Andrew Sullivan Endorses Ron Paul!!!
At last!
Sullivan: “Ron Paul For the Republican Nomination”.
I was thinking of emailing him just this morning to try to press him on this. On a day when the rest of the conservative blogosphere has collectively decided to stick their heads in the sand in relation to this movement, now is perfect timing on Sullivan’s part. He continues to prove why he’s such a worthy inspiration for schlubs like me. He is a true conservative of conscience, in a ideology that has been hijacked and corroded from within by hacks and scoundrels.
The money quote of all Sullivan money quotes:
But the deeper reason to support Ron Paul is a simple one. The great forgotten principles of the current Republican party are freedom and toleration. Paul’s federalism, his deep suspicion of Washington power, his resistance to government spending, debt and inflation, his ability to grasp that not all human problems are soluble, least of all by government: these are principles that made me a conservative in the first place. No one in the current field articulates them as clearly and understands them as deeply as Paul. He is a man of faith who nonetheless sees a clear line between religion and politics. More than all this, he has somehow ignited a new movement of those who love freedom and want to rescue it from the do-gooding bromides of the left to the Christianist meddling of the right. The Paulites’ enthusiasm for liberty, their unapologetic defense of core conservative principles, their awareness that in the new millennium, these principles of small government, self-reliance, cultural pluralism, and a humble foreign policy are more necessary than ever – no lover of liberty can stand by and not join them.
Man, that chokes me up.
Sullivan, like Paul, makes me proud to call myself a conservative.
Don’t forget, our own Crossed Pond endorsements coming soon.
There really is something to be said for character. It’s one of the main reasons I still have a fleeting respect for Bush. He still has the guts to veto a childrens heath care bill. I give McCain and Lieberman similar nods. At least they truly believe what they say, in some cases to hell with the consequences.
Comment by Cameron — 12/17/2007 @ 1:35 pm
Amen, Cameron. This is the quote that articulates the biggest reason that I support Ron Paul:
McCain comes in second–a distant second.
Comment by James — 12/17/2007 @ 1:55 pm
McCain is no fake or fraud.
I kind of expected Sullivan to go the other way, but needless to say I’m happy with his ultimate decision. Ironically, the key issue on which Sullivan’s vote turned is actually one on which I’m more supportive of McCain’s position than Paul’s.
Sullivan’s going to take a hell of a beating from the conservative blogosphere for this. But in doing so, he will be placing himself in the category of both McCain and Paul–the category of individuals who stand up for their principles regardless of the consequences.
Comment by Rojas — 12/17/2007 @ 2:22 pm
I am going to write a script to limit the number of exclamation marks in any sentence in a post title to one.
Comment by Adam — 12/17/2007 @ 3:56 pm
You can’t even install a canned plug-in script to allow comment preview and edit and you are going to write a hack that alters the application of English punctuation?
Comment by James — 12/17/2007 @ 4:01 pm
Multiple exclamation marks are just wrong.
Comment by Adam — 12/17/2007 @ 4:03 pm
You can’t even install a canned plug-in script to allow comment preview and edit
Amen to that.
Comment by daveg — 12/17/2007 @ 4:22 pm
I’m not a conservative in general but Paul appeals to me because he’s the first conservative that seems principled about his conservatism, rather than self-interested.
Comment by Jerrod — 12/17/2007 @ 6:09 pm
Great endorsement by Sullivan. True conservatism articulated at its best.
Comment by Paul Snatchko — 12/17/2007 @ 8:27 pm
If you go back to history, Winston Churchill right until before the war was considered by parliament (specially his own party) and the press as quixotic, eccentric and out of reality and all because what he said was the truth. He was a journalist for a newspaper and there was great pressure from the government and including the press to stop him from writing. When Germany invaded France he became prime minister because he was the only true leader who had been loyal to his principals and convictions and had the courage to face a very grim future for Great Britain. And lets not forget that the people loved him no matter what the press or the government said. Read: “The Last Lion Alone”.
I believe Ron Paul is that kind of leader. What he says is the truth and people love him for that. His voting record in congress speaks by itself.
I believe he has a great chance of winning in the primaries because a lot people might like a candidate but that doesn’t mean they will vote for him in the primaries. I believe every single Paulite will vote even if there is a hurricane cat 5. He will surprise everybody in the primaries, just like Truman did.
