This writer is hard core and has dedicated much to the cause and to wake up to the fact that everything you have been working for is basically a scam, is extremely upsetting thus it is rare.

Ron Paul is not a racist- im black if he was it would be obvious[i dont care what you say, black people in this country have never been free and thus we have suffered and are the result of your liberty being denied. In private conversation most black people would agree that we already live in a communist america and we cant get out, our citizenship is forced, poor whites also live in communist america, at the mercy of the state.

Ron Paul is not the lesser of two evils, he strikes fear in the hearts of the hard/invested dissonance rich left and right.

and on abortion- i am pro choice and i am still for ron paul- freedom/choice and liberty are what they are and women should have the choice to have a child when and with whom they choose.

The only reason why some are opposed to abortion is because of the type of women who are choosing it. It was developed to thin the poor but the poor were not indoctrinated to abhor children so the women who are having abortions are the middle and upper middle class women for whom abortion was not supposed to be an option.

The unintended consequences were somewhat more than what the creators intended- the eugenics crowd didnt want “superior” women making this choice.

In our society women are tortured from birth to be something that they are not, and when they dont live up to this impossible standard they are broken and vulnerable and instead of making them feel safe, men blame them. So the women raise the standard very high to what society seems to want in a father and when this man is not found she is in dispair feeling unworthy of having a child.

The poor do not feel this, when you are born poor your mother loves you, you are not an accessory and you seek the man you love not the one with the fattest wallet and even if it goes bust you love the children and you dont consider if you can or cannot afford to have kids cause you are broke, your parents were broke and if money was what mattered NOBODY WOULD EVER BE BORN!

so basically
if a guy tells me what he does for a living while trying to hit on me- he is history
You are not your job

ask your mate
“If we had to live under a bridge, would you still love me?”
if he/she laughs and says yes :D

if he/she has to think about it-worry
if he/she says no- drop em

the natural mate for a progressive minded woman is a conservative minded man you will keep each other on their toes
the progressive guys like feisty chicks so …. lol

For instance, to abolish a federally funded public education system and give control back to parents must mean that all parents have to find time to teach their kids and everyone else falls through the cracks. No. What this means is parents have the option to raise their own or put their children in a private school or maybe state educational facilities(which are not allowed currently). Not to mention the new funding that would go towards churches and other charities, what with more money in the households….

Shall i continue?

And the racist thing? While well put, the writer doesn’t have a leg to stand on being that he quoted Paul’s exact views on liberty, which are anything but color-coated.

What the writer can do is take statements which Ron may or may have not made about individuals and present them as if they were made about a group of peoples.

You can fool everyone else, but not one who really does understand the man’s views. All you have to do is trust what he says in it’s own context. really. I encourage everyone to read A Foreign Policy Of Freedom by Ron Paul. It will clear you of the rhetoric.

Then you go on to say “Only those with the leisure time, educational training, and temperament commensurate with home schooling!” Who is the racist now? How about saying only those with the priority to teach their children. We teach the children how to walk talk and potty train them and it is only natural to teach them reading writing and arithmetic. The children trust the parents more and the bond is strengthened. I know of thousands that have basic schooling that are doing a fantastic Job teaching their children the important things of life.

“A conclusion to be drawn from research is that homeschooling is FAR MORE effective then critics would like. The amount of literature and studies showing not just adequate but superior academic performance is very convincing that homeschooling works and works well. The lack of studies that report negative outcomes for homeschooling also speaks loudly about its effectiveness.” (Troy L Parrish and his wife Belinda are homeschooling their 8 children)

Did you take notice of the winner of this years Scripps National Spelling Bee a home schooled boy with very high achievements.

If you look deep inside your soul you will find that you are just biased and prejudice about this subject my friend.

Paul attacked AIDS sufferers as “victims of their own lifestyle.” OK show me one shred of evidence where this statement is false. Even in Africa where woman and children are catching AIDS from their adulterate husbands. Gays are actually exposed to these types of diseases as are people that share needles together. Their lifestyles are exposing them to these deadly diseases, FACT!

Another false statement you made: “The solution: end welfare so that everyone will be forced to work at slave wages.” This is not the position of Dr. Paul and you know it! If you are being glib fine, then say so, but don’t misrepresent Dr. Paul with your falsehood, he gets that from the media enough, oh wait your part of that media, figures.

