Moving to the Center

There are a number of phrases, which, after this election, no media outlet should ever repeat: Sista Soulja moment, maverick, thrown under the bus, flip-flop, ad infinitum.

But the one I detest the most is the nonsense about Obama "moving to the center." This translates into an incredibly stupid reversal on FISA, appeasing the ultra-right wing Zionists, backing down on offshore drilling and a number of other things I am not in the mood to look up.

What has happened to the political center? Some of the most popular social programs like Social Security and Medicare are suddenly considered to be far-left, socialist ideas, which is ridiculous: people love these programs. And we are the only remaining industrialized nation without some sort of universal health coverage, despite the fact that it makes ridiculously good economic sense (healthy workers are productive workers, socializing the cost takes it off the balance sheets, fewer hours lost to disability) and the majority of Americans want some form of guaranteed coverage.

Other ideas like diplomacy are also leftist and dangerous. This is patently ridiculous -- diplomacy is very safe and can prevent war, which is actually a GOOD thing.

Why is all this stuff leftist? Probably due to the fact that the conservative fringe has moved so far to the right that normally "moderate" ideas are now socialist measures. And we've definitely seen that shift: Fox News and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp empire, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, George Will, Charles Krauthammer and every other right-wing pundit represent that ideological shift among the media and its corporate interests to the extreme right.

And yet we are off fighting "extremists" in the Middle East, most of whom are so angry and willing to blow stuff up because of stupid policies crafted by the bona fide extremists in America.

We need to kick these people out of power. I've watched V for Vendetta multiple times in the past month, and all of America needs to realize something Hugo Weaving's V character says: "People should not be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people."


Viva la revolucion...


Posted by pdmccaul [Op-Ed] ( August 12, 2008 04:42 PM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

Irritated rant #1

As the title of this post goes, this is the first irritated rant I'm putting on this blog.

First off, I'm addressing white people's annoyance at the so-called double standard regarding the n-word. Here's the truth: THERE IS NO DOUBLE STANDARD. When a white person uses the n-word in America, it carries nearly 400 years of systemic oppression of blacks by whites; when a black person uses it, (in my opinion) they are trying to use a previously derogatory term in order to neutralize it. Honestly, it's like something you'd see out of any group of people that bands together because a bunch of people don't like them -- the group members try to turn the hateful labels the larger group applies to the smaller group in order to pretty much tell the bullies to go to hell. Maybe it's not quite that simple, but that's how it is.

So remember: 400 years of getting your lives ruthlessly controlled kind of entitles a racial group to be sensitive about the oppressors using derogatory terms about them, and they do what they can to start seizing control of the language for themselves.

And on that part, please don't start with the shit about black people being gangsta thug criminals. Criminology is one of my majors, and one of the biggest myths out there is that of minorities being evil criminals who threaten white people. Overwhelmingly, the dominant factor in criminal tendencies is socioeconomic status. Poor people commit crimes because they are desperate. Or something like that. Moreover, with regard to violent crime (the gangsta thug criminal stereotype), most of the time, white people kill white people and black people kill black people. Period. It's only due to sensationalistic crap like the O.J. Simpson trial and every other example of a black man killing a white woman do we get this ridiculous stereotype of the dangerous black gangsta trying to do a drive-by shooting of all our promising young white men and a drive-by rape of all our precious young white women.

Which nicely segues me into rape: it's criminally negligent as to how blithely our society blames the victim for rape and it stems from the almost universal sexism in society. If you want to talk about a real double standard, try this one on for size: when a woman is raped, she "had it coming" because she was "sexually promiscuous" and a "total slut" some ridiculous nonsense like that; when a man is sexually promiscuous, he's considered the awesomest manly man, out-manlied by only Chuck Norris.

The last thing I have the sanity to type before I start wanting to hit my head against the giant wall of society's stupidity is a broad statement about equality, covering issues like immigration, gay marriage (and other "social issues") and practically every -ism out there.

