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Ron Paul's New Primary Goal Is "Internet Freedom"
Charliemopps writes "Ron and Rand Paul are shifting the central focus of their family's libertarian crusade to a new cause: Internet Freedom. From the article: 'Kentucky senator Rand and his father Ron Paul, who has not yet formally conceded the Republican presidential nomination, will throw their weight behind a new online manifesto set to be released today by the Paul-founded Campaign for Liberty. The new push, Paul aides say, will in some ways displace what has been their movement's long-running top priority, shutting down the Federal Reserve Bank. The move is an attempt to stake a libertarian claim to a central public issue of the next decade, and to move from the esoteric terrain of high finance to the everyday world of cable modems and Facebook.' This seems like welcome news to me. Let's see if they can get more traction here than they did with the Fed."
Seems like Ron Paul's congressional record is about the same as a paperweight. The guy might have an interesting idea now and then (and a lot of nutjob ideas in between) but those ideas don't translate to anything real.
Given his failure as a representative, why should we pay attention to anything else he says?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
they need to get a clue.
I made a contribution to one of Ron's 2008 "money bombs." From that simple action, I started getting spam from Ron, the Campaign for Liberty, the Rand Paul campaign, and state campaigns. All with "no one's listening" return addresses.
Somehow, this move reeks of opportunism - they have not shown any real understanding of Internet privacy, and certainly haven't "walked the walk."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Ron and Rand Paul are shifting the central focus of their family's libertarian crusade to a new cause: Internet Freedom.
Depends what you mean by freedom. According to this Ars Technica Article, he means the freedom of corporations to decide who gets to speak and what they get to say on the Internet.
This seems like welcome news to me.
I'd say that depends pretty heavily on whether you want citizens to be free to speak, or network providers to be free to generate revenue by restricting speech.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
No, that's more BS media propaganda. Ron Paul voted against Don't Ask, Don't Tell and has said he's in favor of allowing gay marriage at a federal level. He's personally against it just like he's also personally against abortion, but he's consistent in sticking to his beliefs that people (and states) should have the right to decide for themselves. So don't listen to these people who go on about how he's some racist homophobe who wants to pass laws limiting civil liberties. That's a bunch of BS, the guy supports equal treatment for everyone, gay, straight, man, woman, pro-life, pro-choice, whatever. For future reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Ron_Paul
Their rhetoric even sounds like Ayn Rand's tirades in Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead and elsewhere. This is logical since Ayn Rand is their idolized ideological forebear.
Let private industry do whatever they want to the Internet. Smart people and the corporations they heroically work for have made the Internet what it is today. So let the Verizons, the Comcasts, the Cox's, the Rogers' and the Telus' of the world give priority routing of their ad-laden drivel over what some of the customers of these paragons of individualist virtue would like to do, which is to communicate, to learn and and to chose their entertainment from wherever it suits them.
And if our corporate overlords who provide us with their extravagant priced "pipes" wish for us to have no access outside their hallowed walls, what then? What choices do 99% of us have? Zip. Someone said the Pauls are our friends? Not in this lifetime!
"Internet Freedom" sounds like a phrase designed to make being anti-Net Neutrality sounds good.
And no wonder: Verizon and AT&T are heavy contributors to Rand Paul's campaign.
Make no mistake: there's nothing "free" about the state-granted monopolies the wireless and cable industry have. Since they're monopolies, they ought to be regulated.
And if regulation is removed, you know that the telecom industry will be hitting up Google and Netflix for cash right away.
"Internet Freedom" means freedom for Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T to charge siteowners like Google and Amazon just because they feel like it.
"Internet Freedom" means every single thing you do on the Internet is going to cost more because Verizon and Comcast need to keep posting massive increases in profits.
"Internet Freedom" means freedom for the carriers to hold you hostage. ...and if you think that the 'free-market' will solve this, remember: bandwidth is scarce and already monopolized by the big carriers. You won't see landline competition either: the big carriers also have all the local governments locked up so there won't be any competition there. And you know that the Pauls won't be taking on the local governments so that there can be competition in the landline market.
In the same interview, when asked whether he would vote for or against a state constitutional amendment like California's Proposition 8, he said, "Well, I believe marriage is between one man and one woman."
Paul has also said that at the federal level he opposes "efforts to redefine marriage as something other than a union between one man and one woman." He believes that recognizing or legislating marriages should be left to the states and local communities, and not subjected to "judicial activism."[143] He has said that for these reasons he would have voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, had he been in Congress in 1996
Paul has been a cosponsor of the Marriage Protection Act in each Congress since the bill's original introduction. It would bar federal judges from hearing cases pertaining to the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act.
The second quote is the best. Basically, "I don't think the federal government should preclude the states allowing gay marriage, so I support the federal law that bans gay marriage." WTF?
"Internet collectivists are clever," the manifesto says, accusing their foes of series of Orwellian linguistic twists. "They are masters at hijacking the language of freedom and liberty to disingenuously pushfor more centralized control. 'Openness' means government control of privately owned infrastructure.'Net neutrality' means government acting as arbiter and enforcer of what it deems tobe 'neutral'."
The irony is that If he gets his way on this issue HE will be among the most likely to be stifled.
As Bugs Bunny used to say, "What a maroon!"
-- QED
Ron Paul is now our friend... for now.
I'm not so sure. I would rather have net neutrality myself, and this is exactly the opposite of that (it even says that on the website). It's another of his "let the free market fix all the problems" approaches. Of course some paullowers - especially some of the ones here on slashdot - will insist that he is the lord, savior, and the only source of true knowledge.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
We pay attention to ron paul on slashdot because he is the source of >90% of the political groupthink here.
You can't be serious. This place is a hotbed of anti-free market sentiment, especially when it comes to protectionism. It's also nigh on impossible to have any kind of meaningful discussion about something like science funding or healthcare without wading through a morass of snarky comments about the toxic fruit of capitalism. And besides that, the comment you're replying to, which is critical of Paul, is currently at +4. So, yeah.
We pay attention to ron paul on slashdot because he is the source of >90% of the political groupthink here.
What? Are YOU new here?
Hint: The political groupthink here is WAAAAAAY to the left of Dr. Paul.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
From reading the article, it sounds like the Pauls are more afraid of the government than corporations, which is a mistake IMHO. Eisenhower talked of the Military-Industrial complex. It's all slowly merging into one giant GovCorp, where the politicians and top corporate executives entrench themselves further and further, scratching each other's backs.
There's the concept of "Creative Destruction." The working classes are well acquainted with it. The problem is that where it's needed most, at the top of the political system and in financial sectors, it's almost completely prevented from occurring.
The Economist had an interesting article entitled "The question of extractive elites."
From that article: "In an extractive economy, such as the Belgian Congo and its successor state, Zaire, a narrow elite seizes power and uses its control of resources to prevent social change... Much of current economic policy seems to be driven by the need to prop up banks, whether it is record-low interest rates across the developed world or the recent provision of virtually unlimited liquidity by the once-staid European Central Bank. The long-term effects of these policies, which may be hard to reverse, are difficult to assess."
Ah yes, the ol' "leave it to the states" argument.
Which, if you took and passed any American history class, should be raising some red flags. This is the same tactic that the pro-slavery people used, the anti-civil rights people, etc. etc.
"State's rights" in practice is almost always a way to hide one's immoral motives. Certainly it's the same when it come to gay rights; the definition of marriage comes into play in federal law, so it simply can't be a matter of leaving it to the states. To even suggest such a thing is disingenuous at best, a bold-faced lie at worst.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
the comment you're replying to, which is critical of Paul, is currently at +4. So, yeah.
You're wrong on several things:
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Now, do you celebrate, or find a new Cause...?
the individual's?
or freedom like this?:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/07/04/1538201/verizon-claims-net-neutrality-violates-their-free-speech-rights
the problem the pauls and libertarian fundamentalists like them have is they are incredibly naive about what small government really means: a power vacuum that is filled by corporations. at least with our deeply flawed government, there is actually a pretense that it is supposed to stand for our individual freedoms, and some means of recourse
weaken our government, and you are left with monopolies and oligarchies who are happy to trample on our freedoms in the name of their "freedom", and no recourse whatsoever
oh yeah, you can take your business to a competitor, because without regulation the three dominant players aren't colluding and squashing all real competition
oh yeah, you can sue them in court. like you have 6 months and $100,000 and you lose anyway because they can just wear you down with their legion of lawyer goons
give it up, randroids
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Internet freedom by letting Comcast coagulate with the scum of the earth MPAA/media producers.
