Ron Paul 2012 Support.

Well, I am new to this Ron Paul thing, but I really do have my own argument based on the little things I've mentioned and on my observations about him just by looking at him, reading over him briefly, etc.

I am for change, but I think that Ron Paul represents too much of it too fast and I think he's a rather strange old geezer that has run out of time in his life to actually do this right. I am bothered by him being more of a libertarian posing as a republican, I am bothered by the fact that he wants all drugs to be legal (even though I'm not all anti-drug myself) and I am just bugged that he's taking this seriously and that so many people are concerning themselves with him when they should be concentrating on other people and more realistic approaches.

I almost can't get too serious about a Ron Paul argument because I feel he shouldn't be taken that seriously. He doesn't stand a chance, people, nor should he. I don't hate the guy and I don't really think he's a cult leader, but there's something about him to me that reeks of doom. It is strongly because of the legalization of drugs thing. People, how would you really feel if tomorrow everybody in our country was allowed to sell and purchase cocaine, heroin, X and all sorts of other drugs I can't even imagine? We haven't even legalized marijuana yet -- do we really want a man who believes in going to extremes and releasing it all at once? There are going to be lots of people in this country who don't like it and those people are going to be violent. Our country will fall if someone like Ron Paul becomes our leader. There will be a natural upsurge of people far worse than me who will just tear American apart, especially if we do start getting more drug addicts in the nation. Many people are not going to be okay with Ron Paul. We need time to experiment with change before we unleash a fury of it. We just got an African American president -- that was a big change for us. That was an experiment. Moving on to someone like Ron Paul next is anarchy.

I think that we should support Barack Obama now more than ever instead of tearing him apart because he might win us over in his second term. I'm not some major Obama supporter -- I really could care less about all of this -- but I do feel it's right to hold him up right now. We are at an important crossroads in history and if we make a foolish mistake, we are going to pay for a long, long time. We have Barack Obama - let's stay with Barack Obama.

Speaking of the R[love]ution... b*tches don't know 'bout my ARTIFICIAL LIBERTAR(D)IAN I-LANDS

It's a shame that this is only structurally possible for capitalist utopias.

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"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

I like a lot of his points, but seriously all drugs being legalized is not going to even come close to getting passed. He would get my vote if I wasn't going to vote Obama in what will be my first ever eligible vote.

Ah, took the disguise off, eh? Welcome back.

We always know it's you, as you have a unique way of posting - best to keep the old username, anyway.

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Have to agree with SC on this one- legalizing ALL drugs seems quite radical, and personally, I'm hoping Obama gets reelected. And I seem to be against most of Ron Paul's views; including abortion and healthcare in particular. Still, his opinions on the War in Afghanistan and the death penalty make him better than most Republicans... but not better than Obama.

Not that I'll be able to vote yet, anyways

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"Puns are the highest form of literature." -Alfred Hitchcock

You mean that you "couldn't" care less.

I concur with your concluding paragraph, but not with your fear of legalizing drugs. Most people who want to use drugs already do so; most people don't make that decision based upon legality. A greater problem is the gang-related violence stemming from drugs being illegal (and thus highly profitable via the black market) and the billions of dollars that go down the drain in feckless pursuit of an impossible goal. I would analogize the situation to that of Prohibition.

You would turn the Amarican economy over to Sarah Palin?

I don't necessarily agree with an isolationist foreign policy, but would it be worse than the interventionist foreign policy that has wasted American lives (and foreign ones) and American dollars so often in recent decades?

I merged your last two posts. Just FYI.

This sounds like a sarcastic question, implying that the mere mention of her name is supposed to constitute an argument of how ridiculous the sentiment is.

Sarah Palin is not my first choice for President. She's probably not my tenth choice for President. I like her exactly where she is: in the role of conservative firebrand. But her stated policies on a number of economic matters are, to my mind, correct, or at least a good deal more correct than many others.

I'm not exactly sure how to answer such a broad question, because right off the bat it completely ignores the statement it's replying to, which subdivided general competency from whether or not a candidate is right on the issues.

Yes, I think it would. The willingness to intervene in foreign affairs may or may not be done wisely. I don't think there's any scenario under which isolationism can be done wisely. True, you'll have misguided or mismanaged actions. But you'll also have humanitarian actions. You'll have moral imperatives that an isolationist nation would have to stand idly by and watch.

And this is assuming it's even possible to cut ourselves off from the world and not suffer the consequences of whatever it may become. The world is a good deal smaller than it used to be. I don't think we can wall ourselves off from anything, at least not in any meaningful way.

