24 Reasons for Liberals to Write in Ron Paul or Refuse to Vote in 2012

By Progress Hawk

(A Cry for Protest/Study Guide)

CONTENTS

(NOTE: The Chapters are also divided into seperate posts which can be individually accessed on the right column)

Introduction

#1 – Why I am a “Liberal”

#2 – There is no Lesser of Two Evils

#3 – Ron Paul is not a “Republican”

#4 – Ron Paul is the Only One Who Cares about the Poor

#5 – Ron Paul Has the Most Progressive Tax Policy

#6 – Nobody is a Greater Threat to Big Business and The FED

#7 – Ron Paul Wants Real Healthcare for All

#8 – Ron Paul is Hip to Alternative Medicine and Organic Foods

#9 – Libertarianism, Socialism, Capitalism and Other Isms

#10 – Ron Paul is Not the Tea Party, and Neither is… The Tea Party

#11 – All of the Mainstream Media Lie, Even the Ones You Like

#12 – Ron Paul is the Most Green Candidate

#13 – Barack Obama Is Not Your Ex-Boyfriend!

#14 – Ron Paul is not Anti-Immigration and NOT and Isolationist!

#15 – Paul is NOT Racist. He Would Do More for People of Color than Obama

#16 – The Real Reasons to End the War on Drugs

#17 – Ron Paul wants Quality Education for All

#18 – Ron Paul is the best for Equal Rights

#19 – Gun Control- The Liberal’s Drug War

#20 – Let’s Get Rid of the CIA. No, Seriously…

#21 – The Government is Trying to Poison You

#22 – Don’t Be Thrown off by the Abortion Issue

#23 – Ignore His Son Rand – NOT the Same

#24 – Why Vote for Someone Who “Can’t Win?”

FAVORITE VIDEOS AND DOCUMENTARIES

Introduction

I am a life-long self-identified liberal/progressive because of how I interpret my own set of values. In the end it’s just a meaningless label that has no real consistency throughout history. Many do not realize that there is a strong anti-war tradition in the republican party, and it is also the party that ended slavery, so in the end, who cares which “side” the correct ideas come from, as long as they are the correct ideas? The-two party system of today is actually under the control of the corporate establishment and it’s used to manipulate the public into fighting against each other, while supporting the same militaristic corporate agenda. Through the uses of televised debates and propaganda, this is part of an age old divide -and-conquer strategy, essentially designed to confuse us, and it has remained very effective over these last decades, mostly by creating the illusion of choice.

The purpose of this essay is to explain in bullet-point why I believe that Ron Paul best serves all of my core values as a liberal. I will explain exactly why his initiatives and proposals make him the most progressive candidate running for president, even though he identifies his value system from a conservative stand point (which he only means in the oldest traditional sense of the word -not at all what you think of as “conservative” today, and not sinister in any sense). Then I will systematically address all of the myths that most liberals believe about him, and explain exactly why you cannot believe what any of the mainstream media say about him, no matter which side it’s coming from. I will explain in detail why the establishment is so afraid of Ron Paul and intent on destroying him, why there is absolutely no difference between voting for Romney and voting for Obama, and that the only way to stop the war machine, drastically reduce poverty, get healthcare to those who lack it and protect our environment, is to not vote at all in 2012, or write in Ron Paul.

I know those are very difficult pills to swallow or come to terms with because for years I believed in the -lesser of two evils- argument. I liked Ron Paul in 2008, but I was overwhelmed with my hate for neocons like Bush/Cheney and McCain/Palin, Romney etc, but what I’ve learned is that there’s no real difference. I know it’s almost impossible to imagine that Obama himself is actually a neocon, but I beg you to please hear me out and do your best to approach the information I’m going to share with an open mind. The truth is that Obama, much to my own disappointment, is just as dangerous and destructive as George W. Bush, and Ron Paul is in fact the next JFK. That’s right… A “republican” is the John F. Kennedy of our generation, as strange as that sounds.

At the end I will provide a list of the most fascinating and important, freely available videos and documentaries available online that will challenge the way you think and direct you to a world of resources that you can investigate analyze and judge for yourself. Let me make it clear that this is a badly written INFORMAL essay. Yes I will use all caps to illustrate my tone and I don’t care if that’s annoying. There will be spelling and grammar issues, sloppy sentences, and it probably isn’t 100% accurate. But there is enough truth to what I’ll share to make it worthy of consideration. Sorry I didn’t start this a year earlier.

I’m not going to bother citing all of my claims in this essay, but if you have questions about any of the specifics, I will be happy to engage in discussions and back up any points with sources and documentation to the best of my ability. Pretty much everything will be covered in the numerous links that I’ll be providing though, and we all have the tools to do our own research, as long as the internet is protected that is…

Let’s get started.

#1 – Why I am a “Liberal”

First, a quick explanation about why I consider myself a liberal. Actually, I don’t like that term anymore, because too many liberals, I’ve learned, are very -liberal- about where they stand on the issues. I voted for Obama to END the wars, end warrantless wire tapping, stop the torture and secret prisons, stop the hugely destructive and racist drug war, get healthcare to everyone, and, most of all, hold the big bankers and CEOs on Wall Street accountable for destroying this country with their massive fraud, because that’s exactly what they did. Obama has done none of that, and I hear too many Liberals say things like “well, we can’t just leave Iraq and Afghanistan,’ and we can’t have actual universal healthcare.” Where did all of the fire go? What about change? What about “yes we can?” Guess we can’t?

So, that’s what I’ve come to understand as “liberal.” I usually stick to the word progressive, because what I tend to philosophically value the most is progress with regard to social issues such as equal rights. Things like gender equality, marriage equality and racial equality are very important to me. But I’m not interested in new “programs” or PC propaganda paid for by our taxes. Those approaches do nothing. I’m interested in addressing social problems at their root, namely by ending the war on drugs along with the structural oppression of our monetary system, which is tremendously unfair to people of color and enhances our socially crippling racial divide.

I am strictly anti-war. Not pretend anti-war… Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing but gratitude for the soldiers who put their lives on the line for our country, but the fact that so many are willing to do that just makes the abuse of their sacrifice so much more unforgivable in my view. Nobody’s sons or daughters should be sent to fight and die in a banksters war. War is a geo-political profit machine and has nothing to do with our freedom, our safety or 9/11 (even remotely). It never did. Period. Everyone knows this now, even if they’re in denial about it, or turning a blind eye with the rest of the public.

I also care deeply about the environment and I believe very firmly that we are destroying the planet very rapidly with all of our inefficiencies, which are inevitable in our current system. I don’t care what anyone believes about global warming. By the end of this you’ll see why that entire discussion has become largely irrelevant and a distraction to the point. The planet is in serious danger and something needs to be done. The question is what. It’s a very complicated and important discussion, but willful ignorance and emotional defensiveness will not get us anywhere. I want whatever will best address the problem, not what is “intended’ to address it, or more likely, just another profit scheme under the “green” label.

Poverty is the other biggy and sort of an all encompassing matter and it’s important to note that as a principle I do not blame poverty on the poor, and neither does Ron Paul as you will find out. Like Paul, I blame it on the system that perpetuates it and is tilted to favor the top 1%. I want whatever policies will bring the most progress to these areas, no matter what party or label they are associated with because you will see that it means nothing.

#2 -There is No Lesser of Two Evils. Your Vote does NOTHING.

One of my liberal friends asked me if I’m a republican now because I’m voting for Ron Paul; an alarming assumption. You are what you eat, not what you vote. Would you vote for Joe Liberman just because he’s a “democrat”? Another friend accused me of going too far when I stated that under Obama we got four more years of Bush. My immediate thought was: how many more wars do we have to start before you “moderates” get angry?

Then I remembered that almost all of my liberal friends get their information from TV news and corporate media such as the New York Times (the few who still read things). These people have been told repeatedly that Obama is “withdrawing” our military forces and has a “timetable” for ending our involvement, which is pure comedy as far as I’m concerned, considering the fact that we have an embassy the size of the Vatican in Iraq. It’s also become clear that most people don’t even have the slightest clue how many countries we’re actually fighting in today, because I get a blank stare whenever I ask the question.

Since we don’t like to follow the constitution, we don’t need a declaration of war to actually engage in it, and we haven’t since WW2. So, we can be fighting and dying and killing with our troops in a country and engaging in acts of war with sanctions, no fly zones, drone attacks, deadly raids and so on, without even technically being at war with them. The real question is: how many countries are we fighting and killing in with our military forces? The truth is that we’re currently fighting about 8 different countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Korea, Lybia, Yemen, now across the continent of Africa, and by the time I finish writing this, we’ll be bombing Syria too, while provoking a number of others, such as Iran. Not to mention the other 120 countries where we have bases and personnel… What do you think we’re doing in all of these places? Are we just over there being non-isolationists?

What we weren’t told by the corporate media about the big “draw down” is that the 50,000 troops Obama withdrew from Iraq were immediately sent to Afghanistan for another Bush-like “surge,” and then replaced by 100,000 private military contractors, to protect military bases, business operations, and carry out deadly missions in heavy combat zones. So what we have is not only a continuation of the Bush Doctrine (to occupy the entire middle east, controlling all regions with oil and other valuable resources creating terrorists in the process), but it’s also an escalation of the same neo-colonial agenda under Obama. It’s just being done under the use of different language by those who can manipulate the national discussion. Some say this is the necessary cost of war, which is easy when it isn’t their family’s faces being blown off, but I’m preaching to the choir about this, right? I just don’t know about that anymore. Through Obama, the powers that be have successfully neutered the anti-war movement. The war machine is alive and well, and is not going to be ending with the lives of more soldiers and civilians.

On a strictly domestic level though, how many things about your life are actually different today than they were 6-8 years ago? Can you name one thing? I can’t. My healthcare still sucks, but I am one of the few among my peers who are lucky enough to have I, and gas is too expensive, but this is beside the point. Exactly where is your participation occurring and how has your vote influenced anything that’s happened in this country? Did we vote for the military escalations? Did we vote for the bailout, which transferred wealth from the poor to the top 1% (who ironically like to sling the word socialism around)? Did we vote for their six-figure bonuses while families around the country lost everything? Did we vote for the Federal Reserve to give upwards of $13 trillion to these institutions, to get them out of the mess they created, instead of fixing the country and helping all of the victims their crime?

During one of this year’s primary debates, Ron Paul stated that if we were going to give someone money, it should have been the people who lost their jobs and houses. Could any liberal possibly disagree with that? Plus, I thought we voted to punish these assholes in 2008, but there has not been one single criminal conviction among the largest financial institutions and nobody on Wall Street has been held accountable for their actions, nor have any of the war criminals of the previous administration. This is not what I voted for. In fact everything I was screaming about under Bush, from unwarranted wiretapping and secret prisons, to privatized war and third-party healthcare, are the exact same problems that I’m screaming about today. We’re still spending billions on these wars, while people at home are dying from illnesses they can’t afford to treat, and our civil liberties are being systematically destroyed every single day. How did this happen and why are so many people going along with this?

I suppose it’s because anyone who’s trying to pay attention is distracted by wedge issues; emotional topics that are used arbitrarily in an effort to divide and distract, such as gay marriage and abortion. They keep our country teetering back and forth on surface according to the public’s mood during election seasons, while they do whatever the hell they want to behind the scenes and push forward their corporate/military agenda. This is called a Plutocracy; the real social system that we live under. Both parties are owned by corporate/military interests and the people in power do what they want. This country is run by the oil industry. Not our elected government and certainly not our president. Our votes do nothing to affect what actually happens so this is not a democracy, and you are not free if the government has the legal authority to spy on you or arrest you without due process, hold you for as long as they see fit without access to a lawyer, torture you and even assassinate you, acting as the judge, jury and executioner.

These conditions should terrify us because of how easy it is to abuse authority. In any free society, innocent prisoners should at the very least have the ability to appeal their detention because of how often mistakes are made. What if you were somehow mistaken for a terrorist, or just labeled as one by someone who saw you as a personal threat? That possibility should not exist, because we already know that absolute power corrupts absolutely. The government should fear the people and be under their control. Not the other way around. But we are moving farther away from this under Obama, who recently signed the indefinite detention act.

Obama was hand selected by the corporate elite as the “viable option for the left” (who they can control) based on the temperament of society at the time. We needed someone seemingly opposite from Bush, while his entire campaign was financed by Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and other culprits of the largest corporate fraud in history, which resulted in the greatest economic disaster of our time. These are also THE SAME top contributors to Romney, and they financed Bush as well, so it’s all coming from the same place and serving the same interests. There is no real difference of any consequence between mainstream candidates.

Whenever I get into the -lesser of two evils- argument with liberals, it always comes back to what the president can’t do. I list off all of the problems we still have, and they say “well, we can’t expect the president to do everything.” Without going into the sheer hypocrisy over liberal outrage towards the Bush administration, I say, “That’s true. But he IS the commander and chief. He absolutely can bring all of our troops home tomorrow, and do a complete 180 on foreign policy, and that is just one very radical thing the president can do that would spit in the face of corporatism, with overwhelming public support.” Then they say, “well, if he did something that radical he’d get assassinated.” And I say, BINGO. You’ve just made an enlightening admission.

Yes, the president faces assassination if he does not play ball, so in that sense he IS powerless, and nobody can make it into office without getting their hands dirty and being corrupt on some level. I probably hear that argument more often than any other, to which I ask, “why would you participate in something like that? That isn’t freedom or a democracy. It’s an oppressive dictatorship disguised as a democracy, where the two corporatist parties have full control over the electoral process. So why aren’t you protesting, rather than participating in a scam, and voting for someone who HAS TO serve the military industrial complex instead of the people? You know the same things will happen either way, so why would you support that?

Maybe D stands for DEFEATIST, not democrat. If you admit that we can and should do better for ourselves, but will do the opposite at gun point, that is exactly what you are, and you should be ashamed. Arguing the lesser of two evils with a full understanding of how bad things are, means we’re just supposed to shut up and have our rights trampled by the military, food and medical industrial complexes, along with the wholesale destruction of our environment (all of which we will be discussing ahead), JUST because some stuff is being shifted around on the surface, and that’s just the way it is. This is a cowardly position.

On the other hand if you actually believe that a Romney or an Obama can do some good, I would strongly disagree, but I respect that position (at least with regard to Obama;) a lot more than I do someone who will participate in something that they know is wrong. I think many liberals DO understand what’s going on. Now it’s time for them to embrace that understanding and come to terms with it so we can rise together take our country back.

In my list of films there is a free documentary called “The Obama Deception” which provides a very thorough and non-partisan analysis of the way Obama was used by big businesses to trick the public into advancing the same agenda they had under Bush. I will leave this discussion here and now go back to Ron Paul.

FIRST A DISCLAIMER: Many of you will be dismissive of my last reference because the filmmaker is Alex Jones, who is generally hated by the left and considered a right wing conspiracy nut-job. I’m not a fan of Alex Jones or his mindset either. But hysteria aside, there are qualities about him that would surprise you, such as the fact that he’s a big Ralph Nader supporter. He also considers JFK “our last real president,” and was more outspoken against the Bush administration than Michael Moore. While I don’t like most of Jones’ documentaries, “The Obama Deception” was exceptionally well done, and it’s not what you would imagine. It’s a very subjective a-political look at how Obama was used by the establishment to manipulate us and keep everything the same. It’s not about hating Obama himself and I recommend it to anyone who plans to vote for him again.

Another one of my favorite documentaries is about Alex Jones and his associated “truth movement” is “IFC’s New World Order,” which takes an outsider’s look at what they’re activism is all about. What you’ll see is a very different picture than the one that’s painted by the media and, like them or not, one thing is very clear: they have a stronger anti-war movement than ANY left-wing I’m currently aware of, and they could make useful allies to those who want to see REAL changes our foreign and monetary policy. Like I said, I’m not a fan of Jones, or a part of his club, and I often disagree with his rhetoric. But if you really care about change, I would urge you to withhold your full judgment about groups like his until watching both of these films. Their materials do offer some nuggets of value.

What Democracy?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTbLslkIR2k

Obama Deception: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAaQNACwaLw

IFC’s New World Order: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy9e1AIEc1E

Hip Hop Legend KRS-One on Obama: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmuuPSKbdfE

#3 – Ron Paul is not a “Republican”

Nothing drives me crazier than when liberals say they agree with RP’s foreign policy (bullshit-cough), but he’s just as crazy as all the other republicans on other issues, so we better still vote for Obama. I was a long time fan of Bill Maher (who is actually a big admirer of Paul’s, and helped boost his initial craze in mainstream), until I heard him say those exact words, citing his stances on federal regulation. Then one of his liberal guests jumped in and added that some liberals think Paul’s ideas are appealing because of his foreign policy, but they should realize that a lot of what he says comes from a “hateful” place, as he mocked him for stating that the Civil War was unnecessary. The implication was of course that Paul is a racist Southern right winger, who wouldn’t mind if we still had slavery. Instead of discussing his real position on the matter –that we should have been able to end slavery without a war, as other countries did, and that it was actually just another profit war- they changed the subject right after bringing it up; a cowardly smear from his guest and a disappointingly passive response from Maher (haven’t watched him since…).

Nothing could be more untrue than this propagated idea that Paul’s foreign policy views are the only ones that can appeal to liberals (not that they truly believe in them anyway, as it turns out). His stances on EVERYTHING from federal regulation to healthcare, education and immigration reform, are as different from those of the other “republicans” as night and day. He wants THE OPPOSITE OF TRICKLE DOWN economics.

The reason people don’t realize this is because of the language he often uses, which they only hear in sound-bites. Ron Paul is trying to transform the republican party back into what they were supposed to be once upon a time (which is wise because convincing liberals SHOULD be the easy part), and explains his positions from a conservative point of view, so a lot of the language is frightening to liberals when taken out of context.

To better understand the distinctions between Ron Paul and the establishment republicans (otherwise known as “neo-cons”), let’s begin with Bill Maher’s statement that he’s “just as crazy as the others,” because of his views on big government and more regulation; that they are actually what create the problems in our society.

When Ron Paul says the words “Big Government,” he’s actually talking about BIG BUSINESS. When he talks about the evils of “Federal Regulation,” he is referring to CORPORATE LOOPHOLES, because big business controls the federal government through lobbying, calling all of the shots on all of the bills, essentially creating the so-called regulations themselves. What the OTHER republicans mean when they talk about “big government” and “regulation,” is that they want big businesses (AKA their political sponsors) to be allowed to continue their evil practices and profit motivated abuses without interference from the federal government on behalf of the people, while they continue to work hand-in-hand with the government in order to perpetuate this system which favors them. Ron Paul is actually talking about getting the government out of bed with the evil, giant, too-big-to-fails once and for all, so small businesses can finally have a chance to thrive in an entirely different type of economy.