Please, please, PLEASE stop with the ridiculous hating. Particularly in America, we have this irrational hatred of the minority. We have hated practically every single wave of immigrant in this country, legal or otherwise and we still ended up eventually integrating them into society. We go on and on about gay marriages and abortions without stopping to think that we don't really give a damn about 99.99999% of the people who get married, nor do we spend hours wondering if any of the tens of millions of women in America are pregnant and if the fetus they may carry is actually a person. We go on about where women belong, what races are dangerous and what religions are hellbent on destroying America without realizing that our men are doing stupid things in the places they allegedly belong, our "law-abiding" races are out committing the same crimes the "dangerous" races are doing and the "good" religions are engaging in extremism that rivals that of the "evil" religions.

I've gotten past a good part of hating the intolerant idiots who support all these irrational positions and have almost gotten to the point of pity -- life is tough enough as it is, so all these people are doing is adding unnecessary crap to deal with everyday. And for what hate there is left in me, I mostly store it up and use it as an excuse to plop down with a bunch of beer and stare at a TV for a while.

There. I feel better already.


Posted by pdmccaul [Op-Ed] ( July 31, 2008 08:11 PM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

Satire

By now, I'm sure everyone has heard about the "controversial" New Yorker cover with Barack Obama.

I believe that, as usual, John Stewart says it best -- "it's just a f***ing cartoon."

Seriously. It's a cartoon. Yes, I personally can't stand Mallard Fillmore, mostly because I detect factual inaccuracies or blatant depictions of nonsensical right-wing talking points. But this is the New Yorker magazine people say!

Does anyone realize who reads the New Yorker? People like me (elitist sophisticates and ex-New Yorkers) and New Yorkers. If this wasn't broadcast on television, I kind of doubt there'd be a massive controversy.

But again Stewart puts it best -- "How dare the New Yorker magazine present horrible perceptions of Barack Obama without merely stating whether or not the allegations are true...That is SOOOO your job. (cue clips of media portraying Obama as a America-hating secret Muslim)."

I've said it before, although maybe not in this blog, and I'll say it again -- isn't it bad when a comedy show presents the best coverage of current events?


Posted by pdmccaul [Op-Ed] ( July 23, 2008 08:32 AM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

John McCain is aware of the Internets

It's been well-established that John McCain isn't exactly computer literate.

But how can someone in the media defend this as a non-issue?

Seriously, if Barack Obama had said this, I swear, the national dialogue would be filled with talking points like:

• "He doesn't know what the Internet is? His buddy Al Gore invented it, did he forget to tell Obama about what it is?"
• "How can Barack Obama connect with your average citizen if he doesn't use Google?"
• "Is Barack Obama too elitist for the Internet?"

Ain't objectivity grand?


Posted by pdmccaul [Op-Ed] ( July 17, 2008 07:51 AM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

Jesse Helms: GOOD RIDDANCE (UPDATED)

I know it's not exactly kosher to speak ill of the dead, but if there are two people in the world I could reserve it for, one is Hitler and the other is Jesse Helms.

This post over at Firedoglake probably best explains why I detest that racist, homophobic bigot who stubbornly stood for principles that belong in the 15th century.

He served for far too long in the Senate, and it almost shames me to say that I lived in North Carolina while he was serving as its Senator.

If there's any justice in the afterlife, then Helms is certainly not in a very happy place right now.

UPDATE:

The G Spot is a fairly new blog, but it has a hell of a lot more on how the British papers gave Jesse Helms's a fitting obituary that spoke naught but the truth and left out the maudlin sentiment American papers seem obsessed with giving every public official and celebrity post mortem.