That means my internet will suck more, because I refuse to buy a fucking subscription to their shit ass channels. Fuck you Comcast, I just want my goddamn internet and I'm not a fucking pirate.
Anyone like me to dares to suggest that ron paul is not the second coming is generally moderated down quickly and severely.
This is not true. Moreover, everyone on Slashdot knows that if you begin your post with "I know I'll get modded down for saying this, but..." you will in fact get modded up.
He's a states-rightser who's masquerading as a libertarian, and he gets away with it because the things he says are anti-federal government.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
One needs to separate "marriage" as a private/religious institution from government reward of the same.
One should, but it never seems to happen. Those who want gay marriage don't seem to want to settle for a legal status that doesn't include the term "marriage". Civil unions aren't good enough. Fixing bad civil union laws isn't good enough, even though they're trying to fix what they consider to be bad marriage laws, so they're trying to get laws changed either way.
The only legitimate interest, IMO, for government giving special privileges to those who marry (tax benefits, primarily) are related to preventing offspring from becoming wards of the state, something which doesn't apply to homosexual couples.
Can you explain why the foibles and pitfalls that can happen to heterosexual marriages that would cause the children involved to become wards of the state are not applicable to homosexual marriage partners? Is there something that protects them from becoming homeless/unemployed and going on the dole, or divorce, or dual fatality car crashes that take out both parents?
Just because people disagree with you (and with the other people who unthinkingly agree with you) doesn't make them "groupthink". Spouting nonsense like "to the left" is groupthink. Calling him "Dr. Paul" when he's "Representative Paul" outside his cult is groupthink.
--
make install -not war
Its obvious from reading the comments on this story that a lot of you all think this means Ron Paul is in favor of a free and open internet, and has come out in favor of net neutrality. You all obviously don't know Ron Paul. For him, and his son, "internet freedom" means businesses on the internet are free to do as they please, capitalism rules, and net neutrality will die a quick death.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
"State's rights" in practice is almost always a way to hide one's immoral motives.
So every founder of this country that favored a weak central federal government was just trying to hide some "immoral motive", and wasn't thinking about how we'd just come out of a war with a central federal government system that had repressed pretty much whatever it wanted even though it was on the other side of an ocean from us?
Or is the concept that the best government is the one closest and most responsive to the citizens that have granted it the right to exist somehow an "immoral motive"?
Very orthodox Jews, like Chhasidic Jews, are among the most highly authoritarian people on the planet. Women are property. Their cult leaders' claims of tradition and "what god really meant" are ironclad laws. Absolute conformity, whether in appearance or in dogma, is mandatory.
It's true that most American Jews are secular, mostly of the assimilated Reform sect, and prioritize justice and equality, social compassion. But Jews aren't any different from any other large(ish) group: they've got their assholes, including their institutional assholes.
--
make install -not war
Real internet freedom needs freedom not only from government interference, but also from corporate interference. And the latter requires strong competition based alternative forms of internet access. Since it is not economical to build up that much duplicate physical connectivity to customers, internet access services will need to be split between a shared physical infrastructure and independent core connectivity and associated access services (DHCP, RADIUS, DNS, and whatever else the chosen technology may need). This common shared infrastructure needs to be regulated by government and operated as a regulated monopoly with a mandate to provide service to all on a level and open playing field.
IMHO, Ron Paul would never agree to any part of the infrastructure to be regulated in any way. Competing companies would not overbuild on each other more than 2 or 3 because of the capital inefficiency. As a result, there would not be sufficient competition for a viable free and open internet.
Ron Paul would certainly reject a single vertical internet provider monopoly which would effectively entrench government interference. At least that much is good about his positions.
Only a hybrid solution can ever really work. See how electricity is delivered in Texas. One company (Oncor Energy Delivery) operates the infrastructure and delivers the electricity to the customers of many competing energy providers which customers choose from. Ron Paul is from Texas, so he should know about this.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
There is no Free Market, The Free Market is handled in back rooms and the winners are the ones that fix the game. If we lived in a free market, things would look like Mad Max and Aretha Franklin would rule us all!
Anti- net-neutrality.
Anti- privacy protection.
Anti- any limits or oversight of any sort on what corporation can do online.
Unless you actually want to live in a cyber-punk dystopia I'd say no, he's not our friend.
I've got to say I'm disappointed he's aggressively taking this position. I typically vote liberal, but would love to see a substantial libertarian influence in the government. If by some miracle he got the Republican nomination I had planned to vote for him, warts and all. If he's choosing this as a central campaign platform though, I may have to stick with Obama.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Calling him "Dr. Paul" when he's "Representative Paul" outside his cult is groupthink.
Since when is it "groupthink" to refer to a man using the most prestigious of the titles he's earned?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
He has some good ideas, then there's of coarse the rest that are completely insane. Getting rid of the Federal Reserve is near the top of the list. Classic Republican lunacy. Deregulate and dismantle all safeguards because corporations always know best. Look at the history of deregulating. The SNL bailout was from deregulation as was the bank bailout. Net freedom is a good thing up to a point. Leave it in the hands of the corporations and the internet bad guys and the net will be a disaster. Sales taxing the internet is no solution and anything that is legal should be allowed. People can say it's hard to decide which laws should apply to the internet but most people would agree on the obvious ones. Banning kiddie porn, identity thief and scams should be obvious. Letting Congress decide is nuts because most of them are internet illiterate. Better to get together a group that represent all sides to try to find common ground. Either you compromise or one side lords over the rest and the rule making body is Congress so do you really want them deciding?
... are related to preventing offspring from becoming wards of the state, something which doesn't apply to homosexual couples.
Afterall, gay couples never adopt, use surrogates, sperm donors, or have children from previous marriages. That never happens.
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Neither did Hitler!
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You'll notice they did away with that an adopted the constitution.
I don't know how you call it "doing away with" the concept of a weak federal government when they enacted a constitution based on that concept, and which explicitely said at the end "anything not taken by the feds in this constitution is left to the states and the people."
And, since "marriage" doesn't appear in the US Constitution, it's one of those things that are, by default, left to the states to deal with. Maybe it's some ICC-based issue? Selling wives across a state line would be hindered if different states had different laws about marriage?
"State's rights" in practice is almost always a way to hide one's immoral motives.
Speaking as a Californian who doesn't like the DEA harassing sick people who need marijuana, I'm going to say fuck you.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Since when is it "groupthink" to refer to a man using the most prestigious of the titles he's earned?
Which is more prestigious? A title that hundreds of people have, maybe even thousands, in a several county area, or a title that only one person in that area has (and only 435 in the entire country)? A title that comes about because a panel of five to seven people say you've accomplished the prerequisites (for Ph.D doctors, the committee), or one that takes the votes of tens of thousands of people to achieve?
A title that is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand and the job being performed by that individual, or the title that goes with the job?
I know I'll get modded up for saying this, but I disagree.
ah crap!!! I did it wrong, didn't I.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
One needs to separate "marriage" as a private/religious institution from government reward of the same. The only legitimate interest, IMO, for government giving special privileges to those who marry (tax benefits, primarily) are related to preventing offspring from becoming wards of the state, something which doesn't apply to homosexual couples.
If you're going to take that line of thought, then "marriage" in that sense should be automatic between any couple who have children together, and excluded from anyone who doesn't yet have children. If marriage is to be about childrearing, then there should be (legally) no such thing as a childless marriage or a child out of wedlock. If you have a kid, you're "married"; if not, you're not. No contesting it.
