Ron Paul's Foreign policy

[Bolshevik Sickle]

I know Ron Paul was pretty right-wing and reactionary when it came to social issues (not to mention apparently a closet white supremacist shill), but what about his foreign policy and diplomacy? I totally agree with him on that.

YouTube - Ron Paul is right on Iran (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecP9xzRWywA)
YouTube - Rick Santorum, Ron Paul battle Iran, each other at CNN Arizona Debate (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KT4pMZNi7Y)

[Qayin]

Yuck. His stance merely comes from not a moral anti-imperialist standpoint but a question of "should the state tax people to pay for war?" Paul is not against blackwater or private armies/security forces.

[Bolshevik Sickle]

Yuck. His stance merely comes from not a moral anti-imperialist standpoint but a question of "should the state tax people to pay for war?" Paul is not against blackwater or private armies/security forces.

Politicians have the tendency of lying their way into office, it's normal. But how do you know is for or against the private army stuff?

[Qayin]

Politicians have the tendency of lying their way into office, it's normal. But how do you know is for or against the private army stuff?

All those anarcho-capitalsits/libertarian types uphold privatized force because hey as long as you VOLUNTARILY pay for it, its not oppressive! Its a crock of shit, fuck Ron Paul.

[Taters]

I love trolls.

[adipocere]

Politicians have the tendency of lying their way into office, it's normal. But how do you know is for or against the private army stuff?
The odd thing about Ron Paul is that he seems rather sincere in his politics. I get the impression that he is not so much a liar but is an idealist with an extraordinarily narrow world view, quixotic even.

It would be in line with his ideology to allow the market to dictate private armies and mercenaries. I don't think it's an issue of being for or against. He is more of a neoliberal than a neoconservative - his fetish is economic power, not military might. It is possible that he has some basic moral aversion to war - he is a doctor - but it is more likely that he is one of those holdouts who believes that business should be conducted with personal integrity and that violently destroying a whole country and it's people was not the "ethical" way of acquiring it's resources.

If you have a room full of hawks, it does not mean that a crow is a dove. Ron Paul is a right-wing populist. He appeals to the least (or selectively) informed white, downwardly-mobile, right-wing members of the working class.

[helot]

If Ron Paul was president i don't think this would alter US foreign policy as imperialism is generally in the interests of the dominant sections of the US bourgeoisie.

[Sea]

Ron Paul is remarkably transparent in how he serves the ruling class (Wow, already he's more trustworthy than Khrushchev and Mao!) so I suspect his foreign policy would be just as awful as, and awful for the same reasons as, his domestic economic policies.

However, his libertarian rhetoric is not the same as the latter, and his Jeffersonian rhetoric is not the same as the former. In reality, he'd have no problem swinging the power of the American state around as he sees fit, at home and abroad.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Well, I do wonder about the "libertarian" awareness of US imperialism in the 19th century. They may not like the US being the "world's policeman," but I think they'd have no problem with the limited imperialism of the 19th century, particularly in relation to Latin America.

[TheWannabeAnarchist]

For all that I care, Ron Paul can go straight to hell. He said the Civil Rights Act violated the "right"of corporations to discriminate against minorities. He hates the ADA. He's against all antitrust legislation. Even bourgeois reformism is too much for him to handle. He's a closet racist, as clearly demonstrated by his newsletter article from the 90s, which he refuses to talk about. He said that sick people who can't afford health care should be allowed to die. He also created his own homeschool curriculum, i.e. indoctrination program, to teach kids the values of religious extremism and social Darwinism. This curriculum was ghostwritten by the theocratic wingnut Gary North, who wants gays to be stoned to death. He's the intellectual godfather of the Tea Party movement, which is duping millions of Amerian workers into taking a stand against their own freedom.

They say a broken clock's right twice a day, which is true, but Paul's broken clock is hooked up to a ticking fucking time bomb, and he doesn't deserve one ounce of our respect.

