Updated January 18:
Via fellow blogger Joachim Martillo. Martillo dissects the Ron Paul phenomenon, then follows with a piece by his wife, Karin Friedemann. Both are Jews who converted to Islam.
Martillo makes some interesting points.
First of all, Paul obviously has serious xenophobic tendencies. It's preposterous to eliminate all student visas from "terrorist nations", whatever that means. It's hard enough to get any kind of a visa from the Muslim World these days anyway.
Martillo seems to be correct that Paul used to be a segregationist, and it is very disturbing that Paul is the favorite candidate of the White Racist Far Right. Paul has made some statements against Blacks that were regarded as racist in 1992. I have reviewed those remarks and do not find them to be racist, in general, though I am not certain that "95% of young Black males in Washington, DC are semi-criminal or criminal".
Of course free market libertarianism not only leads to monopolies, but it is also impossible. At least Marxism can be implemented. Libertarianism simply cannot be implemented, due to its internal contradictions.
While promoting laissez faire capitalism, it opposes imperialism. Yet all major capitalist nations must be imperialist, as all major transnational corporations must support imperialist foreign policies of various types. A major capitalist nation that renounces imperialism would be gobbled alive by the other capitalist states that quite reasonably refuse to renounce imperialism, their best weapon.
Foreign policy is but a battle for markets, and alliances between nations are no more possible than alliances between competing corporations. Wars for resources and markets are not only inevitable but are actually mandated by capitalism.
The sad realization that capitalism is not possible without imperialist appendages is one of the reasons I think that the whole system must be junked as fatally flawed, regardless of how poorly the competing models produce wealth and grow the economy.
How many proponents of capitalism realize this? How many know that capitalism mandates imperialism? How many know that a libertarian philosophy of non-aggression is as logically impossible in capitalism as it is in house full of cats? Capitalism leads inexorably to war with no exceptions.
The brutal analysis of capitalism above, which is utterly factual, by the way, is one reason that anyone interested in capitalism needs to understand Marx. Marx was wrong about a lot of things in his analysis of capitalism, but on the score above, he hits it right on target.
To be a capitalist nowadays is to be a deluded human being. The modern capitalist rejects the necessary linkage of capitalism and imperialism in the same way man rejects his mortality - spitting in the face of the obvious.
A return to the Gold Standard and getting rid of the Federal Reserve, which Paul advocates, will not do anything positive. We went off the standard and set up the reserve for some excellent reasons. Diving off Paul's radical rightwing deep end is like diving into a pool blindfolded. One that may have been drained.
Mr. Paul also hates gay marriage and Roe vs. Wade. That is, he wants to throw all this back to the states. While in the case of gay marriage that may be positive, it runs afoul the Truth in Credit aspects of the Constitution, whereby states must recognize things, like marriages, recognized in other states. So gay marriage can't be tossed back to the states without a Constitutional amendment, which is not forthcoming.
Tossing abortion back to the states would of course be a total disaster, but I guess that is what the reactionaries want.
Friedemann's column is naive at best. Muslims make alliance with White racists and fascists at their severe peril. Some of my friends, one of whom is still a Communist though he just implausibly converted to Islam, are also supporting Ron Paul for the same cynical and what-the-heck reasons that Friedemann espouses.
To these folks, the Israel-Palestine conflict is all, Israel needs to be screwed, and Paul is the man to do it. Forget it. The Israeli Lobby runs this damned country, and opposition to it is no more than ~15% of the population. Paul doesn't have a snowball's chance in Hell of getting in. How a Communist could vote for any reactionary is beyond me, but converting to Islam does funny things to your brain.
If you hate Israel (or even Jews) more than anything else in the US, go ahead and waste a vote on Ron Paul, a man who cannot but lose anyway. Personally, my votes are guided by progressive radar, and you can't pay me enough to vote for any reactionary, and this is clearly what Mr. Paul is.
I mean, come on, look at Ron Paul's MySpace page. He proudly states that he has a 100% rating from the John Birch Society! A vote for Ron Paul is a vote for the Birchers. Those of you who are ok with Birchers will find that cheering, but why would anyone even remotely liberal, Centrist, not to mention progressive, throw their vote away in the chilling direction of, of all things, the John Birch Society?
I have to admit some reservations about Ron Paul.
This video evinces xenophobic tendencies.The promise to eliminate student visas from terrorist nations is the sort of sloganeering that I expect from Neocons. In other contexts, Paul has rejected the concept of a terrorist nation and has shown good understanding of the hatred and blowback that US foreign policy has created over the last 60 years.
Paul supports free market libertarian capitalism even though mathematical analysis can demonstrate that such economic systems lead to monopoly dominance and exploitation. Some of his supporters seem to argue from the standpoint that the power of big business is okay while the power of government is not. The belief is at best naive.
I doubt that a return to the gold standard and the elimination of the Federal Reserve will bring economic salvation.
I suspect Ron Paul was a segregationist in the 60s, but such was the nature of southern US culture back then, and he has probably changed. His intention to remove US troops from Iraq as quickly as possible is as pro-minority as it gets because of the disproportionately large representation of African and Hispanic Americans in the military.
