Something Big is Going On (Ron Paul on impending financial disaster)

[Telperion]

Wow, what a timely statement. Please pass it on! It seems likely the mass media machine might try to bury this.



snippit

Ron Paul
Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty
June 3, 2008

The following statement is written by Congressman Paul about the pending financial disaster. He will introduce this statement as a special order and insert it into the Congressional Record next week. Fortunately, we have the opportunity to debut it first on the Campaign for Liberty blog. It reads as follows:

I have, for the past 35 years, expressed my grave concern for the future of America. The course we have taken over the past century has threatened our liberties, security and prosperity. In spite of these long-held concerns, I have days—growing more frequent all the time—when I’m convinced the time is now upon us that some Big Events are about to occur. These fast-approaching events will not go unnoticed. They will affect all of us. They will not be limited to just some areas of our country. The world economy and political system will share in the chaos about to be unleashed.

Though the world has long suffered from the senselessness of wars that should have been avoided, my greatest fear is that the course on which we find ourselves will bring even greater conflict and economic suffering to the innocent people of the world—unless we quickly change our ways.

America, with her traditions of free markets and property rights, led the way toward great wealth and progress throughout the world as well as at home. Since we have lost our confidence in the principles of liberty, self reliance, hard work and frugality, and instead took on empire building, financed through inflation and debt, all this has changed. This is indeed frightening and an historic event.

The problem we face is not new in history. Authoritarianism has been around a long time. For centuries, inflation and debt have been used by tyrants to hold power, promote aggression, and provide “bread and circuses” for the people. The notion that a country can afford “guns and butter” with no significant penalty existed even before the 1960s when it became a popular slogan. It was then, though, we were told the Vietnam War and a massive expansion of the welfare state were not problems. The seventies proved that assumption wrong.

Today things are different from even ancient times or the 1970s. There is something to the argument that we are now a global economy. The world has more people and is more integrated due to modern technology, communications, and travel. If modern technology had been used to promote the ideas of liberty, free markets, sound money and trade, it would have ushered in a new golden age—a globalism we could accept.

Instead, the wealth and freedom we now enjoy are shrinking and rest upon a fragile philosophic infrastructure. It is not unlike the levies and bridges in our own country that our system of war and welfare has caused us to ignore.

 

[Mr. Premise]

There may be a problem with reading something, getting really excited and passing it on to everyone. It can be identification. At that point it is a good idea to see if you can spot the little twist that might make it actually disinfo. Just about anything we read has those little twists. Then, after doing that, you are in a better position to pass it along, since you can pass it along with a warning.

So, Telperion, where do you see the twists here?

 

[bedower]

'...a philosophic infrastructure.'? Can you be a little more specific, Mr Paul?

 

[Telperion]

There may be a problem with reading something, getting really excited and passing it on to everyone. It can be identification. At that point it is a good idea to see if you can spot the little twist that might make it actually disinfo. Just about anything we read has those little twists. Then, after doing that, you are in a better position to pass it along, since you can pass it along with a warning.

So, Telperion, where do you see the twists here?

I'm afraid you're going to have to be a little more specific about this "twist" and it's association withidentification that you're referring to but otherwise, if I follow, I think you are saying that some sort of caveat is needed to go along with the passing along of this Ron Paul statement. I am not what one would call a Ron Paul supporter, however I recognize in this statement a breaking away from the "close your eyes, and click your heels three times" spiel we're getting from the mainstream media with it's laughable attempts at upbeat optimism regarding the state of the US economy. True, as someone who is a part of the government system, anything Mr. Paul says needs to be taken with a grain of salt, however I'm sure most people reading this forum realize this. I apologize if I didn't make it clear that Ron Paul is nothing to leap up in the air for joy about when, as one considers the challenges facing us in th near future, he surely is not. However, fwiw, I feel this statement he released is a good first step towards getting many people to wake up and realize something is not quite kosher.

 

[henry]

So let's look at what he says:

I have, for the past 35 years, expressed my grave concern for the future of America. The course we have taken over the past century has threatened our liberties, security and prosperity. In spite of these long-held concerns, I have days—growing more frequent all the time—when I’m convinced the time is now upon us that some Big Events are about to occur. These fast-approaching events will not go unnoticed. They will affect all of us. They will not be limited to just some areas of our country. The world economy and political system will share in the chaos about to be unleashed.

Though the world has long suffered from the senselessness of wars that should have been avoided, my greatest fear is that the course on which we find ourselves will bring even greater conflict and economic suffering to the innocent people of the world—unless we quickly change our ways.

OK. So far so good. Nothing concrete, but it describes a certain zeitgeist of the moment.

America, with her traditions of free markets and property rights, led the way toward great wealth and progress throughout the world as well as at home.

Whoa! Sez who? What progress? Where? Material progress? Wealth for who? What assumptions he has that any of this is tied to free markets and property rights!

Here is where we see Paul sliding into formulaic thinking and assumptions. It is feeding the "America is great" myth. But maybe one could forgive it as a rhetorical flourish necessary to bring certain readers along for the ride.

Since we have lost our confidence in the principles of liberty, self reliance, hard work and frugality, and instead took on empire building, financed through inflation and debt, all this has changed. This is indeed frightening and an historic event.

The problem we face is not new in history. Authoritarianism has been around a long time.

True, authroitarianism is not new. But how does Paul see it concretely?

For centuries, inflation and debt have been used by tyrants to hold power, promote aggression, and provide “bread and circuses” for the people. The notion that a country can afford “guns and butter” with no significant penalty existed even before the 1960s when it became a popular slogan. It was then, though, we were told the Vietnam War and a massive expansion of the welfare state were not problems. The seventies proved that assumption wrong.

Authoritarianism becomes equated to war and the welfare state. And war and the welfare state end up equated with each other.

I think it is pretty sleazy to equate the military-industrial complex and the welfare state. What is wrong with a society wishing to ensure that all of its citizens have enough food, shelter, health care, etc? Is it the peanuts spent on that in the US (which has never had a state that was generous to its own citizens to begin with), or the massive spending on war, killing, oppression, and injustice that is the problem. Lumping together these two things is part of the sleight of hand of Libertarian ideology.

Today things are different from even ancient times or the 1970s. There is something to the argument that we are now a global economy. The world has more people and is more integrated due to modern technology, communications, and travel. If modern technology had been used to promote the ideas of liberty, free markets, sound money and trade, it would have ushered in a new golden age—a globalism we could accept.

Which begs the question of whether modern technology and the technological development we have seen are not part of the problem. Certainly, the Internet has given individuals the world over the possibility to communicate and share information, but does that benefit not hide or paper over some deeper problem that is rooted in a behaviouristic attitude towards science where everything must be measured and values are therefore excluded.

Instead, the wealth and freedom we now enjoy are shrinking and rest upon a fragile philosophic infrastructure.

Do values rest upon a "philosophic infrastructure", fragile or not, or do they rest upon something else, something tied to conscience? That is, to a state of BEing?

Most people would probably accept the first assertion; I do not. Values tied to any philosophic infrastructure can only be tied to time and place. Values that arise out of conscience are permanent and cross cultures.

It is not unlike the levies and bridges in our own country that our system of war and welfare has caused us to ignore.

So it is OK to spend on bridges, levies and the like, but spending on health care, unemployment insurance, or welfare is not OK? What kind of logic is that?

Welfare has caused us to ignore infrastructure????!!!! You see the problem here with conflating war and welfare?

That is why I think that Libertarianism is essentially heartless. Every man for himself. You may want a world like that. I don't. Its values are tied not to a fragile philosophic infrastructure, but to a faulty one.