Posted by: dolphin October 4, 2011
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Nas bro, on the reddit thread. it is premature of you to not read the entire thread just beause you thought it was written by a student. you need to scroll down to read the some of the facts that are presented in there.
let me copy and paste
An incomplete list of things Ron Paul supporters do not want you to know about Ron Paul:
Ron Paul does not believe in evolution.
In a recorded Q&A session Ron Paul was asked about his stance on evolution, and answered that it is a 'theory he does not accept'.
Initially, Paul supporters responded to this information by conceding that, sure, he doesn't believe in evolution, but it shouldn't matter because evolution has nothing to do with the president's responsibilities. After it was widely pointed out that such a line of reasoning does not work, since not believing in evolution is indicative of a failure to process important evidence and use it to come to reasonable conclusions about the world, they changed their line. Now, a more orthodox claim is that Ron Paul does believe in evolution. This claim takes a couple of forms.
The first ignores the video I linked, and points to another at a national Republican debate wherein candidates are asked to raise their hands to indicate disbelief in evolution. Ron Paul's hand remains at his side, indicating his acceptance of evolution. We're thus left to wonder; was he telling the truth in this video, or was he telling the truth in the other video?
The second approach claims that Ron Paul does believe in evolution, but essentially asserts that he has absolutely no idea what evolution is. It seems, according to these people, in the second video Ron Paul was saying that he does believe in evolution, whereas in the first video he was saying that he doesn't believe in abiogenesis. Abiogenesis, of course, has to do with the origin of life, whereas evolution has to do with the development of life. Not only does this imply the Ron Paul doesn't know what evolution is, it also fails to ameliorate the situation very much; "not believing in abiogenesis" means that you don't believe there exists a scientific explanation for the origin of life. This is hardly a better mode of thought.
If you're left questioning Paul's scientific acumen, I'll leave you with this: recently, he came out expressing his support for homeopathic medicine. That is, medicine which has been demonstrated empirically, objectively, scientifically, medically, and mathematically to be utterly fake.
Ron Paul does not believe the Constitution guarantees a right to privacy.
This one's cut and dry; he really doesn't. He wrote so in this piece:
Ridiculous as sodomy laws may be, there clearly is no right to privacy nor sodomy found anywhere in the Constitution.
We take two things from this:
Ron Paul does not believe there is a constitutional right to privacy
Ron Paul believes that state laws banning gay sex were constitutional
This is fairly obscene on the face of it, and also provides a rather stark example of my third point . . .
Ron Paul is an anti-federalist, not a libertarian.
Libertarian political thought benefits from the work of John Locke. According to Locke, all people are born with natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Under Locke's conception of government, the people extend their consent to be governed in exchange for the protections of their fundamental liberties which government is able to provide.
This does not mesh with Paul's politics. According to him, the federal government has no role in forbidding a state government to tell consenting adults how they can and cannot have sex in the privacy of their own homes. This, Paul claims, is a matter of local customs; if the good folks of Texas don't think gay people should be able to have sex, that's perfectly constitutional.
This way of thinking is fundamentally incompatible with libertarian ethos, which holds that if a government fails to protect the right to liberty of its citizens, then it is an invalid government. This is a way of thinking which is, however, entirely consistent with anti-federalism, which holds that state governments should be of equal or greater, but never lesser, power compared to the federal government.
Ron Paul believes that the incorporation doctrine is "phony".
If you aren't familiar with it, the incorporation doctrine is the legal understanding that the majority of the provisions of the Bill of Rights apply to state governments as well as the federal government. That is, a state cannot decide to abolish the right to free speech, for example.
Ron Paul wrote on the subject in this piece:
If anything, the Supreme Court should have refused to hear the Kelo case on the grounds that the 5th amendment does not apply to states. If constitutional purists hope to maintain credibility, we must reject the phony incorporation doctrine in all cases — not only when it serves our interests.
Yep.
Some Paul supporters argue that this stance isn't as bad as it sounds, because whether or not the Bill of Rights applies to state governments, the Supreme Court will still protect your rights.
The people who make this argument are clearly not aware of my fifth point . . .
Ron Paul does not believe the Supreme Court should be able to hear cases regarding many important civil rights issues.
