Is any Presidential candidate running on the issue: "No bailout for subprime lenders and borrowers"? This seems exactly like an issue where the public's moral prejudices are in sync with economic theory, yet the special interests seem likely to get bailed out at the taxpayer's expense.
Or, how about: "No bailout for fraudulent lenders and borrowers"? Is that too much to ask?
We've moved from the age of the Invisible Hand to the age of the Invisible Thumb on the Scale.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
That is almost certainly Ron Paul's position.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure Ron Paul would agree with that position. I don't know if he's touted that issue much, though. I can't see how it would hurt him much to try it, though. Good idea.
ReplyDeleteRon Paul is... (no big surprise there).
ReplyDeleteActually I heard Mike Huckaby interviewed on NPR late last week and he said very flatly he opposed the Federal Government getting involved. Basically his position was that people who were responsible and sensible should not be subsidizing the mortgages of those who are not.
ReplyDeleteDr. Ron Paul, of course.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgbh7j8Ou8w
Do you even have to ask?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.arizonahousingbubble.com/2007/presidential-candidate-ron-paul-on-the-subprime-bailout-by-the-fed/
Steve Sailer: Is any Presidential candidate running on the issue: "No bailout for subprime lenders and borrowers"?
ReplyDeleteGiven the political milieu of the modern era, I think that that will happen about the same time that some candidate points out that Barack the Magic Negro is, hands down, the least qualified major presidential candidate in our lifetimes, and possibly the least qualified candidate in the entire history of the Rebublic.
[At least Ol' Joe Kennedy managed to get JFK on that stupid PT boat - even if JFK damned near got himself and his entire crew killed in the process.]
Which is to say: Ain't gonna happen.
It's not just PC. I mean, it IS PC, but it's not JUST PC. There's the problem that refusing to bailout people who might lose their homes runs the risk of looking uncompassionate, at least on the Democratic side, and possibly on the Republican; there's a lot of populist discontent brewing.
ReplyDelete"Barack the Magic Negro is, hands down, the least qualified major presidential candidate in our lifetimes, and possibly the least qualified candidate in the entire history of the Rebublic."
ReplyDeleteHow about Abe Lincoln. A term in Congress. A defeat in a senate race. Some local lawyering. . . .
for every three great ideas ron paul has, there is one that is basically unelectable with a mass electorate.
ReplyDeleteIt's called moral hazard, Steve. Greenspan pushed ARMs as a legitimate means of financing a home. He did so to goose the economy, and to comply with the Administration's desire to have more minority (read: blacks and browns) home owners.
ReplyDeleteWhy wouldn't he? After all George Bush is the master of socializing risks, and privatizing gains. That's what illegal immigration is all about.
Greenspan and the regulators fueled the mania.
Why are they not being held responsible?
Why even have regulatory agencies?
BTW, I believe it was globetrotting investor Dr. Marc Faber who said (in a Barron's Roundtable), "Never in history has 100% financing been offered with no credit checks."
Ron Paul might have that position, but it's reason #1 why he is a fundamental non-starter in America (or any other country) and Libertarianism is at BEST a Lunatic fringe operation that attracts cranks.
ReplyDeleteAmerica decided around 1946 that it liked big government, wanted to keep it around, and wanted big government to DO THINGS FOR THEM. Most ordinary Americans figure the only halfway decent opportunities they have is for Big Government to do things for them: student loans, highways, defense spending (aka nerdy white guy engineer employment program), and yes bailouts when they get into trouble.
That's why Bush got into so much trouble over Katrina even though it was the locals who were not responding as they should. People expect Big Government to do things, not the least of which is give them a shot at the money trough.
Steve -- Obama is likely the most unqualified guy ever. But he has a real shot at over-turning Hillary based on the fact that people plain just don't like Hillary's toxic personality and Queen Bee-ism, along with her already established run of has-beens crowding out anything more than donut runs for ambitious young Democrats.
Paul can pull in money from the intense and semi-loony faithful, but vote-wise he's far from being anything like a serious contender. This year's Howard Dean.
I'll add that the kind of Paul-Libertarian politics would be quite attractive in a frontier society with limitless upside and somewhat limited downside, but that hasn't been the case since oh about 1895 or so.
ReplyDeleteevil neocon, I'm no libertarian, and I'm all for the gov't doing things for people, but bailing out ARM borrowers is outrageous.
ReplyDeleteI bought a house 2 years ago, got the fixed rate mortgage because I foresaw exactly what would happen (well, it's worse than I thought or I wouldn't have bought the house at all). If I had taken the ARM, I'd have been paying at least a few hundred dollars less every month. I don't believe that my money should be taken away from me and given to reckless gamblers to punish me for making the right call. That's not libertarianism or small government conservatism. It's just common sense.
I'm sure I'm not the only statist or whatever the Lew Rockwell types would call me who feels this way.
c23
the founding fathers wanted to restrict the right to vote to only those with property because they assumed that those without property would be inclined to vote to take it from those who have it.
ReplyDeletenow that we have universal sufferage, you can imagine the general trend in the US for the next 100 years of american politics without a revolution of some kind.
so, go get a government job, find an area with low living expenses, and vote democrat. competing in the global economy sucks but these days you can have your cake and eat someone else's too.
How about Abe Lincoln. A term in Congress. A defeat in a senate race. Some local lawyering....
ReplyDelete...then started a war that killed 600,000 Americans, plunged America deep into debt, and destroyed the South's economy for generations.
A brilliant leader, indeed.
Abe Lincoln's "little war" cost us almost as many men as all the other wars of this country combined. Moral giant? He suspended habeus corpus and granted draft deferments to rich people who could pony up $300.
In comparison to Lincoln, W is a frickin' genius. His was has killed 100,000, at most, and only 4,000 or so Americans.
As for the subprime bailout? I don't see much to gain in saying no. Remember, 18% of whites and Asians, and over 40% of blacks and Hispanics issued mortgages in the lat 5 years have subprimes. That's a lot of potential people to offend, with minimal upside.
"I think that that will happen about the same time that some candidate points out that Barack the Magic Negro is, hands down, the least qualified major presidential candidate in our lifetimes, and possibly the least qualified candidate in the entire history of the Rebublic."
ReplyDeleteI don't think thats true. The American people seem to think that there are four qualifications for being elected president: 1.) Having been a vice-president, 2.) having been a govenor, 3.) being a Senator (rare - Kennedy was the last sitting Senator to be elected, I don't know who was the last before him), or 4.) Having been an important general in a major war.
I can think of lots of candidates in our lifetime who were less qualified than Barack Obama. Pat Buchanan for example (white house staffer, pundit). Now I probably agree with Pat Buchanan on a great deal more than I do with Barack Obama, but I have to admit that Obama is more qualified (he has won election in a large state).
Other candidates who are/were less qualified than Barack Obama: Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, Ralph Nader, Wesley Clark, Steve Forbes, Alan Keyes, Al Haig, Jesse Jackson, and Eugene Debs. I'm sure there were more.
I am Lugash.
ReplyDeleteLike Evil Neocon says, people like Big Government doing something for them. They don't like Big Government doing something for someone else at all, or at least nearly as much. They also don't like Big Government telling them what to do.
Conservatives and liberals and most libertarians are alike on this. When it comes down to it liberals are the most honest about it. They'll give you national health care, but they're going to take away your Big Mac.
I am Lugash.
Bertrant Russell: How about Abe Lincoln. A term in Congress. A defeat in a senate race. Some local lawyering...
ReplyDeleteA few points.
1) Lincoln's time in the Illinois State Senate is admittedly similar to Obama's.
2) Lincoln was first elected to national office in 1846, 14 years before he was elected president. Obama was first elected to national office in 2004, and almost immediately began running for the presidency.
3) Lincoln had military experience, having served as a captain in the Black Hawk War.
4) Lincoln had private-sector experience, having run both private sector businesses and a private sector law firm.
Obama, by contrast:
1) Received his BA in 1983
2) Worked for a year [1984] in the private sector [at a highly suspicious outfit which sounds like it might have been a shell company for quota set-asides].
3) Worked for three or four years as a "community organizer" [1985-1988] - whatever that means.
4) Spent three years at Harvard Law [1988-1991].
5) Worked for two or three years [1991-1993]on a "voter registration drive" - whatever that means.
6) Worked for three years [1993-1996] at a public-sector law firm, representing "community organizers, discrimination claims, and voting rights cases".
7) Had a job at the University of Chicago law school from 1993-2004. [Can anybody tell me what qualifications Obama brought to the table to deserve what appears to have been "tenure" at a major American law school? Has anyone researched his academic output - did he write any papers at all?]
8) Served in the Illinois State Senate from 1996-2004.
In total: Obama has zero executive experience [government or private sector], zero military experience, 1 year of [highly suspicious] private sector business experience, and the rest of his life has been spent in the racial spoils industry, at make-work jobs in academia & public sector law firms, and as a bureaucrat on the public dole.
Frankly, I can't see anything in Obama's resume which indicates that he's ever worked a single productive day in his entire life.
Having said all that, however, in getting back to the question of Lincoln's inexperience: Lincoln drove the final nails into the coffin of the federal constitution [the body of said coffin having been carpentered by John Marshall], and Lincoln slaughtered upwards of a million men in his obsession with turning the constitution into his own private toilet paper [before he discarded it into that coffin and nailed the lid shut].
Ron Paul made that point in his interview last night on Glenn Beck's show.
ReplyDeleteSailer, why aren't you even in the least interested in his campaign? I find it odd. You also never mention Tancredo's. I remember you saying you don't find this primary season of interest but those guys seem right up your alley in their politics.
If nothing else the way that Paul is getting so much internet money, and broke records that way is a fascinating story in itself.
Ron Paul would certainly be against a subprime bailout. Who knows, the powers that be just might let him win - someone needs to be a scapegoat for the coming economic collapse.
ReplyDeleteAnon -- the bailout is going to happen because these people are VOTERS. Simple as that. Someone will always know someone who's in trouble, and no candidate or pol wants to be the guy who put a friend or relative in bankruptcy court.
ReplyDeleteSafer, easier, and wiser to give out the goodies. That's what politics is all about, divying up the pie. What, you expected principles?
Mark -- Lincoln did one thing. He kept the US together. THAT alone was worth the war. If that meant in wartime suspending parts of the Constitution rather than seeing a Slave Confederacy establish the suicide of the United States, so be it. Sometimes brutal medicine is required in a crisis. Like Steve's chemotherapy.
Lugash is quite correct in his assessment of big government. And said it better than I did.
I heard part of Paul's interview with Beck. Particularly revolting was his refusal to disavow the conspiracy lunatics he panders to. A fundamentally unserious man with lunatic fringe support. Like David Duke.
More serious is Fred's federalism. It's not inconsistent with Big Government but likely a better political sell because it matches control to revenue. Unless we open a frontier on Mars or something we'll never go back to small government. But Federalism at least promises to put brakes on some of the worst growths of Big Government such as Midnight Basketball leagues.
Out of all the candidates only Fred is pushing Federalism.
evil neocon wrote:
ReplyDelete"defense spending (aka nerdy white guy engineer employment program),"
Excellent! I'm in that category, I really had to laugh, so true.
Evil Neocon said: Ron Paul might have that position, but it's reason #1 why he is a fundamental non-starter in America
ReplyDeleteYour problem with Ron Paul is that he doesn't genuflect to Israel or the Lobby. If he did, he would immediately become a "starter" as opposed to a "non-starter" from the neocon perspective.
btw the screen name "Evil Neocon" is redundant. You should try something more leftwing edgy like "Anti-American to the Core".
Wondering why constitutionalist candidates like R. Paul are vilified as "crazy"? It is ultimately because they represent a renaissance of authentic gentile politics. And that is verboten in bi-coastal Kosher America.
ReplyDeleteHere is a look inside the rarely-discussed ethnic struggle that actually animates politics in the good ole USA:
Outside the Jewish Mainstream: Robert Weissberg and Philip Weiss
Steve, other people are also talking about these issues...
ReplyDeleteCould it be that Ron Paul is somewhat a proxy for Kevin MacDonald and therefore represents "The Politics of WASP Resentment" in the eyes of America's political shot-callers:
Kevin MacDonald and the Politics of WASP Resentment
Senator Baghdad Osama is clearly better qualified than JFK was. Osama didn't prove a reckless and incompetent sailor, didn't get someone else to write his undergraduate dissertation for him, didn't get someone to ghost-write an "award-winning" book for him and is not, as far as we know, lying about being seriously ill. He's not (afawk) addicted to drugs nor is he sleeping with a gangster's moll and seducing every woman he comes across. And his Dad was a goatherd, not a Nazi-sympathising gangster.
ReplyDeleteI take evil neocon's point. So long as government takes up over 40% of a nation's economy it is bound to be considered the bailer out of first resort for anything. To many people are dependent on it & while the net cost to the entire nation is greater than the benefit to individuals the whole nation will never lobby to avoid a small individual cost.
ReplyDeleteOne answer would be to freeze the size of the budget and stop hiring government employees. Another would be to ring fence set amounts of existing taxes to particular departments so that bailing out mortgages would be an enormous part of one dept's budget rather than a medium sized part of the whole. That way you have somebody inngovernment who has a incentive not to pay.
On the other hand it isn't so easy as Mr No New Taxes proved.
Martin: I can think of lots of candidates in our lifetime who were less qualified than Barack Obama. Pat Buchanan for example (white house staffer, pundit). Now I probably agree with Pat Buchanan on a great deal more than I do with Barack Obama, but I have to admit that Obama is more qualified (he has won election in a large state).
ReplyDeleteOther candidates who are/were less qualified than Barack Obama: Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, Ralph Nader, Wesley Clark, Steve Forbes, Alan Keyes, Al Haig, Jesse Jackson, and Eugene Debs. I'm sure there were more.
None of the people you named were serious candidates [by the way, you forgot Shirley Chisholm] - none of them ever stood a snowball's chance in Hades of actually getting elected to the presidency.
[And by the way, Al Haig, who may have been a kook, was vastly more qualified to serve as president than Obama.]
But because of the miracle of political correctness, there is a very real possibility that Obama could be the next president of the United States.
And we don't know a damned thing about the guy.
In fact, about the only substantive piece of information we have about him is that his wife has admitted that she got lousy standardized test scores [the implication being that her Princeton & Harvard educations and her healthcare bureaucracy queendom were handed to her on a silver quota platter].
PS: I think that somebody like Steve Sailer [or Michael Fumento] needs to get off his lazy ass and see whether Obama ever wrote any academic papers in the 11 or 12 years that he was [if not actually, then at least functionally] "tenured" at the University of Chicago Law School.
Or whether he published any papers prior to 1993 which would indicate that he deserved to have received the assignment in the first place.
PPS: And WTF is "community organizer"?!?
I would be ashamed to put those words on my resume.
If the presidency was awarded through a normal private-sector resume and interview process, Romney would get the job and the other candidates would be laughed off at the resume review stage. I don't particularly "respond" to Romney, but he is intelligent, non-ideological, and high energy (a Newt with more compelling executive experience and less baggage); wouldn't it be nice to have a capable person in the top spot?
ReplyDeletecontrary to evil neocon, defense is one of the federal government's few legitimate functions. but it can't even be bothered to do that anymore, and prefers an open border. the fedgov would rather get into things in which it has absolutely no business at all, such as education and gay marriage, than perform some of it's actual jobs.
ReplyDeleteand what's with the shot at white nerds in the defense department? are they not the very people that created the internet in the first place, making it easy for evil neocon to hide behind his keyboard and type nonsense for us to read?
To Bruce Wayne; Steve judges all libertarians by the libertarian fringe (free immigration, abolish the federal government tomorrow etc), which is obvious for anyone who has read Steve's articles of the last few years. Steve has a certain tribal nature, evidenced by his enjoyment of American Football, which most likely puts him in the Republican tribe, but Steve, being intellectually honest, wishes the Republican tribe were led by concervatives.
ReplyDeleteRe Obama: A recent Sun-Times profile of Barry lauded his work as a lawyer-tho it was less than totally convincing,as most people quoted said basically,"Uhm,he didnt say much,and,uhm,he didnt do much,but BOY! he was impressive!!!" His work as an instructor at the U of C yeilded more concrete data,as he was consistently rated excellent by his students. The UC wanted him as a permanent teacher there,and I'm sure he wouldve been very successful. When he ran against Bobby Rush for US congressman,and was crushed,that may or may not be a comment on his skills as a civil rights guy!
ReplyDeleteAs a hard-core libertarian, I have to agree 100% with Evil Neocon's cynicism about the prospects for Ron Paul and libertarianism in general.
ReplyDeleteLibertarianism is the idea that people should think for themselves and improve their own lives through their own efforts and not rely on external agencies to do such. Most humans are either unwilling or incapable of doing this.
Most people simply do not want to have to do anything for them selves. They especially do not want to think for themselves, simply because thinking hurts too much for them to do it.
So there is no possibility of a libertarian society here, either in the U.S. or in Asia. It will have to be created somewhere else, once it becomes cheap enough to go somewhere else.
Is any Presidential candidate running on the issue: "No bailout for subprime lenders and borrowers"?
ReplyDeleteThe quixotic Paul (and maybe Huckabee), no. No candidate publicly supports giving disobedient children lumps of coal in their stockings, either.
One of the nice things about this blog is that it acknowledges that half the population is below average in intelligence. I am all for holding people to their contracts, but it's hard not to feel pity for someone who can barely read being given papers to close on a house.
Did you know there was a clause in the constitution forbidding states from passing any law impairing the obligations of contracts? It's true: Article I, Section 10, clause i. The Supreme Court basically read it out of the constitution in 1934 in a case involving a statute limiting lenders from foreclosing on defaulted homeowners. Home Building & Loan Association v. Blaisdell, 290 U.S. 398 (1934).
To follow up on my last response backing up Evil Neocon, I would say that Robert Heinlein summed up the problem succinctly in one of his Lazarus Long novels:
ReplyDeleteThe vast majority of the human race is both incapable and unwilling to think for themselves. A smaller percentage of the human race is capable of thinking. But they are unwilling to do so because it hurts their brains too much to think. There is an even smaller percentage of the human race that is both capable of thinking and are willing to think for themselves.
All of progress, creativity, and positive endevour has come from this smallest group of humans. The rest of the human race is simply baggage.
Totally OT, but: Malcolm Gladwell is on NPR's Talk of the Nation, where he has just assured a caller that he has never found any evidence that there are racial differences in average IQ -- 'we are all endowed with the same basic cognitive potential, it's just that this is expressed differently for cultural reasons'. Or something like that.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous Re Obama: A recent Sun-Times profile of Barry lauded his work as a lawyer-tho it was less than totally convincing,as most people quoted said basically,"Uhm,he didnt say much,and,uhm,he didnt do much,but BOY! he was impressive!!!" His work as an instructor at the U of C yeilded more concrete data,as he was consistently rated excellent by his students. The UC wanted him as a permanent teacher there,and I'm sure he wouldve been very successful.
ReplyDeleteWhat did he teach? Introduction to Civil Rights Law for first year law students?
Seriously, I'd like to know what he accomplished to have deserved an open-ended [decade+] gig at one of the nation's best law schools [and obviously I'm talking something other than having been born with a healthy dose of melanin in his skin].
Can anyone point to any single scholarly paper with his name on it?
kurt9, I appreciate your tight writing style. One universal aspect of the species, though, is an inclination to find a way to feel superior, and the smart in this vein have a tendency to worship their own IQ. Unfortunately for the strictly smart, there is also bravery, modesty, and a slew of classic character virtues, as well as spontaneity, a lack of self-consciousness, grace and poise, and other personality attributes that contribute to the worth of a person, and arguably to a greater degree than IQ. It seems evident that well organized, nailbiting white collar white folks are also a bit dull, but like most dull people, are usually the last to know it. Then too, if you want to do anything real, IQ needs to be accomanied by diligence and interpersonal facility; a lot of worshipers of their own IQs accomplish little because being self satisfied and inclined to think the best of themselves, they fail to realize they are lacking in these other areas. They may amount merely to self-satisfied baggage, after all. Anyhow, if "cool" and character have value, a balanced appraisal of IQ should take this into account.
ReplyDeleteA Counsel of Depravity
ReplyDeleteRon Paul supporters are nuts because they have the right principles, and what is right can't win in this crooked world.
The solution to crookedness is to participate in it, and make the world more crooked still.
For example, if things at work are screwed up, screw them up further. If the mob is taking over your neighborhood, don't call the cops - that is unrealistic; instead, volunteer as a hit man and make your bones quick. If your daughter is sleeping around, don't object - that's unrealistic; instead, pimp her out and at least make some money off her.
We have to accept the way things are as determined by the worst among us. If you disagree, you're insane.
Nuke Iran. Amen and Happy Hannukah.
Ron Paul disavows conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones here. When are the other candidates going to repudiate the neocons who have caused far more harm to our country than truthers or David Duke ever have?
ReplyDeleteRon is more serious about federalism than Fred Thompson. He even thinks that the Kelo decision didn't violate the Bill of Rights because that only applies to the federal government and that courts should have instead looked at the Connecticut constitution.
I am Lugash.
ReplyDeleteOne other thing, the housing bubble mess isn't limited to sub prime. Prime is hurting as well. Alt-A, which lies between the two, is about as bad as subprime. The dollar amounts are probably larger for Alt-A as well.
I am Lugash.
"there is also bravery, modesty, and a slew of classic character virtues, as well as spontaneity, a lack of self-consciousness, grace and poise, and other personality attributes"
ReplyDeleteAll of these traits positively corelate with IQ.
tggp: "Ron Paul disavows conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones ..."
ReplyDeleteInteresting. Nevertheless, during the youtube debate, Paul was offered a chance to distance himself from some of his followers' oddball theories. Instead he talked about the nonexistent plan to build a "NAFTA superhigway" (PS to true believers: It already exists; we call it the Interstate Highway System), the not-in-our-lifetimes "North American Union," and that old favorite, the Trilateral Commission. He talked about these things not to repudiate them but to describe them as being worthy of discussion. How much of a fruitcake do you have to be to support, even tentatively, the Trilateral Commission conspiracy theory on national television?
However many good ideas Paul has, he is nevertheless a nutcase. I'm amazed at the number of intelligent people who are supporting him. I can only assume they do so as a kind of protest vote, knowing that he'll never be elected and thus knowing that the nation will be spared Presidential commissions to investigate the Illuminati and the moon landing "hoax."
"Lucius Vorenus said...
ReplyDeleteNone of the people you named were serious candidates [by the way, you forgot Shirley Chisholm] - none of them ever stood a snowball's chance in Hades of actually getting elected to the presidency."
I wasn't talking about what YOU think qualifies someone to be president, I was talking about what the american electorate has historically required - namely, having previously been elected to high office (or on rare occasions, being a distinquished general). And Obama has done that.
I agree with you that his resume is most unimpressive - very few presidents had impressive job histories prior to their government employment. Obama's previous occupation could best be described as "professional black man". And I'm certainly not going to vote for him.
As to your question of what is a "community organizer", I believe the answer is "tax-payer and foundation subsidized trouble-maker".
"steve wood said...
ReplyDeleteInteresting. Nevertheless, during the youtube debate, Paul was offered a chance to distance himself from some of his followers' oddball theories. Instead he talked about the nonexistent plan to build a "NAFTA superhigway"..."
Nonexistant plan? These guys look like they have a plan to me.
http://www.nascocorridor.com/pages/ports_network/ports_network.htm
"Evil NeoCon....
Mark -- Lincoln did one thing. He kept the US together. THAT alone was worth the war. If that meant in wartime suspending parts of the Constitution rather than seeing a Slave Confederacy establish the suicide of the United States, so be it. Sometimes brutal medicine is required in a crisis."
You might not have felt that way had you been a union soldier in McClellan's Army of the Potomac, waiting around a couple of years for him to get his Napoleon-mojo working, and eventually dying of dysentery.
600,000 dead was worth it? In order to end the institution of slavery which likely would have ended of its own anyway?
But then, neocons seem to have few qualms about purchasing their fun with the currency of other people's lives.
"However many good ideas Paul has, he is nevertheless a nutcase."
ReplyDeleteApparently you are too. You are a nutcase! Why should Paul have to disavow anyone? His clear positions are available to all who can read. If you took the time to look at them they will give you insight into Mr Paul's positions but nutcases like only want to stammer on about other people who are not Dr Paul because I guess you are a nutcase.
I guess Steve Wood also needs to go inform the Trilateral Commission they don't exist.
ReplyDeleteRon Paul has said he doesn't believe the establishment of an NAU is imminent. He has also noted that EU was decades in the making. This doesn't mean we shouldn't oppose those who (often openly) work toward international government and the destruction of American sovereignty.
martin, I'm aware that plans exist to build a multi-modal transportation corridor in Texas. The link you provided doesn't work, although the nascocorridor.com homepage gives an idea of the plan from a sponsor's POV. Here's wikipedia's article:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nafta_superhighway
The point is not whether a plan EXISTS, but whether it is a dire threat to the US.
Similarly, "david rockefeller," I am aware that the Trilateral Commission exists, as does the Council on Foreign Relations. The point is that only kooks believe these two organization are dark conspiracies, pulling the strings of the US (and, someday, if the CFR gets its wish, one-world) government. Furthermore, even if a candidate privately holds such beliefs - as many of us here at isteve privately hold beliefs that are considered extreme by PC standards - expressing them in public while running for national office is the mark of a crank rather a serious candidate.
SW,
ReplyDeleteDid you ever think maybe not all voters share your exact bourgeois status concerns? Maybe some voters are more concerned with the future of their country than they are afraid of being associated with "kooks". And, if not, maybe they should be.
When has Ron Paul said anything about "dark conspiracies"? He has noted that philosophical differences exist. On one side are those who promote "globalism"/internationalism. On the other side are those of us who would like America to retain its national sovereignty and control its borders.
Right now we have de facto open borders with Mexico, not because the American people want open borders, and not because the border is impossible to secure, but because certain elites like open borders.
Elite opinion is formed, in part, at meetings by groups like the TC, CFR, and Bilderberg. Must we (or our presidential candidates) pretend these meetings don't take place simply because to do otherwise might lose us status points among the herd-minded?
Did you ever think maybe not all voters share your exact bourgeois status concerns?
ReplyDeleteBourgeois, c'est moi!
Must we (or our presidential candidates) pretend these meetings don't take place simply because to do otherwise might lose us status points among the herd-minded?
It's not just status points. A private citizen is free to believe and say whatever he wants, but, if he espouses conspiracy theories that are widely considered kooky by the bourgeoisie, then the bourgeoisie will consider him a kook and take little notice of what he says on any subject. If the theories are important enough to him to risk losing all credibility, then he should go for it. Some people thrive in the role of a voice crying in the wilderness. Others prefer to stay within shouting distance of the herd.
Anyway, it's not an either-or choice. There's a middle ground. For example, one can oppose open borders without announcing one's belief that they are being encouraged by the CFR et al.
However, if Presidential candidates privately hold to conspiracy and other non-mainstream theories, then they must publicly disavow them if they want to be elected. That's just a fact of life. Extremists and kooks-in-the-eyes-of-the-bourgeoisie are almost never elected, at least not in the USA.
I re-watched Paul's answer to the "conspiracy" question. His response (which draws loud applause) seems more than reasonable to me. (Also, is it just me, or does the guy asking the question come off as more crazy than Ron Paul could if he tried? With that delivery, dude's got to be on some kind of medication.)
ReplyDeleteRon Paul expressly rejects the existence of "sinister conspiracies" and points out the battle is one of ideologies. He mentions the TC and CFR only to point out that, yes, they exist. He is not going to lose votes over this response.
I urge you to take another look at Paul. If you care about immigration, on that issue alone Paul is the only real choice (secure borders, no amnesty, correct interpretations of the 14th amendment), now that Tancredo is out.