Another bit of language that freaks most liberals out is the idea of “letting the market self-regulate.” Of course this sounds like what the other republicans advocate: allowing big businesses to do what they want without any legal consequences. But it actually means the exact opposite. There are very strict and key regulations under the market such as full transparency. You also can’t commit fraud or destruction of person or property. In fact it’s the involvement of the federal government in business that allows institutions to override these rules and creates the morally hazardous conditions. This is because regulations are NOT what you think they are. Basically they are entire books, with hundreds and sometimes thousands of pages of caveats and fine print that no person or business could ever interpret without a team of expensive researchers to make sure all of the rules are being adhered to.

All this does is give the largest corporations the competitive advantage, because they are the only ones who can afford such teams. Without these so-called regulations, small businesses that use ethical practices would actually have a chance in Hell to fight back and compete with places like Wal-Mart. These executives have government insiders who design the “regulations” that will cater to their interests, and then the lobbyists simply buy the votes to get the right ones passed. Now do you see why thinking that government regulation is a bad thing, isn’t always a bad thing? A legitimate regulation would be summed up in just a few sentences or pages, for EVERYONE to adhere to, without any special privileges or loopholes to be exploited by ANYONE. Anything less should be considered fraudulent.

The libertarian theory behind the uncomfortable sounding “market regulation” argument is supposed to be that once you end the marriage between The Government and Big Business (what Ron Paul defines as “Big Government,”) everyone including the major corporations actually become ACCOUNTABLE for crimes such as FRAUD and destruction to person and property, although many libertarians get confused about this, as Paul often notes, and fall into the right-wing ideologies we despise so much: “let big business do what it wants”. When big business is controlling the government, it essentially allows them to get away with anything, with BEACAUSE of regulations. If they happen to go bankrupt because they misbehaved or gambled our money away, the government will use more of our money to bail them out, regardless of how unpopular and unconstitutional that is. Thanks regulations! Good thing we voted.

In a libertarian or “free society,” as Ron Paul defines it, corporations could not have business relationships with the government at all so there would be no such thing as lobbying. Furthermore, regulations would not allow corporations to operate without transparency. This is key because transparency is what keeps businesses honest, and forces prices of goods and services down through legitimate competition, guided by the will of the consumers. Note that this would actually make it easier for us to get companies on the side of socially conscious, environmentally friendly, strictly organic types of objectives (which are actually effective). But we don’t have transparency, and we should be up in arms about this.

Did you know that it’s impossible to get a price or quote for any medical treatment from a hospital because of insurance regulations? They won’t tell you a thing in advance. They’ll say “come in so we give you an unnecessary exam, and if insurance won’t pay for it, we’ll bill you as much as we want to for the visit and/or treatment because there’s no way for the public to access or scrutinize our internal costs. Can you name any other service you would sign off on a purchase without access to the price? It’s CRIMINAL to operate this way.

If transparency is once again a requirement of the market system, the big nasty corporations won’t be able to get away with committing mass fraud like have been for decades, and in theory, and the Enrons of the world couldn’t even exist. The people would actually be able to hold a company liable, or put them out of business via winnable lawsuits, boycotts and demonstrations. NOT get forced to bail out that institution that harmed them. The abusive corporations would simply self destruct or be forced to shape up immediately. Interesting way to look at it, no? Corporations wouldn’t even be able to get away with polluting because that is destruction of person and property, and the government regulations wouldn’t be there to protect them from the people, who would now essentially be controlling the regulations, as they should.

While this approach is very deliberately mischaracterized as being friendly to big business, so the two main parties can keep fighting and never accomplish anything, these are the ways the market is thought to be a better regulator than the federal government. Regulation by the market, under Ron Paul’s definition, is regulation by the people. Not regulation by big business, and we cannot expect our big business government to protect us from big business. They are for them. Not for you.

I hope you’re starting to see why Ron Paul is not even in the same category as other republicans and shouldn’t even be associated with them or their “principles.” He’s also different from other libertarians, but I will cover that later. First, I’ll get back to the main purpose of this essay, which is to demonstrate why he supports my values as a progressive, better than any other candidate.

Paul the Anti-Neocon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADINuxdKC4A.

#4- Ron Paul is the only one who cares about the poor.

The corporate media will make you believe that he wants to take away entitlements and that he hates welfare. This is hog wash. Ron Paul wants to eliminate the need for entitlements over a 10-20 year period of redirecting war money (and we’re talking billions here) to help our poor, our sick and our dying -not to mention all of our veterans who need care, and anyone who is dependent on the system today. What an evil right winger!

Do I have to remind progressives that there was a time when a person could support an entire family on one income? Although you’ve been conditioned not to believe it, it is absolutely possible for us to return to that, with everyone included (not just white people).

Don’t buy into the absurd myth that there just aren’t enough resources for everyone to have enough, so we have to play this game where everything is too expensive, so then we’re forced to depend on entitlements and become debt slaves and wage slaves; keeping a certain percentage of the population in extreme poverty as a functional requirement.

That’s the scam that keeps the rich at the top, and abandons the other 99%. If you think that we naturally ended up in this position through legitimate competition, and the resulting conditions are just the cost of having everyone included in our open “free market,” we have some work to do.

I should correct one statement though… Ron Paul does hate welfare, but with good reason. His point about this is that welfare is designed to keep people in poverty rather than help them out of it, and we should be addressing the root causes of poverty instead of using this phony band-aid solution that enables the structural oppression and keeps things exactly the way they are: in a state of perpetual poverty, which is actually profitable to the top 1%, but that’s for a later discussion. Ron Paul is saying that nobody in any “class” should be forced into the position of having to become dependent and thereby enslaved in the system because everything’s too damn expensive and incomes are too low. We’re being conned. The system should be set up so that people are able to take care of themselves in any income bracket, because all jobs are important to our economy. What a terrible right wing ideology, huh?

So once again, Ron Paul’s point is that everyone should be able to take care of themselves and their family, whether they are high, middle or low-income workers. He does not want to rip assistance away from anyone because they’re lazy and deservingly poor, the way some other “conservatives” do. He wants to end all of our wars and use those billions of dollars to help the needy for as long as it takes. He always refers to poor people as “victims” of the corrupt system that is tilted to favor the rich. I can provide many instances of him using that exact language, including when he called out Herman Cain during the primary debates for “blaming the victims” in his remarks about the Occupy Movement. I believe Cain said “if you’re not rich, blame yourself.” Paul immediately shot back that the “victims” can’t be blamed for the conditions created by the bubble in our perverted economy.

I’ve heard Paul say that it could take decades to get rid of the need for entitlements, so don’t believe the media nonsense. He does not want to take away anyone’s existing welfare or social security and nobody has more compassion for the poor and extremely poor in this country than Ron Paul. I will provide links to some wonderful speeches he’s given about true compassion. He wants to heal the system and phase out the need for entitlements; in other words, fix poverty (not just pretend to reduce it).

Now that I’ve clarified this point, I’ll address the million dollar question. How do we get back to the system where it was possible to have one job and take care of a family, and include everyone in that system. It’s impossible right? Just a utopian fantasy, right? Wrong… The idea that we can’t return to that is an illusion created by the owners of international banking institutions that basically control everything in our country and many others (more on that ahead).

There are two things that need to happen for use to begin moving back in the direction of a thriving society, which you will never hear Obama or Romney discuss. A fundamental change in our foreign policy from corporate imperialism to true non-interventionism, so we can effectively end all of our wars and occupations for good, will be a big part of the requirement, but none of our major systemic problems in our economic and foreign policy can be corrected until we A) CORRECT THE TAX CODE, and B) AUDIT THE FEDERAL RESERVE.

#5 Ron Paul has the most progressive tax policy: END THE IRS!

The first big answer to how we get back to a world without the need for entitlements, with conditions that allow a family to survive on one income, is fixing our criminally fraudulent tax code, and what I love about this point is how simple it is. Remove the income tax (hear me out) and let EVERYONE keep 90% of their income instead of around 75% or less (often as much as a 3rd is taken -and not for what you think!). That’s right… A lot of people have proposed a so-called “flat tax,” but Ron Paul is the only one who has ever actually meant it the way it sounds. Just imagine if everyone had to pay the government exactly 10% of their income, and that’s it! Everyone is automatically at least 15% wealthier.

Progressives should love this because it essentially means the rich pay more. They physically pay a larger amount because they have a higher income, so that’s a larger sum going in, and it’s fair because EVERYONE pays an equal percentage of what they earn. No special rules or loop holes to be exploited by the rich and powerful, and no more complexity. Does anyone actually understand our tax code? It’s over 3 million words long. Remember…COMPLEXITY IS FRAUD.

We do not need an income tax. Obviously that money isn’t going towards fixing schools and streets or ending poverty -just look around. More than enough can be generated to cover all necessary government costs with corporate taxes, fees, sales taxes and consumption taxes. Countries such as Iceland have done wonders for themselves implementing this model of the flat-tax system. There’s no reason we can’t do the same and there is no reason why we actually need to touch the worker’s paycheck. There’s is also no true reason why we can’t cut spending down to what it was in the 90s; when the budget was only a third of what it is today, unless you think we have to continue fighting/expanding these wars and policing the world, but I thought liberals were against militarism…

The system we have now under both parties is OPPRESSIVE TO THE POOR and favorable to the corporate elite. It forces lower income earners to pay a higher percentage of their income and it is completely unfair.

Nothing makes my blood boil more than when these rich wall street cronies has the audacity to go on TV with a straight face and make the argument that the rich already pay more in taxes, when they know damn well that they’re also paying a lower percentage of their incomes than people with regular salaries or far less. Ron Paul constantly points this out (the evil right winger that he is) and you never see it highlighted in the mainstream news. What’s been almost equally frustrating to watch are these nitwits the media selects as “Leaders of the Occupy Movement,” who don’t even know how to argue this point.

The so-called “liberal media” (who is actually much kinder to Ron Paul than right-wing media) only focuses on how he wants to “take away entitlements” -an obviously effective and completely erroneous fear tactic. They should talk about how he wants to end the wars so we can repair and heal our system to eliminate the need for entitlements all together over the next 10-20 years. Nobody say that on CNN or MSNBC, because just like Fox News, they are owned by the same multinational corporations that makes obscene profits off of our endless wars, and that is not a conspiracy theory in any sense. You just have to be willing to do the research in order to see how the power structure was designed early on through our monetary system to perpetuate these cycles of mass poverty and global conflict, TO GENERATE BILLIONS.

But I digress in the interest of staying on point… None of the money that the IRS steals from the 99% actually goes towards fixing our roads or our schools, as I think we’ve all figured out by now. Our schools and our infrastructure continue to deteriorate very rapidly. But, here’s the thing, income taxes aren’t even supposed to be used to pay for schools and roads! Schools are paid for by property taxes. Roads and bridges, gasoline taxes, and our water and sewer systems, along with airports etc., are funded by user fees. So where does this money go if its purpose isn’t to help our country? The money goes straight back the into the treasury for military spending or whatever purpose those in power see fit, which we have no control over, or participation in. This is not a conspiracy theory either. More on the corruption of the IRS as an institution ahead…

First, now that we know how to theoretically raise everyone’s income by at least 15% in a single act of tax reform, we have to make it possible and stop out of control inflation. “Inflation is theft,” according to Paul, and the only way to reverse inflation, or bring out any type of change that will reverse the terrible course we’re on, in our own country AND in the rest of the world (believe it or not), is auditing the Federal Reserve.

#6 Nobody is a bigger threat to the Big Banks, Wall Street and The FED.

You will be shocked once you learn about the history of the Federal Reserve and how it relates to our monetary system and our government. This issue is more complicated than the answer to our tax policy, and this is also where things really start to get interesting, as almost every major social problem around the world, mass suffering and depravation, can actually be tied directly back to operations of this entity known as the FED.

The problem with the FED, which has the most immediate impact on you, is out of control inflation. It’s the reason everything is priced so astronomically and why education and medical care put people into debt. It is almost entirely the reason we are stuck in our wars, and why the world economy is self-destructing. Without the FED as it currently exists, we would be able to fill our gas tanks at just one silver dime/gallon, and bring an end to most poverty in our own country and beyond. Just imagine if every citizen was allowed to keep 90% of their hard-earned incomes, as they should, and the prices of everything were dropped down to this extent. Think we’d be a little better off? Think there would still be a need for entitlements? Is there a more compassionate solution that helps more poor people? We’ll get back to that point when we reach the Healthcare discussion.

First, let’s look at what the FED is, how it’s creating these problems/conditions, and why is it so far beyond our control. Like I said it’s a long story, but the basic explanation is that the Federal Reserve isn’t federal at all. It is not even a part of our country or our country’s government (so don’t be fooled by the name), yet it’s had full control over our government, our military, our media, our educational system, the CIA, IRS and our entire monetary system for the past 100 years, operating in complete secrecy without any accountability or auditing. This is where Ron Paul is actually in favor of more regulation because that is where it’s needed: a true medical diagnosis from an experienced physician.

The FED is in fact the arm of a giant multinational corporation known as the world bank, which owns all of the world’s largest businesses; big oil, big pharma, Coca-Cola, all of the central banks, mainstream media institutions and so on. Their Federal Reserve is more powerful than the US government because of a bill that was signed into law by Woodrow Wilson: The Federal Reserve act of 1913. This is an institution with enough influence to overrule any court or legal proceeding, and it has the ability simply decide what a car will cost the average person, for instance.

The world bank is essentially an international cartel comprised of superpower governments which work together to serve corporate interests. They hold annual meetings around the world and invite all their countries most powerful and influential figures. Even though these figures control almost everything that affects us, our economy and the geopolitical direction of our country, these meetings are top secret (research Bilderberg Group). The U.S., along with some European nations such as Great Britain, France and Israel, serves as one of the puppet governments to this global financial institution, which is under the control a criminal enterprise of trillionares: The Rothschilds, Rockefellers and the Lehmans to name a few. It began with the Rothschilds: descendents of a secretive community of goldsmiths who invented a monetary system with the structure of a pyramid scheme. They figured out that by controlling the supply of money, they can control, well, pretty much everything.

Before their system took hold, nations had the ability to issue and control their own interest-free currencies, with value that was based on how much of it was in circulation. This model drove the prices of goods and services down, encouraging productivity, and wealth poured into the middle and lower classes making the economy flourish. Everyone in society was able to thrive in this system for over 700 years in Great Britain, without accumulating any type of national debt. Nations should actually never have to go into debt and national debt just is a side effect of this corruption.

The system that the “money changers” came up with was different, and they used a practice known today as “fractional reserve lending.” In this model their institution –the central bank- issues the currency to governments at interest, to loan to their people at interest, rather than just allowing nations to issue their own interest-free money to their citizens. This allows them to finance debt and control the value of money by controlling how much of it is in circulation, and get this… They can lend out money that they don’t even possess! If we all went to the bank right now to take out everything we have, they wouldn’t be able to give it to us because, guess what… They don’t even have it! That’s because they use one person’s money to make loans to another other person at interest, and the more people (and institutions) that take out loans, the more interest is funneled back to the world bank. Money essentially becomes debt, because the only way to obtain it is to borrow from this foreign institution. Is that mildly upsetting to anybody else? This is how every major bank in this country operates today.

The reason you might not know about this is because this institution also controls what goes into our text books and media. Basically we’ve been lied to our entire lives, and 90% of what we were taught about history or economics is either false or grossly inadequate.

Not only is your money being used to make loans to other people at interest, but when the government needs to borrow large sums of money, the FED can legally print as much money as they want to in order to provide a loan, without any precious metals to back the bills. The dollars are essentially valueless and literally printed out of thin air: legal counterfeiting , made possible by the Federal Reserve Act (because there is only so much we can borrow from China at interest or steal from the tax payer to expand our empire).

Since the value of our currency is based on the amount of money that’s in circulation, all of this additional fake money being pumped into the system, drives the value of the currency down, and the prices of goods and services are forced up and voila! You have inflation that increases until the entire nation is in debt to this private foreign banking institution. Let the mass foreclosures and layoffs begin.

Towards the end of his presidency Woodrow Wilson stated the following: “I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.” – 1919.

So there you have it. Woodrow Wilson was bought. You and I were sold out. And this powerful secretive group has remained in power all of this time through the methods of bribery, assassination and false flag terrorism, meaning they stage, finance and orchestrate terrorist attacks and bombings around the world to get public support for wars that make them billions (often financing both sides to keep it going as long as possible), and laws that give them greater power by taking away freedoms, ie: governments having the legal authority to spy on citizens without any probable cause, detain anyone they want to for as long as they want, without granting the right to an attorney or any due process, and assassinate anyone they want to privately define as a “threat.” All of these things are perfectly legal in our country (“for your own protection”), so our freedom is actually an illusion as I stated earlier. What we are is complacent and ignorant, and our society remains conditioned this way, thanks to the industries and institutions they control (namely education, media, and processed food –bare with me).

Am I suggesting that 9/11 was planned by our government? Of course not. That would imply that everyone, including the president and all members of congress are involved in a conspiracy together, and everyone on the planes faked their own deaths or something to that effect, which is obviously absurd. 9/11 truthers don’t actually believe this either, and the 9/11 Truth movement has nothing to do with the idea that “our government” was behind the attacks. That “theory” was fed to the media in order to discredit the real truth about the 9/11 attacks: that it was a classic black ops mission, financed by non-public figures behind the central banking system.

It wasn’t our country or our government that was behind it, which is why I tend not to use the term “inside job.” It came from an external source, which has control over key elements of our government, such our military, and our media, all of which were used together to cover up the truth about the attacks. Not very difficult when you have trillions of dollars at your disposal. There is nothing “unpatriotic” about getting to the bottom of this. Patriotism is a fools notion and a manipulation concept anyway. A country’s government is not its people. We would not want people to be patriots under someone like Hitler, and we are not by default better than anyone who was born in a different place. But if you want to think of patriotism as caring about your country, what could be more important than investigating this in an open public manner. It does not hurt the families of the victims to talk about this either because they are pushing for new investigations harder than anyone else.

Let me make it clear that I am not a conspiracy theorist. I’m hugely skeptical and I question everything, but I’m not a blind sheep either. I don’t know if this is the same group who killed JFK, but I’m informed enough to know that every president, from Lincoln to Kennedy, who fought against this criminal empire has been assassinated.