[AmilcarCabral]

Dear brother Bolshevik: From my own personal point of view and from what I know about socialism, capitalism and wars. I think that it is almost impossible to destroy wars, to turn USA into an anti-war government, without first nationalizing corporations like Lockheed Boeing, General Electric and other corporations that make weapons and other non-weapons corporations that also bribe, force and lobby the US congress, US government and The Pentagon to invade other nations. I think that even Wal Mart, Mcdonalds and even banks benefit from US government invading other countries.

This theory of nations that need to wage wars comes all the way back from the ancient greeks and ancient romans. I read in the book "History of Rome" by Indro Montanelli, and in The Republic by Plato that when Rome began to grow economically it needed to expand and steal lands from other societies of that time. Even the philosopher Socrates somehow rationalized and defended the need of Republics to invade other countries.

So even though I love Ron Paul a lot more than Obama and Mitt Romney because of his anti-war political program. I don't know how would Ron Paul be ableo to turn the US Imperialist government into a US Republican Anti-War government (without nationalizing corporations and without destroy the private sector).

Because I think that as long as the private sector is powerful, the US government will be a slave of the private sector, and US gov. would have to keep invading other countries because that's the only way that the private sector of the USA can maintain itself growing economically and evading economic collapse

.



I know Ron Paul was pretty right-wing and reactionary when it came to social issues (not to mention apparently a closet white supremacist shill), but what about his foreign policy and diplomacy? I totally agree with him on that.

YouTube - Ron Paul is right on Iran (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecP9xzRWywA)
YouTube - Rick Santorum, Ron Paul battle Iran, each other at CNN Arizona Debate (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KT4pMZNi7Y)

[Red Commissar]

Ron Paul's positions aren't particularly that unique. If anything he's just a hold over of what passed for "conservative" in the US, especially before the 70s, which among other things consisted of a fixation on "states' rights" and an isolationist foreign policy. He doesn't make a critique of war from an anti-war standpoint, but rather one of cost and benefit to the US. I think Ron Paul is aware more than anyone else that the economic system he proselytizes for is dependent on plundering of foreign markets

I suppose years of the conservative camp here being dominated by neocons has made us forget that there was once a strong isolationist current in that movement. Even though Neo-Con stuff seems to've been discredited and is being slowly abandoned by Republicans, there doesn't seem to be a total shift back towards this isolationism. So with that in mind Ron Paul comes off more as an old relic than actually responding to the times.

I mean yeah some people might be willing to give him a pass on his foreign policy and thing it's ok to tactically support him, but a guy with a fixation on Austrian economics (read anti-labor) and giving states a blank check to do what ever the fuck they feel to do with poor, minorities, gays, and what ever other vulnerable community (LIBERTY!) exists turns me off to him completely.

Really, I think it's a indication of just how cruddy the US political scene is when people like Ron Paul somehow get the adoration of folk based sorely on some cherry-picked positions on weed decriminalization and the war.

Something has to be said too about the position of the president. Even if we're to ignore Ron Paul's political contradictions and other problems, there's only so much he could do as president. War policy is intertwined with Congress and it's doubtful he could get much done there, and more over having to deal with the complicated web of private interests and government bureaucracy which benefit from the status quo.

The only consolation prize for Ron Paul is that some how his kid ended up even nuttier than he is.

[MarxSchmarx]

Just a quick comment:



This theory of nations that need to wage wars comes all the way back from the ancient greeks and ancient romans. I read in the book "History of Rome" by Indro Montanelli, and in The Republic by Plato that when Rome began to grow economically it needed to expand and steal lands from other societies of that time. Even the philosopher Socrates somehow rationalized and defended the need of Republics to invade other countries..

Plato wrote in ancient Greece, centuries before the Romans appeared on the scene. As such, he could not have had much of any thing to say about a society that would materialize centuries after his death. Perhaps you meant Cicero, who was a passionate advocate of the Republic and sceptical of Empire?

I don't think this needs an extended discussion, but I think it's important to get our sources right in our arguments.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

Ron Paul is a part of an endangered species that used to be extremely plentiful in American politics: The "Old Right".