Comment by Luchi — 12/17/2007 @ 10:14 pm
“What he says is the truth …”
Abolishing the Federal Reserve is the truth???
Ron Paul would abolish one of the few institutions in Washington that actually does its job.
Mr. Paul would also have us leave the UN, WTO and God only knows what else. Ron Paul is a ‘paleo’ isolationist.
He is also from the libertarian fringe. Think anarchist without the bombs and beard :) These were not stray remarks by Mr. Paul but carefully written essays within the last 5 years.
Does Andrew Sullivan support these positions? I know he does not. Mr. Sullivan has shown himself to just another journalist shooting from the hip and not doing his homework.
One thing I’ve learned: do not support someone for a good viewpoint until you know WHY they hold it. It was very stupid of Bush to pretend Saddam was another Hitler. But in 1938 Ron Paul would have been firmly in the Chamberlain camp pretending that Hitler was Saddam. For you history buffs think Senator Borah.
Comment by jm — 12/17/2007 @ 10:38 pm
I graduated in economics and was a big fan of Milton Friedman when being his fan was a kiss of death on final exams administered by the faculty devotees of Paul Samuelson. Ron Paul and 40 years of monetary mismanagement by the FED have caused me to give the gold standard, in perhaps a modified form, another look despite Friedman’s opposition to it. The current “subprime mortgage” collapse is a direct result of Fed actions so I fail to see the Fed’s management of our currency as any better than the post office has been in managing the mail service.
Comment by Coogan — 12/17/2007 @ 10:54 pm
I think my point has been proven. Ron Paul, the gold standard and the 5 cent cigar. Ah for the good old days!
Our economy has been growing steadily at 3-3.5% for 25 years with low unemployment. We have outperformed by a wide margin every other large industrial country. But what the heck, Ron Paul knows better. Lets bring back the gold standard like we had in the glorious year of 1929.
Ron Paul opposed the Iraq adventure, but so did other isolationists like Pat Buchanan. He may have strong principles but they are somewhat flakey and dated.
Comment by jm — 12/18/2007 @ 1:02 am
But, there would not have been a WWII if the US did not enter WWI. So military intervention was the original source of the problem.
WWII was the original “blowback”.
And we are still paying for that as much of the unrest in the Middle East can be traced to decisions that came out of WWI and WWII including the creation of Israel and other post colonial activities on the part of England.
Oh, and the Fed was largely responsible for the depression, which was horrible in itself, but also another aggravating source of WWII.
So Ron Paul’s policies would have worked to prevent WWII in several ways.
Please stop with the whole “1939” myth and get back to reality based foreign policy.
Comment by daveg — 12/18/2007 @ 7:09 am
Jim, it appears that you have a very outdated view of economic history especially considering the actual events that facilitated the Crash of 29. The Crash had absolutely nothing to do with the gold standard although that is the common boogie man blamed for the events that led up to the Crash. The real culprit was the lose money polices of the FED in the early 20s; something that even Bernanke owned up and admitted was the case. The FED has had a pitiful record when it comes to actual stabilization of the economy and has, through its polices, created far more recessions and depressions then ever occurred under the sound money system of the 1800s. I believe I counted a total of 27 shallow, moderate and deep recessions, including 2 moderate depressions and of course the Great Depression. In the 1800s there were only 5 notable “panics”.
You neglect one cardinal point that apparently few people recognize or understand and that is the entire fiat monetary system is completely collateralized by debt making debt the asset upon which the complete monetary and economic system rests. Every single dollar in circulation, whether digital or physical, has been borrowed into existence. All growth within the economy is totally sustained by the expansion [inflation] of the money supply and the money supply is totally dependent upon the equal expansion of debt. The debt is irreversible and because on top of the principle debt an interest obligation is attached, the debt must continually be multiplied exponentially. Now, I could provide the equations to show that under such a system there is a mathematical termination point, but I will simply explain what is happening with the system at the present.