“To advocate for society to be organized on the basis of strict individualism, as libertarians do, is to argue that everyone has the right to do whatever he or she wants. Sounds nice in the abstract, perhaps. But what happens when the desires of one individual infringe on the desires of another?

“So if the chairman of Dow Chemical wants to flush his company’s toxic effluence into rivers and streams, so be it.”

You are a liar, Sherry! repent you sinner! Dr. Paul has never said this ever, ever, ever. In fact Dr. Paul’s philosophy is far superior then that of todays system of payoffs and lobbing to pass laws for the interests of a corporation such as Dow. If Dow does that they are infringing on the rights of others and that is what court system is about. For the record DOW is doing a fine job of keeping environmentally conscientious. YOU ARE SLANTING THIS ARTICLE TO ONE SIDE the socialist side, and you are far from a balanced non biased journalist. You are part of the problem!

Your presuppositions are not allowing the truth to reign, you will slant this article at ALL COST to your viewpoint but you are being disingenuous in doing so.

You really need to brush up on what liberty means, here is the basics of The Philosophy of Liberty

“And those who advocate his noxious politics, should be attacked for their racism, immigrant bashing, and hostility to the values a genuine Left champions.”

HAHAHAAHAHAHA Now you are truly showing who you are now. You are a liar. BTW “values a genuine Left ” is an oxymoron. Tell me do you feel it is right for a woman to get an abortion 10 minutes before birth? That is what the so called “left” is advocating… murder! You are making me sick to my stomach. You ARE a true socialist! I hope this article will show America the mindset of your view, that the government should own and control major industries, and get sick and tired of it and stand up and fight with Dr. Ron Paul for liberty and get these people out of our pockets and stop them from ruining this planet and stop the destruction of mankind. VOTE FOR RON PAUL IN 2008.

Dan

On a personal level, any friend of Alex Jones is a friend of mine:)

Forever Wild,
Shunka Wakan

If we don’t restore OUR Government to power, then we will remain at the mercy of PEDDLERS of various POISONS and ANTIDOTES. NEITHER of which is being created for OUR benefit, but to increase the wealth and power of the OWNERS of America.

”Ron Paul is not ANTI-WAR for the BENEFIT of Humanity, but for the EXCLUSION of Humanity.”

Our ( USA-RUSSIA ) proliferation of threats and weapons has forced neighbors to shoot back at the neighbors shooting at them over OUR version of POLITICS ( SELFISH GREED ) .

We have not RISEN, we have LOWERED the WORLD and ourselves.

Now, we can no longer save ourselves without also saving the world that we have destroyed.

PS: ??? Save MEAT and not HUMAN Mothers, HUMAN Families, and HUMAN Futures from unintended pregnancy ? When we are injured by our many accidents , should we just let nature take it’s course and die ?

Abortion SAVES HUMANITY from what our civilization FAILED to do for Humanity.. FAILED to let children SEE the TRUTH about the MESSY, AWKWARD, life altering, and life threatening biological function that was so scary that God had to create EXTRA HORMONES, to encourage us to participate in it.

God did not make Human reproduction into a mysterious game called ”sex”, WE DID. Now we have to save the children from the STUPIDITY that we have TAUGHT THEM.

(Note: I’m neither a Socialist nor a Paul supporter).

Those authorities not granted to the Central Government by the Constitution are, by the Constitution, granted to the States. So, Libertarianism is not about anarchy nor non-government but about local government (and Dr. Paul’s disturbing stance on reproductive freedom calls into question his real stance).

However, even local government must be some how controlled so that the tyranny of the majority does not trample the rights of the minority. That’s what happened post-Civil War — the outcome of which set into motion the concentration of power in the Federal government that allowed such as G.W. Bush to exercise his misguided will upon this country and the world — when non-whites were systematically disenfranchised through the tyranny of the majority. In the 60s, the powerful central government stepped in to stop that misuse of local power. Most would say that action was a good use of the Federal Government’s power and not entirely unConstitutional in that the disenfranchisement by the local government deprived those people of their of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness .

Alas, the history of this powerful central government has not be for the good of individuals but for monied, and therefore powerful, interests, such as corporations which, through an odd notion of ownership/property rights imbues the corporation (which Latin roots with some sort of human rights and protection of corporate interests.

“To advocate for society to be organized on the basis of strict individualism, as libertarians do, is to argue that everyone has the right to do whatever he or she wants.”

Advocating individual rights IS NOT the same as advocating individuals can do whatever they want. You can’t do whatever you want if it is going to violate anothers rights. It really is just that simple.

“Libertarians like Paul don’t shy away from the logical ramifications of their argument. “The dictatorial power of a majority” he argues ought to be replaced by the unencumbered power of individuals–in other words, the dictatorial power of a minority.”

Wow… Here again you demonstrate a COMPLETE LACK of understanding of what individual rights really are. Individual rights do not give one individual the right to violate anothers.

But you’ll have a hard time revolving these red-state Amerigoons, unless it’s for a position like Paul’s (which looks more more devo- than revo). These red-state rednecks already seem for the most part ‘revolting’ enough!

The last time Amerigoons revolved around anything, it was pat robertson and the Christian coalition’s dismantling of the counter-culture, and so far Amerigoons seem perfectly happy being the brain-dead ‘believers’ they’ve inbred themselves into being right across the bible belt. Therein lies the reason for Bushco, and why they ‘believed’ (for the most part), up until recently.

You just can’t talk sensible policy to an electorate whose only national ‘activism’ in decades was lead by Jimmy Swaggart. You just can’t talk evolution (nor revolution) to a flock who’s still convinced we landed here at the stroke of a divine forefinger on what used to be a flat pancake (prior iterations of present pious parasites gagged Galileo for a similar sacrilegious heresy of trying to roll that flapjack into a well-rounded ‘ball of dough’).

A large part of the ‘liberty’ ameriguns are constantly concerned about is surprisingly not related to free speech nor wire-tapping nor even Habeus Corpus (esp. if there’s latin in them thar laws!).

Instead the ‘liberty’ they long for is the ‘right’ to make us pray, and let business and personal property owners abuse the environment and public health, worker’s rights, and anything and everything that could hinder profits or free access to killing things with gunz, while consistently AGAINST their own self interest (religion trumps truth in this tribe)

Case in point, old-timers around here are all complaining about the ‘environmentalists’ calling for GE to clean up the Hudson from its decades of unregulated PCB spewage. They must be old indeed, apparently forgetting that the only reason the Hudson is any cleaner than the 300-mile-long superfund-site it was (another law the free-marketers are trying to quash) under the industrialists is because a REAL revolutionary, Pete Seeger went around in his boat and banjo. and refused to let them rest (yeah you bet they called him a freak and a commie for that!).

And these same locals, who are all in bed (and inbred) with well paid-off legislature there in Albany (the most corrupt state capital in the land), were pushing with all their miserable might to let a billionaire Canadian Concrete magnate construct the largest and tallest coal-fired cement plant ever created, and right in the very scenic view-shed from Frederic Edwin Church’s Olana!

These folks fell for the ‘economic invigoration’ poppycock and false promises from the company’s powerpoint propaganda. Midway through the show it leaked out somehow that the plant would net a total of 1 (one) new job over and above the existing cement plant just across the bridge, yet the people here still supported that plant out of principle. It was only just barely killed, and the struggle took years of wasted time for local activists to stop them, in the end I suspect it only got axed because local David Rockefeller talked billionaire to billionaire (probably at Bohemian Grove) about smokestacks in the middle of his sunset (as it turned out the 300’ tall smokestack would’ve bee in Rockefeller’s view–he owns like half the county).

But look out, those same mindless minions are bringin’ us threebrand-spankin’ new casinos. Sponsored by the same sad, sordid story, and they’re eatin’ it right up once again. Seems they just can’t wait to parade in and blow their trailer-rent on nickel-slots while swillin’ free beer.

The people of the heartland are believers. They’re not going to question anything, and the ‘leaders’ they vote into local office are those that talks white-trash the trickiest. Somehow these ameri-vangelist minions let their ‘revolutionary spirit’ get rolled up and carried off to some fictitious fundamentalist fool’s fan-club cult. I’ve even heard them say that ‘Jesus was a carpenter, so capitalism must be ordained by the bible’

It was never necessary to abuse workers, species, the environment, etc. in order for everyone to make scads of money around here. But this free market theosophy took the incredibly ill-gotten wealth of this land and funneled it entirely to the top tenth of a percent. Do these poorer people have a problem with that? Do they complain or revolt? Do they question this pitiful predicament and rebel in any way whatsoever? Guess pious people pull no punches and push no rivers, and just leave it all up to ‘prayer’.