Here is Kennedy’s speech about secret societies that likely played a part in his death –http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces. Here is an equally important speech by Dwight Eisenhower from when he was leaving office, about the dangers of the Military Industrial Complex: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY. Both speeches are absolutely chilling in many regards (although Eisenhower wasn’t killed).

So I guess this means JFK and Eisenhower where pretty paranoid, huh? I always find people amusing when they scoff at the thought of anything that could be called a –conspiracy- because the only argument I ever hear is “Oooooh, it’s a conspiracy. The government’s out to get me. Big brother’s watching, oooooh…” Hilarious, but I wonder if these hardcore “conspiracy deniers” have an actual argument against any specific theories they take issue with. Or is it just the word “conspiracy” that they’re so adamantly opposed to?

The term -conspiracy theorist- is a public manipulation word, FED TO US by the same corporate propagandists who’ve introduced other popular terms and phrases into the national dialogue, such as “Axis of Evil,” “Cut and Run,” “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and so on. People who get stuck on the word “conspiracy” are no less brainwashed than the masses of people who got behind those catch phrases. When people talk about 9/11 truth, they’re not taking about doctored photos of our landing on the moon. We’re talking about people getting killed right in front of our faces and our government LYING ABOUT THE FACTS. This should be a wakeup call. Not something to blow off or have an immature attitude about. This “conspiracy theory” actually concerns you and everyone in our country who’s being sent to fight and die overseas. Time to reclaim our freedom of thought.

George Carlin put it best when he joked about how “conspiracy” has been turned into a dirty word, making it sound crazy that people might “get together and plan something (gasp)!” My point is, I do not spend time investigating various conspiracy theories or dreaming up my own to explain away a truth that I can’t handle. That argument never made sense to me. Why would I want to believe the government was involved in a domestic attack on any level? It would be much easier to think that it was Osama Bin Laden and his band of cave dwelling radicals, but here is the truth, if anyone dares to research it for themselves: the attacks had absolutely nothing to do with Al Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden.

Groups like Al Qaeda make handy scapegoats, because the central bankers have been using our government to bomb their houses and steal their oil for decades. So there are already many groups who hate us and want to attack our forces and embassies, which they can shift the blame to. Bin Laden himself was a CIA operative during the 90s. That’s right. He technically worked for us. Then he was on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list for acts of terrorism, but never for 9/11 because (get ready) the FBI doesn’t even have the evidence to link him to the attacks! When you do the research you will see that the “evidence” made public of his involvement was laughable at best, and there is nothing sillier or more far-fetched than the official government story. “Bin Laden’s death” was another hoax designed to keep us in Afghanistan by proving that “the War on Terror is working.” USA! USA! USA!

We won’t go any further into this territory and I’ll let my list of links provide the details. But again, do not misinterpret me. There is no grand conspiracy that the government YOU know is a part of. These events come from behind the scenes and they are consequences of the bankers’ global monopolistic gaming strategy. This is just the way it’s been going on through a lot of our history, and there is plenty of documentation to prove this. These problems are self-perpetuating in the structure of our money-flow, and the grand majority of people working in these financial institutions are entirely unaware of what they’re really involved in. It’s not that the world is being controlled through puppet strings at the hands of an evil cult run by Dick Cheney. It’s international organized crime at the highest level. This group happened to figure out the ultimate pyramid scheme, and created this seemingly indestructible power structure/empire that keeps so many millions at war and in poverty, while they sit at the top with close to 50% of the world’s wealth. The rest gets divided between the other 99% – hence the Occupy Movement.

If you don’t think anyone could be this evil, than you don’t know the history. The Gulf of Tonkin incident is just one example of an admitted false flag operation, which led to the Vietnam war, killing over a million. Operation Northwoods is another good place to start (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods). These people do what they want because it doesn’t affect them and it makes them preposterously rich. They have trillions of dollars. Nobody with that amount of money and power can be trusted. What, do you think they’re going to be normal empathetic people with regular values? Come on…

The reason most people reject this type of information is because of their egos. They don’t want to believe that they’ve been tricked or manipulated, especially by someone they trust. They want to believe they’re smarter than the propaganda, but that’s only because they don’t have any understanding of how easy it is to manipulate the public through control of the media and other institutions. There are entire declassified government manuals for this, and straight mind control is also a lot easier than most realize. Here are a couple of mind-control demonstrations by Darren Brown that you might find interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Dt-fdqrd3Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQjr1YL0zg

So, don’t feel stupid if you’ve been tricked, but don’t be stupid and accept what you’re told or dismiss this type of information without researching and analyzing it for yourself. Learn about alternative news media and trust me, you will never go back. This is the most important issue of our time for a number of major reasons, the first being that the collapse of our country’s government and economy is in their financial interest and it doesn’t matter who wins the wars, because they aren’t really a part of our country.

Once a country’s government goes bankrupt and collapses, the world bank buys up all of the country’s assets at a fraction of the price, thereby enslaving the country and controlling all of its industries. This has happened countless times throughout history, and in my sources you will see government manual explaining how to bankrupt a country through war and then seize its government, resources and primary industries (as well as interviews with John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman).

When OUR currency finally fails (and we are practically there already) because it has no more value, they can then introduce their one-world currency, the Amero, to replace the dollar, and this will be the means by which they can finally establish their one-world-government and achieve global domination (in a sense) –keeping everyone underneath impoverished, and under heavy control and surveillance. That has always been the agenda and it’s been speculated that that this is why FEMA (yes, the same FEMA that did such an awesome job with Katrina) has evidently built refugee camps all over our country, to contain us if or when this happens. Sound like fun?

The other reason it’s the most important issue is that the game is finally up. 20 years ago false flag operations were easier to get away with, but they underestimated the free flow of information on the internet in 2001. Now a majority of the people in this country and around the world believe that our government was at least on some level involved in the attacks and the ensuing cover-up, because they’ve had access to nearly 10-years worth of hard evidence.

An intellectual revolution and global uprising has begun as a result of this revelation, coupled with the global depression. People are waking up faster than ever, so now they will have no choice but to escalate their war efforts, as you’ve seen happening, and secure their control over the countries with the most important resources such as oil. They will push us into World War III as quickly as possible: Asia and the Middle East vs North America, Europe and Israel. The system will do whatever it has to for self-preservation including more 9/11-style attacks and false flag operations. That is why this is so important, and so dangerous, and this is why we have to act now and take our country back.

I’ll leave it there on the issue of the FED, but hopefully what I’ve shared will inspire some further investigation (the best documentaries about this are The Money Masters, The Secret of Oz and the first two Zeitgeist films). In the long term, this really is the key to endingwars, ending poverty and ending our use of oil all together (for those environmentally minded folks –The FED is Big Oil essentially). Nothing will ever be perfect, but the idea that we can’t bring an end to these broad social deficiencies is the greatest trick the devil ever played.

Don’t let anyone tell you that we always have to fight wars because there will always be evil people. The tyrants reach their positions from doing business with us, and the only reason there would always be war, is because it is always profitable. It has never been about your protection, and we wouldn’t need to worry about people wanting to bomb us if we weren’t tangled up in this evil web. Our country was hijacked, plain and simple, and now it’s time to take back our liberty and put an end to this madness once and for all.

Money Masters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDtBSiI13fE&feature=related

The Secret of Oz: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swkq2E8mswI

Zeitgeist the Movie and Zeitgeist Addendum: http://zeitgeistmovie.com/

#7 Ron Paul wants REAL HEALTHCARE FOR ALL

“Universal Healthcare” and “Medicare for All” are just words. How’s that going by the way? Are you enjoying your free universal healthcare under Obama? I’m sorry, you don’t even have Healthcare? I rest my case. “Obama Care” (God I’m sick of hearing that term) doesn’t bring us anywhere close to what you think of as universal healthcare, as much as I wanted it to. No matter how many different ways they babble about it, it only forces more people and businesses to buy really shitty expensive plans FROM A THRID PARTY, and you end up with around 10-12million more people who are technically insured (still close to 40 million without it) as we INCREASE military spending. Here’s a bizarrely well kept secret for you… YOU WILL NEVER HAVE UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE, no matter how many consecutive times we elect a Wall Street democrat, like Obama. I repeat, it will be IMPOSSIBLE for us to have a social democracy like Sweden or Canada, until we completely reform our foreign and monetary policies.

Those countries only have the capability for such a system, because they’re non-militaristic nations, and this is because we are controlling their oil supply with our military. In order to be like them, we would have to end our dependence on oil and cut all of our military spending (that does not include defense spending). Until we do that, it just ain’t gonna happen, and as we’ve learned, we will never be able to get off the oil and change our foreign policy while those very interests are in control of our government via the FED. I would like us very much to move in the direction of a social democracy, and even though Ron Paul prefers a different approach, he has expressed that a “socialized” medical system would not be the end of the world. Back when it actually looked like we were going to get universal healthcare, I remember him saying that he’s a realist about it, and that’s what the public wants, but we should at least end the wars so we can pay for the new system.

So there’s no reason for the issue healthcare to end the discussion between liberal progressives and libertarian conservatives like Ron Paul (and prevent what could be the most powerful political coalition in ages). Furthermore, Paul’s healthcare proposals are NOTHING like what the republicans want (just what we had before), and I am now convinced that he offers an even better solution than Universal Healthcare, which is equally compassionate and far reaching.

