[Newsbot]

<strong>Filibuster Cartoon</strong>
<strong>Title: </strong> <a href="http://www.filibustercartoons.com/archive.php?id=20070621" target="_blank">Dr. Paul</a> (click to view)
<strong>Date: </strong> June 21, 2007

I\'ll tell you who I don\'t like- Ron Paul. The libertarian Texas Congressman who is currently running for the Republican Party presidential nomination. He\'s quite popular with much of the online set, but not me. <br> <br>His big thing is isolationism. He opposes the Iraq war, which he views to be an imperialist war for oil. He also thinks terrorists only attack America because Americans \"meddle\" too much overseas. His solution is to pull the US out of every foreign obligation, partnership, and alliance previous presidents have spent centuries building up. <br> <br>Dr. Paul also favors the abolishment of all federal programs and is a Confederate apologist. So he basically combines the worst rhetoric of the far-left and the far-right into one throughly unappealing, immature political agenda. Thankfully he\'s only polling at 2%.

[Kjorteo]

...Ouch.

[Prestwick]

Wow!

Could the USA possibly send him over to the UK to be our rep for EU "reform"?

[AdamLein]

Without intending to get into an argument about America's "global responsibilities" (why are they America's responsibilities?), the suggestion that terrorists attack America only because of her overseas meddling does not seem to be an unpopular one.

But the Atlas Shrugged motif is definitely an appropriate one. John Galt and his followers were making a point -- just as the world needed them, maybe if America withdraws all foreign "interference", the world will decide it wants that interference back. Of course, just as in the book, the world is much more likely to coerce the U.S. to interfere on its behalf than to negotiate with her rationally.

This cartoon may just be an excellent, if unintentional, endorsement of Dr. Paul.

[WBenson]

At least he's sort of fun to watch...

[Lunchbox]

You have to live in America to get an idea of what has been going on here (as it's also hard for me to analyze Canadian politics as I don't live there and get the full experience). For the past (going on) 6 years, we get these election-time nuggets about how America is attacked because it's free and has liberty. That's total BS. We were attacked on 9/11 for over 60 years of meddling with the middle east. We brought the shah into Iran, we had ardent support for Israel while really shunning the arab community (I support the existence of the nation of Israel by the way), we supported the Afghan Mujahadeen, then ignored them after they won back Afghanistan, and allowed anarchy and eventually the Taliban and Osama bin Laden (who we supplied with money during the Afghan/Soviet conflict) to take over. We then supported both Iran and Iraq during their war so that we could receive cheap oil, brought our troops into Saudi Arabia during desert shield, which drove Osama up the wall, then continued repeat bombings of unnecessary targets in the Iraq no-fly zone after desert storm, which killed and deserted many Iraqi civilians. Basically Ron Paul is right in saying that 9/11 wasn't caused because Al Qaeda was jealous of our freedom, it's because we've been causing trouble in the area for many years. Personally, it's a fresh perspective and I respect him for going against the trend, and he's one of the few people who considers himself to be conservative who actually has a few conservative ideas (The term really popped up for a while because it sounded nice, but 90% of people who say they're conservative here would freak out if they lost their Soc or Medicare), but I personally don't support much else that he preaches.

[Psudo]

Glee! It's so good to see someone (J.J. especially) agrees with me!

AdamLein wrote:

why are they America's responsibilities?

"With great power comes great responsibility." While it may be a trite superhero slogan, it's also a moral truth: if you're capable of ending injustice, you have a moral duty to do so. Actually, that even applies to John Galt's strike of the men of the mind.

AdamLein wrote:

the suggestion that terrorists attack America only because of her overseas meddling does not seem to be an unpopular one.

First, popularity is not proof of morality or intelligence. Second, it's impossible to be a world superpower and not have an inherent stake in global affairs. We confronted the USSR in the middle east because the USSR's success directly threatened ours (as proven in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and in the reaction of our economy to the fall of the Soviet Union). During Desert Shield/Storm, we were defending an valuable ally (one of the few in the area) that was unable to defend itself. These actions have such a direct effect on US interests! How can it be immoral for us to protect our own interests?

... What was the name of the pirate in Atlas Shrugged? He was acting individually to influence the global system out of the interest of justice without even national authority. The only difference between what he did and what the USA tries to do is 1) he is fiction, so he is able to be faultless, never making mistakes; and 2) he's an individual, whereas we are a sovereign nation, and thus we're subject to to the influence of domestic and international oversight and criticism. Otherwise, this central argument from Atlas Shrugged defends the USA's actions: we must do what defends us individually, which coincidentally also protects all that are just.

[EmperorLiam]

Listen, Ron Paul is the BEST choice to lead ANY nation on Earth. You are so freaking wrong JJ. Here's WHY!

1. The overt religious movement into government is creating a very resentful and dissenting atheist population, I know, I'm one of em.

2. USA can't do ANYTHING in Africa or Asian continent without drawing hatred from all sides. So their involvement is counter productive no matter what in these two regions (Middle east is on the Asian continent)

3. War on Drugs (prohibition), is wasting huge resources among other problems, and ruining the lives of literally millions of people.

4. War on Poverty, by supplying free rice for example to african nations, it puts the local farmers out of work, America needs to stop sending foreign aid, its already been proven that nations without foreign aid develop faster.

5. War on Terror, considering how FEW people die from this, why does it warrant so much resources? Just another smoke screen to steal our money and take our rights away from us.

6. American debt has become completely unmanageable, adding in the time bomb that social welfare and medic aid is, America will have an economic collapse if it does not switch to a Libertarian government.

7. Oil dependency can't be solved until the governments subsidies and aid to oil companies ends, giving alternative energies a competitive chance. Peak oil is now predicted down from 2025 to 2011 due to China's advanced growth.


No other candidate in either parties (even Mike Gravel) has a plan to solve all these MAJOR problems which if ignored will help end the American Empire, dragging Canada down with it.


So JJ, what good is having a government that interferes in other nations affairs when it will collapse in the process?

PS: You STILL think Ayn Rand is a Libertarian don't you? Shes not.

EDIT:

Also, hes not a Confederate apologist... and really, what was so bad about the Confederates anyhow? Are you going to drag out that completely fictious, "the civil war was to end slavery" bullshiat? Why is it that EVERY OTHER nation on the planet ended slavery without war? It was about creating a strong Federal government, slavery was just an excuse that worked well for gaining support, the Union had 4 slave states in its ranks itself.

Realize that I'm pro-Iraq liberation/occupation, pro-choice, Canadian, and yet I still see that Ron Paul is far better than the competition. Frankly JJ, your politics have become rather ridiculous this past year, you seem to think OTHER ass-backwards nations needs are more important than our own. Frankly, the world would be better off if Afghanistan and Iraq/Iran sunk into the ocean, helping them is fine, but not at the expense of our own people.

Also, the media is heavily biased against him, especially FOX, yet hes the only candidate thats been making the TV circuit. Ron Paul has been on Colbert Report, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Dennis miller TWICE, thats more than the others COMBINED.

[EmperorLiam]

Good debate about intervention aka foreign policy, between news broadcaster and a columnist/author.

http://media33b.libsyn.com/podcasts/17c ... -06-20.mp3

[Voyager]

EmperorLiam wrote:
"Frankly, the world would be better off if Afghanistan and Iraq/Iran sunk into the ocean, helping them is fine, but not at the expense of our own people. "

Well, people have said that before

[AdamLein]

Psudo wrote:

"With great power comes great responsibility." While it may be a trite superhero slogan, it's also a moral truth: if you're capable of ending injustice, you have a moral duty to do so. Actually, that even applies to John Galt's strike of the men of the mind.

I take that slogan to mean something weaker: With power comes the responsibility to avoid using the power for immoral acts. I reject the paternalistic Spiderman interpretation.

In Galt's case, he acted on his capability to end the injustice because it was an injustice to him. In the end, he did it because it was in his own best interest.

Quote:

First, popularity is not proof of morality or intelligence.

No, but not being a total ignoramus, I meant something else when I brought that up. Dr. Paul is running for public office, so the popularity of his political views is fair game in the discussion of any editorial cartoon about him.

Quote:

How can it be immoral for us to protect our own interests?

It can be immoral if doing so requires the initiation of the use of force. It's one thing to defend Israel (a stance which I support only weakly), but another thing entirely to instigate wars and regime change in order to establish a political and military foothold in a region.

To me, isolationism and noninterference are the best bet only until it's clear that an external power directly threatens us. You can't come back and say, "Ah, but the Middle East does directly threaten us" as a counter, because we weren't practicing noninterference beforehand. Maybe if we practiced noninterference, the Middle East wouldn't directly threaten us, in which case it would be immoral to interfere.

Quote:

... What was the name of the pirate in Atlas Shrugged? He was acting individually to influence the global system out of the interest of justice without even national authority. The only difference between what he did and what the USA tries to do is 1) he is fiction, so he is able to be faultless, never making mistakes; and 2) he's an individual, whereas we are a sovereign nation, and thus we're subject to to the influence of domestic and international oversight and criticism. Otherwise, this central argument from Atlas Shrugged defends the USA's actions: we must do what defends us individually, which coincidentally also protects all that are just.

That's a pretty interesting argument. However, I think (2) is a key difference between Ragnar Danneskjold and the U.S. government; he was doing it because of his desire to live in a moral society. I would point out that the other Atlasses were not in agreement that his tactics were themselves moral.

In any case, I agree that a nation's military forces should be used to defend the interests of the people of that nation. However, it's really hard to tell exactly how best to promote such defense when the army is already embroiled in the local affairs of the foreign aggressor. Better to remove a variable in the equation by getting out of the area; if the aggressor follows you, you then have every justification to clobber them into the dust.

[AdamLein]

EmperorLiam wrote:

PS: You STILL think Ayn Rand is a Libertarian don't you? Shes not.

Yeah well, she was a libertarian. She just didn't want to associate herself with a political party that is, admittedly, a bit of a joke... despite being arguably the biggest third party.

[sasquatch2]

Yes popularity is frequently more a measure of how effective the media campaign has been to support that "popular" issue. The media now defines public opinion, reliably or not to support their agenda. As a result we see this isolationism touted as popular and CO2 AGW as a "scientific" consensus despite reports of flooding islands that are not.

[Kjorteo]

Sigh.

Anyone want to help make a list of completely unrelated political issues (abortion, gun control, isolationism, etc.) and arrange them on "where will sasquatch2 hijack the discussion toward global warming again" Bingo cards?

[sasquatch2]

No hi-jacking necessary. The common thread in all these matters is identical.

Don't ya just hate it when that is dragged into the light.

Go eat your tofu and be quiet.