RON PAUL: “THERE’S NO FREE LUNCH, AND NO FREE WAR”

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It’s true that Ron Paul is the only 2012 presidential candidate who is a medical doctor, but let’s not forget that Mitt Romney is a doctor, too. Mitt earned his Ph.D. in Flipflopology.




I couldn’t decide which of those two images of flip-flops (or “thongs” as they were known in my boyhood days) I should use for this blog bit, so I did what Mitt himself would have done: I selected BOTH of them.

[At the bottom of this blog bit you will find a very interesting video that illustrates many of Romney’s most outrageous examples of Flipflopology. The guy is a true doctor of that science.]

I’ve read some of Ron Paul’s writings – a couple of books and a number of articles – but I think my favorite is his book ‘A FOREIGN POLICY OF FREEDOM’ which I read in 2007 or 2008.



In the Introduction, Doctor Paul writes:

This book is a collection of statements I have made over the past 30 years dealing with foreign policy from the date I was first elected to Congress in 1976. Though I wrote and spoke less about foreign policy during my 12-year hiatus from Congress (1985-1997), I remained interested and continued to study carefully the case for noninterventionism. … In various places throughout the book I have inserted current thoughts and insights into my reprinted speeches and articles.

The book also contains selected notes from Ron Paul’s personal diary, and it is so chock full of wisdom, inconvenient truths and valuable views that I had a hell of a time trying to select just a small sample to quote here.

As everyone knows, there are two types of lies: Lies of commission and lies of omission. Every political personality/talking head who presumes to explain to the Americonned People what the biggest SECULAR problems in this country currently are, and yet does not repeatedly return to the subjects of the ‘Federal Reserve’ system (being privately owned and having no reserves, is the most misnamed entity imaginable) and the ‘Council on Foreign Relations’ (CFR) is committing a lie of omission.

In other words, all your Neoconservative heroes, from Glenn Beck, to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Hugh Hewitt, and (the devil himself) Michael Medved, et al., are all DELIBERATELY committing lies of omission when they presume to educate you about politics.

You’ll learn more truth about American politics from reading this one Ron Paul book – ‘A FOREIGN POLICY OF FREEDOM’ – than you would from five years worth of watching and reading the aformentioned NeoCons (and getting unwittingly conned by them).

They’ll not argue with Dr. Paul about economics because they know he’d hand each and every one of them their own neoconservative ass on a silver platter. So what they do instead is try to convince YOU, the voter, that Dr. Paul is an “isolationist” with a dangerous view of foreign policy. This book will set the record straight for you. Let’s look at a little of what Congressman Ron Paul has said through the decades . . .

'Commerce with all nations, alliances with none', should be our motto.
~ Thomas Jefferson
(from Page 9)

2007:
During the Reagan years I began to realize how special interests, with bipartisan support, drive our policy of foreign intervention. We sent troops to Lebanon and Granada; financial aid to Nicaragua; weapons to Iran and Iraq; military assistance to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein; and bombed Libya – all for reasons other than American national security.
. . .
These events motivated me to speak out more frequently on foreign affairs, and vote (often by myself) to make that point that we should follow the Constitution and the Founding Fathers by staying out of the affairs of foreign nations – especially when our meddling has nothing to do with national security interests.
~ Pg. VI

10/14/1981:
I believe that the American people are sick and tired of supplying, either deliberately or through accident, both sides in the conflicts since World War II. We saw this happen in Vietnam. We were shipping both wheat and weapons to the Soviet Union, who, in turn, shipped them to North Vietnam, at the same time that we were shipping wheat and weapons to South Vietnam. We have seen this happen in the border wars between India and Pakistan. We have seen it happen in the wars between Israel and her neighbors.
~ Pg. 8

2007:
To this day we still prop up Communist China through the Export-Import Bank, thus subsidizing oppression while harming our own competitiveness.
~ Pg. 16

9/14/1982:
It is outrageous that the American taxpayers are being forced to subsidize Communist China while domestic programs like Social Security are in jeopardy.
~ Pg. 17

9/19/1984:
Recently, the national Taxpayers’ Union gave me their annual Taxpayers’ Best Friend Award for voting for the least amount of taxes and spending of any Member of Congress.
. . .
This past year, I am recorded as having voted against 99 percent of all spending – to me that means voting FOR the taxpayer 99 percent of the time and AGAINST the tyranny of the state at the same percentage.
~ Pg. 42

9/19/1984:
Our official policy currently is to be tough on communism, but at the same time promote low-interest loans, allowing Red China to buy nuclear technology, F-16’s and other military technology – all this by the strongest anti-Communist administration that we’ve had in decades. We participate in the bailout of bankrupt Argentina as she continues to loan money to Castro’s Cuba, which prompts us to send men, money and weapons to counteract the spread of communism formed by Castro.
~ Pg. 44

9/19/1984:
Our Export-Import Bank financed the building of the Kama River truck plant in Russia – trucks then used in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan over a road built by our own Corps of Engineers. Our response? Draft registration and an Olympic boycott!
~ Pg. 45

9/19/1984:
Campaigns are won on promising tax cuts; some are given, but are quickly canceled out by numerous tax increases associated with accelerated federal spending.
. . .
We routinely preach about helping the poor, then plunder the working class to subsidize foreign socialist dictators … through abusive taxation and inflation.
~ Pg. 46

7/15/1997:
The best way to support our troops is to bring them home as quickly as possible.
~ Pg. 61 [Yep! 1997. Some things never change!]