It reminds me of Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead -- the protagonist of the preceding book (Ender's Game), Andrew Wiggin, has left his xenocidal ways behind and now travels the galaxy and "speaks" people's deaths. In doing so, he does not go out of his way to speak excessively well of the deceased; instead, in keeping with the tradition of speaking deaths, which he founded at the end of Ender's Game, Andrew Wiggin speaks nothing but the truth of a person's life. In Speaker for the Dead, the one death he speaks (at least as far as I remember -- I haven't read the book in a year) is of a man that many feared and thus hated for his strength, which shapes the man into who he is.

I really wish I could summarize it, but it's rather difficult to summarize without writing a few pages myself (this translates into BUY THE BOOK and READ IT FOR YOURSELF).

Still, we must remember that the truth of our actions will live on beyond us, and there's very little point in trying to hide it behind polite encomiums and eulogies.


Posted by pdmccaul [Op-Ed] ( July 06, 2008 04:28 PM ) Permalink | Comments[1]

Why is Karl Rove considered...

...a political genius?

The man first managed to run the 2006 GOP elections based on the idea that electing Democrats would result in all of us catching the terrorists' super smallpox viruses, spontaneously converting to radical Islam and then dying in a nuclear fireball. If you recall, that managed to award the Democrats control of Congress (which they have squandered).

But now this: Crooks and Liars has a clip of Rove on Hannity and Colmes talking about Boumediene v. Bush, in which SCOTUS argued that Gitmo detainees have the right to habeas corpus rights. As many have noted before, this does not automatically mean the people we are illegally holding for indefinite periods of time can go out and strap on a C-4 vest and kill Americans -- it means that they have the right to challenge their detention. And the bottom line is that if they were actually terrorists, we should have a pretty damn good case against them: THEY BLEW UP AMERICAN BUILDINGS OR KILLED AMERICAN TROOPS!

But Karl Rove goes on H&C and spouts the right-wing nonsense that the terrorists can now be set free immediately and proceed to bomb our cities and get gay married.

If you watch the entire clip, you realize just how much of an idiot Rove is. He tries to claim that the 2002 vote for the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against Iraq is the same as a declaration of war.

This is deceiving. Ultimately, the supreme law of the land, the US Constitution, says that Congress is vested with the power to declare war, while the War Powers Resolution declares that the President may take immediate action against enemies of the state.

If you read the 2002 Iraq AUMF, it shows that the President is bound to use force only as last resort if diplomacy had failed.

Diplomacy never failed. Thus, amongst other arguments, the Congress has every right to withdraw support and pull the troops out right now. The other major argument is probably that the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional, as it undercuts Article I's statement that the legislature is responsible for the declaration of war. Unfortunately, with the Supreme Court stacked as it is, I don't see that sort of ruling emerging at any time in the next few months.


Posted by pdmccaul [Op-Ed] ( July 04, 2008 04:23 PM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

The SURGE!

I don't have a lot to say in this post, nor do I have links for you to click on or ignore.

I do have a question: if the Surge has worked and We are Winning in Iraq, with Victory Around the Corner, when can we Bring Home the Troops?

Seriously, it makes no sense. Bush says the troops will come home once we've won. Now that we've almost won, do we plan on leaving? NO! Stay forever! Hell, let's invade Iran while we're at it!

Then again, it IS Bush and his insane neocon friends we are talking about...


Posted by pdmccaul [Op-Ed] ( July 01, 2008 03:02 PM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

Grassroots strategy, extended

Matthew Yglesias has a very interesting post about a recent Gallup poll regarding presidential candidates, categorized by education: "When you look at these numbers it's important to recall that the largest bloc of people with grad school diplomas are public school teachers."

To me, this strikes me as huge, simply because parents tend to pay attention to teachers (mostly because the teachers are responsible for their kids for one-third of the day for nine months out of the year for 12 years).

Senator Obama has a number of programs he should push through Congress early: health care, public transportation, economic reform and undoing the damage Bush 43 has done to the country and the Constitution. But I think he should push a strong educational plan as well: raise teachers' salaries, foster small programs for local educational innovation and some other category that I cannot think of off of the top of my head.

This is an effective grassroots strategy -- one that should not be ignored.