Of course, there are other things involved in marriage besides the rights and responsibilities of children. Mutual rights in each others' property and lives (e.g. medical decisions in case of incapacitation). I can see a reason why people who aren't romantically or sexually involved at all might want to do something like that. Say you have two very straight guys who have no intention of ever settling down with one woman but plan to play the field their entire lives; but they are very close friends, have been housemates for years, etc, and want to buy a house together, file joint taxes on their mutual incomes and expenses, and have the other guy watch out for them if anything horrible should ever happen to them. Neither has any sexual or romantic interest in the other, and they each plan on having a different girl over every night, in their separate rooms, for the rest of their lives.
Why shouldn't they be able to make such financial and legal arrangements so resembling what we now call marriage? We don't have to call that marriage, call it a kind of incorporation, partnership, or union... a civil one, you might say. And let men and women in love with each other planning to raise a family get that exact same thing, and call it the exact same thing. And if those two guys want to make that arrangement, and are also having sex with each other, what difference does that make? What if more than two people want to live together and pool their lives and finances together -- whether or not any of them are having sex with each other -- what's wrong with letting them? And the slippery slope stops there, because children, dead people, goats, and furniture can't enter into contracts at all, and so there's no worry about anybody "marrying" any of those things if we replace marriage with a generic civil contract.
And then there's the social ceremony. This is legally meaningless, and should be the thing that gets the term "marriage". Let your favorite church, temple, mosque, coven, social club, or renaissance faire guild decide who they want to give what ceremony and recognize what title to, and let the law not give a shit about any of that. "Marriage" should be legally meaningless. Civil unions for everyone!
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Those who want gay marriage don't seem to want to settle for a legal status that doesn't include the term "marriage". Civil unions aren't good enough. Fixing bad civil union laws isn't good enough, even though they're trying to fix what they consider to be bad marriage laws, so they're trying to get laws changed either way.
If civil unions are good enough for gay couples, shouldn't they be good enough for straight couples too?
Get the government out of marriage entirely. Call it a civil union and forget about the sex of the people involved. Leave "marriage" to the churches, and give that no legal weight whatsoever.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
I wonder how much Ron Paul even knows what it means, or is it just another digital age buzzword to stay relevant with the undergrads.
Don't worry, he knows precisely what it means: the death knell for net neutrality.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I`d rather be a doctor than a representative, regardless of how few or many can be of either.
There is no "fair market" because there is no "free market". Government doesn't help make things more free or more fair, it only helps the OTHER guys win.
Free means open to all. Fair means same rules apply to everyone. Free and Fair Markets would fix this economy in a heartbeat. Too many people have gamed the system to have either ever again. Instead we have Solyndra (both R and D supported) and Bailouts (both R and D supported) of banks and car companies (Except Ford).
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
"State's rights" in practice is almost always a way to hide one's immoral motives.
So every founder of this country that favored a weak central federal government was just trying to hide some "immoral motive", and wasn't thinking about how we'd just come out of a war with a central federal government system that had repressed pretty much whatever it wanted even though it was on the other side of an ocean from us?
I can't speak for the grandparent, but I read his comment as applying to the period of time after the vast majority of americans came to see governing most things as a legitimate role of the federal government. Every case I can think of after the 1850s where someone says "leave X to the states", they really mean "we would like the federal government to act on X, but the majority opposes our position, so we want state by state rules". Not exactly a principled position. A few example issues:
* Slavery
* School segregation
* Abortion
* Gun Control
* Drugs
* Gay marriage
* Health care
Suppose segregationists had the votes to pass federal jim crow laws. Do you think they would not do so because they cared about "state's rights"?
I know plenty of people who think drug laws and gay marriage should be a state issue. They don't feel that way about segregation or abortion. I don't know anyone under 30 who opposes gay marriage, so I suspect that in my lifetime a federal law to legalize it will pass. And the people who want it to be a state issue today will cheer. They don't care about states's rights. They care about winning.
I can think of a dozen politicians who claimed to care about state's rights on some issue. For each one, there is another issue on the list where they would happily use federal law to make states do what they want. Why? Because they can pass that federal law. The Pauls fail this test along with everyone else.
Why do people always think "more laws and more regulations will make everything better", when it never does?
