Mark R. Crovelli
LewRockwell.com
February 26, 2010
Ron Paul’s stunning landslide victory in the CPAC straw poll is an event that cannot be allowed to go to waste. Political moments this ripe are about as rare as the California condor, and Ron Paul would do us all an incalculable service if he would seize the day, and declare his intention to run in the 2012 presidential election. He needs to do this right now. Not next month, not next year, but now.
Just imagine the effect that an announcement of candidacy would do for the Paulian revolution right now. As the only declared candidate for president in 2012 and the winner of the CPAC straw poll, he would immediately garner widespread media attention. Not only would he be the only declared candidate at the moment, but he might even be the only declared presidential candidate for the next eleven months. To have the field completely free of challengers and a fearsome grassroots electioneering and fundraising machine already in place is the political strategist’s Holy Grail. All Ron Paul has to do is tell the world he is running in 2012, and his entire movement will spring to life without any challengers standing in his way.
The fear and loathing Ron Paul would instill in the powers that be cannot be overstated. In their terrified stupor, the Republican leadership would search far and wide to find a sufficiently servile sock puppet to trot out to oppose Dr. Paul. All they would find, however, is a Mormon version of Ted Kennedy, an old man from Arizona who is clearly off his rocker, and a woman who can’t figure out what she stands for, besides war. The situation for Dr. Paul would only brighten if the Republican National Committee were to push for an early announcement of candidacy from one of these clowns. Indeed, the best possible outcome for Dr. Paul and the movement would be to force the RNC’s hand to pick one of these idiots sooner rather than later. The front-running idiot at the moment is the Mormon version of Ted Kennedy who loves socialized medicine. Life would be good indeed if Dr. Paul could induce the RNC to throw its weight behind a man who supports socialized medicine. That would ensure a Ron Paul run against Barack Obama in 2012!
The paroxysms of fear that would grip the Obama administration would be equally great, because Ron Paul is actually committed to ending our murderous foreign empire. Obama won the last election on the “peace platform,” which was possible only because he was running against a crazy old man, hell-bent on even more war than Bush II. In such company, Obama looked like a “peace candidate.” In the company of Dr. Paul, however, Obama can be seen for what he is; namely, a card-carrying member of the same war party that includes Bush II. If Obama knew at this early point that he could possibly be facing Ron Paul in 2012, he would have to start changing his perpetual-war policies right now in order to stand a chance against the real “peace candidate” in two years. Nor could he continue to indulge in his lunatic Keynesianism-meets-corporatism economic policies, because Ron Paul the presidential candidate would publicly expose it all as the quackery it is. Ron Paul is Obama’s worst nightmare in 2012.
Perhaps most importantly, however, is the hope that his early announcement would give to the American people. For, without Dr. Paul as a candidate in 2012, we will be left with only the most cynical and dreadful of options. We will be faced with a so-called “peace candidate” who is wholly devoted to war, and a mainstream Republican candidate who is devoted to war coupled with torture and assassination. We will be faced with a socialist incumbent, and a mainstream Republican candidate devoted to corporate welfare and succoring the military-industrial complex. Without Dr. Paul in the mix, these will be our only options: war + socialism, or war + torture + economic fascism. There will be no hope for freedom and peace.
The need is great for you, Dr. Paul, and the moment will never be so ripe for you to announce your candidacy. Seize the moment and awaken the slumbering revolutionaries who are waiting for you to say the word and give them hope in 2012. The murmurs and whispers that you might run in 2012 will give way to a groundswell of support that will make the very Earth tremble. Please give us what we want and need in the depths of depression and war, the hope that liberty and peace can still be attained in our lifetime.
RON PAUL FOR PRESIDENT IN 2012!
Get your attire NOW!
Showing posts with label Sarah Palin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sarah Palin. Show all posts
Feb 28, 2010
Feb 9, 2010
Why Does Sarah Palin Want More War?
Mere Christianity
C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity (Shepherd's Notes)
Image via WikipediaBy LRC columnist Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D:
I like it that Sarah Palin talks about smaller government, and that her very existence makes the lying incumbents in Washington nervous. I like that she cultivates a persona of simple straight talk – even innocence.
