Monday, December 13, 2010

Ron Paul is coming in from the cold

WASHINGTON — As virtually all of Washington was declaring WikiLeaks’s disclosures of secret diplomatic cables an act of treason, Representative Ron Paul was applauding the organization for exposing the United States’ “delusional foreign policy.”

For this, the conservative blog RedState dubbed him “Al Qaeda’s favorite member of Congress.”

It was hardly the first time that Mr. Paul had marched to his own beat. During his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, he was best remembered for declaring in a debate that the 9/11 attacks were the Muslim world’s response to American military intervention around the globe. A fellow candidate, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, interrupted and demanded that he take back the words — a request that Mr. Paul refused.

During his 20 years in Congress, Mr. Paul has staked out the lonely end of 434-to-1 votes against legislation that he considers unconstitutional, even on issues as ceremonial as granting Mother Teresa a Congressional Gold Medal. His colleagues have dubbed him “Dr. No,” but his wife will insist that they have the spelling wrong: he is really Dr. Know.

Now it appears others are beginning to credit him with some wisdom — or at least acknowledging his passionate following.

After years of blocking him from a leadership position, Mr. Paul’s fellow Republicans have named him chairman of the House subcommittee on domestic monetary policy, which oversees the Federal Reserve as well as the currency and the valuation of the dollar.

Mr. Paul has strong views on those issues. He has written a book called “End the Fed”; he embraces Austrian economic thought, which holds that the government has no role in regulating the economy; and he advocates a return to the gold standard.
Read the rest here.

I have not always agreed with Ron Paul. But I have always respected him. There are damn few politicians about whom I can make that statement.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yup.

Sophocles said...

I really just like that man. He is a real human being.

Anonymous said...

Yup. A blind ideologue - if only we had more of them we'd be better off by far. Seasoned with a little conspiracy theory in the mix (Paul was a staple of the Bircher-liberty lobby folks) - even better!

David said...

We can't have any liberty, nope just blind allegiance to soulless governments. Government never test LSD on the population, or gives STD's to African Americans, nope. Some people deserve the government they get.

Anonymous said...

David - is that really the choice anyone faces? Or a chimera invented to rationalize kookery?

I mean, seriously, if this is the level of unnuanced thinking is in any way representative of the population as a whole, we're doomed.

John (Ad Orientem) said...

I am no fan of weird conspiracy theories (as anyone who has been reading this blog would know). That said I am reminded of the old saying... "Just because your paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you."

Nathaniel said...

I view Ron Paul a bit like an Orthodox person might view a "fool for Christ." Nutty? Absolutely. Yet, he somehow is able to hold up a mirror to people that don't want to look at their own reflection.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

I sure am glad the establishment is in the hands of steely-eyed pragmatists instead of ideologues like Ron Paul. Just think of how many rational policies the establishment has pursued over the years:

Perpetual war in Iraq
Perpetual war in Afghanistan
No Child Left Behind
Community Reinvestment Act
Mass Third World immigration
Deficit spending
Women in the military
Marijuana prohibition

How dare anybody suggest that it is the establishment that is in the grip of delusional ideology, and that its policies bear no rational relation to the historical, social and economic data.

Anonymous said...

Ah yes clearly the only answer is to turn everything over to wall street - good thinking - after all, nothing would go downhill if we just deregulate everything and scrap public investment.

Of the continuum of possible policy orientations I can think of neither looks attractive in the aggregate, though I must say the Paul alternative looks much worse. Of course people are almost always more comfortable with the devil they know, so I could be wrong.

David said...

Yes you are wrong. We all are to one degree or another so welcome to Kookery.