Terrorism does not unleash power destructive enough to overturn our social system but enough to maintain constant pressure.

Terror increases people’s desire for security at the expense of their desire for change.

Now, I know there are good and decent people that support Ron Paul as a candidate. And to be fair, I know that Paul has not espoused the kind of views that one sees at the extremist websites.
However, the fact that he is getting so much support from those quarters is disturbing to me.

http://www.whitecivilrights.com/

http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php/ron-paul-revolution-d-c-388512p400.html

http://www.whitecivilrights.com/the-%e2%80%9cchosen-ones%e2%80%9d-have-chosen-%e2%80%93hillary_957.html

http://www.davidduke.com/general/clear-media-conspiracy-against-ron-paul_2126.html

First, just because a candidate says what we might want to hear about Iraq does not mean that, if by some chance he/she were elected, he/she could effect the changes he/she claims to promise. In short: Talk is cheap.

Then there’s this from today’s Talking Points Memo — god, this guy sounds like the nutjobs in Western Washington state who are convinced the black helicopters are coming and that the United Nations is going to take over the land in our national parks:

Ron Paul puts his nuttiness in print

Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-Texas) presidential campaign had a pretty good week. Paul announced that he raised $5 million in the third quarter, which not only stunned the political world, it put him on par with GOP heavyweights like John McCain in the race for campaign funding. It’s difficult to dismiss a guy as a “fringe” candidate on a “quixotic” quest when he’s able to demonstrate this kind of support.

But it’s incredibly easy to dismiss a guy as “nutty” when he writes bizarre, hand-written letters about a U.N.-takeover of the world.

Brendan Nyhan received a fundraising letter from Paul, in which the candidate insisted that American sovereignty is hanging by a thread.

[...]

[From Paul's handwritten letter] The world’s elites are busy forming a North American Union. If they are successful, as they were in forming the European Union, the good ‘ol USA will only be a memory. We can’t let that happen.

The UN also wants to confiscate our firearms and impose a global tax. The UN elites want to control the world’s oceans with the Law of the Sea Treaty. And they want to use our military to police the world.

TPM goes on:

… [I]t is, as Kevin put it, “Unabomber-esque.”

Listening to the debates, Paul often comes across as the most sensible guy on the stage, especially when it comes to Iraq and the Patriot Act. And then we’re reminded, in print, that when it comes to a paranoid vision of the world, Paul really is out there on the political periphery.

I’m outta here.

Warning! Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!

And then Bill Keyes writes: I have always been a supporter of Pat Buchanan and a lot of other libertarians

[further comment unnecessary]

You live in a place of comfort in this world. I have little doubt that you are secure, possibly in a gated community, but certainly in a suburban environment. You have the position and assets to provide you with all you need, and probably an ability to throw the occasional splurge on high-end electronic equipment or a mid-life crisis convertible.

You have a high level of self-assurance that if only you were in a place of importance, you could improve the world with your erudition and eloquence. You would make a good member of the current administration.

But you have no idea what it is like to grow up poor and unpropertied and desperate. And I admit that I don’t either. I live on several acres in north Scottsdale, Arizona, and have known little want in my 51 years.

What you lack is empathy. What you lack is an appreciation for what drives a man to crime. What drives a man to abandon a woman who bore his children. What you lack is a world view which includes absent fatherhood and the likelihood of prison time as a part of your life and future. When all about you are living by rules honed by contingency, you will adopt those rules yourself.

You don’t know those rules. You also have no idea what to do to change those rules, or to redirect contingency.

You rightly criticize the Great Society for simply throwing money at the problem and creating a cycle of dependency. But you offer no alternative but to toss the dependents into ever-deeper poverty and into the shadows of American history.

You would, given the power, have the poor returned to slavery.

For that is now where we find the most desperately poor, abandoned by city, state and federal governments, and virtually abandoned by their fellow Americans. While you demand that they pull themselves up by their bootstraps, they ask, “What bootstraps?” In some deeply poor communities, the best bootstraps to which they can attach themselves is a life of crime, of selling illegal drugs to each other and to our wayward youth, of pimping and whoring, of robbing and burgling. Given all of our economic problems, we are at full employment, so some of us must look elsewhere for a living.

