[Peace-discussion] Must read.
John Walsh
jvwalshmd@gmail.com
Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:03:55 -0500
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Actually Nader has spoken approvingly of Paul - and vice versa. Neither is
a socialist in the old 19th century sense of the word - but neither am I an=
d
neither is the GP.
I do not want to be rude BUT all the points you raise are almost the
standard ones that trip off the tongue of Leftists - all very predictable.
I am not proposing that we support Paul - but I would damned sure vote for
him before any one of the Dems in the field including Kucinich.
I find that there is a failure on the "Left" to rethink things in a serious
way and form alliances that are not across the board but may exert a pincer
movement on the parties of war, death and empire.
john walsh (MA delegate)
On Dec 14, 2007 3:54 PM, David Strand <mncivil@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Ron Paul does not deserve the support of any Green in
> my opinion.
>
> To begin with, he opposes every consumer and
> environmental protection that Nader has ever worked
> for as he feels all those government regulations are
> unduly burdensome on business.
>
> He opposes carbon cap and trade and most all
> government regulations of pollution.
>
> He opposes all forms of public education. In fact his
> chief campaign organizer in Iowa is a guy who is paid
> for by a conservative think tank that believes public
> education undermines parents religious rights by it's
> mere existence and at least since he is tied up with
> the Ron Paul campaign he not touring the country
> trying to defeat public schools systems funding
> referenda.
>
> He opposes civil rights laws and regulations as an
> undue monitoring of what he sees as personal morality
> by the government.
>
> He is part of the southern Milesian tradition of
> libertarianism which often draws white supremacists
> and those sentimental for the days of the confederacy
> and which tend to be far more socially conservative
> than their Cato Institute related brethren. For
> example, Ron Paul, for all his libertarian
> credentials, believes the government SHOULD use it's
> force to restrict abortion and other post
> fertilization forms of birth control so he is
> decisively anti-abortion and even opposed to numerous
> forms of birth control.
>
> He doesn't support government protection of the right
> to unionize either.
>
> He doesn't support current social safety net programs
> such as welfare, medicare, medicaid let alone fully
> opposing Green objectives such as universal single
> payer healthcare.
>
> And his immigration policies are as backward from
> Green positions as those of the infamously rascist and
> anti-immigrant candidate Tom Tancredo.
>
> Is it allright to work with him together on the
> singular issues we do agree with him on such as
> opposing the war though from very different reasonings
> and frames?
>
>
> You betch ya!
>
> However, this should not translate into a campaign in
> favor of so so many things which we heartily oppose
> and opposed to so so many things we support.
>
> If that's a "sling or arrow", I hope it's hit it's
> mark.
>
> David Strand
> --- John Walsh <jvwalshmd@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=3D12053
> >
> > December 14, 2007
> > Ron Paul: Slings and Arrows, Left and Right
> > The Trots and the neo-Trots gang up on Ron
> > BY JUSTIN RAIMONDO
> >
> > Ron Paul's simultaneous reenactment of the Goldwater
> > and McCarthy
> > (Eugene, not Joe) campaigns has excited a wave of
> > enthusiasm on both
> > sides of the political spectrum =96 and also a much
> > less enthusiastic
> > reaction from committed ideologues, left and right.
> > While they come at
> > the Paul campaign from different angles, both wind
> > up with
> > surprisingly similar negative analyses of the
> > Paulian phenomenon, more
> > so than you might imagine.
> >
> > Let's take the lefties first, starting with one
> > Sherry Wolf, whom, we
> > are told, is an editor of the International
> > Socialist Review. Writing
> > in Counterpunch, she starts out her polemic by
> > acknowledging the utter
> > lack of any alternative to the object of her intense
> > irritation:
> >
> > "'Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum,' goes the
> > revamped aphorism.
> > Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul's
> > surprising stature among
> > a small but vocal layer of antiwar activists and
> > leftist bloggers
> > appears to bear this out."
> >
> > By way of understanding the full implications of
> > this statement,
> > perhaps you ought to know that the International
> > Socialist Review,
> > where Ms. Wolf serves on the editorial board, is the
> > quarterly
> > theoretical journal of the International Socialist
> > Organization (ISO),
> > the largest Trotskyist organization in the US,
> > associated with the
> > "Third Camp" views of the late Tony Cliff. Last time
> > around the ISO
> > supported Ralph Nader for President, attracting much
> > criticism from
> > its more orthodox Trotskyist competitors: I remember
> > going to a Nader
> > rally at Mission High School in San Francisco at
> > which Nader attacked
> > the idea of state socialism, much to the
> > embarrassment of the ISO,
> > which provided the organizational muscle for the
> > Nader campaign in
> > Northern California =96 and their embarrassment must
> > be even greater
> > this time around, when there is no "progressive"
> > candidate on the
> > ballot or likely to appear on any ballot, and Nader
> > is saying good
> > things about =85 Ron Paul! (at around 4:40 minutes
> > into this Youtubed
> > "Hardball"clip).
> >
> > Panic! What to do?! Well, Ms. Wolf complains, at
> > length, that Ron
> > isn't a socialist, which seems to me a rather
> > useless pursuit. After
> > all, neither is Nader. If they want a socialist,
> > then why not run
> > their own candidate, like the Socialist Workers
> > Party used to do? Oh,
> > no, they can't be bothered. Instead, they recycle
> > the smears initially
> > hurled at Paul by the neocons: he's a "racist,"
> > albeit Wolf's
> > rationale is even loopier than that dreamt up by
> > Ron's opponents on
> > the Right. Paul is a racist, you see, because he
> > "imagines a
> > colorblind world" =96 as did Martin Luther King, and
> > the entire
> > integrationist tradition of the civil rights
> > movement, oh, but never
> > mind. Aside from citing quotes that were not written
> > by Rep. Paul, and
> > were instead authored by a fired aide, Wolf can't do
> > any better than
> > that. This is a lot like the Clintonians implying
> > that Barack Obama
> > may have been a drug dealer. One can't help
> > wondering, if, perhaps,
> > the ISO is secretly supporting Hillary =96 or else,
> > why the effort to
> > wall off the left from Paul with this ridiculous
> > smear of "racism"?
> > Who benefits from that? Clearly, the Democrats =85.
> >
> > Wolf decries Paul's opposition to a policy of open
> > borders, and yet
> > Nader took almost the same position as Paul: he
> > opposes illegal
> > immigration, and pledged to reduce it last time
> > around. In an
> > interview with Pat Buchanan published in The
> > American Conservative,
> > when asked about the growth of the US population to
> > 400 million in the
> > near future, Nader said
> >
> > "We don't have the absorptive capacity for that many
> > people. Over 32
> > million came in, in the '90s, which is the highest
> > in American
> > history. We have to control our immigration. We have
> > to limit the
> > number of people who come into this country
> > illegally. First of all,
> > we have to say what is the impact on
> > African-Americans and Hispanic
> > Americans in this country in terms of wages of our
> > present stance on
> > immigration? It is a wage-depressing policy."
> >
> > The hypocrisy of the ISO attack on Paul is
> > breathtaking.
> >
> > Like the neocons, Wolf attacks Paul for supposedly
> > being one of those
> > dreaded "isolationists." Does she realize that this
> > is a code-word for
> > anti-war and anti-imperialist? Of course she does,
> > yet she cynically
> > avers: "In the isolationist fashion of the nation's
> > Pat Buchanans, he
> > decries intervention in foreign nation's affairs and
> > believes
> > membership in the United Nations undermines U.S.
> > sovereignty." Such a
> > sentence, dripping with contempt for Paul's "no
> > entangling alliances"
> > keep-us-out-of-war stance, might easily have
> > appeared in the Weekly
> > Standard, or National Review. Out of the United
> > Nations?! Oh,
> > heavens-to-Betsy, then how would the Security
> > Council enforce all
> > those delightful sanctions against Iran, and
> > threaten to unleash the
> > armed might of the West if Tehran doesn't bow to the
> > Council's
> > demands? Of course, this is par for the course for
> > the ISO, whose
> > British predecessors, the Cliff-ite Socialist Review
> > faction, refused
> > to condemn the US invasion of Korea, which was
> > sanctioned, you'll
> > recall, by the UN and fought under "international"
> > auspices.
> >
> > The ISO is so f*cking clueless, that I have a hard
> > time taking Wolf's
> > polemic seriously: it is so obviously the result of
> > pure political
> > calculation, and sheer panic, that one has to wonder
> > if they take it
> > seriously. I have to say, however, that they just
> > don't get it. They
> > don't understand Ron's appeal to the left, aside and
> > apart from his
> > unrelenting opposition to US intervention abroad.
> > They think they can
> > gull the left if they bring up his economic views:
> >
> > "Complaints against 'big government' and
> > 'over-regulation,' though
> > often justified, also issue from the privileged who
> > are frustrated at
> > finding that their quest for still greater
> > privileges at the expense
> > of their community are curtailed by a government
> > which, ideally,
> > represents that community. Pure food and drug laws
> > curtail profits and
> > mandate tests as they protect the general public."
> >
> > Yet Paul's critique of state capitalism takes on the
> > commanding
> > heights of the system: the Federal Reserve.
> > Inflation, he says, is the
> > means by which the plutocratic elite gets the
> > freshly-created assets
> > first and gets to spend them at full value =96 while
> > the currency is
> > debauched and the poor and the middle class suffer.
> > His
> =3D=3D=3D message truncated =3D=3D=3D
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________________________________________________=
____________
> Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page.
> http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
>
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Actually Nader has spoken approvingly of Paul - and vice versa. Neith=
er is a socialist in the old 19th century sense of the word - but neither a=
m I and neither is the GP.<div><br></div><div>I do not want to be rude BUT =
all the points you raise are almost the standard ones that trip off the ton=
gue of Leftists - all very predictable. I am not proposing that we su=
pport Paul - but I would damned sure vote for him before any one of the Dem=
s in the field including Kucinich.
</div><div><br></div><div>I find that there is a failure on the "Left&=
quot; to rethink things in a serious way and form alliances that are not ac=
ross the board but may exert a pincer movement on the parties of war, death=
and empire.
</div><div>john walsh (MA delegate)</div><div><br><div class=3D"gmail_quote=
">On Dec 14, 2007 3:54 PM, David Strand <<a href=3D"mailto:mncivil@yahoo=
.com">mncivil@yahoo.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class=3D"gmail_quote"=
style=3D"margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
Ron Paul does not deserve the support of any Green in<br>my opinion.<br><br=
>To begin with, he opposes every consumer and<br>environmental protection t=
hat Nader has ever worked<br>for as he feels all those government regulatio=
ns are
<br>unduly burdensome on business.<br><br>He opposes carbon cap and trade a=
nd most all<br>government regulations of pollution.<br><br>He opposes all f=
orms of public education. In fact his<br>chief campaign organizer in =
Iowa is a guy who is paid
<br>for by a conservative think tank that believes public<br>education unde=
rmines parents religious rights by it's<br>mere existence and at least =
since he is tied up with<br>the Ron Paul campaign he not touring the countr=
y
<br>trying to defeat public schools systems funding<br>referenda.<br><br>He=
opposes civil rights laws and regulations as an<br>undue monitoring of wha=
t he sees as personal morality<br>by the government.<br><br>He is part of t=
he southern Milesian tradition of
<br>libertarianism which often draws white supremacists<br>and those sentim=
ental for the days of the confederacy<br>and which tend to be far more soci=
ally conservative<br>than their Cato Institute related brethren. For<=
br>
example, Ron Paul, for all his libertarian<br>credentials, believes the gov=
ernment SHOULD use it's<br>force to restrict abortion and other post<br=
>fertilization forms of birth control so he is<br>decisively anti-abortion =
and even opposed to numerous
<br>forms of birth control.<br><br>He doesn't support government protec=
tion of the right<br>to unionize either.<br><br>He doesn't support curr=
ent social safety net programs<br>such as welfare, medicare, medicaid let a=
lone fully
<br>opposing Green objectives such as universal single<br>payer healthcare.=
<br><br>And his immigration policies are as backward from<br>Green position=
s as those of the infamously rascist and<br>anti-immigrant candidate Tom Ta=
ncredo.
<br><br>Is it allright to work with him together on the<br>singular issues =
we do agree with him on such as<br>opposing the war though from very differ=
ent reasonings<br>and frames?<br><br><br>You betch ya!<br><br>However, this=
should not translate into a campaign in
<br>favor of so so many things which we heartily oppose<br>and opposed to s=
o so many things we support.<br><br>If that's a "sling or arrow&qu=
ot;, I hope it's hit it's<br>mark.<br><br>David Strand<br><div>
<div></div><div class=3D"Wj3C7c">--- John Walsh <<a href=3D"mailto:jvwal=
shmd@gmail.com">jvwalshmd@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><br>> <a href=3D"h=
ttp://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=3D12053" target=3D"_blank">http://w=
ww.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=3D12053
</a><br>><br>> December 14, 2007<br>> Ron Paul: Slings and Arrows,=
Left and Right<br>> The Trots and the neo-Trots gang up on Ron<br>> =
BY JUSTIN RAIMONDO<br>><br>> Ron Paul's simultaneous reenactment =
of the Goldwater
<br>> and McCarthy<br>> (Eugene, not Joe) campaigns has excited a wav=
e of<br>> enthusiasm on both<br>> sides of the political spectrum =96=
and also a much<br>> less enthusiastic<br>> reaction from committed =
ideologues, left and right.
<br>> While they come at<br>> the Paul campaign from different angles=
, both wind<br>> up with<br>> surprisingly similar negative analyses =
of the<br>> Paulian phenomenon, more<br>> so than you might imagine.
<br>><br>> Let's take the lefties first, starting with one<br>>=
; Sherry Wolf, whom, we<br>> are told, is an editor of the International=
<br>> Socialist Review. Writing<br>> in Counterpunch, she starts out =
her polemic by
<br>> acknowledging the utter<br>> lack of any alternative to the obj=
ect of her intense<br>> irritation:<br>><br>> "'Politics,=
like nature, abhors a vacuum,' goes the<br>> revamped aphorism.
<br>> Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul's<br>> surprisin=
g stature among<br>> a small but vocal layer of antiwar activists and<br=
>> leftist bloggers<br>> appears to bear this out."<br>><br>
> By way of understanding the full implications of<br>> this statemen=
t,<br>> perhaps you ought to know that the International<br>> Sociali=
st Review,<br>> where Ms. Wolf serves on the editorial board, is the
<br>> quarterly<br>> theoretical journal of the International Sociali=
st<br>> Organization (ISO),<br>> the largest Trotskyist organization =
in the US,<br>> associated with the<br>> "Third Camp" views=
of the late Tony Cliff. Last time
<br>> around the ISO<br>> supported Ralph Nader for President, attrac=
ting much<br>> criticism from<br>> its more orthodox Trotskyist compe=
titors: I remember<br>> going to a Nader<br>> rally at Mission High S=
chool in San Francisco at
<br>> which Nader attacked<br>> the idea of state socialism, much to =
the<br>> embarrassment of the ISO,<br>> which provided the organizati=
onal muscle for the<br>> Nader campaign in<br>> Northern California =
=96 and their embarrassment must
<br>> be even greater<br>> this time around, when there is no "p=
rogressive"<br>> candidate on the<br>> ballot or likely to appea=
r on any ballot, and Nader<br>> is saying good<br>> things about =85 =
Ron Paul! (at around 4:40 minutes
<br>> into this Youtubed<br>> "Hardball"clip).<br>><br>&=
gt; Panic! What to do?! Well, Ms. Wolf complains, at<br>> length, that R=
on<br>> isn't a socialist, which seems to me a rather<br>> useles=
s pursuit. After
<br>> all, neither is Nader. If they want a socialist,<br>> then why =
not run<br>> their own candidate, like the Socialist Workers<br>> Par=
ty used to do? Oh,<br>> no, they can't be bothered. Instead, they re=
cycle
<br>> the smears initially<br>> hurled at Paul by the neocons: he'=
;s a "racist,"<br>> albeit Wolf's<br>> rationale is eve=
n loopier than that dreamt up by<br>> Ron's opponents on<br>> the=
Right. Paul is a racist, you see, because he
<br>> "imagines a<br>> colorblind world" =96 as did Martin =
Luther King, and<br>> the entire<br>> integrationist tradition of the=
civil rights<br>> movement, oh, but never<br>> mind. Aside from citi=
ng quotes that were not written
<br>> by Rep. Paul, and<br>> were instead authored by a fired aide, W=
olf can't do<br>> any better than<br>> that. This is a lot like t=
he Clintonians implying<br>> that Barack Obama<br>> may have been a d=
rug dealer. One can't help
<br>> wondering, if, perhaps,<br>> the ISO is secretly supporting Hil=
lary =96 or else,<br>> why the effort to<br>> wall off the left from =
Paul with this ridiculous<br>> smear of "racism"?<br>> Who =
benefits from that? Clearly, the Democrats =85.
<br>><br>> Wolf decries Paul's opposition to a policy of open<br>=
> borders, and yet<br>> Nader took almost the same position as Paul: =
he<br>> opposes illegal<br>> immigration, and pledged to reduce it la=
st time
<br>> around. In an<br>> interview with Pat Buchanan published in The=
<br>> American Conservative,<br>> when asked about the growth of the =
US population to<br>> 400 million in the<br>> near future, Nader said
<br>><br>> "We don't have the absorptive capacity for that m=
any<br>> people. Over 32<br>> million came in, in the '90s, which=
is the highest<br>> in American<br>> history. We have to control our=
immigration. We have
<br>> to limit the<br>> number of people who come into this country<b=
r>> illegally. First of all,<br>> we have to say what is the impact o=
n<br>> African-Americans and Hispanic<br>> Americans in this country =
in terms of wages of our
<br>> present stance on<br>> immigration? It is a wage-depressing pol=
icy."<br>><br>> The hypocrisy of the ISO attack on Paul is<br>&g=
t; breathtaking.<br>><br>> Like the neocons, Wolf attacks Paul for su=
pposedly
<br>> being one of those<br>> dreaded "isolationists." Does=
she realize that this<br>> is a code-word for<br>> anti-war and anti=
-imperialist? Of course she does,<br>> yet she cynically<br>> avers: =
"In the isolationist fashion of the nation's
<br>> Pat Buchanans, he<br>> decries intervention in foreign nation&#=
39;s affairs and<br>> believes<br>> membership in the United Nations =
undermines U.S.<br>> sovereignty." Such a<br>> sentence, drippin=
g with contempt for Paul's "no
<br>> entangling alliances"<br>> keep-us-out-of-war stance, migh=
t easily have<br>> appeared in the Weekly<br>> Standard, or National =
Review. Out of the United<br>> Nations?! Oh,<br>> heavens-to-Betsy, t=
hen how would the Security
<br>> Council enforce all<br>> those delightful sanctions against Ira=
n, and<br>> threaten to unleash the<br>> armed might of the West if T=
ehran doesn't bow to the<br>> Council's<br>> demands? Of cour=
se, this is par for the course for
<br>> the ISO, whose<br>> British predecessors, the Cliff-ite Sociali=
st Review<br>> faction, refused<br>> to condemn the US invasion of Ko=
rea, which was<br>> sanctioned, you'll<br>> recall, by the UN and=
fought under "international"
<br>> auspices.<br>><br>> The ISO is so f*cking clueless, that I h=
ave a hard<br>> time taking Wolf's<br>> polemic seriously: it is =
so obviously the result of<br>> pure political<br>> calculation, and =
sheer panic, that one has to wonder
<br>> if they take it<br>> seriously. I have to say, however, that th=
ey just<br>> don't get it. They<br>> don't understand Ron'=
;s appeal to the left, aside and<br>> apart from his<br>> unrelenting=
opposition to US intervention abroad.
<br>> They think they can<br>> gull the left if they bring up his eco=
nomic views:<br>><br>> "Complaints against 'big government&#=
39; and<br>> 'over-regulation,' though<br>> often justified, =
also issue from the privileged who
<br>> are frustrated at<br>> finding that their quest for still great=
er<br>> privileges at the expense<br>> of their community are curtail=
ed by a government<br>> which, ideally,<br>> represents that communit=
y. Pure food and drug laws
<br>> curtail profits and<br>> mandate tests as they protect the gene=
ral public."<br>><br>> Yet Paul's critique of state capitali=
sm takes on the<br>> commanding<br>> heights of the system: the Feder=
al Reserve.
<br>> Inflation, he says, is the<br>> means by which the plutocratic =
elite gets the<br>> freshly-created assets<br>> first and gets to spe=
nd them at full value =96 while<br>> the currency is<br>> debauched a=
nd the poor and the middle class suffer.
<br>> His<br></div></div>=3D=3D=3D message truncated =3D=3D=3D<br><div c=
lass=3D"WgoR0d"><br><br><br> __________________________=
__________________________________________________________<br>Never miss a =
thing. Make Yahoo your home page.
<br><a href=3D"http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs" target=3D"_blank">http://www.yaho=
o.com/r/hs</a><br></div></blockquote></div><br></div>
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