The Old Right essentially has its origins in the Herbert Hoover era, and became very prominent whilst FDR was president. They were leftovers from the day when the Republicans were considered the 'progressive' party in America. They were fiscally conservative, sometimes (but not always) socially conservative, and strongly anti-interventionist. They also had links to rather reactionary, ultra-traditionalist Southern Agrarian groups.

When these groups died out in the Goldwater era, they came back into existence as
'paleoconservatives'. Pat Buchanan was the most famous such person...until Ron Paul came into existence.

[hatzel]

Basically this is exactly why a whole bunch of leftish types always seem to find themselves lining up behind whichever reactionary dimwit happens to be making a few pleasant-sounding murmurs, despite the fact that even a cursory glance beyond the soundbites at what they're actually saying would be enough to prove that there's nothing of interest to us there...

[AmilcarCabral]

Marx: Hi, I need to specify, I remember that Socrates in the book "The Republic" written by Plato that republics when they grow and expand in size and economic power, he rationalized and somehow legitimized that when nations grow in size and in economic power, they need to conquer other lands. I didn't mean Socrates was talking about the roman empire, because like you said Rome was not founded yet in Socrate's life.

However in the book "History of Rome" written by the historian Indro Montanelli, he made that point that after some years of rome's foundation, the roman rulers had in mind expansionist imperialist wars. There is a great blog by a US vietnam war veteran here http://www.brianwillson.com/ with lots of good information about how USA was founded as an expanding empire by default. And that the US founders had already in their minds the words empire "empire of liberty". When nations were younger, bigger nations not only USA, Britain, Germany and France always had the temptation to become imperialist nations.

So, like i said in my former comment, I don't think that if Ron Paul becomes US president or Rand Paul, they would be able to stop all wars altogether, close all the military bases that US government has in other countries and turn the US Imperialist government into a republican anti-war government without nationalizing those corporations that lobby the US government into waging wars


Just a quick comment:



Plato wrote in ancient Greece, centuries before the Romans appeared on the scene. As such, he could not have had much of any thing to say about a society that would materialize centuries after his death. Perhaps you meant Cicero, who was a passionate advocate of the Republic and sceptical of Empire?

I don't think this needs an extended discussion, but I think it's important to get our sources right in our arguments.

[AmilcarCabral]

Hatzel: you are right, I guess it is a human survival thing. The Democratic Party, The Republican Party, Bush, Obama, Mitt Romney and most blue dog democrats and neocons republicans have been so ultra-right wingers, so dangerous, so crazy and mad. And the left of the USA is so weak, the electoral system of USA is so rigged to even block the Green Party, that some times people in America just have to choose the lesser evil of all optional evils. And we have to be realists, not utopian. Right now in USA not even The Green Party and Jill Stein have a chance of rising to the White House. I think that's why many progressives in America supported Ron Paul, just because of his anti-war policies, compared with Obama who was pushing the world to another crazy war with Syria, and who knows if that war would've had a domino effect, pushing China, Russia etc. to fight against US



Basically this is exactly why a whole bunch of leftish types always seem to find themselves lining up behind whichever reactionary dimwit happens to be making a few pleasant-sounding murmurs, despite the fact that even a cursory glance beyond the soundbites at what they're actually saying would be enough to prove that there's nothing of interest to us there...

[hatzel]

Hatzel: you are right

To be fair, though, it's not like you're not exactly the kind of person I was talking about, is it?

[Gerrard Winstanley]

At the end of the day, he's one of the precious few bright lights in mainstream U.S. politics today, so I'm on the fence.