While we establish enterprise zones and pour government resources into well-established and politically-connected corporations, the individuals who could more benefit from small loans and grants to establish small, legal businesses providing neighborhood services within and outside of their communities, such as construction, maintenance, landscaping, restaurant and retail businesses, among others, go wanting.

It takes motivation to establish a criminal enterprise. If we can somehow harness that sense of enterprise and direct it to legal small businesses, we could not only reduce the number of former slaves (and my own family owned and raised slaves in Bibb County, Alabama, in antebellum days) dependent on government money, and keep more people out of prison.

But what the hell do I know? I’ve been raised in a privileged environment like you.

I’m very much interested, in a pathological sense, in your plan to deal with illegal immigration.

Why the GOP Must Nominate Ron Paul by Joe
http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_114454.asp

I wrote the author an email and he responded back with comments on my points.

Any of you let me know what you think………

Odd numbers are my points

Even numbers are his replies

Dear Bill,

Thanks for your message about my article. I’m glad you found it worth your time to read. Please feel free to share it with your friends….

1. As a life long Democrat I agree with your article. Hillary will win the nomination, but you need to know something from our side of the aisle. Hillary will not be able to unify the Democrats going into Nov 2008 for a very simple reason “Its the war stupid”. Whatever you think of the “progressive antiwar branch of the Democratic” we are so pissed at her and the Congressional Democratic leadership for bending over and giving Bush everything he wanted to keep the war going that we will probably vote for Rep Ron Paul or not vote at all.

2. Sounds good to me! Of course he has to get the nomination first. You might consider changing your registration (if necessary, depending on your state) and voting in the Republican primary to help Ron win. You can always go back to voting on the D side later. But this is perhaps a once in a lifetime chance to cross party lines and do the right thing.

3. Contrary to what you might think all Democrats are not “left wing crazed hippies” just as I don’t believe all Republicans are right wing neocons. For one I have always been a supporter of Pat Buchanan and a lot of other libertarians

4..I wouldn’t exactly call him a libertarian. Maybe a paleoconservative?

5..who have similiar beliefs that I do like a more balanced distribution of our taxes, no imperial expansion in our foreign policy, more control of Fed dollars by the states, etc

6..How about leaving the dollars with the people in the various states to start with, so they won’t have to filter through a giant bureaucracy before being (inequitably) redistributed?

7..After a good discussion with a Republican friend of mine several years ago he said you are really a conservative Democrat. He was right.

8..You sound like one to me….

9..I believe a significant reason for the polarization in this country is fringe elements on both sides. Let me ask you.. does Rush Limbaugh really speak to your beliefs or does Pat Buchanan.

10..Neither. But Ron Paul does, almost 100%.

11..Here is my take on the 2008 elections.
I believe it will be Hillary vs Rudy.

12..In that case we lose big time, either way. Might be time to start looking at New Zealand….

13..You may not like Rudy

14..Oh, goodness, he’s the most awful candidate of either party. He might turn out to be even worse than Bush. If those are the choices next November I’ll either vote for the Libertarian candidate or shoot myself in the head (before the winner takes all my guns away).

15..but from my perspective he will have a much better chance than any of the others regardless of his background of multiple wives etc.

16..I don’t think so. And gosh I hope not. I’d literally rather have Hillary than a fascist like Rudy, and that is saying something, ’cause I really can’t stand her.

17..So I don’t think you have anything to fear.

16..I don’t just fear Hillary, I fear all of the big-government, socialist/fascist candidates on both sides of the aisle. Rudy winning would be even worse than Hillary, and Romney, McCain, or Thompson would be only minutely better. The country continues its slide downhill into oblivion in any case. It’s Ron Paul or we are really in bad shape.

17..Remember Bush got more votes in 2004 than 2000, so I say the math is simple to the Democrats “where are your votes going to come from, disgruntled Republicans?” The only reason that people switch parties is that they think the other one is going to be different on some key issues like the war in Iraq. So if you and I assume many other conservatives are fed up with the war, why would you vote for Hillary or for that matter any of the so called leading Democrats./ Answer simple you wouldn’t.