But the problem with Sarah is that, like so many Americans, she’s never really thought too deeply about the State. In actual fact, her life, rogue or not, is the story of state subsidy, state employment, state redistribution of wealth, state corruption and state centralizing power.
Children of the 60s are the special children of both the warfare state and the welfare state, that scientific bureaucratic corporate state that Ike warned of in 1961 fifty years ago. And Sarah Palin, bless her heart, is devoted to her parents.
Her human parents had careers in the public school system. Dad was a science teacher, and mom a school secretary in Idaho, and in Alaska as well. They believed in public schooling. Sarah and her siblings were schooled by the state, as were and are Sarah’s kids.
It likely never occurred to the Palins to do otherwise, even though in Idaho and Alaska, home and independent schooling is very popular. In fact, Alaska is the best state in the nation for home schooling. The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) reports:
But Alaska is a state where there may be too few people for the central state to worry about educating, when in fact it already controls so many of them. In terms of U.S. military spending, since World War II, Alaska has been a major recipient of defense spending and construction. In terms of federal real estate, Alaska is nearly 70% federal property. Only Nevada has a greater percentage of federally owned land, at close to 85%.
I lived in Alaska between 1983 and 1986, courtesy of my military assignment. We loved the place, and bought into the idea that people could live as they pleased in the last frontier. But that was more an ideal than a reality. Most high-paying jobs there were state or federal, and private companies were often dependent on state and federal subsidies for health, education, natural resources or at the time, construction and maintenance of the Alaska pipeline. Among military transplants from the lower 48, there was a sense that if you or your spouse didn’t have a government subsidized job or a retirement check – you might be living at a subsistence level in a place that is cold and dark for half the year. By subsisting, I mean living without the comfort and consumptive variety that most Americans take for granted. By subsisting, I mean a decrease in the overall economic benefit that comes from specialization and trade, due primarily to a geographic scarcity of non-government employed people actually producing useful things.
This is Alaska – a state of contradictions, a place where a vision of lovely freedom is contrasted by the reality of high per capita government activity and employment. So when liberty lovers watch Sarah Palin, and are inspired by some of the things she says, we must recognize how she was made.
The chatter this weekend relates to something Sarah said on FoxNews. As Gomer Pyle would say, "Surprise, surprise, surprise."
It’s more war.
In figuring out how Obama could be a better, more popular President, Palin suggested, "[He could decide] to declare war on Iran or …to come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do."
Some will say she’s ignorant, others that she is genius. Certainly, the Christian right and the Israel lobby together demand that statements like this be made early and often, and it is they who help make $500 a plate dinner speeches possible. But I think that the problem with Sarah is simply that she just hasn’t thought enough about the state, how it lives (parasitically) and why it survives (redistribution and fear). Growing up as a member of the great publicly employed in Alaska is probably the worst way to critically understand the welfare and warfare state; no matter how bad they are, you always love your Mommy and your Daddy.
She learned that freedom looks like government protecting you. She learned that liberty means doing what is good for the state. As a Republican (in Alaska, there are mostly libertarians, independents and Republicans, and she gravitated to the most statist option), she likes the idea of small government and non-interference. But as a child of the warfare-welfare state, she will build bridges to nowhere at home, and repeatedly blow them up overseas, without a hint of irony.
Sarah Palin has said publicly that she loves to read C.S. Lewis. Lewis, a believer, posited the state and the individual through a lens of Christianity. He wrote,
LRC columnist Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, has written on defense issues with a libertarian perspective for MilitaryWeek.com, hosts the call-in radio show American Forum, and blogs occasionally for Huffingtonpost.com and Liberty and Power. To receive automatic announcements of new articles, click here.
Copyright © 2010 Karen Kwiatkowski
The Best of Karen Kwiatkowski
C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity (Shepherd's Notes)
Image via WikipediaI like it that Sarah Palin talks about smaller government, and that her very existence makes the lying incumbents in Washington nervous. I like that she cultivates a persona of simple straight talk – even innocence.