Ron Paul tried to pass a bill known as the We the People Act, which if passed would have prevented the federal courts (including the SCOTUS) from hearing cases regarding gay, religious, and reproductive rights. Are you a gay man in Georgia who feels your civil rights are being infringed upon by a state law? Too bad; Ron Paul says that the Supreme Court has no business deciding whether or not you are right. Hopefully I don't need to list many of the important civil rights victories which would have been rendered impossible had this legislation been in place in their time.
Ron Paul is virulently opposed to abortion rights.
I could have broken this up into a number of different points, but they all fit nicely under the same heading. I'll break it up into subheadings for clarity, I guess.
Ron Paul has pledged to defund Planned Parenthood.
Ron Paul has pledged to promote pro-life legislation, nominate pro-life candidates to the Court, and seat pro-life candidates in key positions such as the head of the NIH.
Ron Paul believes that Roe v. Wade should be overturned.
Ron Paul attempted to pass federal legislation defining life as beginning at conception.
Suffice to say, if reproductive rights are important to you or anyone you care about, Ron Paul is not your candidate.
Ron Paul opposes strong standards of separation of church and state.
In this piece, Paul makes a number of interesting claims. First, that "rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers".
Interesting, considering that a) the First Amendment is considered by constitutional law scholars to contain the principle of separation of church and state, b) the very term 'separation of church and state' was popularized in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson, and c) some of the writings of the Founding Fathers, which supposedly do not support strong separation of church and state -- take Madison for instance:
Nothwithstanding the general progress made within the two last centuries in favour of this branch of liberty, & the full establishment of it, in some parts of our Country, there remains in others a strong bias towards the old error, that without some sort of alliance or coalition between Gov' & Religion neither can be duly supported: Such indeed is the tendency to such a coalition, and such its corrupting influence on both the parties, that the danger cannot be too carefully guarded agst.. And in a Gov' of opinion, like ours, the only effectual guard must be found in the soundness and stability of the general opinion on the subject. Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Gov will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together;
In that same article, Paul also claims that the Constitution is "replete" with references to God (it contains none) and that "secularists" are waging a "war on religion".
But his supporters claim he isn't just another far-right fundamentalist Christian.
let me copy and paste
An incomplete list of things Ron Paul supporters do not want you to know about Ron Paul:
Ron Paul does not believe in evolution.
In a recorded Q&A session Ron Paul was asked about his stance on evolution, and answered that it is a 'theory he does not accept'.
Initially, Paul supporters responded to this information by conceding that, sure, he doesn't believe in evolution, but it shouldn't matter because evolution has nothing to do with the president's responsibilities. After it was widely pointed out that such a line of reasoning does not work, since not believing in evolution is indicative of a failure to process important evidence and use it to come to reasonable conclusions about the world, they changed their line. Now, a more orthodox claim is that Ron Paul does believe in evolution. This claim takes a couple of forms.
The first ignores the video I linked, and points to another at a national Republican debate wherein candidates are asked to raise their hands to indicate disbelief in evolution. Ron Paul's hand remains at his side, indicating his acceptance of evolution. We're thus left to wonder; was he telling the truth in this video, or was he telling the truth in the other video?
The second approach claims that Ron Paul does believe in evolution, but essentially asserts that he has absolutely no idea what evolution is. It seems, according to these people, in the second video Ron Paul was saying that he does believe in evolution, whereas in the first video he was saying that he doesn't believe in abiogenesis. Abiogenesis, of course, has to do with the origin of life, whereas evolution has to do with the development of life. Not only does this imply the Ron Paul doesn't know what evolution is, it also fails to ameliorate the situation very much; "not believing in abiogenesis" means that you don't believe there exists a scientific explanation for the origin of life. This is hardly a better mode of thought.
If you're left questioning Paul's scientific acumen, I'll leave you with this: recently, he came out expressing his support for homeopathic medicine. That is, medicine which has been demonstrated empirically, objectively, scientifically, medically, and mathematically to be utterly fake.
Ron Paul does not believe the Constitution guarantees a right to privacy.
This one's cut and dry; he really doesn't. He wrote so in this piece:
Ridiculous as sodomy laws may be, there clearly is no right to privacy nor sodomy found anywhere in the Constitution.
We take two things from this:
Ron Paul does not believe there is a constitutional right to privacy
Ron Paul believes that state laws banning gay sex were constitutional
This is fairly obscene on the face of it, and also provides a rather stark example of my third point . . .
Ron Paul is an anti-federalist, not a libertarian.
Libertarian political thought benefits from the work of John Locke. According to Locke, all people are born with natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Under Locke's conception of government, the people extend their consent to be governed in exchange for the protections of their fundamental liberties which government is able to provide.
This does not mesh with Paul's politics. According to him, the federal government has no role in forbidding a state government to tell consenting adults how they can and cannot have sex in the privacy of their own homes. This, Paul claims, is a matter of local customs; if the good folks of Texas don't think gay people should be able to have sex, that's perfectly constitutional.
This way of thinking is fundamentally incompatible with libertarian ethos, which holds that if a government fails to protect the right to liberty of its citizens, then it is an invalid government. This is a way of thinking which is, however, entirely consistent with anti-federalism, which holds that state governments should be of equal or greater, but never lesser, power compared to the federal government.
Ron Paul believes that the incorporation doctrine is "phony".
If you aren't familiar with it, the incorporation doctrine is the legal understanding that the majority of the provisions of the Bill of Rights apply to state governments as well as the federal government. That is, a state cannot decide to abolish the right to free speech, for example.
Ron Paul wrote on the subject in this piece:
If anything, the Supreme Court should have refused to hear the Kelo case on the grounds that the 5th amendment does not apply to states. If constitutional purists hope to maintain credibility, we must reject the phony incorporation doctrine in all cases — not only when it serves our interests.
Yep.
Some Paul supporters argue that this stance isn't as bad as it sounds, because whether or not the Bill of Rights applies to state governments, the Supreme Court will still protect your rights.
The people who make this argument are clearly not aware of my fifth point . . .
Ron Paul does not believe the Supreme Court should be able to hear cases regarding many important civil rights issues.
Ron Paul tried to pass a bill known as the We the People Act, which if passed would have prevented the federal courts (including the SCOTUS) from hearing cases regarding gay, religious, and reproductive rights. Are you a gay man in Georgia who feels your civil rights are being infringed upon by a state law? Too bad; Ron Paul says that the Supreme Court has no business deciding whether or not you are right. Hopefully I don't need to list many of the important civil rights victories which would have been rendered impossible had this legislation been in place in their time.
Ron Paul is virulently opposed to abortion rights.
I could have broken this up into a number of different points, but they all fit nicely under the same heading. I'll break it up into subheadings for clarity, I guess.
Ron Paul has pledged to defund Planned Parenthood.
Ron Paul has pledged to promote pro-life legislation, nominate pro-life candidates to the Court, and seat pro-life candidates in key positions such as the head of the NIH.
Ron Paul believes that Roe v. Wade should be overturned.
Ron Paul attempted to pass federal legislation defining life as beginning at conception.
Suffice to say, if reproductive rights are important to you or anyone you care about, Ron Paul is not your candidate.
Ron Paul opposes strong standards of separation of church and state.
In this piece, Paul makes a number of interesting claims. First, that "rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers".
Interesting, considering that a) the First Amendment is considered by constitutional law scholars to contain the principle of separation of church and state, b) the very term 'separation of church and state' was popularized in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson, and c) some of the writings of the Founding Fathers, which supposedly do not support strong separation of church and state -- take Madison for instance:
Nothwithstanding the general progress made within the two last centuries in favour of this branch of liberty, & the full establishment of it, in some parts of our Country, there remains in others a strong bias towards the old error, that without some sort of alliance or coalition between Gov' & Religion neither can be duly supported: Such indeed is the tendency to such a coalition, and such its corrupting influence on both the parties, that the danger cannot be too carefully guarded agst.. And in a Gov' of opinion, like ours, the only effectual guard must be found in the soundness and stability of the general opinion on the subject. Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Gov will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together;
In that same article, Paul also claims that the Constitution is "replete" with references to God (it contains none) and that "secularists" are waging a "war on religion".
But his supporters claim he isn't just another far-right fundamentalist Christian.