to make us morally better and economically equal? Do we have a responsibility to police the world, while imposing our vision of good government on everyone else in the world with some form of utopian nation building? If not, and the enemies of liberty are exposed and rejected, then it behooves us to present an alternative philosophy that is morally superior and economically sound and provides a guide to world affairs to enhance peace and commerce.
It’s quite amusing (if not nauseating) to hear McCain and Palin calling Obama a socialist at every turn if you pay the slightest attention to the ideas McCain embraces. A nice little article at HighClearing.com successfully reams McCain for his hypocrisy:
The word “socialism” can mean many things to many people, anything from Western European style social welfare to state ownership of the means of production to the New Deal or the Great Society or a wide range of other usages. I’ll let those who know (or at least claim to know) more about the real meaning of the word have the debate over which usage is proper (mostly because I hate debates over whether somebody is using a politically-charged word correctly). Instead, I’ll engage the McCain rhetoric on its own terms.
McCain, just like Obama, believes that taxes should be levied for the purpose of funding social programs that redistribute income downwards. (We’ll leave aside, for the moment, the fact that both of them also believe that taxes should be levied for the purpose of funding a bloated military-industrial complex and other things that redistribute at least some of the income upward.) McCain and Obama may envision different forms and scopes for those programs, and those differences may or may not have profound consequences in practice. However, the McCain rhetoric is being employed to argue that just about any downward redistribution is a type of socialism. If it is (at least in McCain’s usage of the term) then McCain is a socialist. Maybe not as much of a socialist as Obama (we’ll leave aside welfare for the rich, for the moment) but a socialist nonetheless.
The Libertarian candidate for President in 2000 was Harry Browne. That year he released a campaign book with the title, “The Great Libertarian Offer“. The positive libertarian sentiment in that book was both educational and inspiring to me and many other liberty seeking individuals. There has been quite a bit of talk in the past year about the demise of the Republican party to the delight of loyal and liberal Democrats everywhere. This demise represents a great opportunity for libertarian ideas to either reinforce the Libertarian Party itself or modify the Republican Party’s neo-conservatism into libertarian conservatism.
I say opportunity because the outlook for liberty at this point in our country’s history is quite bleak. The popular political culture pendulum is swinging far to the left with Barack Obama’s pending victory. Following 9/11 Neo-conservative Right ideals were in vogue. The question remains what happens when the rebound occurs from the current move to the left? This is where libertarians can capitalize if the cards are played properly.
Over at AntiWar.com”, Pat Buchanan’s commentary on the looming budget crisis is, as usual, honest and direct. The bottom line is that the American Empire cannot be sustained, and just like the Roman Empire, it must eventually fall.
Uncle Sam’s Visa card is about to be stamped ‘Canceled.’ The budget
is going to have to go under the knife. But what gets cut? Social
Security and Medicare are surely exempt. Seniors have already taken a
huge hit in their 401(k)s. And as the Democrats are crafting another
$150 billion stimulus package for the working poor and middle class,
Medicaid and food stamps are untouchable. Interest on the debt cannot
be cut. It is going up. Will a Democratic Congress slash unemployment
benefits, welfare, education, student loans, veterans benefits — in a
recession? No way. Yet, that is almost the entire U.S. budget –
except for defense, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and foreign aid.
And this is where the ax will eventually fall. It is the American
Empire that is going to be liquidated.
You laughed at him. You made fun of him. You called him extreme, a gadfly, a kook, and many other trite terms of marginalization. His only crime was the truth in stark contrast to every calculated, vacuous platitude uttered by his Republican opponents. Now I can’t help but imagine Ron Paul sitting in his easy chair surrounded by gold and silver bullion smiling knowingly saying, “Who’s laughing now, bitches?!”
No, that isn’t Ron Paul’s style, as we learned from the debate where Paul whispered, “Make, fun buddy”, under his breath in reaction to yet another moronic insult emanating from somewhere between Mitt Romney’s sculpted sideburns. Ron Paul is a man deserving of integrity and respect at work in the sea of extreme buffoonery that is Washington DC.
Nothing illustrates such an assertion better than the last few weeks of having to listen to every pundit and politico tell us why we all had to fall in line behind a bailout bill that no one wanted to pass and no one was sure would work. But the sky was falling and the wolf was around the bend so pass it we must. America, our government didn’t listen to us. We have no representation anymore. The last vestige of capitalism is nearing death. We are on the road to economic slavery.
The US House Committee on Foreign Affairs chaired a meeting published as “Defeating al-Qaeda’s Air Force: Pakistan’s F-16 Program in the Fight Against Terrorism.” The Champion of the Constitution reports on what this meeting covered, what it really demonstrated, and how it connects with the dream of Ron Paul, Dwight Eisenhower, myself and who knows? perhaps even you.
As you can see for yourself at this house.gov page, Congress did indeed call this meeting entitled “Defeating Al-Qaeda’s Air Force: Pakistan’s F-16 Program in the Fight Against Terrorism.” While I suppose if someone taught the neocon clerk or sub-committee chairman Gary Ackerman (D-NY) proper punctuation the title could be arranged to reflect the meeting contents much better, the first thing I want to note is the international consternation this title caused and the general geopolitical situation. Then I will summarize the meeting from my point of view – I did listen to the entire two-hour proceeding, which you can watch here, and give you my unbiased (grin grin) conclusion.
The Pakistan Situation
The Times of India, the Press Trust of India and Pakistan’s PakTribune were all highly interested and yet confused by the title of the meeting. While the meeting is of fairly high relevance to both Pakistan and India, most of the American public is either ignorant or don’t-give-a-damn (yours truly and the Reader excepted . And I can see why, there are so many nations the US government does international arms contracts – Israel and most of the Middle East, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Pakistan, parts of Europe, ex-Soviet republics (like Georgia) and pretty much anywhere else people want to buy weapons to deter or kill others it is hard to keep track. Hey, everyone DOES know the United States of America is the world’s top international arms dealer by a long shot right?
The general geopolitical situation with Pakistan is that we are committing acts of war against this sovereign nation in what amounts to a just another undeclared war of terror. As I documented in “The Next American War of Terror in Pakistan Continues – Marriot Hotel Bombing Portends Blowback Event on American Soil“, the New York Times and Financial Times reported that Bush issued secret orders to start attacking Pakistan without governmental permission. However, in the same article is the vehement public stance of the Pakistani military’s army chief, Pervez Kiyani, which is to not allow foreign troops onto its soil and defend Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity “at all cost.” The Pakistanis have no choice if you understand this nation’s political situation which I tried to explain in my July article “Utter Chaos in Afghanistan and Pakistan as Barack Obama Sanctions Preemptive War”
Let’s start with the deadly soda, because we definitely all need to work together to proactively hunt down dangerous felons like this. Let me paint the picture. It’s an easy one. We’ve all had parents, at least two, anyway. And some of us have even cared for them when they got sick. And most of us have had a soda or two in our lives. So this should be pretty easy to picture. Natalie Walters, a lady who routinely takes her father to the Boise Veterans Affairs Medical Center for treatment, also decided to callously take advantage of her right to travel, and regularly visited the cafeteria. Her routine was to refill her mug with Diet Coke for anywhere from $1 to $1.50, depending on the cashier at the time and his or her ability to accurately type in the right codes and digits on a keyboard. Well, imagine her surprise on Aug. 20, when Walters filled her mug with Diet Coke, [and] the clerk charged $3.80.
“I told her that cannot be right and asked to talk to the manager,” Walters said.
The manager told Walters the price is correct.
Walters decided she didn’t want to pay that much and offered to return the soda, she said. But the manager told her there was no way to accept the returned soda and Walters had to pay. Walters refused, and she said she was angry by this point, and she poured the soda onto the counter.
The manager banned Walters from the cafeteria.
But, wait, there’s more! A LOT more! Officials realized their debt to the safety of the community, and felt morally compelled to go through every piece of cafeteria and hospital videotape, tracking her insurgent movements, tracing her back to her ill father; going through his medical records; and justifiably upsetting him by interrupting him at his own dental appointment to let him know that Big Brother requested his daughter’s presence.
While watching Neil Cavuto rip apart Bill O’Reilly on The O’Reilly Factor, my blood pressure rose a few points when I heard Bill O’Reilly call for the government to “watch over” banks and businesses to make sure they’re not preying on unsuspecting innocent people. He ranted that “it was wrong for those banks to lend to people who can’t pay it back” and my my blood pressure shot through the roof. While in chat with a friend, I ranted: (slightly edited to remove cursing)
(12:32:26 AM) LibertarianMikeM:I get so (bleep)ing pissed off when liberals (and apparently also neocons like Bill O’Reilly) say that “it was wrong for those banks to lend to people who can’t pay it back” when in fact it was Clinton Administration (thanks to the Community Redevelopment Act in the late 60′s) who FORCED the banks to give out loans to “underprivileged” buyers. So the banks did what they were told even though it was a bad idea, and then when things went wrong, they blame the banks. WTF? (12:32:45 AM) LibertarianMikeM:Here in Baltimore, the exact thing is happening. Wells Fargo was coerced (by threat of being called racists) to make loans available to many people who didn’t have the means to pay back to the loans. Then the housing bubble burst, and people started defaulting on their loans causing this huge mess, and now the city is suing Wells Fargo for being “greedy” and handing out these loans. (12:32:58 AM) LibertarianMikeM:What a (bleeped) up situation!
While I’m sure there were some cases of overly-zealous loan officers taking advantage of the “good times” at the height of the bubble, it cannot be denied that many banks were coerced into handing out questionable loans against their will. They were forced by legislators to go against their own policies in the name of “social progress”. Then when all the foreclosures came, nobody seemed to remember it was the government’s intervention that cause the problem in the first place. It’s oh so convenient to blame the “greedy” bankers.
But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street’s most revered institutions.
Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either that or face stiff government penalties.
The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but “predatory.”
Yes, the market was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the secondary market for subprimes, vis-a-vis mortgaged-backed securities traded on Wall Street. But the seed was planted in the ’90s by Clinton and his social engineers. They were the political catalyst behind this slow-motion financial train wreck.
Nevertheless, the media constantly repeats the lies and the drooling masses suck it all up. Then all these unconstitutional bailouts, and we’re way over our heads in debt. There’s no doubt in my mind that the only possible end result of all of this is economic collapse.
Liberty Maven
“. The positive libertarian sentiment in that book was both educational and inspiring to me and many other liberty seeking individuals. There has been quite a bit of talk in the past year about 
. And I can see why, there are so many nations the US government does international arms contracts – Israel and most of the Middle East, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Pakistan, parts of Europe, ex-Soviet republics (like Georgia) and pretty much anywhere else people want to buy weapons to deter or kill others it is hard to keep track. Hey, everyone DOES know the United States of America is the world’s top international arms dealer by a long shot right?
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