Ron Paul Facts
This is an ongoing project that continuously grows, as Ron Paul’s idiocy is one part growing and one part hidden in his past.
Table of Contents
Iran
Normally I would stick this under the foreign policy header, but Iran gets special attention. Ron Paul tends to be a much more emphatic defender of countries that pose the greatest threat to Israel, which happens to be Iran in this case. So I thought I would give it special consideration. The big problem with Ron Paul on Iran is that he simply doesn’t get it. His ideology literally helps him glaze over and ignore actual facts and reality. You could apply that statement to just about any view he has, but Iran just happens to be the one I find the oddest. Here is a very troubling quote from Ron Paul on Iran:
There is little resistance to the rising clamor for “democratizing” Iran, even though their current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is an elected leader. Though Iran is hardly a perfect democracy, its system is far superior to most of our Arab allies about which we never complain. – Ron Paul (April 5 2006)
If you’re unfamiliar with Iran, this might appear to be an innocent statement. The facts speak differently. Iran is not a democracy. It’s not even near a democracy. Calling it a democracy destroys the meaning of the word democracy. Iran is actually a theocratic dictatorship with a supreme ruler and an Islamic constitution. It is true that they do have elections in the country, but elections don’t mean democracy necessarily. The supreme leader and a group of unelected theological elders choose who can actually be on these election ballots. In Iran, your election is basically voting between the guy the supreme leader chose and the other guy that supreme leader chose. Most human rights groups don’t even think the votes are counted and they just declare whoever they want winner. Hence, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not an elected official of anything that represents a democracy.
Foreign Policy of Isolationism
Ron Paul supporters absolutely froth at the mouth when you call Ron Paul an isolationist. They don’t froth because you’re saying anything inaccurate. They froth because it is such a concise and accurate statement that makes him look so damn bad. I thought it would be best to bring up a scenario that helps provide some framework against Ron Paul’s foreign policy positions.
I’m very confident that 200 years ago an isolationist type foreign policy would have worked great in the United States. But that was a much different time and I want to point out the big differences between today and 200 years ago.
- A weapon of mass destruction would have been a canon
- A chemical weapon would have been small pox on a blanket
- A rifle shot once and then needed to be reloaded
- It took roughly a month to cross the Atlantic
It was a much different time for people. The world was much more primitive. Countries were much more isolated. Today, we have a world that is very connected and integrated. We also have amazingly powerful technology that can be used for good and bad things. We have intercontinental ballistic missiles that can have various warheads attached (nuclear, chemical, biological) and reach countries thousands of miles away. The US government has been doing recent testing where it can hit a target accurately anywhere in the world in under an hour. We live in a different world and that requires a different approach. We can’t just ignore or bury our heads in the sand expecting dictators and theocracies to behave rationally with very powerful technology.
Would you expect a country that puts homosexuals to death to rationally behave with a nuclear weapon? I don’t think so. This is essentially why isolationism is such an irrational position and the reason Paultards froth when you state it. They would prefer to use words that sound better to explain their irrational pacifism.
You’ll often hear Ron Paul supporters defend him and say he’s not an isolationist. He just wants to be friends of countries, have free trade and just peace. It sounds nice, but it isn’t accurate.
It’s best to get Ron Paul to define what friends means when it comes to countries. His idea of friends is basically not talking to them and not doing anything with them. Anything other than that would be telling them what to do. He won’t engage in any international treaties or other such obligations because he views it as an attack on American sovereignty. A treaty would make the US obligated to do things and Ron Paul doesn’t like that. It’s a very isolated type position he wants for the country.
When it comes to free trade you’re getting caught up by a buzz word. Ron Paul is against every single free trade agreement that America has ever signed into law or tried to. This includes NAFTA, GATT, FTAA, etc. He says they’re technically not free trade. It’s true, they’re “technically” not free trade. They’re actually agreements between countries to greatly liberalize trade between countries. In the world we live in today, that’s what has to be done to build international trade. Ron Paul believes in something called unilateral free trade, which means he’ll implement free trade on the US side of the border. He won’t enter into any agreements or discussions with other countries. Other countries can import what they want into the country, no regulations, that’s it. Unilateral free trade is isolationist. The other side of free trade agreements is that Ron Paul views them from a conspiracy point of view, but you can read more about that in the conspiracy section.