Posted by pdmccaul [Op-Ed] ( June 07, 2008 10:36 AM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

Scott McClellan

I'm not sure who has and hasn't seen it, but I thought Scott McClellan's interview with Keith Olbermann on Countdown justifies forgiving his role in propagandizing the nation. The critical element was the Number One item on Countdown, with former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean.

He went through the crucible, much like McClellan is now: former "friends" denouncing him as if he were an enemy, old foes excoriating him for not coming clean when it mattered and the internal struggle of doing the right thing.

Honestly, I'm sick of hearing people on the blogosphere attack McClellan. Yes, he could have spoken up earlier. But sometimes, when you are very much a part of the machine, it's difficult to immediately see that the grand plan you are a part of is working towards a very bad end. And we should remember our history and look at John Dean: the man was ripped into by everyone for testifying against Nixon, allies and enemies alike. Yet he did it anyways.

I won't pretend to know why McClellan chose now to act, nor why Dean chose to cooperate with the Watergate special prosecutor. Maybe they did it out of patriotic fervor; perhaps they were rats fleeing the sinking ship; or possibly they acted so they could actually sleep at night.

But we shouldn't be the judges of Scott McClellan. It may just be the Catholic New Yorker in me, but I believe redemption is possible, albeit rare. And McClellan should be getting the benefit of the doubt.


Posted by pdmccaul [Op-Ed] ( May 31, 2008 12:07 PM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

3/19 and 3/25 Viewpoint Columns

19 March

25 March

On the broader side of things, I am slowly losing faith in America.


Posted by pdmccaul [Op-Ed] ( March 25, 2008 05:58 PM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

2/26 Viewpoint Piece

I spend so little time here and so much more time stressing over what to write for the Technician that I've decided just to start posting links to my columns there.  Why not?

Here's the column I ran Tuesday, 26 February. Enjoy.


Posted by pdmccaul [Op-Ed] ( February 28, 2008 03:00 PM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

Economic Stimulus Stupidity

How exactly is George Bush our president?

I have been watching his press conference on what he proposes Congress considers for the desperately needed economic stimulus package to hopefully prevent our economy from falling into recession.  Here's two points I saw that made me extremely confused and extremely angry:

• The need to cut unnecessary expenditures unrelated to our economy...HELLO!  WAR IN IRAQ!! We have yet to see the vaunted oil price drop that our invasion would spark (it actually sparked record increases in oil prices) and otherwise it does little else then waste taxpayer money.
  
• The need to not increase taxes.  I like to point out that the economy went into eight years of economic prosperity after Clinton's Deficit Reduction Act, which increased taxes on the top 1% of earners.  Republicans said it would cripple the economy.  Republicans were then proven wrong. Thus, we should ignore Republican tax and economic theory.  But we don't.

It is ridiculous to state the blatantly obvious and mix it with the same old party line about tax cuts and cutting government spending; it is worse coming from a President that has spent more money than any other president while cutting taxes while our nation is at war (something economist Paul Krugman points out no civilization in history has ever done).

Wake up, my Republican friends.  Your party no longer seems to listen to you.


Posted by pdmccaul [Op-Ed] ( January 18, 2008 11:37 AM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

A Funny Dance

It's funny watching Dubya and the neocons try to finagle their way out of the latest disaster for the administration.  After the government's National Intelligence Estimate on Iran said that they stopped trying to build a bomb four years ago, Bush and Company had some explaining to do.

Here's what Norman Podhoretz, considered by some to be the "godfather" of neoconservative policy, said about the NIE:

Wow.  Aren't we supposed to never question the great intelligence organization and brilliant military we have that has seized us tremendous victory from the dire threat of Islamofascism?  If I didn't know better, I'd think that Podhoretz is crazy.  But here's the kicker: this guy is the CHIEF ADVISOR to Rudy Giuliani on foreign policy.  And Rudy's already an authoritarian nut.