But all party politics and presidential posturing aside, this preposterous Paulian proposal that the market ‘polices itself’, is obviously so utterly disproved. Anyone espousing such opprobrium in light of the disastrous destruction and heart-rending record of personal and corporate wanton waste that this young land has already suffered through the ‘greed imperative’, has subscribed to some religious devotion to a cut-throat culture of vicious, self-righteous pioneer pillagers.

That corrupting cultural dogma which was rail-roaded out to the rednecks on Carnegie’s cattle-cars (fueled by Standard Oil no doubt) looked for a while almost old-fashioned. But that’s until it got reamed into the right-brains of red-states from a televangelist’s lectern by Paul’s ultra-free-market predecessors, Ron Reagan and Maggie Thatcher.

Read Paul’s platform:
Pt’s got nothing to do with ‘liberalism’ nor ‘revolution’ in the sense of grass-roots citizens uniting to reject the megalomaniacal overlords of industry. Rather the entire Paulian position is again placed on a precarious pedestal of free-market fundamentalism more likely to fuel a feeding frenzy by right-wing religious fanatics. Society seems not shy at all of the corruptions fueled by free markets.

Whether they realize it or not, people apparently support Paul for the same reasons they walked the ultra-capitalist plank when last lured by Reagan’s tricky “Trickle-down” triumph. The Paulian program places its entire platform on a precarious pedestal that cancels all oversight and regulation from any thing higher than the village parking-ticket appeals court, transferring ALL environmental policy to the local level, and gambling that people will come to their personal senses and hold industry in check all by themselves.

If this public’s past performance is any forecast, then indeed Ron Paul could only have constructed this stage-set with the full knowledge that under his program industry would win, the people and wildlife would lose, and absolutely nothing would be done to stop it. It’s almost such an obvious economic farce that the words ‘seriously sinister’ come to mind.

Nobody claims the fed laws are not flawed, nor that States do not, on occasion, sue business for their folly. But fact is whatever combination we have now is all we have, and if it fails, it’s because there’s not enough regulation, and the people’s quasi-elected leaders are bent on dismantling laws long before Paul ever got his band of web-based ‘rebels’ to believe his ‘libertarian’ republican preacher’s pitch.

In the end, I’d predict that the people and those they ‘elect’ to lead are the problem, and a Paul presidency would be perfectly anti-progressive in this regard and not ‘revolutionary’ in the least.

If you actually read what paul says, what he writes, and watch his interviews, he’s categorically OPPOSED to ANY federal oversight of this pathology of amerigun frontier-style amerigoon abuse of nature.

Again, Paul’s position ONLY provides for individuals to sue if damaged by neighbors. That’s the entire extent of his ‘environments position. As alluded above, the typical red-state paradigm promotes a cavalier, carnivorous culture of hunting, logging, herding and believing, like some sort of swaggering cowboy cult.

If left to local government, PCB’s would have extinguished shore birds and raptors, murrelets would have been wiped out in the lower 48, and dozens of other species would have gone the way of the red wolf, passenger pigeon, and Carolina Parakeet.

That’s not to say the feds don’t do horrific things, like subsidize the corrupt logging of national forests at a net loss to the tax payer (which Paul indeed opposes, not because vast publicly owned irreplaceable virgin forests are needlessly decimated for tinder and toilet paper. but because it defies his free-market model). These are the people who mismanage or slant rulings regarding prior regulations, keep mining incentives from settler days on the books for free land and mineral rights for ‘big mining’ forever flows, and insist it’s safe to bury leaky nuke waste in a leaky salt mine, Of course they then stack the courts with anti-wildlife judges (who oddly enough promote life of microscopic fetuses, etc, and are determined to roll back federal rulings there too).

But consider for now that all this has as much to do with the administrations the people here elect, and what sort of treasonous corruption they are willing to obviously and overwhelmingly tolerate and support (as long as it comes under the guise of greed, god, and gung-ho false patriotic, illegal aggressive militaristic glory and gore).

If the past two elections have shown us anything, it’s that people in this land are just plain daft.
They do not, will not, and are determined not, it seems, to learn anything from any past debacle, be it environmental or military. Nothing shakes them, not election fraud, false-flag fraud, militaristic fraud, economic voodoo fraud, religious fraud, etc. etc. Absolutely nothing makes these people care about progress year after debilitating decade (but a past president with an extra-curricular cigar fetish, oh yeah that’s the real news!)

Certainly the current crop of feds fails miserably to implement any environmental standards, instead bushco 2 does everything it can to roll back and gut existing legal safeguards. So there you have it: if anyone wanted to see what a ‘Paul Paradigm’ might begin to look like from an environmental view, just look at the Reagan years (‘trees make more pollution than smokestacks’: a flatulent phrase that will live in infamy), or for the yet more fetid, try to fathom the environmental antics of bushco 1 & 2.

So let me then understand: These citizens are the people you want to now entrust to organize their state legislature to take on the big business interests in protection of forests, air and water, when they’ve shown no capacity to even take on Bochco for lying us into Vietnam once again (as if the first one didn’t just end a generation ago)?

Somebody’s missing something, methinks: Apparently red state rednecks just want to shoot things and be left alone to drain their wetlands, pump dioxin and PCB’s into streams, cut down anything they can call a saw-log, and sell the rest for firewood.

In that scenario you can forget saving habitat or endangered ‘varmints’ who will all (as in each and every to the very last one) just end up barbequed on some trailer-dwelling polycarbonate fiesta-ware platter

This whole charade of trusting the local municipalities and states to enact laws effectively protecting the ‘common’ good (as if states were a bunch of islands sharing not the same landmass, water, woods and species), is absurd. This country is if anything far smaller than Paul’s old man notion of individual nation-states floating in a sea of endlessly expendable wilderness. It’s like something from back in Daniel Boone days, patriots pickin’ off redcoats and complaining about the price of tea.

And what about the old problem of slave-states vs. the rest of normal humanity? Isn’t Paul here proposing we allow the reversing a few of the more fortuitous federal functions, like the Emancipation Proclamation? Sounds far-fetched, but one wonders if Paul feels the feds were ‘treading’ on ‘state’s rights’ or the constitution by freeing the slaves.

Absurd you say, “Paul would never allow it” (and hopefully not). But from my reading there’s absolutely nothing in his platform preventing Alabama from voting to re-enact segregation (remember, he’s against the Civil Rights Act). It would be up to the victims to sue in local courts— (Hullo?… anyone still remember the Jena Six, yet only 6 months on?? So much for local red-neck kangaroo courts upholding human rights). Based on the paulian program as it’s presented to his public, supporters had better be ready for more ‘strange fruit’ hangin’ from poplar trees if you give those hooded heretics reason to ‘vote’ for local southern ‘policy’.

And we’re not even mentioning labor laws, minimum wage, women’s suffrage– the list of hard-won worker and human rights against the single-minded. male dominated profit-motive of business is long, and still oozing life. These federal protections were hard won with the blood of those who fought just such a corporatocratic regime as Paul apparently proposes.
But my concern is less for those who can file lawsuits (and the burgeoning pro-bono army of sleazy lawyers filing fpr this windfall of likely lucrative litigation), when courts can’t handle the legions of opportunistic ambulance-chasers we already have haunting the halls of ‘justice’).
My concern is for those who have no voice, who can’t file complaints nor take up firearms to defend themselves against the ‘revolutionary’ patriots of Ruby Ridge or Waxo.
In the fine words of Gerald Durell: “Remember that the animals and plants have no Member of Parliament they can write to; they can’t perform sit-down strikes…they have nobody to speak for them except us, the human beings who share the world with them, but do not own it.”
When it comes to protecting the ‘Liberty’ of the other nations of animals and plants, as well as our health from long-term industrial toxins, the only choice you have with this electorate, as proven by it’s red-state voting record and prior typical abuse, is to regulate them to smithereens, from every possible angle you can.

Leaving life on earth up to locals to litigate is preposterous. You would need a full time fleet of Erin Brokoviches in every town to take on industry’s criminal antics pro-bono on behalf of the local inbred, illiterate electorate, who could care less if Big Coal levels the whole state of WV and makes it into a toxic parking lot (as we now see), as long as they’re gettin’ their minimum wage for their efforts and black-lung in the pits.

Now I’ve not been on the front lines there in Humboldt, but based on what I’ve read and followed these last years since Luna, the ONLY thing slowing down PL was the Endangered Species Act and their need to file and approve THP’s. Now certainly the system is not nearly as effective as one would have hoped, but if they had no fed law, PL would have denuded the place a decade ago.

As I recall, much hope was placed in local and state lawmakers to mandate greater protections for ancient trees and streams, and we waited an entire term of Governor Gray Davis for him to honor his campaign promises to help. But last I heard in the months before your new governator, NCEF and others were leading the charge to have Davis recalled for not honoring his campaign commitments to the old growth and it’s preservation.

And what ever happened to the ‘Heritage Tree Preservation Act’, which made such perfect sense by preserving ancients as not the province of a particular land-owner, but as perhaps the greatest expression of life on earth, transcending anyone who ever ‘owned’ the dirt they’ve lived on for millennia? Seems to me the state killed that one for these very ‘Paulian’ principles, which would doubtless determine that the law would impinge on ‘private property rights’.

Now I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the Ron Paul Paradigm and it’s inherently anti-environmentalist-by-default principles, has already been tried on the very places the Tree-sitters have so valiantly fought to preserve.

I agree ‘revolution’ sounds all well and good, considering the frustration we all feel with the status quo, but the ‘Paul Revolution’ is, once again the sort of thing one wants to avoid at all costs!

I reiterate that if one is so passionate about a presidential platform as the paulies seem to be, then one should be very careful about actually reading the positions, especially when they already clearly carry some very controversial clauses.

I would also perk up my ears at any presidential preacher whose main sponsors are among the military. Paul is very proud of his pandemic, rabid support among the enlisted militarists of our nationalistic mass-murdering goon-squad (all federal employees, mind you).

But based upon the fully failed dogma these dopes duped themselves into and which they uphold to this day (despite the compelling case that what they are doing is illegal and in violation of all moral, ethical and religious doctrine, as well as the Geneva accords prohibiting individual soldiers from acting on illegal or immoral orders thus rendering each enlisted man choosing to be deployed and kill in Iraq nothing short of murderous, psychopathic war-criminals). I would certainly do a double-take at any candidate who falls back so fully on funding from the military, which looks now more like a federal cult of violent, blood-thirsty crazies than a grass-roots group of ‘revolutionaries’.

All very odd indeed, odd enough to think a few more thoughts before throwing one’s support and activist efforts behind the Ron Paul Parade.

Forever Wild,
Shunka Wakan
North Coast Earth First!
http://www.northcoastearthfirst.org

It’s not a perfect world. We only have the choices that we have.

Any attempt to translate libertarian views into a liberal perspective is going to result in serious misunderstandings. I’ve been trying to make sense of libertarians for 20 years.

Libertarians come from the “Old Right”. That is, the pre-Buckley anti-war right. (Buckley founded the National Review and pushed militarism). The Old Right was most likely correct in 1917 to oppose Woodrow Wilson as he led us into “the war to end all wars”.

We’ve been at war pretty much ever since.

Sadly, the main progressive of the era, T. Roosevelt was pro-war.

Is war really just one issue? What about civil liberties? Most liberals and libertarians recognize that war is the chief means by which the ruling elite diminish our liberties.

Without civil liberties we have nothing. Environmentalism or any other endeavor will be completely at the mercy of those in power.

1) A nonsense “whatever-I-feel-like” definition of socialism, which applies equally well to Stalin and Mao’s forced starvation, humanitarian aid to the UN Millenium Goals, or even critical public funding of research and infrastructure.

Sound like a helpful preconcieved notion with which to enter political debate?

AND:

2) This sheep-thought usually occurs within the mental context that all opposing (or more subtle) economic views have been “disproven” by “basic economics.” (The infantile jab to “read a basic economics book” is one I have heard dozens of times in talks with these people.)

This leads to yet more nonsense, like the belief that “socialism” caused the Great Depression, or that “socialist” European countries don’t produce pharmaceuticals. (Yeah we all know how terrible Scandinavian or German craftsmanship or design is!)

It presumes well-respected economists like Joseph Stieglitz or Paul Hawken are “disproven socialists,” and more importantly, it obscures critical thinking about the use and distribution of natural resources in a time when their exponentially increasing depletion challenges the convential wisdom that the material quality of life for future generations will improve rather than worsen.

PS – I agree with Paul that public education is daycare at best and doesn’t serve in developing the minds or bettering the future prospects of kids, except in the sense that vast social belief makes it a partially self-fulfilling property.

I think the solution there is to open business, industry, and research to student observation and build internships into the structure of the economy, as well as to give some pass/fail seminars in critical thinking, propaganda evaluation, basic health self-care, etc.

Too bad so many otherwise insightful, progressive people are wedded to the extreme waste of human potential that is the modern, corporate and military-derive “educational” system.

– Sunil

Point is, selfishness and greed is clearly NOT the only ethic to be breading into your culture, and unfortunately that’s been the state of cultural affairs here for decades since the entire electorate folded for Raygun (to the extreme detriment of society and any altruistic, civic progress ever since).

About Paul:
Now I’m certainly no history buff, but I don’t believe the history of state regulation and it’s enforcement regarding the environment and endangered species would support your and Paul’s idea that federal environmental regulation of endangered species, clean water, clean air, etc. is adequately addressed or enforced by states. Nor are state and local governments ever likely to be incentivised to countermand the selfish desires of their constituency, especially as it pertains to amerigoons bizarre cultural frontier nostalgia and proclivity to shoot things into extinction and abuse nature in general.

State governments are typically beholden to local business interests who hold sway over policy time and again, and business typically cares not for consequences of it’s actions (present wave of ‘green-washing’ notwithstanding).

If states were successfully mandating environmental controls of industry and its antics, which are designed entirely around the profit motive at the expense of everyone and everything else to the very limits of the legal (and anything beyond that can be gotten through graft or cronyism, etc.) then the Endangered Species Act would never have come into being, and it’s sponsors would never have selflessly sacrificed to get the law on the books. Without that law dozens of species would by now be gone. Do the Paulies even care?

But look how a gun-totin’ red state like Montana manages wolves: The minute wolves are barely de-listed, that state is shooting wolves from the air wholesale, claiming they harass livestock. Buffalo were protected, but Montana allows you to shoot them in the eye the minute the buffalo roam outside of Yellowstone.

Fact is environmental controls on industry and individuals is woefully inadequate already, and the power of ‘neighbors’ under Paul’s position to successfully litigate against Midwest smokestacks, for example, which spew acid that has killed most of the thousands of lakes and streams in the Adirondacks, our largest wilderness preserve, is so daunting that no civilian nor even neighboring states have effectively regulated that output despite the science.

There you have not only a case against the effectiveness of states and even ‘neighbor’ states to moderate the destructiveness of acid rain for decade after decade, but it is known now for decades that certain thousands of asthmatics, etc. will each year die from this very coal combustion pollution.

If States were such responsible enforcers of the common good and the rule of law, why wouldn’t they regulate these polluters, which they refused to do despite the lawsuits levied and petitions signed, etc? The local profit motive of their local constituency is apparently far too important for states to effectively control the clear abuse. Instead states apparently have a disincentive to work for the common good at the expense of business, and they’re not about to fix that all by themselves.

Industry succeeds in bending even the most obvious rules because it’s so expensive to litigate against them, and so many local politicians and judges are in their pockets. Case in point, it took decades of activism to get big tobacco to remotely behave responsibly, despite the full knowledge we now know they had all that time of it’s carcinogenesis.

Which reminds me, the #2 killer and health-care disaster after I think heart disease is cancer, fully 1/3rd of which is lung cancer, likely virtually all tobacco-related. There you have it again, private enterprise run completely amok despite full knowledge of the public health disaster for decades. Do you think the governors of Big Tobacco States were gonna feel sorry for sick and dying lung-cancer patients trying to sue their biggest palm greasers? I’m no expert, certainly, but I seem to remembered this scandal

Once again a testament to the sinister nature of corporations and the state governments which are financially and culturally in their pocket. I suspect Ron Paul, Like Ron Reagan, pushed deregulation purely for the profit motive, not anything to do with personal ‘liberty’.

And as proven by the vastly increasing divide between the elites and the poor in this country since Reagan, ‘trickle down’ categorically didn’t work! Are you really ready to try yet another un-tested, suspiciously slanted economic model, only to find out it’s a disaster decades on?