Lastly, Ron Paul doesn’t care about peace. Being anti-war doesn’t make you pro-peace. Ron Paul’s policy on peace is isolationism. He would go out to a bar with friends and turn his back if one of his friends got beat up. That’s his view of “peace” and it’s not getting involved in anything for any reason. He has stated that if he was President during WW2 he wouldn’t of responded militarily to the Pearl Harbor attacks and he also stated that he wouldn’t of tried to stop the holocaust. That is Ron Paul’s idea of “peace”.
Israel and his Hidden Anti-Semitism
This is another topic that doesn’t deserve to be stuck under foreign policy. The Paultards of the internet try to make it sound like Ron Paul is just about neutral internationally as he can. But that isn’t really quite that true. There has always been more hostility thrown towards Israel (the closest thing to a libertarian state in the Middle East). Often it revolves around international aid for countries. I’ve made a post on this site dissecting content on Ron Paul community websites. You can view it here. The largest Ron Paul community on the internet is DailyPaul and they have a sick obsession. The word Israel was used more times than Bush, Iraq, and Federal Reserve even though these are supposed to be the big talking points of the Paul political movement.
A former staffer of Ron Paul (of 12 years) stated that Ron Paul was anti-Israel and doesn’t think the state should exist. I’m not sure if that is a neutral position by Ron Paul standards or “an act of war” on his part. Either way you have to admit that he has some sort of passionate hatred of Israel that doesn’t seem to be fair or balanced. He has said, in Congress, that Hamas was created by Israel. This sort of falls into his conspiracy theory type thinking, but that’s a scary thought. He actually believes a terrorist organization that has one purpose of killing Jews was created by Israel. Please see this crazy video below:
He has the most convoluted type of thinking, but it actually isn’t that surprising if you understand the background of where his views came from.
I mentioned in Ron Paul’s ideology portion of this factsheet that Ron Paul is actually a Paleoconservative. This is sort of like libertarianism, but it’s anti-immigration, xenophobic, homophobic, isolationist, full of neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists and other weirdos. This really needs to be understood. When Don Black, past Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and creator of the white power website Stormfront, endorses Ron Paul he does it for a reason. Ron Paul hits all the important bullet points of paleoconservatism and the racists come running.
Ron Paul hates Israel for a reason. It’s hidden in his polluted ideology where he keeps his mouth shut (though exposes some of it in his newsletters).
Ron Paul’s Ideology
A lot of people falsely categorize his political ideology. You’ll hear things like Constitutionalist, Libertarian, “true conservative”, etc and they’re all wrong. Ron Paul’s political ideology is better described as Paleoconservativism. This explains so much about understanding what Ron Paul is really about and also the people that he often associates with.
It seems easy to categorize Ron Paul as a libertarian because he ran as a third party candidate with them. But he’s not a libertarian (small “l”). He’s a paleoconservative. Most people don’t realize that there is a big rift within libertarianism (small “l”) regarding the way the movement works. I’m not going to go into a long description on the topic because a book could be written on the subject. But a libertarian magazine like Reason isn’t a Ron Paul talking point (and often very critical of him) for a reason. Essentially paleoconservatives have been using other political organizations to push their agenda. A pure libertarian believes in libertarianism, yet a paleoconservative is closely related, but also tends to be anti-Semitic, anti-immigration, white power, etc based ideology. And usually sprinkled with conspiracy theories on top.
Isolationism is a very big part of his ideology. The great isolationists that have been around for 50 years have also been the biggest anti-Semites around. If you look at Ron Paul’s buddies like Pat Buchanan and Lew Rockwell, they’re big anti-Semites. Even Ron Paul’s newsletters are paleoconservative ideologically and yet no one seems to be picking up on this fact. The racism, conspiracies and hatred of Israel is quite consistent with paleoconservative ideology.