Friday, April 29, 2011

A political rant (by somebody else)

One of the best I've read in a long time. The subject: Why liberals should favor Ron Paul over Barack Obama.


Favorite excerpts:
I do have a problem with those who imagine themselves to be liberal-minded citizens of the world casting their vote for Barack Obama and propagating the notion that someone can bomb and/or militarily occupy Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen and Libya and still earn more Progressive Points than the guy who would, you know, not do any of that....

Unlike the Nobel Peace Prize winner-in-chief, Paul would also bring the troops home from not just Afghanistan and Iraq, but Europe, Korea and Okinawa. There'd be no need for a School of the Americas because the U.S. wouldn't be busy training foreign military personnel the finer points of human rights abuses. Israel would have to carry out its war crimes on its own dime....

[I]t seems to me that if you're going to style yourself a progressive, liberal humanitarian, your first priority really ought to be stopping your government from killing poor people. Second on that list? Stopping your government from putting hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens in cages for decades at a time over non-violent “crimes” committed by consenting adults. Seriously: what the fuck? Social Security's great and all I guess, but not exploding little children with cluster bombs – shouldn't that be at the top of the Liberal Agenda?

8 comments:

JT88Keys said...

They had me right up to the part where they implied that the USA uses cluster bombs.

Rakewell said...

Why do you think we don't? The Department of Defense is pretty clear about it:

http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=50455

JT88Keys said...

Huh....I was under the impression we didn't based on the indignation expressed by the White House and DoD over their use by Libya recently.

Hypocrisy from government entities?

Crash said...

We refused to sign the international agreement not to use cluster-bombs. Whether or not we use them, I don't know.

bastinptc said...

Sometimes I think a Paul/Kucinich ticket might be one avenue to pursue. Both men make sense on a lot of things.

Wolynski said...

Thing is, Obama promised to end war in Iraq, close Guantanamo etc. Once they get into office, they develop amnesia or rather, they find they don't have the power to do these things.

MisterFred said...

Economic policy lasts longer than foreign policy (see social security and WWII). Barack Obama may be a moderate (I use the word as the insult it is), but the institution of Paul policies would cripple the country for decades. Stumbling along under Obama at least retains the possibility of retaining enough national power to implement a truly liberal agenda in the nearer future.

Seriously, the article's argument is liberals should like this guy that shits over every policy they like except in these two little areas over a guy that only casually discards liberal policy, except for shitting on liberal ideals in two areas. Wow, oh yeah, totally going to line up behind Rand Paul.

zzzzzzzzzzz...

Anonymous said...

Read more about Ron Paul here. He is a bit too far on the right for me.

http://freestudents.blogspot.com/search/label/Ron%20Paul