First, by auditing the FED to reverse inflation, and correcting our tax code so everyone is AT LEAST 15% more wealthy, Health Insurance would become EASILY AFFORDABLE by just about anyone. The new transparency that insurance companies would be required to follow (since they can’t hide behind “regulations” anymore), would drive the prices of services down through open competition. Ron Paul uses technology as an example to illustrate that the quality of the products increases exponentially and they become cheaper and cheaper, which is why poor people end up with computers and cell phones. It would work exactly the same way with health insurance, and it would if the federal government wasn’t involved.

You see unlike Obama, Ron Paul wants to end the sleazy relationship between the government and big insurance corporations. After all it’s the regulations that allow them to operate without transparency, fix prices, force people into debt, and interfere with the doctor/patient relationship. Why should we be forced to see a doctor for every tiny medical need? We should be able to have about 90% of our needs covered by nurses at $10-30 a pop, instead of being FORCED by insurance companies to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to see a doctor and get a basic treatment. Do you really think those treatments cost that much to perform? We should be paying pennies compared to what they charge, but we can never know the real answer to that question, because there is no transparency, and therefore, no accountability. That is why they can literally get away with murder.

What would we liberals enjoy more than actually getting the government out of bed with big insurance and big pharma, and ending that relationship for good? We should be overjoyed at the very thought that someone in politics still believes this is possible and has made it his goal. It’s the equivalent of cutting out the middle man and taking away their power to abuse. The monetary and tax reform measures would allow charities to thrive once again and care for the most desperate individuals, so nobody is EVER denied. Additionally the open competition would create incentives for the insurance companies to offer deals and retroactive policies, meaning if an uninsured person gets injured they can sign up and receive full, or mostly full, coverage for their emergency treatment. States would also still be allowed to have state run-programs, with more socialized structures, so the burden wouldn’t fall entirely on the charities. But that doesn’t even matter, because, once again, our monetary and tax reform reduce that burden down to a fraction of what it is today. NOBODY GETS THROWN OUT ON THE STREETS. It’s amazing how many times I’ve heard him say that, and to this day people still think that Ron Paul wants to let people die if they’re uninsured. That is alarmingly ignorant.

I thought I’d save the best point for last on this subject, because it’s really amazing. Are you ready? The other part of Ron Paul’s healthcare would be a part of his tax reform. EVERY PERSON would receive annual tax credits for major medical needs. This means that a portion of your income would be withheld in case of such needs. If you run into a major health issue, it is covered by this reserve. If you DON’T use it (drum roll please), you get a FULL REFUND at the end of the year! How the hell does this not make sense to people? Of course the idea sounds crazy, because it would stop the big insurance companies from making criminally absurd amounts of money off you, and help small insurance companies enter the market and compete! But it’s perfectly reasonable to structure health care this way and it ACCOMPLISHES THE SAME THING AS UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE: everyone receives care, and nobody goes into debt because they got sick.

This is the system we were supposed to have until big insurance companies took over the government. As Ron Paul stated, “For decades, the U.S. healthcare system was the envy of the entire world. Not coincidentally, there was far less government involvement in medicine during this time. America had the finest doctors and hospitals, patients enjoyed high-quality, affordable medical care, and thousands of private charities provided health services for the poor. Doctors focused on treating patients, without the red tape and threat of lawsuits that plague the profession today. Most Americans paid cash for basic services, and had insurance only for major illnesses and accidents. This meant both doctors and patients had an incentive to keep costs down, as the patient was directly responsible for payment, rather than an HMO or government program.”

In his entire career in Medicine Ron Paul has never accepted insurance money. He always negotiated the prices directly with his patients to what they could afford. If they couldn’t afford the treatment, they didn’t’ pay for it, simple as that. Here is a testimony from one of his patients- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Rv0Z5SNrF4, and here is Ron Paul commenting on the story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4bEvqMXmM8&feature=relmfu.

Escape Fire Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPdevYgl01g

#8 Ron Paul is Hip to Alternative Medicine and Organic Food

And that’s no laughing matter… There are thousands of treatments and remedies for illnesses and chronic health conditions that are proven to be far more effective than any of the dangerous products from the pharmaceutical industry, which kill thousands every year. Nutritional Therapy for example can effectively cure numerous types of cancer and deadly illnesses, but it is ILLEGAL to treat patients with these methods alone in most states. You would never be told about any of these options or methods, because doctors’ jobs are to sell you Big Pharma drugs and treatments, which lead to more complications and then require more drugs and treatments, because this is how they were taught to practice in today’s med schools. It’s about a million times more profitable to TREAT sickness than it is to cure it, which is why the pharmaceutical industry lobbies congress to keep alternative medicine illegal, and this is how the medical industrial complex works. It is also another glaring indicator of how fundamentally flawed our monetary system is.

Sickness and death are industries, and two of the largest. American’s spend more than 2 trillion dollars per year on healthcare which creates a “positive effect”: our country’s GDP actually increases with sickness and deaths, so there is NO common interest left between companies making profits and actually trying to solve these problems. That would end type of mass profits, so the corporations use the government to avoid that. You will not see less cancer and chronic deceases. It will continue to skyrocket as it has non-coincidentally over the past several decades, because it’s making people filthy rich -not to mention that it’s easier to control a population when everyone is sick, dying and broke. How much worse does it have to get? Are we not terrified and sickened enough as it is?

Under current laws, the federal government may literally send thugs to kick down the doors of alternative medicine organizations, on behalf of Big Pharma, and outlaw their treatments, because THEY get to decide if it’s “too dangerous.” Of course it’s really just about preventing alternative medicine from taking business away from Big Pharma, which kills and addicts people by the millions, and this is why Ron Paul says people should be allowed to “practice what they want.” Alternative medicine should be allowed to develop and compete in the market without being STOPPED by the government, on behalf of big business. It’s MURDER for the government to allow this and they have no right under the constitution to stand in the way. Paul talks about this frequently during healthcare discussions, but it’s never included in media sound bites. Of course Paul is the opposite of a sound-bite politician (almost enough to win my vote by itself), and you have to listen to full discussions to really catch what he’s talking about.

On the other side of this you have the food industrial complex, which feeds and runs parallel to the medical industrial complex. Do you ever wonder where all of these mystery cancers and deceases came from over the just over last several decades, a time through which saw the end of localized food production? Ever wonder why so many kids have autism, ADHD, let alone obesity and diabetes, or where the Hell Alzheimer’s came from? Did you know that all three of those have links to processed food? Ever wonder how rich people get treating those diseases? Did you know that in our public schools we feed children the same toxic, chemical ridden, sugar-latent garbage that the feed prisoners in order to keep them lazy and stupid? Yes, bad nutrition absolutely makes you stupid, because it turns you into a junky starting at a very young age, and this is another key to keeping the rest of society exactly where it is; in a state of rapid deterioration, while the top few can experience exponential growth and perfect health.

What’s more is that the synthetic chemicals in processed foods have carcinogenic properties, addictive substances, and the FDA does not even require companies to list all of the additives that they include. This is because the FDA works on behalf of the Monsanto and other processed food giants. Like most federal departments, the FDA is not there to protect your health. That’s just what we were taught to believe. The FDA is actually trying to change the legal definition of -organic- so they can co-opt the public’s shift to natural products, in light of this information. That is why more and more people are growing their own food and starting local farms.

But the government interference doesn’t end there. They can also send SWAT teams in to raid and shut down farms that produce raw milk (or anything THEY decide is dangerous), even if there has not been a SINGAL public complaint. Did you know that when you pasteurize milk, you sacrifice almost all of the vitamins and nutrients that fight diseases, prevent arthritis, and enhance the body’s defense mechanisms? This is what we give up to avoid a just tiny chance of getting salmonella, in exchange for added hormones, and chemicals that are linked to heart diseases, and historically, at much higher risk for poisoning or contamination.

Don’t get me wrong. I think raw milk sounds revolting and I will never become a raw milk drinker, but how in Christ is it possible that the US government has the ability trespass into my private home and stop me from drinking something that MIGHT make me sick (but will probably have the opposite effect make and make me healthier than average)? Is it not my right to chose mostly helpful bacteria with nutrients, over chemically contaminated cancer causing additives? Am I not even allowed to pick my poison, or decide for myself which one is more dangerous?

HELL NO, people. That is a cartoonishly absurd violation of our rights, which is why Ron Paul always brings up the issue of “raw milk freedom” (for anyone who was confused by it at first like I was). It’s the perfect example of how far we’ve come in our police state, on the road to tyranny. That is not freedom and Ron Paul wants to stop this insanity. No more allowing the federal government to subsidize corporate crops and farms to maintain their competitive advantage over small organic farms. Why should it be more expensive for regular people to eat if they want to be healthy and not get cancer? And no more allowing the FDA to raid your farms and local markets.

Paul is right. This has reached an insane level and it’s time to get rid of these “departments of such and such,” who are actually hired thugs and extortionists (both literally and symbolically) for the largest corporations who want to remain in total control at whatever cost. Removing this element would allow a swift return to local food production and a rapid rise in the availability of healthy, uncontaminated and unprocessed foods that people can afford. Nothing will be more crucial to our survival as a civilization, than localizing food production, because today our food supply is completely vulnerable. Thanks to globalization, nothing will accelerate a mass human die off faster than our food supply becoming threatened. This priority should be right up there at the top with monetary reform and an education overhaul.

If you wanted to take it even one step further and consider the way this system works together with the medical industry to keep you sick and stupid and dying in masses, feeding the machine with our blood and lining the pockets of billionaires, we can just be honest and call it what it is: genocide. Will genocide inspire us to start listening Ron Paul, and supporting for him regardless of what the corporate media says, or does it have to get to the point where people are getting killed in the streets? I wish this was just paranoia, but we’re already reaching that point, and once we’ve gotten there it will be far too late. Can’t say he didn’t warn us… Structural violence is still violence, and it is far more deadly.

As for what Obama will do about this… Well… He just appointed Monsanto VP Tom Visack to USDA Chief. You be the judge.

The Idiot Cycle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcwCK4AWKdM&feature=player_embedded

Food Matters Intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwZY1jaw2EM

Sickness and Death GDP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzuPznm6RAA

Anonymous Monsanto: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FMzfube9qo

Obama/Monsanto: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMWAzH9P728

Food Inc Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z9DadeSsGw

Monsanto Doc: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8xsJJKZqtg

Michael Ruppert Speech: http://www.collapsenet.com/free-resources/collapsenet-public-access/item/3462-re-writing-genesis-one-the-forgiveness-of-debt (Incredible Michael Ruppert speech –removed from Youtube –choppy video quality, but the MP3 plays perfectly)

#9 Libertarianism, Socialism, Capitalism and other isms

When most people, namely liberals, think of libertarians, they imagine racist, gun-toting isolationists, who don’t believe in helping others, or having a societal safety net for those in need. Those people certainly do exist and call themselves libertarians, which is why many “libertarians” actually hate Ron Paul. He frequently calls libertarians out when they’re wrong (most often when they drift too far to the right, because they misunderstand the principles). But it is only mainstream media culture that made these types of “libertarians” the primary association with the label, and libertarianism has been successfully turned into another dirty word, much the way -socialism- has on the flip side. There is a terrible amount of confusion today surrounding both of these terms, along with words like capitalism, and it’s important to understand that they usually mean different things coming from different people.

Let’s start with libertarianism, which started out as a philosophy centered around respect for the constitution and -individual liberty-, or freedom from an oppressive ruler. In a free society, the government does not have the right -under the constitution- to interfere with our private lives in any way, unless we are being destructive to another person or their property. They may never invade any citizen’s home and arrest or spy on them without due process. They may not censor us or take away our freedom of speech, under ANY circumstances, or phony national defense justifications, and they may not tax/steal money from our hard earned pay checks to use for their private business ventures, housing bubbles and imperialism.

These are not bad principles and as a liberal I am tremendously concerned about the protection of our civil liberties, which are routinely being violated and systematically destroyed via bills like the Patriot Act. Our civil liberties are supposed to make us free, as opposed to being ruled and controlled. Once we give up our freedom of speech or right to privacy, we are no longer free. This is why terrorist groups just love to have us invade their countries. They can target us directly on their own turf, while our freedoms get taken away (for security reasons) and we go bankrupt.

Fighting for civil liberties has been one of the fiercest traditions of the progressive movement since the 1960s, and it’s one of the aspects of the left that made me proud to call myself a liberal. Our message spat in the face of anyone who was stupid enough to think that ANY compromise on this matter was acceptable or “for our own good.” We use to be the best at banning together and fighting back to protect our freedoms, and we were up in arms when they were being threatened by the Bush administration. Today the exact same process continues, but I guess we’re going to let it slide and focus on ending the wars, getting healthcare to the poor and prosecuting the bankers on Wall Street who caused the depression… Wait a second… None of that’s happening either. Quite the opposite in fact… Hmmm… Something doesn’t smell right. Oh well, at least we have a democrat in office now! Woohoo!

Maybe liberals don’t care about civil liberties anymore (only took a couple years), but another aspect about libertarianism that most are unaware of, is the fact that there are both conservative libertarians, as well as progressive libertarians, who still value these principles. Bill Maher, who is famous as a voice from the left, has used the word libertarian in describing his politics, and never used the word democrat (in fact he’s stated very clearly that he is not a democrat). Even Noam Chomsky has stated that in the most traditional/philosophical sense of the word, he too is a libertarian, noting that the term has become highly distorted over the years. He also suggests that this could only be his real-life position in a system of “perfect liberty.” Since there is no such thing, we can assume that by “perfect liberty” he meant a society that doesn’t have its monetary system controlled and manipulated by foreign banks, which ultimately have the most say in how we run our countries or use our military. Paul’s argument is that this type of free society can be achieved once we have a peaceful revolution to bring about key measures of reform.

When it comes to the word socialism you run into even more confusion. On one hand there are those who believe a social democracy like that of Sweden, Norway, or Canada; countries where the citizens pool their money to include things like healthcare in their government services, equates to militaristic, totalitarian, dictatorships such as Russia and North Korea. That is the communist model of socialism, not democratic socialism. People who think that these are the same thing, or that adopting the Canadian healthcare system will turn us into a militaristic socialist dictatorship should wake up to the fact that we are already there. But it’s a system of corporate socialism, where you and I are forced to bail out big businesses (not to save jobs, but to save bonuses), hence the term “too big to fail.” The few rich and powerful rulers have the ability to use our military against us, and for whatever business purposes THEY decide, with or without public or congressional approval. We’ve been living with socialism for a very long time. Minimum wage is socialism. The post office is socialism. Anyone who harps on that word solely with regard to healthcare needs to grow up.

On the other hand, there are those who believe that because they hold “liberal values” or believe in things like universal healthcare and public education, that they are in fact socialists, and now proudly define themselves as such. This over-simplified attitude makes me nervous because this is largely the same group of people that was manipulated into believing that the bailout was in some way related to saving jobs (exactly, how the public was manipulated into seeing a relationship between Iraq and 9/11). These people need to understand that when a giant corporation is allowed to fail, all of that business has to go somewhere, and it ends up going to the small businesses. Then the small businesses have to expand in order to take on the new business.

The demand wouldn’t just disappear with the biggest company and it’s not like if GM went bankrupt and had to close its doors, all of the workers would suddenly be on the streets. We know it doesn’t work that way. There would be somewhere to transfer to, with severances and state assistance to help through the transition. Don’t get fooled into helping these criminals in the name of “socialist causes.” They should be allowed to fail, just like everyone else who is following the rules and has everything stacked against them. Not be rewarded or allowed to maintain their competitive advantage over the market. That is the appropriate position of a progressive, and of a libertarian for that matter.

What socialism really means at its root is -controlled by the people- instead of the few at the top. A business with a “socialized” structure, for example, would have everyone of it’s employees hold an equal stalk in the company, so that as business grows, so do ALL of their incomes, instead of just those at the top of the pyramid. The employees also vote on every business decision, so the institution is in fact controlled by the workers- democratically- and THEY make all of the big decisions regarding their benefits and investments. The difference is that the CEOs don’t get to have 3 mansions, 10 Lamborghinis and a private jet. Instead, everyone in the company thrives and has each other’s back. Interestingly, Ron Paul actually cosponsored a bill in 1999 called the Employee Ownership Act that would move corporations in this direction: requiring that at least 50% of stock be owned by employees, and that they be allowed to vote on all corporate issues. So we’re not actually on different sides of the fence with this. Ron Paul shares these values and he is not the kind of libertarian you thought he was. Don’t let the corporate media throw us for a loop with these terms and control the discussion!

I would be open to trying either model; a social democracy where we pay into a public healthcare system that provides for everyone –assuming we follow a strict non-interventionist foreign policy and respect civil liberties, OR a libertarian society with strict free-market capitalism, like the one advocated by Dr. Paul. Neither of these models are even close to what we have, or what is being offered by the democrats or republicans, and we should not be scared off by the word capitalism either.

What we have today is NOT free market capitalism, but corporate socialism, which Ron Paul refers to as “corporatism.” BOTH parties in the political establishment are simply fighting for slightly different versions of this, and they will both favor the top corporations over the citizens, which is why the choice between Romney and Obama is so inconsequential and everything they argue about is pointless as far as we’re concerned. I don’t agree with those who are religiously devoted to capitalism either. There is no such thing as a perfect free market, and the “invisible hand” can’t magically ensure fairness. But with a reformed monetary system and tax-code, combined with non-interventionism, capitalism would be structured in a way that supports society as a whole –not big businesses. As a progressive I want whatever system does this, regardless of its labels or surface associations.

#10 Ron Paul is NOT the TEA PARTY and neither is… The Tea Party

Ron Paul is not affiliated with the Tea Party. That’s a media trick. He speaks to them and tries to educate them, but he is not a part of the Tea Party organization or “The Tea Party Candidate,” as they CONSTANTLY refer to him on all of the news channels. But the Tea Party isn’t what you think it is either. I’ve never been a fan of the Tea Party, mostly because sensationalist use of the word socialism that I frequently hear from their leaders, which always makes it harder for me to take people seriously. But I’d be willing to bet that you didn’t know there are also democratic members of the Tea Party, or that the proposed Tea Party budget for 2012 was actually Bill Clinton’s last budget plan, or that none of the leaders are against social safety nets, as one of them made clear on an NPR interview (which I haven’ been able to locate unfortunately).

As Ralph Nader has pointed out on numerous occasions, the Tea Party began as a movement for supporting the constitution and protecting civil liberties. The “authentic Tea Partiers,” as Nader refers to them, hated the bush administration as much as we did, and are adamantly against domestic spying, central banking, wars of aggression and the fraudulent tax code, so it would make sense for them to be attracted to Paul. Nader has made the case that this group would make useful allies to the anti-war left, but that possibility has been largely derailed as the Tea Party became co-opted by the establishment. In other words their momentum was recognized, so the people in power made it their own and used the media to transform it as they saw to favor their own agenda. The movement became infiltrated by those who are more fixated on gun rights, anti-immigration, and some who are just plain racist and anti-Obama. Of course the media focused only on them.