But the problem with Sarah is that, like so many Americans, she’s never really thought too deeply about the State. In actual fact, her life, rogue or not, is the story of state subsidy, state employment, state redistribution of wealth, state corruption and state centralizing power.
Children of the 60s are the special children of both the warfare state and the welfare state, that scientific bureaucratic corporate state that Ike warned of in 1961 fifty years ago. And Sarah Palin, bless her heart, is devoted to her parents.
Her human parents had careers in the public school system. Dad was a science teacher, and mom a school secretary in Idaho, and in Alaska as well. They believed in public schooling. Sarah and her siblings were schooled by the state, as were and are Sarah’s kids.
It likely never occurred to the Palins to do otherwise, even though in Idaho and Alaska, home and independent schooling is very popular. In fact, Alaska is the best state in the nation for home schooling. The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) reports:
There is no government oversight of home education in Alaska. This means that there is no prescribed curriculum, no state testing or other evaluations, no minimum number of days of instruction, and no teacher qualifications. Parents are not even required to notify state officials that they intend to homeschool their children.
| ||
I lived in Alaska between 1983 and 1986, courtesy of my military assignment. We loved the place, and bought into the idea that people could live as they pleased in the last frontier. But that was more an ideal than a reality. Most high-paying jobs there were state or federal, and private companies were often dependent on state and federal subsidies for health, education, natural resources or at the time, construction and maintenance of the Alaska pipeline. Among military transplants from the lower 48, there was a sense that if you or your spouse didn’t have a government subsidized job or a retirement check – you might be living at a subsistence level in a place that is cold and dark for half the year. By subsisting, I mean living without the comfort and consumptive variety that most Americans take for granted. By subsisting, I mean a decrease in the overall economic benefit that comes from specialization and trade, due primarily to a geographic scarcity of non-government employed people actually producing useful things.
This is Alaska – a state of contradictions, a place where a vision of lovely freedom is contrasted by the reality of high per capita government activity and employment. So when liberty lovers watch Sarah Palin, and are inspired by some of the things she says, we must recognize how she was made.
The chatter this weekend relates to something Sarah said on FoxNews. As Gomer Pyle would say, "Surprise, surprise, surprise."
It’s more war.
In figuring out how Obama could be a better, more popular President, Palin suggested, "[He could decide] to declare war on Iran or …to come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do."
Some will say she’s ignorant, others that she is genius. Certainly, the Christian right and the Israel lobby together demand that statements like this be made early and often, and it is they who help make $500 a plate dinner speeches possible. But I think that the problem with Sarah is simply that she just hasn’t thought enough about the state, how it lives (parasitically) and why it survives (redistribution and fear). Growing up as a member of the great publicly employed in Alaska is probably the worst way to critically understand the welfare and warfare state; no matter how bad they are, you always love your Mommy and your Daddy.
Sarah Palin has said publicly that she loves to read C.S. Lewis. Lewis, a believer, posited the state and the individual through a lens of Christianity. He wrote,
"…Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live for ever, and this must be either true or false. . . . And immortality makes this other difference, which, by the by, has a connection with the difference between totalitarianism and democracy. If individuals live only seventy years, then a state, or a nation, or a civilisation, which may last for a thousand years, is more important than an individual. But if Christianity is true, then the individual is not only more important but incomparably more important, for he is everlasting and the life of the state or civilisation, compared with his, is only a moment.Sarah Palin is still learning, like all of us, and there is hope. But if she wants more war, while certainly not very Christian of her or even necessary, she should look for opportunities closer to home.
~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
LRC columnist Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, has written on defense issues with a libertarian perspective for MilitaryWeek.com, hosts the call-in radio show American Forum, and blogs occasionally for Huffingtonpost.com and Liberty and Power. To receive automatic announcements of new articles, click here.
Copyright © 2010 Karen Kwiatkowski
The Best of Karen Kwiatkowski
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I don't know yet how I feel about him, and that is the thing. It's kinda like with Obama at the time, He hasn't been around long...
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Good Times.