I am less concerned about Roe vs. Wade and gay marriage than most of the progressive Boston Cambridge crowd, but making abortion and marriage matters of state legislation -- as Paul wishes -- probably means that freedom of choice and gay marriage might survive in various states in the USA while any attempt at national legislation or constitution change in these areas could easily backfire.
At this point, I would probably support a candidate that opposed women's suffrage and supported a new prohibition as long as he would end the Iraq occupation and work for the repeal of the Patriot Act. On these questions Ron Paul is the only game in town.
November 18, 2007
Muslims discover Ron Paul
by Karin Friedemann
After the Republican debate on Tuesday evening in Dearborn, Mich., a reporter from the Arab-American News asked Ron Paul what he thought of the term “Islamic fascism.”
“It’s a false term to make people think we’re fighting Hitler,” Paul responded. “It’s war propaganda designed to generate fear so that the war has to be spread.”
The call has gone out to all the Muslim Americans to hurry up and register to vote Republican so that they can vote in the Republican Primary to support Ron Paul, the anti-interventionist, non-isolationist candidate for President of the United States. Muslims are opening their wallets and joining teaparty07.com as well.
An anonymous Ron Paul supporter posted the following message on the internet:
Muslims and Americans have an unique window of opportunity for the 2008 election. There is a candidate running as a Republican that would work to completely cut off the funding to Israel, remove ALL US troops from Arab lands, and repeal the Patriot Act. He’s a Republican with Libertarian views named Ron Paul. Ron Paul’s policies ranging from monetary to foreign are top notch.Ron Paul stood up in Congress in 2006 and opposed a resolution that sided with Israel in the Lebanon-Israel conflict. He stated the following.
Till now Muslims and Americans have not had an American Presidential candidate that really suited their best interests. This election is unique in that we have a man running as a Republican that speaks the truth…We know the current policies in the Middle East are failing, not only making it less safe in the world but hurting and killing innocent Muslims, which our media callously calls collateral damage.
It is our duty as Muslims to follow the truth regardless of how futile it may seem. Ron Paul is the only candidate that does not seem to be swayed by the influential lobbies that the other candidates are catering to.
Ron Paul:
Mr. Speaker, I follow a policy in foreign affairs called non-interventionism. I do not believe we are making the United States more secure when we involve ourselves in conflicts overseas. The Constitution really doesn’t authorize us to be the policemen of the world, much less to favor one side over another in foreign conflicts.Ron Paul has also sponsored a bill to overturn the Patriot Act. He is one of the few members of Congress from either of the major houses that is speaking rationally about these issues. How can we get everyone, and I mean everyone, to join the Ron Paul Republican voter sign-up campaign?
It is very clear, reading this resolution objectively, that all the terrorists are on one side and all the victims and the innocents are on the other side. I find this unfair, particularly considering the significantly higher number of civilian casualties among Lebanese civilians. I would rather advocate neutrality rather than picking sides, which is what this resolution does.
There is general frustration with politicians these days, and the unwillingness to believe that supporting a particular candidate will make a difference.
But whether Ron Paul wins or loses, Ron Paul's Meetup site is a great way to meet your neighbors who are against the war and organize the community on a grassroots level. If something like Katrina ever happened to us, knowing our neighbors could mean the difference between life and death to our families.
The common thread I’ve been reading lately about leftists and Jews is that they are having trouble getting more than a dozen people to come to their stuff (whether anti-Zionist or Zionist). The anti-Israel movement is not moving forward, because “protest Zionist imperialism” is just not a catchy slogan.
By contrast, there are over 400 RP activists against war taxes in Boston alone. Every day the list of passionate anti-war activists grows. Very few of them agree with every single RP position, they just want to get the Lobby out of the way and pull the troops out of Iraq.
One reason it’s working is because of the software. They made the Meetup site almost like a dating site, where you can make friends with people in or near your zip code. They made it very easy to get together with new people to join the activism. You can’t beat technology, may as well use it.
In the event that RP actually won the election and got the Hamas treatment, his supporters are fully in support of the Right to Bear Arms. It would be interesting to see what followed.
If anti-war protesters want to continue to focus on the genocidal machinations of the global Zionist-imperialist military, industrial, financial, political, neoliberal, media complex, they have to be willing to meet with anyone any time to hear what ideas people have to address this, which is our primary responsibility - even if they are Republicans.
If you ever saw Ron Paul in an interview it cannot be said that he avoids discussing vital issues. He is someone who is willing to make a statement and stick by it even when no one agrees with him. I don’t “believe” in electoral politics but it’s not that much sweat off my brow to go and vote to end war.
I think the fact that NO pro-Israel group will let Ron Paul speak at their convention, not even peace Zionists, is evidence enough that he is the only person to put in charge as commander-in-chief. And, even if he loses, making all these contacts with local anti-interventionists is priceless.
If you want to expand the peace movement so that it overlaps with the freedom movement like ripples in a pond, you just have to respect the fact that people might agree with you, but for different reasons.
Ron Paul's Muslim Supporters Yahoo Group
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