Because NOT having laws protecting civil rights worked so well in the past.
"A free market fixes everything" is nonsense. Imagine no rules/laws/regulations. Perfectly free market. To win, I'll murder my competition, and get away with it (until they murder me). There are no laws. It's free and fair, brutal and ugly.
OK, so we make murder illegal. And kidnapping, extortion, blackmail, etc. It's no longer a free market. But I don't think anyone minds.
But already, government can be corrupted. A sheriff that aggressively investigates crimes against my competitors while ignoring my crimes gives me an advantage. And this is just serious crimes.
The point is not to get government out of the way, it's to make government enforce fairness (you are right about that). And "less government" is not really the way to do this. I don't want a perfectly free market. If you take econ101, you'll see many ways businesses could screw over consumers with asymmetric info, monopolies, fraud, etc. And I want regulations to eliminate toxins in food, unreasonably dangerous products, etc. And I don't want to drink polluted water.
Solyndra is no big deal--they expected a percentage of businesses the government backed to not succeed, and Solyndra was in that percentage. If there's corruption involved, then I'd be mad, but I haven't heard of any yet. I'm glad the US government invested in the Internet.
It's generally more prestigious to earn something than to win something.
You're wrong in a very fundamental way. Obama most certainly is proud of his accomplishments, as are most Democrats who voted for him. Among other things, he's dramatically changed the health care landscape for the better, he's helped to radically shift society's perception of homosexuality, and militarily he's kicked ass, accomplishing the destruction of the most hated person on earth since Adolph Hitler. Am I in love with everything the guy's done? No, but on the whole, I am extremely proud to proclaim that I supported him in 2008, and I am happily doing so again this year.
You seem to be buying Republican attempts to make him out as ineffectual. I know it's pretty difficult with right wing politicians, Fox News and a whole bunch of talking heads on the radio constantly spewing out lies and misrepresentations about his record and corporations who want the unfettered ability to run roughshod over our freedoms spending hundreds of millions, possibly even billions of dollars on 24x7x365 slick well-planned marketing campaigns designed to get the poor and middle class to vote against their own self-interest. It's clearly a case of the old adage of telling a lie enough until even the person telling it believes it's true.
But make no mistake, I am not supporting him because of any kind of "I'm not GWB" campaign. The fact is that he inherited a hell of a mess caused by eight years of bad policy, and he's done an amazing job turning things around. Most Democrats knew this well enough in 2009 that they really haven't needed to constantly remind everyone except when Republicans keep trotting out things like the massive job losses that the U.S. sustained in Obama's first year when we were still operating under Bush's economy. If Republicans would stop pitching these losses as Obama's fault before he even had a chance to enact any policies, we would stop reminding everyone why those numbers were so bad.
But yeah, it's most certainly not more of the same. Ask anyone who is getting mortgage relief now. Ask any gay member of the military. Ask anyone who had their insurance policy canceled during the Bush years because they had an incurable condition. Ask the brave members of SEAL Team Six. Ask any young immigrant who is here through no decision of their own but, until a couple of weeks ago, faced the threat of deportation to a country they've never known. Anyone who thinks that the past four years have been more of the same is either lying, stupid, or grossly not paying attention.
We still have HOPE and we've seen CHANGE. Backtracking on that now would be one of the dumbest things the American electorate could ever do.
I suspect that Americans have more respect for physicians than they have for Congress.
>how their locally-collected tax dollars should be spent
Yeah it's not like Congress is actually in charge of the District of Columbia... oh wait, yes they are. And while we're at it, imagine that, a conservative supports conservative ideals to govern a place his governing body has power over. Oh, the horror.
I don't support Rand Paul or Ron Paul. I just think people like you who get oh, the vapahs every time someone who disagrees with you voices their opinion are pretty much the worst thing ever. Present an alternative, you mincing, cleft-ass wimp! Instead of bitching about how awful their libertarian/conservative approach is, how about offering a progressive vision instead of being a whiny little bitch?
That is, you know, if you have any ideas.
Since when is it "groupthink" to refer to a man using the most prestigious of the titles he's earned?
