A few days before he delivered a speech at Syracuse University, Ron Paul answered some questions from readers of the Syracuse Post Standard, including this question about Crimea and Putin (my highlight):
Q: I read your opinion piece about Crimea earlier this week in USA Today. If the U.S. shouldn't care about that, what should we care about in foreign affairs?
A: We should care about minding our own business and tending to our own business and setting a good example. That's how we should handle it. Be friends with people. Trade with people. Talk with them. Be diplomatic, but not threats and innuendos.
We have two choices today. We either give them money and if we don't get the right dictator in charge, then, we start bombing them. I resent both of those.
As far as the article goes, it has been unbelievably beneficial to the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. The numbers of people who are flocking there now are in the hundreds of thousands because they have no other place to go.
It's so uniform. Every TV station - conservative, liberal, Republican, Democrat - they all say 'Ok, let's go get Putin'...They're the enemy. They're another Hitler. We have to do something about it.
At the same time, we're in 140 countries around the world, 900 bases. They say, well, Russia just invaded Crimea. Well, maybe from their viewpoint, they did what they thought they had to do. We invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, North Africa and we have the gall to say that all the evil in the world is on Putin's shoulders. That is so distorted.
... You know where we get the support is from the young people. This is similar to Obama's plan to further expand our war in Syria. We were going to start bombing, but there was such an outcry that the congressmen knew they couldn't support it, so they had to back off. ... Believe me, the neoconservatives are hysterical. They want to go to war against Iran. But the young people don't.
They're the ones who have to pay for this. They are the ones, either they or their friends will have to go over there and lose their legs and lose their arms and lose their lives for no-win wars that aren't Constitutionally justified.
Ron at his plainspoken best.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah,
ReplyDeleteThis guy doesn't do libertarianism any favors. Better to support Rand Paul "playing the game," because it helps him get power.
Tony
DeleteDo you actually understand the term "libertarianism"?
I think he was being sarcastic. BTW, enjoy your clear, well written and principled work.
DeleteThank you, and if so - Tony, please accept my apologies.
DeleteI indeed was being sarcastic, and bionic mosquito, apologies accepted :)
DeleteApparently, under some interpretations, Jesus agrees with Ron Paul (wink wink):
ReplyDelete" Cowardice is scarcely a term one associates with Jesus. Either he failed to make himself clear, or we have misunderstood him. There is plenty of cause to believe the latter. Jesus is not forbidding self-defense here, only the use of violence. Nor is he legitimating the abandonment of nonviolence in order to defend the neighbor. He is rather showing us a way that can be used by individuals or large movements to intervene on behalf of justice for our neighbors--nonviolently.
The classical interpretation of Matt 5:38-42//Luke 6:29-30 suggests two, and only two, possibilities for action in the face of evil: fight or flight. Either we resist evil, or we do not resist it. Jesus seemingly says that we are not to resist it; so, it would appear, he commands us to be docile, inert, compliant, to abandon all desire for justice, to allow the oppressor to walk all over us. "Turn the other cheek" is taken to enjoin becoming a doormat for Jesus, to be trampled without protest. "Give your undergarment as well" has encouraged people to go limp in the face of injustice and hand over the last thing they own. "Going the second mile" has been turned into a platitude meaning nothing more than "extend yourself." Rather than encourage the oppressed to counteract their oppressors, these revolutionary statements have been transformed into injunctions to collude in one's own despoiling.
But that interpretation excluded a third alternative: active nonviolent resistance. The word translated "resist" is itself problematic; what translators have failed to note is how frequently anthistenai is used as a military term. Resistance implies "counteractive aggression," a response to hostilities initiated by someone else. Liddell-Scott defines anthistemi as to "set against esp. in battle, withstand." Ephesians 6:13 is exemplary of its military usage: "Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand [antistenai, literally, to draw up battle ranks against the enemy] in the evil day, and having done all, to stand [stenai, literally, to close ranks and continue to fight]." The term is used in the LXX primarily for armed resistance in military encounters (44 out of 71 times). Josephus uses anthistemi for violent struggle 15 out of 17 times, Philo 4 out of 10. Jesus' answer is set against the backdrop of the burning question of forcible resistance to Rome. In that context, "resistance" could have only one meaning: lethal violence.
Stasis, the noun form of stenai, means "a stand," in the military sense of facing off against an enemy. By extension it came to mean a "party formed for seditious purposes; sedition, revolt." The NRSV translates stasis in Mark 15:7 as "insurrection" (so also Luke 23:19, 25), in Acts 19:40 as "rioting," and in Acts 23:10 as "violent dissension."
In short, antistenai means more in Matt. 5:39a than simply to "stand against" or "resist." It means to resist violently, to revolt or rebel, to engage in an insurrection. Jesus is not encouraging submission to evil; that would run counter to everything he did and said. He is, rather, warning against responding to evil in kind by letting the oppressor set the terms of our opposition. Perhaps most importantly, he cautions us against being made over into the very evil we oppose by adopting its methods and spirit. He is saying, in effect, Do not mirror evil; do not become the very thing you hate. The best translation is the Scholars Version: "Don't react violently against the one who is evil." "
That last part bears repeating (TL;DR version): "Do not mirror evil; do not become the very thing you hate."
Awesome post. Thank you!
DeleteThe USSA government is like a morbidly obese person giving dieting advice.
ReplyDeleteJerry Wolfgang = Troll
ReplyDeletejust in case ...
lose their lives for no-win wars that aren't Constitutionally justified.
ReplyDelete"Constitutionally justified". WW2 was constitutionally justified, so Ron Paul must support it.
That just goes to prove that Paul is a warmongering, statist charlatan who fools you retards by making a big song and dance about other wars, hoping you won't notice his wink-nod endorsement of WW2.