For more on the NIE, here's a nice link to the key findings, with a link to the .pdf file of the entire NIE.

Still, what's going to be real interesting to watch is how Bush defends his statements about Iran being on the verge of incinerating the world in a nuclear fireball to start World War III when some sources indicate that he may have known since August.

This feels like something taken out of some improv comedy routine about crazy politicians.  Except this one's real...so my laughter's a bit half-hearted.

Posted by pdmccaul [Op-Ed] ( December 06, 2007 06:24 PM ) Permalink

Washington's Odd Obsession

What is it about Social Security that draws modern politicians to it like a deck lamp draws moths?

As I've seen it, Social Security is the third rail of American politics: it's electric, so if you touch it, you die.  Or at least wind up badly fried and messed up.  Evidence enough of this is Bush's failed attempt to privatize Social Security in 2005 and Reagan's attempt to crush Social Security in the 1980s.

Add to this the recent idea that Social Security is a mess, and, as Paul Krugman notes, this leads to a "Beltway obsession with Social Security [that] reflects ideology and fashion, not the real problems facing America" that covers our news media.  Also, as most anyone familiar with the numbers, the real financial shortfalls aren't in Social Security; the looming spectre of unfunded liabilities lies in the realm of Medicare and Medicaid, which are disasters.

What happened to the old adages that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" or "the squeaky wheel gets the grease?"  Am I suddenly in The Twilight Zone and all these people older than me are secretly actually younger than me and too hip to remember old adages?


Posted by pdmccaul [Op-Ed] ( November 28, 2007 10:38 AM ) Permalink

The Flaw in "Pure" Liberty

Liberty.  One of the banner words that libertarians in particular like to use as a justification for a virtually non-existent government.

I like to remind people of the famous words of Thomas Hobbs: without some sort of social contract, human life becomes "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."  This is the basis of the fundamental problem with supposedly "pure" liberty.

The biggest problem with liberty is the idea of independence, particularly in the modern world; there is a decreasing amount in the level of pure autonomy any individual or collective can have today.  I am not saying that socially, we can never be independent.  We can.  What I argue is that in terms of political and economic means, we cannot truly create pure liberty without introducing something of a Darwinistic twist to our complex social order.  Look at Enron, WorldCom, and all the other companies that squandered company resources to make the appearance of profit in order to benefit the top executives; look at the sub-prime mortgage fiasco of today and how well-compensated the executives responsible for these ridiculously risky and foolish "investment vehicles" are.  Strict libertarianism, in both the economic and social sense, creates situations that promote the rise of unjust and oppresive societies: allowing people to do as they will without some source of collective sanction will lead some to exploit and oppress others.

In its purest, liberty is essentially lawlessness; if one takes the entire "Ownership Society" promoted by some very libertarian think tanks (the Cato Institute, most prominently) for its inherent meaning, it translates to something of an "Own-Your-Own Society."  We assume that people are inherently good, and by moving towards a laissez-faire economy, we promote the best interests of all.  But is this truly the case?  Are all the corporate scandals and product recall controversies not enough to persuade us that pursuit of profit and the bottom line can lead even the best of us to make uncharitable and inhumane decisions?  While we may not wish to impose charity upon people, we at least have to impose justice; by no means should we draw the line at more conventional crimes at the cost of ignoring the more moralistic crimes of deprivation and corruption.

And as I said earlier, true independence is a myth: without the economy, astute regulation, and people to enforce the regulation, we might wake up to a house without electricity, clean water, basic sanitation to drive on run-down roads in unsafe vehicles to unhealthy workplaces with unreasonable working hours and minimum pay.  The government and its regulatory oversight provide tremendous guarantees that we wake up and take for granted; should we really gut such safeguards to give ourselves the feeling of independence?

Is liberty an important part of the American political landscape?  By all means, yes, it is; liberty is one of the basic rights we built this nation upon.  But libertarians who argue that the government should not force us to be charitable seem to forget the idea that our rights come with responsibilities, and that having freedom and independence does not permit us to act in ways that may hurt others.

It's the one big idea from Spider-Man that I think we all need to heed: with great power comes great responsibility.  Our right to liberty is a great power.  Libertarians need to think of the responsibility that comes with the freedom to act in such a broad array of choices, and accept the consequences.


Posted by pdmccaul [Op-Ed] ( November 23, 2007 04:08 PM ) Permalink

The REAL Story of King Midas

Everyone knows the tale of King Midas, the man whose touch turned things into gold; yet we draw the wrong conclusions from it in terms of an economical standpoint.

There was (for lack of a better term) an Op-ed in the Technician today (the NC State school newspaper) that addressed the "need" to return to the gold standard.  This article, I fear, represents the sort of "journalistic" stuff our newspaper is made of.

The most striking detail of this op-ed was the fact that it presents one side of the economic story.  Most economists disagree with re-instating the gold standard; by tacking the value of our currency to a specific commodity, we'd artificially inflate the value of gold by forcing the worth of our economy to support a "reasonable" gold exchange rate.  Paul Krugman did an excellent job of picking apart the arguments of gold standard proponents in this 1996 article.  What Krugman tells us is exactly what I've said: most economists oppose the gold standard, it artificially increases the worth of gold, ignores the basic principle of supply and demand, and ignores the moral of the tale of King Midas:

And that's the crux of the matter.  Gold is just a metal, and its value depends upon the value we place on it.  If gold can buy you a lot of useful goods and cool toys, then it has a high value; if we can use some other, less arbitrary means of assigning a value to these goods and toys, then gold becomes as valuable as it is useable for some purpose.  Thus, in terms of finding some commodity to which we should tack our currency, we should find something that is highly useful in and of itself, like platinum or silicon.  The latter is my preference for a nice, somewhat specious argument for the silicon standard: computers and breast implants both use silicon; further, since...adult entertainers that broadcast via the Internet tend to get breast implants, this industry will increase the benefit of having a computer, thus increasing the demand for silicon for computer chips.  Thus, silicon will fuel a powerful positive feedback cycle that will eventually lead to what the Religious Right would call a "porn bomb" being used against our children.

So it's pointless to tie our currency to a metal and expect our economic problems to disappear by magic and our dollar to suddenly skyrocket in value overnight.  What we need is sensible governmental fiscal policy...something we haven't had out of this administration for the past seven years.


Posted by pdmccaul [Op-Ed] ( November 15, 2007 01:10 PM ) Permalink

Xenophobia at its worst

Xenophobia, noun - fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or anything that is strange or foreign.

This is what Merriam-Webster defines xenophobia as.  It almost sounds like some talking points on immigration reform.

The following ad was created by Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO) and is so appallingly racist and xenophobic that I was first inclined to believe that it was a huge YouTube prank:

(For all my technical skill, I do not know how, nor do I feel like investing the time at the present moment to figure out how to embed YouTube video into my blog.  So just go watch the ad at TalkingPointsMemo's Election Central.)

But it's not.  This video is supposed to air in Iowa, though I hope it won't.

Immigration reform is not going to happen in any form as suggested by the video.  Mostly due to business interests.  You see, illegal immigrants are a boon to bottom-line business: since these people are not legally in the country, then they have no standing and no ability to use labor laws to protect themselves.  So all this nonsense about a twenty-foot fence is sheerly ridiculous.  For starters, it implies that people only can get to this country via the land route.  I will admit that most illegal immigrants probably won't fly with American Airlines or any airline, for that matter.  I will remind you of the old tale of Paul Revere: one if by land, two if BY SEA.

So in order to reasonably seal our nation up from any immigrants, we'd also probably have to place huge minefields off the coast (I am being intentionally facetious/specious here).  These minefields, of course, would then prevent supertankers from bringing in what is presently the lifeblood of our nation: oil.  Thus, our economy collapses and bad things happen.

