Ron Paul seemed a bit off in the last debate

imbalance

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Jun 30, 2011
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It's probably because he's been putting his campaign on the back burner so that he can fight to protect YOUR liberty.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KglGLXec-6E&feature=player_embedded]Ron Paul NDAA Repeal Act Introduced 1/18/2012 - YouTube[/ame]​

Plato said:
The fact is, that what happens to the finest philosophers in their relation to cities is hard; there is no single thing in the world like it, but one must compile a parable from all sorts of things to defend them, like a painter painting a centaur and other such mixtures. Imagine a ship or a fleet of ships in the following state. The captain is above all on board in stature and strength, but rather deaf and likewise rather short-sighted, and he knows navigation no better than he sees and hears. The crew are quarrelling about pilotage; everyone thinks he ought to be pilot, although he knows nothing of the art, and cannot tell us who taught him or where he learnt it. Besides, they all declare that it cannot be taught, and they are ready to tear in pieces anyone who says it can; they all keep crowding round the solitary captain, begging and praying and doing anything and everything to get him to hand over the helm to them. Sometimes one party fails but another succeeds better; then one party kills the other, or throws them overboard, and the good, honest captain they bind hand and foot by some opiate or some intoxicant or some other means and take command the ship. They use up all the stores, drinking and feasting, and make such a voyage as you might expect with such men. Besides, they have their votes of thanks: one has a testimonial as Good Navigator, another is a Born Pilot and Master Mariner. These are for any who are good hands at backing them up when they try to persuade or compel the captain to let them rule; for those who will not they have a vote of censure, Good For Nothing, and the true pilot is nowhere -- they won't listen to him. They fail to understand that he must devote his attention to year and seasons, sky and stars and winds, and all that belongs to his art, if he is really to be anything like a ruler of the ship; but that as for gaining control of the helm, with the approval of some people and the disapproval of others, neither art nor practice of this can be comprehended at the same time as the art of navigation. With such a state of things on board the ships, don't you believe the true-born pilot would be dubbed star-gazer, bibble-blabbler, Good For Nothing, by those afloat in ships so provided?

I don't suppose you want us to examine the parable bit by bit, and so to see how this is exactly what happens between the true philosopher and the city; I think you understand what I mean.

Well then, if anyone is surprised that philosophers are not honoured in a city, first teach him this parable, and try to persuade him that it would be much more surprising if they were. And tell him he is quite right in saying that the finest philosophers are useless to the masses; but tell him it is their fault for not using them, no fault of these fine philosophers. For it is not natural that a pilot should beg the sailors to be ruled by him; nor that the wise should wait at the rich man's door. No, the author of that neat saying told a lie, but the truth is that the sick man must wait at the doctor's door, whether he is rich or poor; and anyone who needs to be ruled should wait at the door of one who is able to rule him, not that the ruler should petition the subjects to be ruled, if there is truly any help in him. But you will make no mistake in likening the present political rulers to the sailors I described just now, and those whom they call Good For Nothing and stargazing babblers to the true pilots.
-- Book IV of The Republic
 
it would seem most have no interest in liberty. We have a strong base for big government and a warfare/welfare state in America today. That base seems a lot bigger than those who still cling to the new idea of freedom and liberty. So it goes.

"The contemporary world has gone astray, in sum, because it has sought freedoms from the dangers and risks of liberty."
 
it would seem most have no interest in liberty. We have a strong base for big government and a warfare/welfare state in America today. That base seems a lot bigger than those who still cling to the new idea of freedom and liberty. So it goes.

"The contemporary world has gone astray, in sum, because it has sought freedoms from the dangers and risks of liberty."

Ron Paul's (and most conservative libertarians) idea of freedom is the freedom of people to live under an overpass and not be bothered by the government.

There's a REASON that human history has been a story of how well people COOPERATE with each other. The MORE people cooperate, the greater the achievements. The more polarized the society, less can be achieved.

Supporting Ron Paul isn't so much a cry for freedom as it is a rationalization for being a cheapskate a$$hole.
There's no such thing as community or civic virtue when everyone is out only for themselves.

Oh and now you have Cholera.
 
