Ron Paul's Farewell Address to Congress

[George H. Smith]

This runs around 50 minutes.

Ghs

[Mark]

Transcript here.

And this is the man the so-called Ayn Rand Institute trashed in favor of Romney, then complains that the American public has "lost its sense of life" when so many Americans refused to vote for him.

[Peter]

Ron Paul is a great man. His son differs with his Dad on some key issues, but those issues make him electable at the national level. Senator Rand Paul needs to be FOR a woman's right to an abortion in the first trimester. That is all he needs to change. Rand Paul for President in 2016.

Peter Taylor

[GALTGULCH8]

Peter, Mark, GHS,

What makes any of us think that Rand Paul is open to even discussing the issue of a woman's right to choose to terminate her pregnancy?

How do you suggest we proceed in approaching him on this delicate subject?

I wonder if he has followed his father's advice to read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

I will search for his website to see if he is open to being contacted when I can keep my eyes open.

Gulch

[Peter]

Gulch8 wrote:

What makes any of us think that Rand Paul is open to even discussing the issue of a woman's right to choose to terminate her pregnancy?

end quote

A few days ago Rand was on Fox and he said something very provocative about “the next Republican candidate, and what he must do to get the votes.” I wish I had written it down but I think Rand is willing to support a candidate who is elect-able. Of course, he would be my perfect choice, if he were elect-able. So who is elect-able? Certainly someone who stands on principle but also someone who understands that, “Almost half of US women have experienced an unintended pregnancy and about half of unintended pregnancies end in abortion . . . .”

If we ignore the young women’s vote we will lose again. Peter Taylor

[Mark]

After Randolph's vain expediency in endorsing Romney, and his helping pass the National Defense Authorization Act -- just who is he trying to please? -- I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him. Given my present muscular development that's not very far!

Play this game: suppose he weren't Ron Paul's son. Would you think him a fine statesman?

Consider his two TSA bills. The first would turn TSA screening over to private screeners, or rather private screeners explicitly approved by the Department of Homeland Security. Talk about crony capitalism. Instead of being X-rayed and groped by federal employees you’ll be X-rayed and groped by Haliburton (or whatever) employees.

His second bill would permit travelers who set off the screener alarm to opt out of a pat-down and be re-screened. What next? It would allow them to phone a lawyer when detained, and it would allow them to object to mistreatment. Gee, thanks a lot Randolph.

And he calls these bills “End the TSA” legislation. He talks the talk, but “privatize” is a dirty word when used in the sense he uses it.

Privatizing airport security ought to mean leaving it up to the airports and airlines, period. No TSA, no DHS. Randolph muddies our language – just like a typical politico.

Randolph is no one to get enthusiastic about. He gets consideration because we are desperate to find someone, anyone, in political life who looks like they might champion our cause.

I predict we'll be disappointed again and again with Randolph. He's not a true fighter.

[GALTGULCH8]

When you mention TSA screening I am reminded of a comment made by the renowned Australian physician Helen Caldicott who said in essence that she would prefer to have all of her orifices violated by a screener rather than submit to the Xray scan.

Of course she is profoundly concerned about nuclear radiation which she seems to have reason to believe has become ubiquitous since Chernobyl and Fukushima. Watch her speak on www.youtube.com

She said that Cesium 137 is everywhere in Europe from the Chernobyl power plant disaster. She admonishes against eating anything which comes from anywhere in Europe. Cheese from Norway, Virgin olive oil from Italy. All contaminated with radiation fallout. Children born 25 miles from Chernobyl are born with no brain or with one eye in the center of their forehead.

The cloud of radiation from Fukushima reached the US in a matter of days. The fallout has a half life measured anywhere from 8 days for Iodine 131 to thousands of years if not millions.

She even advices that instead of being cremated, which causes whatever particles that are radioactive to be inhaled by some other living creature or human thus causing cancer in them in time, that you choose to be buried taking the particles out of circulation.

Radioactivity is cumulative and when you develop cancer in twenty years you will not be able to connect it to a particular TSA screening procedure or the time you opened your mouth during a rain fall to let in and swallow a drop of rain containing radioactive fallout from a Japanese nuclear power plant routine release.