So then this 2nd amendment ‘right to bear arms’ which the militia movement is so militant about, should allow us to stockpile hand-grenades, missile launchers and tactical nukes in order to arm us against the fed blackwater goons who’ll be para-trooping out of choppers like Red Dawn, am I right?

Imagine the feds trying to subjugate a country like the USA when they can’t even handle a country the size of Texas, nor get water to Katrina victims for 5 days!

Does anyone have anything to say about Paul’s now infamous support of the Patriots, land of Timothy McVeigh, the worst domestic terrorist of all time?

Paul supports nuclear power, potentially the longest lasting environmental catastrophe of all time (see the great interview with Helen Caldicott)

Paul is categorically anti-abortion, for what that’s worth to liberals.

Paul opposed the civil rights act of 1964, claiming it reduced liberty.

Paul’s site says “The key to sound environmental policy is respect for private property rights. The strict enforcement of property rights corrects environmental wrongs while increasing the cost of polluting”, which we’ve already seen above does not work on a national scale, nor even on a local or inter-state scale, and is inviting the worst possible abuses of deregulation, graft and disaster with the only recourse being that the injured party can sue after the damage is already done, putting no national controls in place to forestall that damage, instead relying on states to mandate regulation at it’s prerogative, which we see also doesn’t work.

Paul says: “I can’t find endangered species written in the Constitution”, advocating the dissolution of federal protections like the endangered species act which would be a disastrous crime if one looks at the history of US citizen and commercial abuse of species and all the domestic prior extinctions.

Paul is the most vocal advocate of gun rights, claiming that the reason for the second amendment is about fighting the federal military to fend off government abuse, ignoring the hideous gun violence promoted more by easy commercial access to guns, and especially to ammo, than black-market weapons.

And to think the populace with their shotguns plan to use them in case the military and their daisy-cutter bombs come knocking is absurd. (White-bred Americans want their guns because they like to kill animals, not because they anticipate an attack from the feds).

Paul disavows any conspiracy behind the 911 attacks, stating it was a ‘failure of bureaucracy’ (Do the Alex Jones supporters who flock behind Paul realize this?)

Paul apparently opposes universal health care, espousing a Giuliani-style tax-credit instead.

Paul voted against impeaching Cheney, stating there was not the ‘evidence’, yet he somehow found the ‘evidence’ to impeach Clinton. This clearly dubious dichotomy in his duplicitous votes thoroughly undermines whatever ‘credibility’ his supporters seem to find in his agreeable and countenance.

But nobody seems interested in addressing this particular double-standard, which is especially conspicuous coming from this lauded ‘constitutionalist’ whom everyone seems to ‘trust’ so much, and which was the reason for my skepticism about him in the first place, finally finding all this (and I’ve certainly found enough to see that a Paul presidency is a disastrous idea, he is truly an extremist and not this refreshing voice of revolution everyone seems so eager to claim).

I’m not here saying each of Paul’s points is bad, or that he’s a horrible, evil, warmongering criminal like Cheney, but there is enough truly wacky extremism under that crown to sideline his sole asset, his anti-war position. About the only other redeeming value to the good Dr. Paul and his positions is his apparent support of unregulated access to dietary supplements.

Now I don’t think we’re in danger of a Paul presidency, but I do question the militancy behind the Ron Paul ‘Revolution’, and it’s attractiveness to some on the left who should be lining up their energy behind Kucinich (who is also anti-war, has a sound and proven national health-care plan, but doesn’t come with all this sinister, selfish, commerce-is-god, gun-totin’ militia mania).

What’s up there, fellas?

Socialism doesn’t work, its a form of enslavement and fuedalism, all that is required is unquestioning obedience to the party and collective. Unfettered capitalism also leads over time to a fuedal state where the rich are served by the poor. Unfettered Libertarianism is the survival of the fittest, it might have been appropriate for the pioneers in the wild west, but times have changed. The answer lies somewhere between the three.

Its important for Americans to make their views known as quickly as they can. One commentator used the term ‘Corporatocracy’ I would say that America is on the verge of a Kleptocracy where thieves rule and the rule of law ignored.

For that reason as a voice in the wilderness, and for hope, I support Ron Paul