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Seriously? You're equating government to people cooperating with each other? And you actually bothered to demogogue it up by saying:

Ron Paul's (and most conservative libertarians) idea of freedom is the freedom of people to live under an overpass and not be bothered by the government.

Which is completely false in every way. If you're going to raise concerns over Ron Paul's ideas, the least you could do is be accurate.
 
People can cooperate just fine without the government forcing them to do it based on whoever believes they have the best idea for how that should work.
 
Seriously? You're equating government to people cooperating with each other? And you actually bothered to demogogue it up by saying:

Ron Paul's (and most conservative libertarians) idea of freedom is the freedom of people to live under an overpass and not be bothered by the government.

Which is completely false in every way. If you're going to raise concerns over Ron Paul's ideas, the least you could do is be accurate.

Oh, so he's FOR the FED bailing out banks then?
Oh, he's not? Then we'd all be living under highway overpasses then, wouldn't we?
The banks couldn't have met their obligations and the whole system would have come crashing down.

I just love how every time someone objects to any idea of the Grand Poobah of the Ronulans, they simply "don't understand" him, like he's some moody rebel that your parents just don't "get" what's in his heart, like you do.
 
Yes, tax payers bailing out insolvent businesses is a grand idea and we would all die starving, in the cold, under a bridge had we not done so. Give me a fucking break. Bank becomes insolvent, liquidates and new ones step in to take the place. Preferrably ones that aren't going to fuck it all up with malinvestment. "the whole system would have come crashing down" is more demogoguery on your part.

And for the record, the fed CREATED the housing bubble in the first place.
 
Yes, tax payers bailing out insolvent businesses is a grand idea and we would all die starving, in the cold, under a bridge had we not done so. Give me a fucking break. Bank becomes insolvent, liquidates and new ones step in to take the place. Preferrably ones that aren't going to fuck it all up with malinvestment. "the whole system would have come crashing down" is more demogoguery on your part.

And for the record, the fed CREATED the housing bubble in the first place.

When 7 out of 10 of the largest banks are going to fail, where are the "new ones" going to come from? Hmm?

You don't protect citizens by letting the tigers loose. You protect investors by keeping them on a chain. Deregulation isn't and never WILL be the answer.

I can't wait to find out how the fed created the housing bubble in the first place. I'm sure the banksters were dragged kicking and screaming all the way making record profits until their ponzi scheme blew up and they stuck everyone else with the bill.

You want a practical example of practical libertarianism? Visit Somalia. There, enlightened self interest rules the day and there is no goobermint to stand in your way.
 
Yes, tax payers bailing out insolvent businesses is a grand idea and we would all die starving, in the cold, under a bridge had we not done so. Give me a fucking break. Bank becomes insolvent, liquidates and new ones step in to take the place. Preferrably ones that aren't going to fuck it all up with malinvestment. "the whole system would have come crashing down" is more demogoguery on your part.

And for the record, the fed CREATED the housing bubble in the first place.

When 7 out of 10 of the largest banks are going to fail, where are the "new ones" going to come from? Hmm?

You don't protect citizens by letting the tigers loose. You protect investors by keeping them on a chain. Deregulation isn't and never WILL be the answer.

I can't wait to find out how the fed created the housing bubble in the first place. I'm sure the banksters were dragged kicking and screaming all the way making record profits until their ponzi scheme blew up and they stuck everyone else with the bill.

You want a practical example of practical libertarianism? Visit Somalia. There, enlightened self interest rules the day and there is no goobermint to stand in your way.

I see this Somalia reference a lot. I am not sure where it comes from but wherever it comes from they are wrong. Somalia is an anarchy not a libertarian government.
 
Yes, tax payers bailing out insolvent businesses is a grand idea and we would all die starving, in the cold, under a bridge had we not done so. Give me a fucking break. Bank becomes insolvent, liquidates and new ones step in to take the place. Preferrably ones that aren't going to fuck it all up with malinvestment. "the whole system would have come crashing down" is more demogoguery on your part.

And for the record, the fed CREATED the housing bubble in the first place.

When 7 out of 10 of the largest banks are going to fail, where are the "new ones" going to come from? Hmm?