Since Nixon cut all ties between our fiat currency and the underlying commodity specie, the system must totally rely upon the creation of credit/debt for its viability and economic sustainability. The problem arises when the system begins, as it has, to reach its practical possible lifespan where the debt becomes so huge that it begins to require more service than the economy can actually produce in growth. Due to the multiplication of the debt, which includes the periodic principle and periodic interest, the debt, as we are now seeing is expanding far faster than the rate of economic growth. Eventually, the entire system will reach what can be called it’s maximum possible lifespan or terminal point where it reaches the point that all profitability within the economy begins to be siphoned off by the service requirements of the debt [principle and interest] and the economy will no longer be able to tolerate even minor disruptions, such, as we have seen, small interest rate increases. At one time, the economy could sustain much higher disruptions and keep growing; that is no longer the case and it now struggles to maintain itself.
We are in a classic Catch 22 because we must expand the money supply to keep the economy going, but by expanding it we hasten the day when the debt demands much more service from the economy then the economy can provide. Everything that is built upon this system will suffer the same fate as the system itself. We tend to hear politicians state that we are yoking our children and grand children with a massive debt; unfortunately it is not that simple or pretty. The truth is that our children and grand children will only be left with the broken pieces of a society crushed by system that will break down everything we now know and recognize as society. Everything we know, everything we now trust in is built upon a system with an inherent terminal point where the entire system collapses under the weight of the debt that it relies on for its existence. All investments, currencies, pensions, insurances, government programs, IRAs, 401ks, mortgage securities, etc., everything we know that makes our society what it is today will follow the fate of this monetary system.
Under such a fiat system the outcome is completely unavoidable; it continued existence is a mathematical impossibility. It would require a complete reversal of mathematical law in order for it to continue perpetually and that is impossible.
Now, concerning Ron Paul’s position on interventionism, I would suggest you read a very good book that was just published titled A Shattered Peace about the Treaty of Versailles and why we are, after almost 100 years, still paying the price for our intervention into WWI. There is a great deal of difference between isolationism and non-interventionism. Ron Paul, contrary to many of the comments, is not an isolationist, but he is most definitely a non-interventionist. For the last 109 years this country has intervened in over 200 countries around the world; the question is has it made us any safer or produced results that could actually be considered in the best interest of the American People or this nation. Most of the beneficiaries have been big business, from the Sugar Magnates during our intervention into Cuba, Central America and the Philippines during the Spanish-American War to the build up of the military “contractors” that started to become wealthy from war during WWI. If you look at the results of those interventions you will quickly see that the consequences of those interventions still cause of many problems we are contending with today.
In WWI, before the U.S. entered the war, both sides of the conflict were drained of resources, tired of the war, which was growing extremely unpopular and both sides were ready to sue for peace until the U.S. entered. With our entry the power was shifted and there was a victory declared over the enemy and with that victory, the harshest reparations were imposed and were meant to humiliate the Germans in particular. The Treaty of Versailles and its severe harshness set the stage for the rise of Hitler. Hitler, by the way, had a policy of intervention without respect to the national sovereignty of other nations, so did Japan; how were their intervention any different as seen from the nations they invaded then from the ones we either invade or “set-up” bases by “invitation”? The former Soviet Union had a policy of intervention, remember Afghanistan? What was different? Could it be that we actually think we have a right to do it and other nations don’t? That is perhaps one of the most idiotic ideas of all time and stems from a self-righteousness that will betray us eventually, actually it already has!
Had we not entered WWI, the world would be a totally different place. Hitler would have never been able to gain popularity or power; millions would not have died, including 6 million Jews. Without the death of the European Jews, Israel would have never been imposed on the Muslim countries of the Middle East. The Soviet Union would have never gained control over Eastern Europe and the artificial borders within many countries of the Middle East would have been totally different. Iraq, for instance, would not have existed in its present form; neither would Iran or a number of other countries.
Interventionism is a dangerous game and unfortunately we don’t have the foresight to understand that such dangerous actions can and usually do affect our future in ways that are beyond our comprehension.
There is another extremely important thing that we need to seriously consider about our intervention into the various regions of the world. There are other nations that may wish to begin imposing the same policy as we now do. There are a number of countries that may begin to intervene to “protect” their “interests” just as we have, will we condemn them for their actions when we are doing the same thing? China may wish to put bases in Mexico; Russia may think that it is in its national interest to put bases in Canada? Based upon the mentality that says we must intervene, establish bases in other countries I would assume that those who hold such views would also think it would be fine for other countries to do the same. If we think we have that right then it must be an international right as well, otherwise our policies are based upon something other than logic and reason.
Comment by Republicae — 12/19/2007 @ 2:03 pm