So business will not let immigration reforms pass in any meaningful way.

And to all those xenophobes and anti-immigration people out there: I'm sure your great-great-great-great grandparents were Native Americans.  And I'm the Pope.  This nation was founded on the basis of being a place where people could escape oppression or find some measure of hope.  Has the American dream changed?

Here's a few interesting things to close this post out on: nuclear terrorism and televangelists.  Anonymous Liberal has a nice post on the technical infeasability of the whole "suitcase nuke" situation; apparently, we needn't really worry about a smoking "mushroom cloud" gun being handed to terrorists in simple briefcase form.  We are more likely to look for the smoking "suspiciously stationary fully-loaded SUV" gun.  On the televangelist bit, Balloon Juice has a quick summary with links to investigations into several prominent televangelists.  Is Jesus whispering stock tips into the ears of television preachers?  Or are these ministers defrauding the flock of money to finance a life of finery?  More on that as the investigations unfold.


Posted by pdmccaul [Op-Ed] ( November 13, 2007 04:01 PM ) Permalink

Ron Paul

Ron Paul made recent news with an astonishing $4 million dollar fundraising effort through the Internet grassroots.

Let me make the disclaimer of saying that I do not imply that I support Ron Paul as a candidate.  As a reasonable individual, I can say that logic and reality dictate that Ron Paul will not be the GOP candidate, nor can the netroots create enough financing to make him a viable third-party candidate.  But I like him on several issues: Social Security, military expenditure, and civil liberties.  He supports bringing home the troops, paying off the debt, financing Social Security, and minimizing government intrusion into people's lives.

(This is all according to the Issues section on Ron Paul's website - you can Google it).

Yet what I do not agree with him on breaks him as a candidate.  He is very much an strict constructionist on Constitutional issues; I feel that the Constitution, while well-intended, cannot truly encompass the complexity of the modern world.  Dr. Paul also advocates more of a free-market economics and a more...isolationist stance on international entities such as the ICJ and WTO.  The nail in the coffin, however, is his very harsh immigration policy (close the borders, kick 'em out, etc.).

Ron Paul is not really a Republican.  He is something of a libertarian.  That is essentially why I do not support or advocate him for President: I am a social libertarian but an economic socialist.  I believe regulation is required, and the idea of small government is antithetical to such regulatory agency.  Further, I don't agree that deregulation and withdrawal from some present trade agreements is good for the people; if America becomes a difficult place to maximize profits and has little in ways of enticing commercial agencies to our nation, I fear companies will simply move operations out of the nation.  Still, staying in these agreements may also allow corporate interests to act in pursuit of pure profity with impunity.  So we really need to do more than just leave these trade agreements and return to the gold standard as Dr. Paul says.

I also do not see anything of an opinion on universal health care.  While advocating deregulation of alternative medicine, Ron Paul does nothing to improving the regulatory ability of the FDA and similar agencies; he wants to cut funding for the FDA due to its past failures, even as our nation needs it the most in light of recent drug recalls.  Paul's ideas make no sense with regard to health care regulation: instead of funding the vital organization that has failed due to money shortages, he says cut off the financial support.

That is not acceptable.  So I can't really accept Ron Paul as a candidate, both in terms of electability and platform (mostly due to planks).

All said and done, however, I think Ron Paul has managed to captivate the attention of many by being a principled leader who has carefully thought political opinions and supports an opinion on some key issues held by the majority of America.  Now if only a Democrat could match his grassroots/netroots support....

(Final Note: for those interested in seeing a bit more analysis of the issue, Glenn Greenwald has an evaluation of Dr. Paul's candidacy, platform, and principled integrity...and Mr. Greenwald also makes the disclaimer noting that any positive remark about a candidate is not the same as endorsing the candidate.)


Posted by pdmccaul [Op-Ed] ( November 08, 2007 09:31 AM ) Permalink