You don't protect citizens by letting the tigers loose. You protect investors by keeping them on a chain. Deregulation isn't and never WILL be the answer.

I can't wait to find out how the fed created the housing bubble in the first place. I'm sure the banksters were dragged kicking and screaming all the way making record profits until their ponzi scheme blew up and they stuck everyone else with the bill.

You want a practical example of practical libertarianism? Visit Somalia. There, enlightened self interest rules the day and there is no goobermint to stand in your way.

I see this Somalia reference a lot. I am not sure where it comes from but wherever it comes from they are wrong. Somalia is an anarchy not a libertarian government.

Somalia isn't anarchist anymore than it is libertarian.
 
You haters of Ron Paul are funny. First he has us all sleeping under bridges, then he's going to erase the constitution of the United States and send us into a state of anarchy. I also love it when people bring up deregulation as if it means "free for all!" and no oversight.

Your demagoguery is fun, but it makes for horrible intellectual discussion.

Here, I'll give you the reason the federal reserve created the housing bubble in the most simplest way I've ever seen it dumbed down for the less informed on economics.

The Housing Bubble in 4 Easy Steps

1. The Federal Reserve cut interest rates to as low as 1% so that after inflation we had negative interest rates. (starting in 2001 after the dotcom/nasdaq bubble burst)

2. As a result, mortgage rates fell to an all time low.

3. Low rates caused borrowing and lending to explode, particularly in real estate. For example, commercial banks more than doubled the amount of real-estate loans they made.

4. All these low interest loans had to be extended to people with worse credit ratings and this increased the demand for homes and other real-estate assets. It should not be surprising that home prices skyrocketed.

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, mortgage-backed securities, and credit derivatives were simply the conduit that made all these bad loans and investments seem less risky than they really were. In this manner the Federal Reserve can fool the market, at least temporarily. In the end the market always reasserts itself.
 
I can't wait to find out how the fed created the housing bubble in the first place. I'm sure the banksters were dragged kicking and screaming all the way making record profits until their ponzi scheme blew up and they stuck everyone else with the bill.

No, lenders followed the signals created by the central planners. And the banks didn't stick us with the bill, you can thank your federal government for that. Yes, the one you are care free to trust. I still can not understand how people can blame the banks for participating in the system set in front of them, hedge their bets through financial instruments as the realization of toxicity knocks on the door after standing on the deck for 6+ years, and then receive bail out taxpayer money FROM the government on the "whoops, we done fucked up good and people are going to be pissed."

And then everyone walks away (with the exception of very few) without facing any penalty for their actions. And on to the next one.

I do actually know why everyone gets to walk and we eat the shit sandwich. It has a lot to do with a misinformed public on what the root cause of our financial, and in so, political problems,are that face us and how to fix them. So we keep running in circles. All the way to the bottom.

See ya there.
 
When 7 out of 10 of the largest banks are going to fail, where are the "new ones" going to come from? Hmm?

You don't protect citizens by letting the tigers loose. You protect investors by keeping them on a chain. Deregulation isn't and never WILL be the answer.

I can't wait to find out how the fed created the housing bubble in the first place. I'm sure the banksters were dragged kicking and screaming all the way making record profits until their ponzi scheme blew up and they stuck everyone else with the bill.

You want a practical example of practical libertarianism? Visit Somalia. There, enlightened self interest rules the day and there is no goobermint to stand in your way.

I see this Somalia reference a lot. I am not sure where it comes from but wherever it comes from they are wrong. Somalia is an anarchy not a libertarian government.

Somalia isn't anarchist anymore than it is libertarian.

well I could be wrong on that, last I heard they didn't have a government though. I will research this sometime.
 
Observing Ron Paul in the last debate had me wondering if it wasn't time for his medications to be evaluated again...
 
maybe its because the man will be 80 if he wins president and sworn in. He is too old..

Unfortunately true. Ron is the only guy pursuing sane thinking, but h is old and that makes people weary about him. I will say; the old man has stood alone for a long time. Nothing makes ones adrenalin flow more. But he's fading I fear. Fading in stamina to handle the task and we have no one else even near him in thought. So I don't think he can pull it off (even if you think the table isn't slanted).
 

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