Which is more prestigious? A title that hundreds of people have, maybe even thousands, in a several county area, or a title that only one person in that area has (and only 435 in the entire country)? A title that comes about because a panel of five to seven people say you've accomplished the prerequisites (for Ph.D doctors, the committee), or one that takes the votes of tens of thousands of people to achieve?
A title that is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand and the job being performed by that individual, or the title that goes with the job?
No, how about a title that MOST people actually recognize and understand the weight and relevance of it, sans the sting of political crossfire.
A "Doctor" is viewed as someone who has shown dedication and intelligence to obtain that degree, via methods that "thousands" of voters can actually RELATE to.
A "Representative" is viewed as just another political asshole who might have bought that title with little or dedication or intelligence that hardly anyone can relate to.
His degree title does have relevance in that it conveys a fairly clear message as to his ability and accomplishments to the average layman, which constitutes the bulk of voters.
A "free market" doesn't mean an unregulated market. A "free market" means a market in which prices are set by supply and demand. Free markets require laws and a functioning legal system. Those are sufficient and necessary to prevent monopolies, fraud, harm from products and pollution, and asymmetric info: when these things occur, you (or even the government) can sue the people who caused them.
A market stops being free, however, when the government decides to go beyond that and implement economic plans through subsidies, price controls, loan guarantees, bailouts, etc.
I can't correct it all right now...
I personally disagree with homosexuality, but even I can see the change has been occurring since long before Obama reached office.
There was a clear inflection point in polls though when Obama publicly stated his support for gay marriage.
Obama has had 3.5 years to do something and the unemployment rate has not only EXCEEDED the HIGHEST he said it would go, it has STAYED there for a long long time.
We've been doing doing about a million jobs a month better lately than the economy he took over in 2009. As economists know, spending is what pulls an economy out of a recession. You can clearly see when the stimulus worked in the unemployment numbers, but Congress blocked the jobs bill and has forced austerity, which is a drag on the economy.
How much voter fraud do we have in this country?
Almost none. Well, there was that O'Keefe guy. Got any others?
The Internet wouldn't even EXIST if the Ron/Randoms had been in power in the 1970's, and now they figure they have something useful to say about how it ought to work? I suppose their "Internet Freedom" must mean that they want us to be free of the Internet entirely...
My comment mentions Ron Paul and it's unmodded. So there you have it.
A "free market" doesn't mean an unregulated market. A "free market" means a market in which prices are set by supply and demand. Free markets require laws and a functioning legal system. Those are sufficient and necessary to prevent monopolies, fraud, harm from products and pollution, and asymmetric info: when these things occur, you (or even the government) can sue the people who caused them.
Which, as the comment you're replying to points out, is already more than enough government for corruption to set in. If government corruption is as inevitable as libertarians seem to think it is then it's basically impossible to have a free market.
The Hippocratic oath is an oath/EM., not a guideline to be bent for superstitious beliefs.
Yes, but in that case you are asking a doctor to do harm to what some feel is life. "Do no harm" is then applied with precedent (Do no harm to the mother first, then no harm to the baby). That is the both moral and ethical issue surrounding abortion so your point is weak.
Doctors certainly face this type of issue many times in their careers, not just with a pregnant mother, but with choices on who to save first. It is not a black and white oath when looked upon in that context.
If Dr. Paul turned away a mother for a routine abortion it could be viewed as his "superstitious beliefs" trumping his oath, or it could be viewed as his belief that he is doing harm to an unwitting life versus a mother who is otherwise in good health. Hmmmm, then he is following his oath. The SC legalized abortion, it did not compel doctors to perform them.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
Sorry, but I also disagree with you. There is small but vocal group of libertarians on Slashdot and an overlapping vocal group of Ron Paul supporters but I'm convinced from observation that they are both small minorities. They are, perhaps, larger in comparison to what you would find on other sites with different demographics but Ron Paul supporters are a definitely a minority of Slashdot posters.
The pro-Ron Paul group's voice is magnified because they tend toward boorish krankerism which means they never shut up about their dear leader, but you should be careful to not confuse a small but loud group with a large group.
Fanatically anti-fanatical