The government is entitled to deal/not deal with anyone it wants. It's when they start restricting the actions of private businesses, as with Iran, Cuba etc, that I get annoyed. Aside from what they're entitled to do, there's also the question of what they should do, which in my opinion that is: trade with everyone, interfere politically with no one.
If only trade and politics were completely separate issues. If only!
edit: Basically you don't want the government to do
anything about Sudanese crisis. I'd like to ask you why you are so dense and cold and hate other people and seem completely impervious to human suffering, but I won't. I'd like to ask you what you would do, just smile and say "TRADE SOLVES ALL THESE PROBLEMS WITH OTHER GOVERNMENTS MURDERING PEOPLE, TRADE AND INACTION THAT IS", but I won't. I'd like to ask you why the **** do you think "do nothing and hope the problem goes away" is a good way to deal with a crisis that arguably borders on genocide, but I won't.
Instead I am only going to ask you, what good is a free market, if it cannot even guard for morality, like Some People say it would.
edit: Oh dear, this is a neverending road I have taken! Said bill only said that "government should not use it's funds to deal with companies that do bussiness in Sudan". Mother of God, how can anyone defend this?
TAXPAYER MONEY MUST GO TO SUPPORT COMPANIES THAT ARE COMPLICIT IN GENOCIDE BECAUSE RON PAUL
I would also argue that if your aim is to end tyranny, the best solution is trade and development. The most repressive countries are also the poorest and vice versa. The quickest root to democracy, civil society and all that good stuff is simply wealth. It is very hard for any sort of freedom or peace to blossom from poverty and the close-mindedness than comes with it. That's the best way to change the behaviour of governments who you may consider to be bad.
Such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, China (getting better) and Russia (getting worse)? That's not even mentioning the older dictatories of East Asia, which usually combined repressive - at least to some extent, but for a libertarian it would be too much anyways - government with wildly successful economics - South Korea, Taiwan for example. Or Chile, the country where the GDP skyrocketed after Pinochet was installed, but where inequalities grew and opposition was hunted down?
So why focus on the gold standard? He's also the only fiscal conservative in either party, because no one opposes the $500b/year military spending and other programs. The GOP has long since abandonded even the pretence of fiscal conservativism, which is exactly what the US needs if it hopes to buy itself out from the pocket of China, the UAE, Japan and others.
I don't know, ask your precious Ron Paul - he's the one harping about it! You know, he brought up the entire gold standard thing. Without him, no one would even discuss it. It's not my fault that he talks about it.
The Constitution doesn't magically stop applying at the state level. And since the Constitution doesn't mention modern specificities such as abortion, gay marriage and a million other things, those fall to individual states. But basic rights can not be infringed. Since people take a divergent view of whether, say, gay marriage constitutes a basic right, is it not better to decide locally (like I said, the county/city level would be even more preferable) than to guarantee pissing off 50% of the population?
The Supreme Court has ruled that abortion is a basic right. The Supreme court is the highest authority in constitutional matters. If USSC decides that abortion, for example, is a constitutional right, then it is - until Congress decides to amend the constitution, to one way or another. So that's about abortion issue. Although considered by many as a weird revere artifact, the Constitution is alive and constantly changing, because it has a built in method for both amending and correcting.
You are pretty much arguing for majoritarianism, but in the same sentence harp on about basic rights - you don't see any contradiction here? Is state government a government or not? So government A cannot say things about issue A because UGH EVIL GUBMINT but government B can limit rights just as they see fit because somehow it is not UGH EVIL GUBMINT? Jesus Christ, you harp on about how people should have rights, but are still completely OK with someone limiting them just as long as it is not the UGH EVIL GUBMINT but something that is, by all accounts, completely the same, only lower on the ladder.
Instead of trying to secure rights, you are only removing the elements that secure them and try to replace them with a mechanism that gives someone else all the cards to remove those rights, as well as more.
You can't claim that he's forcing his beliefs on anyone, because moving authority downward is an ideologically neutral move. For all he knows, all 50 states could choose the exact opposite of what he believes, or they could not. It favours no one side.
It favours no side, and hurts ordinary people. How low should authority go, and what are the limits?
Sure, I believe that tax is theft and so does Paul. But a certain amount of theft is needed to keep the government, a necessary evil but necessary nevertheless, functioning, so some degree of taxes are necessary. I still don't understand the argument for involving the government in medical research, and area where its presence is simply not needed. If a government derives its legitimacy from the people, I don't see how it could spend everyone's money on a program only some people endorse.
I don't know what you have against state-funded medical research, because, you see, quite a lot medical research is done by state but the marketing and distribution is then done by private actors. These state-funded useless institutions are, by the way, responsible for whopping 5 out of 5 important AIDS meds, for example. Well, of course this is a complete side issue, first because medical companies are so big and well-entreched that the existence of pitiful governmental study groups - which the companies then proceed to use to milk money - does not threaten them at all, and many universities are actually forbidden to do for-profit research and marketing, which keeps those two things very separate.
I may be being anal here, but I consider them to be the same thing. Democracy is defined as the implementation of the will of the majority. The US is not, and in my opinion should not be, a democracy. It is a Republic, which means that the majority can not infringe on the rights of the minority, including the smallest minority unit which is the individual, as it sees fit.
If you say that in democracies people do THIS and in republic THIS, then you truly at a loss. Do all those nice Western European countries fall to mob rule? Is DPRK a democracy because it has that D in its name?
Democracy != mob rule. At least not what we know of democracy. Yes, you are being anal for the sake of being anal, and trying to be clever, and it doesn't really work.
And don't get me wrong, I have nothing against immigration. I'm an immigrant myself and am friends with tons of other immigrants. But breaking into a country illegally is not OK, no matter how much of a right you believe you have to be there.
Very well, I concede the point. However, if US would instead... make illegal immigration magically disappear by allowing everyone right to access?
I don't know whether he said it or someone else. But from what I know of the man, I personally find it extremely unlikely. Also, he's mentioned this guy as a possible running mate, and if you would notice the colour of the gentleman's skin you may deduce that RP is no racist.
Ohhh yessss, the classic "not racist best friend is black BUT"-defence! Gee!
It was Ron Paul's letter. Is he responsible for his own paper or not? Why did he only come out and say it was
ghostwritten (!) about 9 years after the fact? I mean, yeah, sure, his integrity came into play. He just couldn't keep up the lie! Certainly it shouldn't matter that even if it was ghostwritten, he put his name on a racist writing. Of course, it shouldn't matter. Ron Paul, the Integrate Candidate.
You know, the funny thing about Ron Paul is not Ron Paul, but his supporters who, although trying to be so high and mighty about individual liberty, bend over backwards to desperately support things like destroying the separation of church and state, and majoritarian mob rule and removal of certain processes that guard those precious rights - all of which are pretty much against libertarian ideals! - while hand-waving stuff like Ron Paul Survival Report. It truly is fascinating.