Rand Paul is a man of faith like his father as well as a man of principle. I am trying to locate his official website which might list his positions on issues.

[Mark]

Gulch8, the end of your last post was relevant to mine. To comment on that part:

I tried to show that, unlike his father, Randolph is not much a man of principle. Sure, more than your typical politico, but that's a very low standard.

Can you imagine Ron Paul voting for the NDAA? Can you imagine Ron Paul confusing “DHS contracting out TSA” with free enterprise?

About the second question, Randolph is smart enough to know the difference, so he’s a liar and he thinks we’re too stupid to notice.

[Selene]

Randolph is no one to get enthusiastic about. He gets consideration because we are desperate to find someone, anyone, in political life who looks like they might champion our cause.

You might have a sadly correct point here.

[GALTGULCH8]

Just perhaps he realizes that by virtue of his father's consistent dedication to the principles of the Constitution that he thereby alienated the GOP with whom he had no clout. Sure he did ignite many citizens to take up the cause which has become his legacy.

But maybe his son has other plans. Why not cozy up to the establishment by sharing advocacy for such nightmares as the NDAA? By ingratiating himself to the GOP upper echelons he stands a better chance of gaining their approval of his candidacy to be the nominee for president in the next election, if there is one.

Is it possible to lie without abandoning loyalty to one's principles? There are easy examples to justify telling a lie in certain circumstances.

I hope this is what he is up to. Nevertheless his position on abortion is shameful. Can it be that he shares the antiabortion gene with his father? Is it conceivable that a father and a son fail to grasp the simple difference between a potential thing and an actual thing?

This all remains to be seen.

[Mark]

As explained in "Yaron Brook vs. Ron Paul" (3rd paragraph & 2nd footnote) the abortion issue as it relates to Ron Paul is a non-issue. The NDAA for which Randolph voted is infinitely worse than state-by-state abortion choice.

Gulch8 asks rhetorically:

"Why not cozy up to the establishment by sharing advocacy for such nightmares as the NDAA?"

then speaks of Randolph alienating the GOP versus ingratiating himself to it. Yet why care about GOP-machine hacks when what matters are the grassroot voters? They flocked to Ron Paul precisely because he was genuine, open, direct, honest. And he didn’t have to “ingratiate” himself, he simply was himself.

Besides, do you really think a GOP hack is going to be fooled by a man just acting like he's one of them?

How many people must a would-be Mafioso murder to prove himself worthy of “being made”? At some point an act becomes so good it might as well be the real thing.

At times lying can be the right action but in this situation perforce Randolph would lie to both the public and the politicians at the same time. His lies will alienate the better public and won't convince the GOP machine until he becomes a GOP hack in truth.

He's already a long way there.

[Selene]

They flocked to Ron Paul precisely because he was genuine, open, direct, honest.

Mark:

It was a pretty sparse flock.

A...

[GALTGULCH8]

"It was a pretty sparse flock."

To me the sparse flock of which you speak has the potential to do the trick. Objectivism started with one person and has seeded the world. Its potential has yet to be realized.

Given the current crisis in the civilized world a portion of the younger generation are desperate to alter the direction in which the world and their own countries are headed. Armed with the input from the Atlas Society with which the Students For Liberty has allied themselves there is a potential for exponential growth.

Your sparse flock just may become a force to be reckoned with in time.

If there is enough time.

[Mark]

Re posts #6 and #8, I made a mistake regarding Randolph's position on the NDAA. In fact he voted against that bill.

[Mark]

"Rand Paul 2016" by the illimitable Julie Borowski, a.k.a TokenLibertarianGirl.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIjRdxK2mE4

This little girl -- this young lady I meant to say -- could charm a hungry dog off a meat wagon.

She does make one mistake, when she says Ron Paul wants to end the TSA. Maybe he does, but so far you'd never know it.

He's been less than honest about his TSA bills. The problem is not that they fail to abolish the TSA -- perhaps we can't expect, given realpolitik, the TSA to be abolished overnight -- the problem is his pretending that his bills abolish the TSA when they merely make a cosmetic change.

Julie / TLG has had more experience with the TSA than she would have liked: