Forum Post: Lots of common ground RONPAUL and OWS
Posted 13 years ago on Nov. 9, 2011, 3:59 a.m. EST by mcdynamite
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By Brent Budowsky
The more I hear about him the more I like....
I view RonPaul and his supporters as a movement and a cause as much as a conventional campaign, in the same way I view Occupy Wall Street as a movement and a cause that originated far outside the conventional political system. For many months I have given a lot of thought to whether an alliance can be formed between authentic conservative populists and authentic progressive populists, and here is my thought today:
I listen carefully and respectfully to what RonPaul says, and what Occupy Wall Street says. There are two levels of analysis. On the matter of the role of government, there will never be agreement. On the matter of private-sector solutions, there are profound and powerful opportunities for agreement.
RonPaul and Occupy Wall Street agree that what is called capitalism is, in many cases, not capitalism but cronyism in which special interests game the system to accumulate wealth in ways that involve special access to government monies and favoritism and not creating products that consumers want to buy.
If there were a way to build a de facto consumer alliance between RonPaul supporters and Occupy Wall Street supporters based purely on private-sector initiatives that make profit by putting customers first, it would change the world.
Today there is a powerful revolt against banks that charge fees that customers reject. Setting aside our respective views of what government should do, or not do, about which we will never agree, we can agree on some powerful private-sector approaches with the enormous leverage of the RonPaul supporters and the Occupy Wall Street supporters.
On the matters I raise here, involving private-sector solutions that serve customers first, both RonPaul supporters and Occupy Wall Street supporters make an honest effort to give a fair deal to the 99 percent.
My own thinking is far more specific and advanced than what I write here. My purpose today is to raise the thought of beginning a new kind of alliance, on certain matters of shared interest, between authentic conservative populists and authentic liberal populists.
The truth is, as most RonPaul supporters and most Occupy Wall Street supporters would agree, far too often the fix is in against us.
The most powerful answer to crony capitalism is customer capitalism. The most powerful weapon for change is a unity between conservative populists and liberal populists.
While we will never agree on the role of government, the most powerful revolution waiting to be tapped is to join forces in support of those in the private sector who stand with the 99 percent, giving individuals real choices in the private market in support of companies that believe that the customer is always right.
I welcome specific ideas, and will soon offer some more of my own.
http://weirdloadreboot.com/blog/2011/08/29/what-exactly-is-wrong-with-ron-paul-george-wallace-for-the-21st-century/
What are my beefs with Ron Lawl? For starters Ron Lawl has NO regard for the rights of women in even the most intimate issues of their lives and health. The past sponsor of legislation intended to overturn Roe v. Wade, Ron Lawl's libertarianism does not apply to women. Paul has a rigid, no-exceptions for health, rape, or incest anti-abortion position, essentially empowering a rapist to sire a child with a woman of his choosing and the government forcing the victim to carry any pregnancy no matter how repulsive to term. Paul routinely attributes his stance on abortion to his background as an ob-gyn physician, but the majority of practicing ob-gyns are pro-choice, and that Paul's draconian position tracks exactly with that of his Christian Reconstructionist friends from groups like Christian Identity on the white supremacy side and theocrats who dominate the issue within the GOP.
When corporate media covers Ron Lawl they always focus on his economic libertarianism. (which is to simply turn America over to corporations through government privatization and safety/environmental deregulation.) Rarely do they address Paul's more extremist views and connections such as Sarah Posner, writing for the Nation, did when she noted that during his appearances leading up to the Iowa Ames straw poll (in which Paul finished second only to Rep. Michele Bachmann by a 200-vote margin), "launched into gruesome descriptions of abortion, a departure from his stump speech focused on cutting taxes, shutting down the Federal Reserve, getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan and repealing the Patriot Act." Paul pandered to the religious right in Iowa in the same way that he does Anti-Prohibition/Cannabis movement faithful on the issue of legalizing pot.
As for my friends in the LGBT community Ron Lawl holds a special place of hate in his
heart for them. While it is factual that Paul advocates leaving it to the states to determine whether same-sex marriages should be legally recognized, it's not because he's a friend to LGBT people. Paul's position on same-sex marriage stems from his beliefs about the limits of the federal government's role vis-a-vis his novel interpretation of the Constitution. Paul has no problems with State Governments instituting laws that make gays second class citizens or would infringe on the right of any other minority group from blacks to Latinos. Paul doesn't want the Federal Government forcing people NOT to discriminate. It is the same argument that was made by the "States Rights" segregationist. The end result of this policy would be increased discrimination within State's featuring powerful religious majorities, white-only wealth, and white dominated political power.
As it relates to the gay community it is instructive to look at a newsletter called the Ron Lawl Political Report, unearthed by Kirchick, shows Paul on a rant against a range of foes and conspiracies, including "the federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS," to which Paul parenthetically adds, "my training as a physician helps me see through this one." The passage, which also portends a "coming race war in our big cities," complains of the "perverted" and "pagan" annual romp for the rich and powerful known as Bohemian Grove, and takes aim at the "demonic" Skull and Bones Society at Yale, not to mention the "Israeli lobby," begins with the paranoid claim, "I've been told not to talk, but these stooges don't scare me."
While Paul denied, in 2001, writing most of the scurrilous material that ran, without attribution, in newsletters that bore his name in the title, this passage, according to Jon Hopwood, bears Paul's byline. Paul and his followers simply want the rest of us to take Ron Lawl's word for it that he didn't write that stuff… even though all of it bears his name and Paul is a known liar.
My biggest problem with Ron Lawl is the John Birch Society connections. Those with short term memory when it comes to the John Birch Society have forgotten exactly what they are and who they represent. They have always come from the farthest-right fascist wing of American politics- born in the 1950's to oppose the Civil Rights movement. In 2008 Paul delivered the keynote address [video] at the 50th anniversary gala of the John Birch Society, the famous anti-communist, anti-civil-rights organization hatched in the 1950s by North Carolina candy magnate Robert Welch, with the help of Fred Koch, founder of what is now Koch Industries, and a handful of well-heeled friends. The JBS is also remembered for its role in helping to launch the 1964 presidential candidacy of the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., and for later backing the segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace in his 1968 third-party presidential bid.
The semi-secular ideology of the John Birch Society is a paranoid mix of libertarian market and fiscal theory laced with flourishes of white cultural supremacy and finds its religious counterpart, as Fred Clarkson noted, in the theonomy of Christian Reconstructionism, the right-wing religious-political school of thought founded by Rousas John Rushdoony. The ultimate goal of Christian Reconstructionists is to reconstitute the law of the Hebrew Bible, which calls for, amongst other extremes, the execution of homosexuals, as the law of the land. This would be the same as the imposition of Sharia Law and would represent a theocratic take-over of American democracy. The Constitution Party constitutes the political wing of Reconstructionism, and the CP has found a good friend in Ron Lawl who interprets the constitution by the Christians' narrow perceptions of it's powers. Basically any amendments made after the Civil War are null & void and there is NO separation of church and State.
What is most scary about the John Birch Society, is that it seems to be a breeding ground for Neo-Nazis. Several members of the intellectual wing of the White Nationalist Neo-Nazi movement come directly from the John Birch society.
One of the founders of the John Birch Society was Revilo P. Oliver, who went on to found the white nationalist Neo-Nazi organization, The National Alliance which named Hitler “the greatest man of our era.”
Another member of the John Birch society was William Pierce, also a founder of the
National Alliance, who also wrote “The Turner Diaries.” “The Turner Diaries” is credited with inspiring Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City, Killing 168 people. Other prominent members of the John Birch society, who played large roles in the Neo-Nazi movement, include Tom Metzger, who was a Grand Dragon of the KKK and Kevin Strom, the former managing director of National Vanguard, (another prominent white supremacist organization) who was convicted for child pornography.
The Southern Poverty Leadership Committee claims the John Birch society is responsible for a lot of the Patriot movement “New World Order,” anti-government ideologies that spread to militias and Neo-Nazis.
When Paul launched his second presidential quest in 2008, he won the endorsement of Rev. Chuck Baldwin, a Baptist pastor who travels in Christian Reconstructionist circles, though he is not precisely a Reconstructionist himself (for reasons having to do with his interpretation of how the end times will go down). When Paul dropped out of the race, instead of endorsing Republican nominee John McCain, or even Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr, Paul endorsed Constitution Party presidential nominee Chuck Baldwin (who promised, in his acceptance speech, to uphold the Constitution Party platform, which looks curiously similar to the Ron Lawl agenda, right down to the no-exceptions abortion proscription and ending the Fed).
At his shadow rally that year in Minneapolis, held on the eve of the Republican National Convention, Paul invited Constitution Party founder Howard Phillips, a Christian Reconstructionist, to address the crowd of end-the-Fed-cheering post-pubescents. (In his early congressional career, Julie Ingersoll writes in Religion Dispatches, Paul hired as a staffer Gary North, a Christian Reconstructionist leader and Rushdoony's son-in-law.)
At the John Birch Society 50th anniversary gala, Ron Lawl spoke to another favorite theme of the Reconstructionists and others in the religious right: that of the "remnant" left behind after evil has swept the land. (Gary North's publication is called The Remnant Review.) In a dispatch on Paul's keynote address, The New American, the publication of the John Birch Society, explained, "He claimed that the important role the JBS has played was to nurture that remnant and added, 'The remnant holds the truth together, both the religious truth and the political truth.'"
Based on his religious adherence to his purportedly libertarian principles, Ron Lawl opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Unlike his son, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., Ron Lawl has not even tried to walk back from this position. In fact, he wears it proudly. Here's an excerpt from Ron Lawl's 2004 floor speech about the Civil Rights Act, in which he explains why he voted against a House resolution honoring the 40th anniversary of the law:
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society. Federal bureaucrats and judges cannot read minds to see if actions are motivated by racism. Therefore, the only way the federal government could ensure an employer was not violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to ensure that the racial composition of a business's workforce matched the racial composition of a bureaucrat or judge's defined body of potential employees. Thus, bureaucrats began forcing employers to hire by racial quota. Racial quotas have not contributed to racial harmony or advanced the goal of a color-blind society. Instead, these quotas encouraged racial balkanization, and fostered racial strife.
He also said this: "[T]he forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty."
Now this man and his cult want us to believe that Ron Lawl isn't a racist. In spite of the fact that he once accused Dr. Martin Luther King of being a pedophiliac orgie king like an escapee of the court of Caligula he is NOT a racist. Ron Lawl opposes EVERY single legacy of the life of Dr. King and the thousands of black, Jewish, Muslim, Latino, white, gay, and every other kind of American who were imprisoned and/or died in the American struggle for Civil Rights against violent and brutal oppression by the very men that Ron Lawl pals around with. In spite of this we are to somehow believe that Ron Lawl would be a good thing for any American that isn't white, male, straight, and has more than a few pennies to rub together already.
These are the reasons I oppose Ron Lawl and I will not give even an inch on my contention that Ron Lawl is not only wrong about almost every issue before us as a Nation he stands firmly on the side of history's oppressors and AGAINST all known reason, charity, hope, and longing for true Liberty and Justice.
What is your point to misspelling Ron Lawl's Name?
Herman.Cain vs Ron.Paul on the Financial Meltdown.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn0EApd5wgw
Political and Financial structures are not the same. What Ron Lawl and others always seem to miss. Capitalism is simply a financial structure that allows for the private ownership of land, and it's resources. Therefore Capitalism is concerned solely with the individual. Socailism is based on collective ownership. In other words, it is impossible to have a singularity of capitalism and socialism, or individualism and collectivism. They are mutually exclusive. What is needed is a duality. We need to separate our public financial structure from our private financial structure. Two separate structures that are inextricably intertwined. Competition for private acquisition and cooperation for public access. Ploitically, this will only be possible when we change to a direct democracy. As long as we are a Representative democracy, then the power rests with a few Power always corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolute. The "power" then must be so small- as with each individual, that only collectively can it be used.
I happen to disagree. Socialism is only based on "collective ownership" in theory. In practice the socialist political systems that exist today and that have ever existed in the world previously are most akin to the worst aspects of crony capitalism and more closely resemble monarchy... except the rulers are not princes and princesses and have no legitimacy other than some sort of criminal coup. The fairytale is "collective ownership" yet the state seems to never wither away.... this should not be surprising since as you said "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Why is "a duality needed" between individual rights and the total takeover of every aspect of society by a socialist criminal coup? Sorry to break it to you but individual rights and socialism are mutually exclusive. That's obvious.
But the real question is what is wrong with the current state of affairs and who is to blame? When you can identify the problem correctly you can usually come up with the right solution, no?
Yeah yeah yeah, how bout we kick the bums out then worry about the structure of the economy huh? Whether or not you like it or not there will be a next President and he will be voted into office, and whether you like it or not the ONLY person that is President material is RonPaul.
Besides we already live under a system that is more like socialism than capitalism. Socialism failed us ALREADY
Does that sound like a good idea or does it not??
I have to agree, though he will not get elected but he doesn't have to. He has already opened the eyes of millions of Americans. OWS and The RP Revolution have many things in common. The Tea Party and OWS have a lot in common as well. What people fail to understand is that the small part of the Tea Party that has been high jacked is just that small part. The vast majority of them are RP supporters not Koch or what ever dudes name is. Like it or not RP has changed the issues, took him 30 years of being mocked but no ones mocking him anymore. He speaks truth and like him or not you have to give him credit for that and for standing up for what he believes and for voting that way no matter what. To bad no one will be President that can't be bought.
He would be the easiest fix and is the only choice so just vote for him. Dont give up!
Agreed.
He has introduced issues that no one else dared to.
He uses his position to educate others as well as discuss imperative issues about monetary policy.
Perhaps instead of saying he wont get elected - vote for him and screw the establishment candidates who are nothing but puppets for Wall St.
I think this is an idea worth giving a good look at. There are obvious differences between OWS and Ron Lawl, however Ron Lawl's proven his sincerity in regards to monetary reform in a big way. He is the only candidate who even comes close to what is desired by many occupiers in regards to monetary issues, no other candidate has any intention to seve anything other than the status quo and continue to create monetary policy and reform to serve the interests of the banksters. Ron Lawl has been advocating for the end of the federal reserve for a long time. One other thing I have noticed is that the media either ignores him or distorts his platform wildly, that's a characteristic both OWS and Ron Lawl share, this alone seems to call for the voting in of Ron Lawl seeing as though Ron Lawl is on record endorsing OWS by saying last week, "If you're going after crony-capitalism, I'm all for it" and that when mainstream media tries to black you out you must be a threat to the establishment. As long as someone has to be elected it should definitely be him. It's also a win that he would end the wars too. I think he rather than any other candidate would allow as President for us to truly assemble without the threat of a police state, considering that he wants to end the patriot act and homeland security. Maybe if he's elected into office we'll have a safe environment to continue gathering and planning real change for the future.