18..You wouldn’t vote for Hillary … but you might stay home or vote third party in disgust. If Ron Paul doesn’t win the GOP nomination you will see much increased vote totals for the Libertarian, Constitution, and/or Green Party candidates as people voice disgust with both “major” parties.

19..So I believe that it is almost impossible for the Republicans to lose the WH in 2008.

20..Then they better darn sure nominate Ron Paul, because any of the other R (or D) candidates would be a complete disaster for the country.

21..As for Congress, the Democrats won because the anti-war progressive base worked their asses off and believed that if the Dems were in control of Congress something would be done to end, stop, slow down or whatever the “War In Iraq”. In 2008 i believe the Republicans winning the WH will easily regain control of the Senate and quite possibly the House or at least close the gap.

22..I doubt it. But, if Hillary wins, I hope you are right. If any Republican besides Ron Paul wins, then I hope the Democrats keep control of Congress. Sometimes a divided government and stalemate is the best you can hope for.

23..It of course it didn’t happen so we feel betrayed. However the Dem leadership believes we will all come together again to unite behind their nominee (pr0bably Hillary) and get them the WH.
AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN!
So continue to push for Dr. Paul and maybe he could at least get on the ballot in a lot of states,

24…Well, if he wins the GOP nomination I am pretty sure he will be on all 50 plus DC. If not, he will have to decide whether to run as a third party or independent candidate. He could have the LP and CP nominations for the asking, but I don’t know if he would want to go that route.

25..because I can guarantee many millions of us on our side of the aisle would vote for him. I don’t care whether he is a Republican, Dem, Green,, blue red or what. He is the absolute ONLY candidate speaking to ANY of the issues.

26…Well, actually, there is one other candidate doing that: Kucinich. He is speaking to the issues, much more so than any other Democrat … I like his position on Iraq, but I don’t like his socialist answers to domestic policy questions.

Here’s to Ron Paul gaining more traction and winning this thing!

Joe

“Moynihan says that the growing numbers of single-parent families is at the heart of many problems facing black society:

“Broken homes hinder educational achievement. According to Moynihan, children from homes where fathers are present do significantly better in school than those from female-headed families. The average intelligence score for the former group is 7.04 points higher. Boys from broken homes in particular experience greater academic difficulties than those in families with both parents present.

“Moynihan says that black academic difficulties are also revealed by performance on the Armed Forces Qualification Test. This test measures the ability to perform at a 7th or 8th grade level, and 56% of blacks fail it — a rate 4 times that of whites. The military not only represents job opportunities for blacks, but is the ‘only experience’ which assures equal treatment with whites.

“Broken homes increase isolation, crime. Moynihan says that poverty, educational failure, and broken families combine to produce the ‘disastrous’ delinquency and crime rates among U.S. blacks. He cites research by Eleanor and Sheldon Glueck, who found that relatively more delinquent teens come from broken homes. The Gluecks find that maternal supervision, maternal discipline and family cohesiveness together predict 85% of the variation in youth crime.

“In 1960, blacks constituted 33% of all youth in juvenile institutions. The arrest rate of blacks is also higher than for whites — as much as 50% of all urban arrests are black suspects. However, Moynihan notes that blacks are arrested and arraigned more ‘casually’ than are whites. Black crime harms the black community both by reducing productivity and by the effect on victims, most of whom are also black.”

The very sad fact is that the black nuclear family has been utterly shattered since the federal government began to subsidize the production of illegitimate children. If you doubt anything at all that I have sais on this subject, I suppose I would suggest that you begin by reading the extensive works of neo-fascist Daniel Patrick Moynihan on the topic. I can refer you to it, but I can’t read it for you.

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I’d seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?

As I went walking, I saw a sign there;
And on the sign there, it said, ‘No Trespassing.’
But on the other side; it didn’t say nothing!
That side was made for you and me.

- ‘This Land is Your Land’, Woody Guthrie

Maybe that’s not what the encyclopedia says, but it’s how I see it.