[The Fonz]

Ron Paul and the whole anti-interventionist right would not be able to significantly alter U.S foreign policy even in the event some of these people were elected. As leftist in my opinion it is our responsibility to point out the reasons U.S foreign policy is that way. It is not simply because they enjoy droning whole families or propping up vicious oligarchies like that of Colombia, it is because they believe their is a threat to the smooth flow of US and international capital. People such as Ron Paul do not want to change these conditions but exasperate them even more. Also keep in my the recent leaks and revelations that seem to indicate their is a sort of " deep state" which functions the same way no matter who is elected with little oversight(although their their aren't neutral actors in the government). Also, despite lip service to "freedom" and "liberty" people such as Ron Paul can only carry out their objectives though force both domestic and foreign. A good reference in this regard is Hayek's views on Pinochet in Chile. IMO any leftist who supports Ron Paul types for whatever reason supports the slaughter of the working class and organs where workers can articulate their desires and would be a severe setback to and sort of working class movement(however weak or absent this is in the US)

[Mather]

I am always amused by the endless number of Ron Paul threads on Revleft. It seems that too many of our American posters place an undue amount of importance on him. This despite the fact that he is a marginal political figure and given his age he currently has zero chance of ever making it anywhere near the corridors of power. Ron Paul cannot even obtain the same levels of popular support and votes that other third party candidates could, such as Ross Perot.

As for Ron Paul's foreign policy and alleged anti-war stance, it is thoroughly reactionary. His opposition to wars and US military interventions is based solely upon the isolationism of the American Old Right and on not spending any more 'tax dollars' by the state. It has absolutely nothing in common with our opposition to imperialist wars, which is based on the principle that the working class should not be used as cannon fodder in wars that are started and waged by the capitalist class in the pursuit of their own class interests.

It would be a big mistake for us to have any affinity with libertarians, even when libertarian principles at their most superficial level seem to align with our own principles (e.g. being opposed to wars).

[Mather]

They also had links to rather reactionary, ultra-traditionalist Southern Agrarian groups.

I thought that until the 1960s, it was the Democrats who were the party of choice for reactionary and racist white voters in the Deep South?

[ola.]

I remember watching a video long ago where he talked about the problems of "spreading democracy" in the Middle East, and his argument went along the lines of "the last time they had democratic elections, Hamas was elected", aka the "they're not ready for democracy" bullshit. "We can't give them democracy" - as if democracy was ours to give and take away.

[DasFapital]

Ron Paul supported Israel bombing Iraq's nuclear reactors back in '81. Also him and his son want to militarize the US-Mexican Border. His anti-militarism stance isn't as strong as it is made out to be.

[RedWaves]

Ron Paul is a fucking idiot. Everything he comes up with is straight out of 1840 and it's so easy to see that. Why Libertarians worship this man and treat him like a Super Hero is beyond me, besides the fact they want a superhero and want to worship someone.


He's been doing this crap since the late 80's. He knows he's never going to win the primary, but runs anyway, collects all the money from idiots that support his campaigns, and then banks on it. Watch him do it again in 2016, and then all the neo nazi's and dumbass Libertarians that worship him will be screaming how the election was stolen from him, the Jews screwed him, it was a conspiracy, the Illuminati prevented him from winning blah blah blah, they can never accept the fact that he is just a rich old white guy, and is one of the last of his kind running with the all white flag, and that most people see he's a piece of shit. We could go on and on and on with this all day, I mean, why does Ron Paul attract so many white nationalists? How come he's been busted before with so many of them helping his campaign? For fuck's sake back in 2006, he put his campaign ads on the Storm Front forum, that made it obvious from the start.

Ron Paul don't want to change anything. If he even did make it, the real world would turn out like the internet with all these big corporations coming and doing whatever they fuck they want because "we need to go back to gold" and "the market fixes itself".

Libertarians are one of the most laughable parties in the country, but Ron Paul is a whole new type of evil. They use that "he's just like the founding fathers" tagline until it's run into the ground, and let's face it. The Founding fathers were nothing but rich old white men that felt they were more privileged over everyone else. They even felt it was their right to keep slaves, but besides that they should still be worshiped right?


For the past 300 years, America has been run on Libertarianism. You cannot get anymore Libertarian than this. It's always been a system where the rich can do whatever the fuck they want, and the poor are shit on and kicked around. Even before the Industrial revolution, the attitude was always there.


Libertarians should change their name to "Capitalists" cause that's exactly what they are. They don't give a fuck about "liberty" and "freedom" and you know I'm right.



Fuck Ron Paul, fuck his son, and fuck that worthless evil ***** his son was named after. That's all I have to say.