Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Ron Paul to Launch Foreign Policy Institute

This should really drive the neocons crazy.

EconomicPolicyJournal.com has learned that Ron Paul plans to launch his own foreign policy institute. His long-time foreign policy adviser, Daniel McAdams, will head the institute.

24 comments:

  1. Sweet! I sort of expected something like this.

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  2. This is gonna be FUN!!

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  3. The worst possible news: instead of focusing on the real things: Fed, gold standard, welfare state, taxes, state nullification, secession, Ron Paul will establish a 'libertarian' pulpit for a group of Chomskyte crackpots to prattle about the evils of "American imperialism" and the poor Al Qaeda terrorists who only react to American violence.

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    1. "The thing is that I am getting more and more convinced that the war-peace question is the key to the whole libertarian business..." - Murray Rothbard

      What good is any of that when the federal government wastes money on maintaining an empire?

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    2. Foreign policy is much more complicated than just those two issues, and I'm sure that Chomsky and Paul have some very sharp differences when it comes to free vs. fair trade, national sovereignty, nuclear weapon policy, or multinational corporations. Those are very real distinctions.

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    3. These things are real enough. But so is that US policy of interminable foreign aggression and meddling which is intimately connected to them. An empire abroad is destructive of liberty and prosperity at home. And if you don't see the connection, then maybe it's your "libertarianism" that ought to be qualified with quotation marks.

      In short, this is fantastic news.

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    4. I don't see how you can correctly assess "[the] gold standard, welfare state, taxes, state nullification, secession" as "real things", but be so clueless that foreign policy is equal in importance tot he other issues. Huge amounts of money go into our killing machines -- oh yes, and we're killing people, many of whom are not terrorists and are innocent bystanders.

      I will say, however, that the Fed does trump all since basically none of these things would be possible at the current levels without the Fed's "free money supply". But a foreign policy institute founded by Ron Paul is pretty exciting. I hope it lives up to our expectations.

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    5. If you think the institute will not be showing how the imperialism is funded and how the FED is owned by those that promote war for profit....You have completely missed the point of Ron Paul's endeavors.The public is much more interested in NOT sending their children to war than the tedious discipline of how and why it is funded. This is to get the American people to wake up....believe me he is STILL promoting audit the FED. Rand just brought up a new bill in the senate and is getting more support from republicans than before. A double push...from different Paul elements...a great idea.

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    6. Ivan, Dr. Paul knows that one already exists on economic issues. This one: wwww.mises.org.

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    7. ....oh, and don't forget that the biggest terrorist is The Imperial City (Washington DC). In DC's view, it's only terrorism when someone else does it. The hypocrisy is sickening.

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    8. Kevin,
      what proportion of GDP is government wasting on empire? What about the percentage 30 years from now? You think that's the bigger problem than Medicare, Obamacare, Social Security? Which,btw, Ron Paul does not want to abolish, but to 'shore up' by using the savings from reducing the 'oversees spending'.

      I am not saying that isolationist or non-itnerventionist foreign policy is wrong; on the contrary, I think it is correct and vitally important. I only think that the arguments Ron Paul and many of his supporters use to justify that policy very often represent just the crackpot nonsense propagated by the likes of Chomsky, which only alienate the people who would have otherwise been very receptive to Ron's message. I am concerned that this 'institute' will be just a convenient platform for the crackpots to peddle that kind of left-wing anti-imperialist nonsense and nothing more (diverting attention from other more urgent things and actually discrediting the very non-interventionist foreign policy as an idea. If you have to defend libertarian non-interventionism by manufacturing the excuses for Al Qaeda, Iranian mullahs and Muslim Brotherhood, than I suppose that not many reasonable people would accept libertarian non-interventionism).

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    9. Ron Paul wants to take care of the people currently dependent on the programs and then phase them out, by allowing the next generation to opt out.
      And as far as making excuses for terrorism, there is a distinction between making excuses and understanding why they attack us. Our foreign policy isnt working, and partly because so many of our decision makers think "they hate us because we're free!" They hate us because we bomb them and occupy their countries. (And I'm not making excuses for their wrongdoings in pointing that out.)

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    10. Ivan, you have to understand that the Ron Paul movement mostly focuses on marketing itself to liberals. (This is why, four years into the reign of a disastrous liberal president, Wenzel is still whining about "neocons", for example.)

      This is why they spend vast amounts of time complaining about "imperialism" and "empire", but only a fraction as much time complaining about the welfare state, taxes, disastrous monetary policy, etc. If you were trying to market yourself to liberals, would you attack the welfare state or the warfare state?

      The modern Ron Paul/Rothbard/Rockwell/Misesian/ancap movement spends most of its time marketing itself to youngish, liberal-inclined people (not surprising - young people are a liberal demographic), and you don't win that demographic over by complaining about taxes, welfare, monetary policy, etc. You win that demographic by complaining about "racism", "imperialism", etc.

      So the Paulists are just playing up the part of their philosophy that's most marketable to liberals. That's why you're seeing what you're seeing.

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    11. Ivan, if you consider the pointing out of the thoroughly reprehensible behavior of the USG overseas, or that nothing it practices overseas stays overseas, is "The worst possible news," then I pray your children find good neighbors.

      We do not need to call people's attention to the things they are looking at, but to the things they are NOT looking at.

      Also, Dr. Paul did not ever say he did not want to abolish Medicare, Medicaid and "Social Security", but he did say that other programs would make more agreeable targets. Those who have been paying attention have pointed out for over twenty years that Medicare and "Social Security" (two lies in one!) cannot be shored up, and will be defaulted on, either by lowering benefits, increasing qualifications, removing tax-free quotas, gaming away automatic COLAs, debasing the payments' purchasing power, delaying payments, increasing payment intervals, and just plain saying "no," once the voting block becomes too small to pose a credible threat.

      To get people to consider new ideas, it is necessary to first present those ideas to them, whether they approve of them at first or not.

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    12. Ivan, don't be no cloud on a sunny day

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    13. 178 dead children in Pakistan alone. This is a matter of the most grave import.

      The Mises Institute is already doing wonderful work shining a light on the economic fallacies of the establishment.

      Such an institute as this is long overdue.

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  4. A very good staging ground to rally anti-war forces left and right.

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  5. This is great news. My only suggestion is not to locate it in the DC area.

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  6. And don't hire Jesse Benton or John Tate.

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  7. @ Ivan Jankovic

    Is that you, Glenn Beck?..

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  8. The only thing keeping the Washingtonian Empire in power is our military that forces the Arab dictators to demand Federal Reserve notes for their oil. If Ron Paul can convince Americans to demand that our forces must be brought home, the hegemonic tyrannical empire will crumble and fall.

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