Once this image was set, the political establishment could use the Tea Party label as a way to undermine people like Paul. This basically worked, except that the movement continued to grow on a grass roots level, and then some pro-war republicans tried to get smart and align themselves with the Tea Party, such as Sarah Palin. Of course it’s laughable to think that Palin shares even one of the original values of the Tea Party, and Ron Paul has repeatedly called out those Tea Party members who think they can “oppose big government at home, but support it overseas.” He has commented that some of the tea party has fallen into the more mainstream right-wing category, and he was also booed at the Tea Party Debates in 2011 when he talked about why they hate us in the middle east: this annoying little truth that we’ve bombing people for decades and stealing their oil.

Ron Paul is not the Tea party and neither is the Tea Party, so we should ignore any of those associations and not allow the media to manipulate our thoughts. I remember chatting with a couple of young women at a bar one evening, with whom I shared some strong liberal values, but I went on a bit of a tangent (believe it or not) about why the party system doesn’t matter. When I brought up the issue of civil liberties, one said, “Oh great… You’re not a Tea Bagger, are you?” I said, no, definitely not, but then I tried to explain that the Tea Party wasn’t exactly what we’ve been told it is, and we shouldn’t become fixated on arbitrary, media contrived labels, but her eyes had already glazed over by that point.

The establishment had had done its work on her and she couldn’t comprehend anything that wasn’t just comically negative about the Tea Party. Her entire point of view and political philosophy was based purely on MSNBC sarcasm and The Daily Show with John Stewart. Don’t get me wrong, I love John Stewart, and I know how much fun it is to make fun of “Tea Baggers” and the lunatics of the far right. But the Tea Party is a perfect example of media distortion and public manipulation; proof that we cannot allow mainstream media culture to act as our primary vessel of information or influence.

This limited mentality is shared by so many liberals who don’t even understand the REAL reasons to fear and despise people like Cheney, Bush or Romney. It usually has little to do with the hilarious on Comedy Central digs and wise cracks on MSNBC. There are real reasons why these figures are so dangerous, and we have to look beyond television to fully understand the magnitude of the threats they pose to our entire civilization, and I dare someone to try and call that an exaggeration.

Paul Nader Kucinich Alliance/Occupy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLdcB0ln9t8

Nader on Paul: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf47QATWUKs

Progressive Libertarian Alliance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiqz33nLGUU

Nader on Tea Party: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z62DvJBpSfU

Nader’s Grand Alliance: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/ralph-naders-grand-alliance/

#11 ALL OF THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA LIE – Yes, even the ones you like…

All of the mainstream News Organizations (including the 5 major networks), liberal and conservative, are owned by the central bank. They serve the same fundamental interests, MARKETING THEMSELVES as “Left” or “Right”, while DEFINING LEFT and RIGHT, treating us as consumers, just like they do with everything else. Then THEY decide who the presidential candidates will be, as the largest corporations and financial institutions get behind them, and THOSE candidates receive all of the media attention, shaping the public perception of who is “electable.”

The entire system is rigged by the establishment. No, it’s not a conspiracy that every anchor and media representative is a part of, but we know goddamn well that every single one of those puppets is controlled, and it wouldn’t be on their interests to risk their giant salaries, commit career suicide or worse. Most of us are PERFECTLY aware of this, even while continuing to participate as if we have some real choice or say in the matter. The people in power do what they want and the president has no legal obligation to fulfill a single promise. We’re just supposed to trust them because their smarter.

That’s the real message behind all of these networks which owned and operated by the Central Bank which profits from our fraudulent systems and illegal wars. How much more clear of a connection do you need to see that ANYONE who publicly speaks out against the Federal Reserve or the monetary system, with any amount of reach, will be character assassinated by every major network. You will NEVER hear any real discussions about The FED on monetary policy on Prime Time, which is pretty revealing since there is NO issue more important or directly related to your pathetic life (just kidding). Time to wake up.

You should not take anything you hear from corporate news organizations seriously, but I’m not just saying that to sound aggressive and angry. For years I was an MSNBC and NPR junky. There was little I enjoyed more than watching Keith Olbermann make fun of Bush, and it seemed like there was no way they weren’t superior to right-wing news when it came to the truth. But as I began to follow independent/alternative news media (that is -not owned or controlled by institutions tied to the central bank), I became gradually less interested in their programming, and then increasingly annoyed until I could no longer stomach them.

I remember my last straw with mainstream news (and the Obama administration). The hottest thing in the news was the budget deal between President Obama and House Republicans led by John Boehner. They were calling it “The Big Showdown” (Yeah… The big showdown that MEANS NOTHING TO ANY PERSON.), while at the same time the U.S. was preparing to invade Libya, and NOBODY I TALKED TO KNEW EVEN ABOUT IT!! To make things worse, we had just done another George W. Bush style SURGE in Afghanistan (which also didn’t seem to piss anybody off -boggling my mind) and military spending was taken COMPLETELY off the table in the negotiations for this so-called “Budget Deal.” So at the end of the day all we had was weeks of posturing from the Obama administration and house republicans, WHILE ALL THIS OTHER SHIT WAS GOING DOWN.

It served as nothing more than an arbitrary distraction, but it was SOLD to the public as Obama and Boehner reaching a “compromise” just in the nick of time to avoid a “government shut down,” (give me a break) allowing both sides to claim victory and argue that the other interfered. This is how political discourse becomes abstract and meaningless, and I recall how frustrated I finally became, having to go digging for actual news and current events that mattered to me, and would matter to the rest of us if the mainstream media wasn’t corrupt and did its job.

What you have to realize is that Ron Paul is an honest threat to the world’s most powerful interests, which the mainstream media serves to protect at virtually any cost. I know what you’re going to ask… “If he’s such a threat why don’t they just kill him?” Because that would be way too obvious, thanks the most powerful weapon we has at our disposal: the internet. Paul’s message caught like wildfire and spread too quickly. Nobody else in politics has ever accomplished this before, and trying to kill him would make an instant martyr at a time when social unrest is already getting out of control. It’s just not worth the risk. The only real option in character assassination.

Most of the information on TV news is designed to market, frighten, mislead, market distract, distort and market… Did I mention marketing? Most of the “news” is inconsequential and really only exists today for advertising and entertainment. Once you become aware off all of the real events happening in our country and around the world, which are both terrifying and fascinating, it’s impossible to go back to CNN, without being distractingly aware of the circus show that it is, and becoming too bored and irritated within a few short minutes to continue.

The Media’s self-preserving efforts to manipulate public perception have never been more hilariously transparent than with the character assassination of Ron Paul, and nobody did a better job of illustrating this point than Jon Stewart, who has always respected and taken a special interest in Paul because of his principles and integrity. Paul has also verbally praised Stewart on numerous occasions for his honesty and saying that he respects him.

Here are two clips where Stewart analyzes the Media’s treatment of Paul:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtDJ6Ay4QMw&feature=related,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMR1jrZAX1Y.

Here are a couple others that include additional points of view on this glaring example of media bias, and what it means:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP-bVozviXs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mNaz4KdDxw

#12 Ron Paul is the most GREEN candidate –

Here is another important area where people have been dangerously and tragically misled. It has been the goal of the political establishment to discredit Ron Paul’s environmental stances through organizations such as the League of Conservation Voters and Republicans for Environmental Protection, who rate lawmakers’ voting records according to what THEY consider environmentally responsible: bureaucratic/legislative solutions. Paul is not surprisingly rated the lowest by these groups.

In a similar manner to how they characterized his views on issues such as welfare, Paul’s positions on environmental protection have been distorted and used to alienate him, making him appear radical or heartless, when he’s actually just being logical. It breaks my heart that so many have been convinced that Ron Paul doesn’t care about the earth or believe in global warming, or that he wants to take away our national forests so they can be developed and polluted by private businesses.

Once again all of these perceptions are completely backwards and false, but it’s been easy to mislead the public, because it’s another case of someone offering alternative approaches that address root causes, as opposed to the popular approaches condoned by big business and the political establishment (not sure why I still list those separately), which actually do nothing at all aside from helping big businesses dominate the market. Paul’s ideas APPEAR to run counter to green values, because they are unconventional and deliberately avoided and mischaracterized, but what he is offering is actually most effective approach.

Ron Paul understands that the most important and effective way to protect the environment is to restore and protect individual liberties and property rights. I know that sounds odd, but its something we’ve done an absolutely terrible job of for about the last 150 years, and this is the main reason there’s so much environmental destruction today. This argument usually makes environmentalists and conservationists uncomfortable because they’re use to big polluters and developers, who interpret “property rights” as being allowed to practice business however they want to without regulatory interference. Ron Paul pointed out very explicitly on Jay Leno that “this is where a lot of libertarians slip up,” explaining that property rights are actually supposed to protect the environment; if an energy company is polluting the environment, poisoning our air and water, causing acid rain etc, they are being destructive to individuals and private property. If a person’s body is effected by pollution, his/her rights as an individual are being violated.

We are free as individuals to not be harmed or poisoned. People can harm and poison themselves all they want, but if their pollutants are having ANY kind of effect on other people or their properties, they should be able to do what they use to: file for an injunc