4/21/1999:
But when a foreign war comes to our shores in the form of terrorism, we can be sure that our government will explain the need for further sacrifice of personal liberties to win this war against terrorism as well.
~ Pg. 120 [Yep! Spoken in Congress on 4/21/1999!]

11/15/2000:
The USS Cole … disaster was needless and preventable. … It’s positively amazing that, with a military budget of $300 billion, we do not have the ability to protect ourselves against a rubber raft, which destroyed a $1 billion vessel. Our sentries on duty had rifles without bullets and were prohibited from firing on any enemy targets. This policy is absurd, if not insane.
~ Pg. 137

2/8/2001:
The excuses are endless. But it is rarely mentioned that the lobbyists and the proponents of foreign intervention are the weapons manufacturers, the oil companies, and the recipients of huge contracts for building infrastructures in whatever far corners of the Earth we send our troops. Financial interests have a lot at stake, and it is important for them that the United States maintains its empire.
~ Pg. 140

2/8/2001:
For over 50 years, there has been a precise move towards one-world government at the expense of our own sovereignty.
~ Pg. 141

3/19/2003:
It’s surreal! It’s almost as though our policies are controlled by an external force, and not a good one.
~ Pg. 251

3/20/2003:
Congress is like Tony Blair, a puppy dog that tags along and wags its tail when told what to do. But the amount of power the president has didn’t come overnight. It gradually was ceded to successive presidents over many decades. This president, for whatever reason, has relished his omnipotence. Probably the worst thing that can be said about George W. Bush is that he sleeps well at night, without remorse and without concern for the death and destruction he causes.
~ Pg. 253

7/10/2003:
Communism surely lost a lot with the breakup of the Soviet Empire, but this can hardly be declared a victory for American liberty, as the Founders understood it. Neoconservatism is not the philosophy of free markets and a wise foreign policy. Instead, it represents big government welfare at home and a program of using our military might to spread their version of American values throughout the world. Since neoconservatives dominate the way the U.S. government now operates, it behooves us all to understand their beliefs and goals.
~ Pg. 264

1/26/2005:
The #1 function of the federal government – to provide for national security – has been severly undermined. On 9/11 we had a grand total of 14 aircraft in place to protect the entire U.S. mainland, all of which proved useless that day. We have an annual Department of Defense budget of over $400 billion, most of which is spent overseas in over 100 different countries.
~ Pg. 307

1/26/2005:
Before 9/11, our C.I.A. ineptly pursued bin Laden, whom the Taliban was protecting. At the same time, the Taliban was receiving significant support from Pakistan – our “trusted ally” that received millions of dollars from the United States. We allied ourselves with both bin Laden and Hussein in the 1980s, only to regret it in the 1990s. And it’s safe to say we have used billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in the last 50 years pursing this contradictory, irrational, foolish, costly, and very dangerous foreign policy.
~ Pg. 308

9/8/2005:
There’s no free lunch, and no free war.
~ Pg. 337

4/5/2006:
Though many Americans are starting to feel the economic pain of paying for this war through inflation, the real pain has not yet arrived. We generally remain fat and happy, with a system of money and borrowing that postpones the day of reckoning. Foreigners, in particular the Chinese and Japanese, gladly participate in the charade. We print the money and they take it – as do the OPEC nations – and provide us with consumer goods and oil. Then they loan the money back to us at low interest rates, which we use to finance the war and our housing bubble and excessive consumption.

This recycling and perpetual borrowing of inflated dollars allows us to avoid the pain of high taxes to pay for our war and welfare spending. It’s fine until the music stops and the real costs are realized, with much higher interest rates and significant price inflation. That’s when outrage will be heard, and the people will realize we can’t afford the “humanitarianism” of the Neoconservatives.
~ Pg. 357 [Yep! Spoken in Congress on 4/5/2006!]

2007:
War, and the threat of war, are big government’s best friend. Liberals support big government social programs, and conservatives support big government war policies, thus satisfying two major special interest groups. And when push comes to shove, the two groups cooperate and support big government across the board – always at the expense of personal liberty. Both sides pay lip service to freedom, but neither stands against the welfare/warfare state and its promises of unlimited entitlements and endless war.
~ Pg. 365

And now, let me ask YOU, my dear reader: Are you...

Still Voting For 'Mitt Romney'?



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQwrB1vu74c

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

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