My friend Danny has sent me a couple of recordings of Ron Paul. One was of him on, "Meet The Press," and the other was his speech after winning the New Hampshire Primary. Danny asked my opinion about Mr. Paul and the following is a summary of those thoughts.
There are many items and points that Ron Paul makes, I find myself in total agreement with. Then Paul takes the extreme and I drift away. I said before during and today, the war in Iraq was and is a terrible mistake. It has cost us thousands of American lives, trillions of dollars and shifted our focus from building America to watching America crumble. It has also cost tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and left their country in complete chaos. To what end? They will probably sink into a civil war. The country is now in a position that it can be exploited by it's neighbor, Iran. The end result for Iraq is, whether we went in or not, the same. Their is no justification for the past and current administrations to continue pouring billions and maybe even trillions more into an already corrupt government in that country. Other actions we have entered into around the globe has costs us enormous sums of money and people's lives. I would say this one point though, we must separate the war from the warriors. Our military people and I am talking about the grunts on the ground, are the bravest, best trained and without a doubt the finest military fighting people in the history of the world and they are to be admired and thanked every day for their sacrifice and courage. The military and civilian leaders should not waste this precious resource of people to promote our Imperialistic urges.
In this regard I am clear. I support bringing our troops home from Iraq, Afghanistan and any other area in the world where they are not directly serving the defense of America. If our interest are not directly involved, quit spending money, resources and most importantly lives. I do support using troops such as Special Operations, similar to, Seal Team 6, to enter and covertly accomplish certain missions, when our security is endangered. The price in dollars and lives are reduced and yet have a better and longer lasting effect. In general I agree with Mr. Paul on the use of military force and reducing the cost of money that is sent overseas to other countries.
Later I will discuss my point of view on Ron Paul's economic policies.
John,
ReplyDeleteI was actually asking your thoughts on a acute part of the video I sent you. It was the part where he attacked our current monetary system where the Government has a federal Reserve system that can create money by writing a check and buying a bond... (For example). His argument is that if we did not have an elastic/fiat currency then the government would need to ACTUALLY PAY for programs and Wars.
IF we had a hard/honest money then the government would need to go to the PEOPLE and let them know that we wanted to go to war and we would need to PAY for it. IF Americans had to actually pay for WAR then we would not be able to go to work for TEN years (like we have_ while we are trampling through 5 different countries and not even think about it. We want our SS retirement, our medicaid, and medicare, we don't pay attention or hold our government accountable on war and death and we cry if they try to raise taxes.. on anyone. The argument is that we would be an accountable and engaged society and we would have an accountable and engaged government if they actually had to come to the people for the money. But they dont the just barrow money into existence.