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Blog PostsResponding to Glenn Greenwald about Ron Paul
By Joe Emersberger at Jan 02, 2012 |
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RE:Progressives and Ron Paul Fallacies
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/31/progressives_and_the_ron_paul_fallacies/singleton/)
Hi Glenn:
I enjoyed your piece on Ron Paul even though I disagree with important
parts of it. I liked when you highlighted that lesser of evil arguments should
clearly recognize
"that both sides are ;evil;: meaning it is not a Good v. Evil contest but a
More Evil v. Less Evil contest."
Much of the praise that is being voiced for Ron Paul by leftists doesn't
include this crucial point. Perhaps because RP is seen as such a long shot to
win, such a maligned underdog, it is tempting to ignore (as I think you
did in this article) what a profound evil his proposals represent.
People have praised Ron Paul without thinking through what the full
implications of his policies would be - especially on those issues where he has
an understandable appeal to writers like yourself.
Ron Paul proposes to massively cut the Federal budget by 1/3. He proposes
only a 15% cut to the Pentagon while proposing cuts of 44% to child health
insurance , a 35% cut to Medicaid, and a 63% cut to Food Stamps that are
relied on by 50 million US citizens If that were not draconian enough, he
also wants to further weaken unions and eliminate the jobs of about 1/2
million federal employees.
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/76422
In short, RP wants to kick US workers and the poor in face harder than most
Republicans and Democrats would ever dare suggest.
That's extremely immoral in its own right, but also the exact opposite of
what you need to do to dismantle empire and police repression at home.
Dismantling empire requires mobilizing the people who would be Ron Paul's
primary victims. Ron Paul's domestic polices would require even more police
repression and the distraction of foreign enemies. That's a glaring
contradiction in his polices that you and other progressives don't seem to
acknowledge. In an Ron Paul presidency, either the policies you like would have to go,
or his brutal economic assault on the most vulnerable US citizens would
have to go. You could not have both.
Perhaps even worse, RP - even as a candidate - allows war mongering
politicians to pose (with plausibility) as defenders of the poor and working
people. The fact that Neocons are, as you indicated, already saying they would
prefer Obama to Ron Paul is significant evidence of that danger.
Best wishes in the new year,
Joe Emersberger
NOTE
The accuracy of the anlysis provided in the KPFA link above can be verified by look at RP's proposals
http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issues/ron-paul-plan-to-restore-america/
To understand how paltry RP's proposed 15% cut to the military is, consider that it would take a 50% cut just to put the USA military budget in line with what other imperial countries like France and the UK spend.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
To look at it another way, the USA has roughly 4% of the world's population but accounts for 40% of its arms purchases. So even as a candiate with a very remote chance to win, RP still proposes major concessions to the military industrial complex. Proposing to maintain 85% of the US militray's outrageously bloated budget is also major contradiction to RP's anti war rhetoric. I don't see how the fact that he is a marginal candidate justifies Leftists ignoring it.
[UPDATE Jan 12, 2012. RP's website has been updated to say that his proposed cuts to both baseline and "off budget" military spending are about 30%. Fact remains that he proposes over $500 billion in annual military sepnding - surpasing what at least the next 9 big spenders in the world spend combined.]
Another Ron Paul talking point that some leftists have echoed is that he proposes to end the "war on drugs" that very disproportinoately incarcerates poor black males.
I showed Ron Paul's policy proposals to Dean Baker - one of the tiny percentage of professional economists in the world who has a good track record.
According to Dean Baker, Ron Paul's proposed budget cuts would add 5 percentage points to US unemployment rate in the near term. To be clear, if the unemployment rate in the USA is now roughly 9%, Ron Paul's proposed austerity measures would increase it to 14%.
That woud swamp any benefits from eliminating the wars on drugs. Years ago, I read a scholarly study from the 1990s that estimated the impact of the huge US prison population as reducing unemployment by roughly 1 percentage point.
Ron Paul would not only impose massive unemployment but also gut programs that make unemployment far less painful. That would leave greatly increased repression as a counter measure to keep control. The "war on drugs" woud have to be re-invented in some way. If not drug crimes then some other pretext woud have to be found to imprison poor people.
I could also have mentioned to Glenn that it appears Ron Paul's position on global warming is even worse than I thought.
I had read some statements in which he at least took the science seriously though he opposed government action - a disastrous enough stance. However, since 2009, after all that Climategate nonsense, he has been making ludicrous remarks like saying that global warming is ""the greatest hoax I think that has been around for many, many years," Inaction on Climate change, I would hope it is unnecessary to stress to leftists, amounts to imposing a death sentence on the world's most vulnerable people - and potentially all of us.
see here
http://www.ronpaul.com/on-the-issues/global-warming/
Competing for the prize of dumbest statement about Ron Paul made by a leftist would be Ron Jacobs' on Counterpunch:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/27/why-the-establishment-is-terrified-of-ron-paul/
"With Ron Paul as president, at least we’d be done with all the wars, the people of the rest of the world would be finally free of US military interference, including attacks by US drones. The long-suffering Constitution and its Bill of Rights would mean something again. We might even get a Supreme Court justice or two who actually believed that Congress should declare any future wars before we could fight them, and that citizens who were arrested had an absolute right to a speedy trial by a jury of peers. And we’d be electing someone who appears, especially for a politician, to be that rare thing: an honest man who says what he means and means what he says — and who doesn’t seem to be owned by the banksters.
We’d have a hell of a fight on our hands in a Ron Paul presidency, defending Social Security and Medicare, promoting economic equality, fighting climate change and pollution, defending abortion rights and maybe fighting a resurgence of Jim Crow in some parts of the country, but at least we wouldn’t have to worry about being spied upon, beaten and arrested and then perhaps shipped off to Guantanamo for doing it."
However I think the prize still goes to Whitney who wrote
"Let’s say Paul tries to strangle Social Security from Day 1. Isn’t that still infinitely better than another Falluja, another Haditha, another Abu Ghraib, another bombed-out wedding party?
Yes, it’s wrong to deprive the sick and elderly of some pittance so they can eek by, but is it as wrong as blowing women and children to bits in their own country, in their own cities, in their own homes?
It’s a question of priorities, right? So, what’s more important; ending the bloodletting or some potential threat to Social Security?
Paul will stop the killing. We should use our vote to do the same."
If I worked for the CIA, I'd be delighted to plant people within the anti-war movement to say things like this - to accept an utterly fraudulent choice between justice at home and killing abroad.
Some feedback and my response to it
By Emersberger, Joe at Jan 02, 2012 06:31 AM
One writer I greatly respect agrees with me, but another (whom I also respect greatly) tells me that he agrees with Glenn. He thinks the benefits of a Ron Paul candidacy outweigh the risks given RP's remote chances of winning. Basically, he sees Ron Paul as a useful conduit for views that challenge war and empire.
However, what I am mainly arguing is that Leftists think through the consquences of ALL Ron Paul's polices - and note the glaring contradiction they contain. For example, I can only see leftists discrediting themselves by the kinds of remarks made below by Mike Whitney and Robert Sheer. The greater impact of Ron Paul's candicacy , the more damage these type of remarks will do to those who would like to defang the US empire.
Below from Mike Whitney:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/30/ron-paul-and-the-killing-machine/
[quote]
Let’s say, Paul surprises his critics and wins the presidency in a landslide victory in November
2012. Then–in his first public appearance as president–he issues an executive order to stop all Social Security payments immediately, thus cutting off the meager revenue-stream that millions of the nation’s elderly need to scrape-by.
Isn’t this the worst-case scenario? Isn’t this what liberals are really worried about?
Okay, so let’s say it all goes-down just as we said. Let’s say Paul tries to strangle Social Security from Day 1. Isn’t that still infinitely better than another Falluja, another Haditha, another Abu Ghraib, another bombed-out wedding party?
Yes, it’s wrong to deprive the sick and elderly of some pittance so they can eek by, but is it as wrong as blowing women and children to bits in their own country, in their own cities, in their own homes?
It’s a question of priorities, right? So, what’s more important; ending the bloodletting or some potential threat to Social Security?
Paul will stop the killing. We should use our vote to do the same.
[unquote]
To calls these remarks by Whitney"dumb" is being overly kind.
Over at Truthdig Robert Sheer writes
"according to a New York Times editorial; "Ron Paul long ago disqualified himself for the presidency by peddling claptrap proposals like abolishing the Federal Reserve, returning to the gold standard, cutting a third of the federal budget and all foreign aid and opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
That last item, along with the decade-old racist comments in the newsletters Paul published, is certainly worthy of criticism. "
What? The last item? How about all the others on that list. And pleaase note, Sheer isn't even saying something like "no Ron Paul didn't say that". Judging by this article, he can't see anything wrong with the following things:
1) Abolishing the Federal Reserve
A progressive can't find anything to criticize in this? Abolishing the Fed leads to what extactly? Answer: private bankers reinstituting it as a oompletely private entity with even less democractic accountability than it has now. See anything to criticize now?
2) Returing to the Gold Standard.
This is basically a call for super duper tight money policy - a Randian fantasy that eliminating "fiat currency" will make governments completely dependent on private bankers for financing. In other words, this is a call for the extreme hollowing out of democracy - beyong even what "respectable" elitists dare propose - yet this is not something to criticize?
3) Cutting a third of the Federal budget
This shouldn't require comment but remember that Ron Paul proposes a 15% cut in the Pentagon's monstrous budget but over 60% cut in Federal Food Stamps. Nothing to criticize?
4) Cutting ALL foreign aid
Note the key word is "all". There is a significant amount of "tied" aid from rich countries to poor - "aid" that basically amounsts to subsidies for rich country corporations and that harms pooor countries. Other aid gets funnelled into support for coups and unpopular right wing parties. However there is a portion of aid that should not be called "aid" at all. It should often be called "reparations".
Sheer also says that RP's opposition to the Civil Rights Act shoud not be an
"alternative to seriously engaging the substance of Paul’s current campaign—his devastating critique of crony capitalism and his equally trenchant challenge to imperial wars and the assault on our civil liberties that they engender."
The NYT won't do "serious eneagement" but neither does Sheer judging by this article. I see too many leftists following suit.
?
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Re: Some feedback and my response to it
By Kaushik, Raghav at Jan 30, 2012 02:28 AM
Paul Street in his recent interview on ZNet says he is sympathetic to Greenwald on this issue.
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