Exactly. It was decided a good 20 years ago that, as the lone superpower, the U.S. has a responsibility to the rest of the world to manage an interventionist foreign policy. Despite of the consequences of this decision, things could have been a whole lot worse if we had adopted an isolationist policy.

I can imagine us someday legalizing all drugs somehow. I really could. But I really think rushing them all out is insanity.

Wintertriangles thinks that natural selection will take care of stupid humans and kill off the idiots that use the drugs - all once they're legal - but the case can really be said for the opposite. Gang violence might as well be natural selection, too.

At least - and as terrible as this may sound - drugs are contained in some way via the black market and aren't easily accessible. I don't know all of the drugs that are even out there that would become available, but I imagine that if all drugs became legal, is it possible that we might find really scary stuff on sale at 7-Eleven if all drugs became legal? And I do believe that many more people would take drugs than those who do now while it's illegal. This could have hideous consequences for society on top of what society might turn into if we even allow it. If anything should be done, the war on drugs should strongly focus on putting less people in jail who sell it illegally and more focus on educating people about drugs and about the history of drugs and why people take them. Natural drugs from the earth, like marijuana and mushrooms, should have more tolerance than anything that's concocted in a lab or whatever -- 'cause to me the real terror is when man creates those scary pills or whatever that come out of nowhere. Anything that has a deep history of killing people through overdoses needs restriction.

I mean, I might be thinking ridiculous ideas like heroin would be sale at 7-Eleven -- probably it would all be something you'd have to get that's prescription based (maybe?) But like that's gonna satisfy everyone. Even if marijuana became legal everywhere, it might be restricted and only through prescription only -- and that will still be abused.

My main feeling about all of this, though, is that it's not time for all drugs to be legalized. I know you can look at time and think, "Well, if not now, when?" and I understand, but it doesn't look like it's time, yet. We have got to reach a new plateau collectively. All of this will come to pass, but it should come to pass at the right moment. I look at Ron Paul and I don't see the right guy. But I do think that people like Ron Paul are inspiring and will send a message to people and will probably inspire the right person whenever he shows up.

This is why there is gang violence

Well, cheer it on. You're a fan of natural selection, apparently -- if the gangs are killing each other, then natural selection is totally at work. Those people are there and they're dying away. Maybe nature prefers the gangs to die instead of the supposedly idiotic people who would take drugs and die from it.

Natural selection doesn't include pussies with guns, I shouldn't have to explain that

And how do you know?

How are you aware of what nature may have in store for things?

Those people in gangs are just as likely to get killed off as anybody else. They want to play with guns, they want to fight over drugs -- fine. They're going to die for it, then.

People want to take dangerous drugs? Fine. They might die for it, too.

Seems to me that drugs and death have a very strong link no matter what events occur around them.

Thanks, Yoda said that was the best way and I felt it time to finally come clean.

But America abandoned Afghanistan twenty years ago with costly results; our country also failed to intervene to prevent genocide in Rwanda (and more recently in Darfur) and the response to Bosnia proved tardy and thus tragic. More recently, interventions if Afghanistan (which proved reactive rather than proactive) and Iraq have turned into fiascoes approaching decade-long quagmires. Somehow, we can't seem to find the correct balance and of course, American interventionism dates back well over twenty years.

The key isn't a false binary between isolationism and interventionism, but the wisdom and international knowledge needed to make better decisions. If we cut ourselves off from the rest of the world in terms of daily interest and institutional learning and then try to render almost knee-jerk reactions to explosive events in far-flung countries, we are bound to blunder.

I don't think that America should cut itself off from the rest of the world, either. But if we are to intervene in the world, we should also be focusing on the world through our media coverage, our educational system, and our overall sensibilities. Of course, we rarely do so, thus resulting in a schism that is bound to produce poor outcomes.

And when we intervene, we should be employing "hard power" with greater subtlety, precision, and prudence, hence reducing the prospect of "blow back" which Ron Paul has rightly discussed.

I don't entirely disagree, but what you're proposing now isn't quite what Ron Paul is proposing.

And, in a very broad sense, I think it's very easy to criticize errors in intervention in hindsight. But I'm not convinced it's the kind of thing that is at all predictable. The very nature of intervention, and the number of variables involved, and the number of those variables which we do not control, implies that there might not be a way to intervene which does not produce some undesirable outcomes, and which does not open us up to some sort of criticism like this.

Yes, but as Yoda said, you're bound to have SOME misguided or mismanaged actions with an interventionist policy. Someone is always going to make a mistake or error, but trying to maintain an isolationist policy when you're the world superpower is an error in and of itself.

On a semi related note, it looks like the end might finally be near for Gadafi with only limited United States support.

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It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula