Why not Ron Paul?

Does America have a future? At this point, there is nothing more important than pulling our troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and everywhere. Unfortunately we don't have a lot of choices here. You want Rudy Giuliani, who dressed up as a woman and marched in the gay pride parade, and who has been profiteering off 9/11, or you want Hillary, who strongly supported the genocidal sanctions against Iraqi children while she was First Lady? Both of them have promised AIPAC to bomb Iran. Also, Obama is influenced by AIPAC. Cynthia McKinney might run as a Green, but her chances of winning are slim because the Green Party has no money and has very few active volunteers. Ron Paul actually has a fighting chance to stop the wars because he has a strong base of support among the Young Republicans who are very enthusiastic, friendly, and remarkably sane. He wins every debate because he makes a "self-interest" argument for ending the wars which works with Americans. Even Jay Leno respected him.

Ron Paul is a Constitutionalist and a non-interventionist. Everybody disagrees with him about something. The leftists hate him because he's anti-abortion. But again, we have to put aside our personal opinions and stop the war immediately or lose our democracy. We only have one chance. The only thing that can unite Americans is the Constitution (as flawed a document as it is - but it's better than the lawlessness of Bush). Not a single Jewish organization supports Ron Paul for president.

Ron Paul approaches the Constitution almost like an Islamic jurist. He did not say he didn't think universal health care might be a good idea. He said it's not in the Constitution that the US government has the role of providing health care. If you want to do it, then you have to amend the Constitution. If you allow Congress to do things that the Constitution doesn't allow, then we no longer have a constitutional democracy. They can declare war without an act of Congress, they can cancel your currency value, they can put you in jail without evidence, etc.

I have never come across him saying anything racist. He did say, "I certainly join my colleagues in urging Americans to celebrate the progress this country has made in race relations. However, contrary to the claims of the supporters of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the sponsors of H.Res. 676, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not improve race relations or enhance freedom. Instead, the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty."

That is certainly true. Boston's bizarre busing system destroyed neighborhoods which had closely knit communities that worked together on a local level to organize social programs like Boy Scouts, now we have a welfare state where you have to enter a lottery to get your kids into a decent school, and they waste a lot of gas busing kids across town when there is a school walking distance from their house. Nobody attends Boy Scouts anymore, and neighborhood crime is rampant. The situation for blacks and whites has worsened since the 1960s because our economy is going down the drain due to our foreign policy. He has a rational argument for his views.

The current drug policy in the United States is completely irrational. The CIA invades a country, forces them to grow drugs, then the CIA brings it into the country and sells it to the police, who then sell it to the drug mafia, and then we spend billions of dollars putting people in jail for non-violent crimes. By decriminalizing drugs, and dismantling the CIA, as Paul proposes, you will have far fewer social problems created by criminal mafias and gangs because something like cocaine would no longer be profitable. And our tax money would no longer pay for these drug wars. That was also the approach in the early days of Islam. Because there was nothing specifically in the Quran outlawing any plant, there was no criminal offense for hashish, qat, or opium, and often they were prescribed by doctors as medicines. Avincenna talks a lot about the medieval Muslim uses of what we now consider to be "illegal" drugs. The drug wars have cost US taxpayers billions of dollars and have not improved anything. So it's useful to look at how America used to deal with these issues. Did you know that George Washington grew marijuana on the White House lawn? Farmers used to pay their taxes with hemp. The laws changed in the 1940s due to pressure from special interest groups. The herbicide (genocide of plant species) led to great dust storms, the ruination of farmers, and the Great Depression.

I am aware of "states rights" connection with the American history of slavery, however in this day and age, states rights gives you protection from Bush. And it also protects people. Because as long as, for example, gay marriage is a states issue, then every state can decide if it does or doesn't want to have gay marriage. If you gave the Feds the authority to make that decision, a special interest lobby could convince the federal government to legalize or outlaw gay marriage for the entire country. So there are pros and cons to Ron Paul's positions.

Affirmative action has not succeeded in addressing inequalities in society. What most average black and white people want is more money to live. Ron Paul would decrease the individual burden on average people to sustain an empire with their taxes and we'd have less poverty. Dr. Paul is a moral person so I'm sure that minorities could work with him to end poverty in ways that conform to the Constitution. In Roxbury here, the black community has been having a lot of meetings to figure out what to do because even though they succeeded in getting federal funding for all kinds of stuff, the crime in the neighborhood is just getting worse and worse. So, the socialist approach isn't working and Ron Paul's approach - locally based government, is what the black community is doing anyway, out of necessity. The #1 concern for black youth right now is not wanting to get killed in Iraq. Paul has a young black following.

Bottom line, we have to stop the war. Ron Paul is approachable. He is neither a criminal nor insane. As long as you can make an argument from the point of view of the Constitution you can get by. Sort of like when you are dealing with the Taliban, you have to make your argument based on Quran/Hadith and they will listen.

About immigration, I think it's a non-issue for those who immigrated here legally. I suspect that the anti-Mexican rhetoric is playing to popular sentiment, yet with his "small government" proposal, we'd have less of a police state working night and day to bust into the homes of the Mexicans, so they still might be better off with Ron Paul, and also, fewer Mexicans would join the US military and kill Muslims in order to get a green card, if there was no war. Ideally, the US should have a less predatorial relationship with Mexico so that their country would not be so impoverished that their young people would all have to leave home.

Some people feel that they don't want to support Ron Paul because they disagree with this or that. However, what we have right now is Bush and a government that has descended into lawlessness. In fact, the US is bankrupt. So either we give in to complete tyranny, or we stick to the Constitution. I don't see any other choice. There is no other candidate who has indicated willingness to uphold the Constitution when it comes to declaring wars, detainee rights, and our personal freedoms.


To learn more about Ron Paul, watch this CNN clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K0uwNjXooI&NR=1
To help Ron Paul, visit teaparty07.com - ronpaul.meetup.com - ronpaul2008.com