Man. I was asleep, sorry. Looks like I missed out on the first round.

Let me just start at the beginning. Lots of things have already been said, but I have some ADDENDA.

Well, if you're going to discredit Wikipedia with random websites. I guess I will too.

I'd just like to note something about the reliability of Wikipedia here. While there's no doubt that Wikipedia is an extremely good resource on pretty much every relevant topic, with well-sourced articles that form a good starting point for broader research. The problem that most easily arises in these topics, however, is also the least obvious one to the uninformed reader: bias. There are some articles on Wikipedia, for example the one about Ron Paul, in which some things are purposely omitted or written in a sense that would give the reader a certain opinion about the subject matter. These things are not very easily helped unless there are a couple of editors willing to put in many hours to fix up the article. This is a pitfall that you must avoid.

Quote from: Omega the Unknown on February 24, 2008, 12:24:10 am

voted against the renewal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and published his reasons for disaproval with the Act.

Lol. Did you actually read the article that you put? This goes with the 'Libertarian' aspect.

This is something I see more libertarians do: they assume they're right. For what reason, I don't know. You think it's not a bad thing that Ron Paul voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which, by the way, is what Martin Luther King, Jr. died for, because it "fits perfectly with the fact he is a libertarian". About the right to vote, King said the following: "We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote." This was the reality: in some states, you simply could not vote if you were black. It wasn't until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that it was determined that there should be no discrimination in this regard. Everybody was given the ability to vote.

By removing the Federal Government's authority to determine that everyone should be able to vote, what do the libertarians hope to gain? They think it's better to let the states decide this. Basically, when allowing this, all that's really happening is it's becoming easier for a state to take away that right.

Yet, you say his disapproval of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes sense because "he's a libertarian".

(And I'm the big loser here because I still don't get it.)

Read it and tell me why this is a 'bad' thing. This goes with the Libertarian point of view.

There you go again. You that that since "it's the libertarian point of view", it's good. You provide me with no insight as to why, aside from the fact that "it's a libertarian principle". I know by now that you like libertarianism, but I still don't know why.

For your information, this is why I initially suggested that maybe you don't know too much about the phenomenon to begin with. Many people who say they support Ron Paul are simply not able to explain themselves very well.

By the way, I never suggested anything about your intelligence, like you claim. I don't think you're not intelligent. What I do think, however, is that you're going with a political ideology that seems very attractive from a distance, but in reality is a dreamt up attempt to tear down the greatest political and human rights developments of the past century. You need to do more research into this. I'm sure you'll realize at some point that the things libertarians want will effect the very basic things we take for granted, such as the right to vote, for example. I'm sure you don't want that, because I do think you have a head on your shoulders with a brain inside that's capable of realizing the positive advances that the past century has brought.

No, he doesn't. That's not what this bill opposes, and what this was doing was removing Federal Jurisdiction over marriage. Leaving it up to the states to decide.

And again, there is no explanation as to why this would be good. I'll take a wild stab in the dark here and guess that it's good because "it's libertarian".

It's true, allowing states to decide whether they recognize a marriage is a libertarian principle. They believe that states are better off deciding on these things.

Then I raise the following point, which Omega also mentioned: what if some states won't recognize someone's marriage? Would that mean they simply should try to avoid those states? Let me just paint one of many possible scenarios here: two people get married, then go to a state that won't recognize their marriage. Disaster strikes. They get involved in a terrible car crash that puts one of the two in a coma. His living will states that his spouse is permitted to decide whether to turn off life support. However, that spouse is suddenly nonexistent, as the state they're in refuses to recognize him or her. Then what?

Or what if someone who is married goes to another state that does not recognize his marriage and then marries someone else? It would be a gigantic legal mess.

And this also clearly shows one of the biggest problems with libertarianism: why should someone have different rights in different parts of one sovereign country? What is there to gain from this?

Again. So? I am of the personal belief that the UN causes many problems with countries as you have diplomats that have no fear of reprecussion speaking rather than the countries actually communicating with one another.

I've always hoped that I wouldn't have to explain why leaving the United Nations is a bad thing.

Before we turn to this, let me first show you a map of the members of the United Nations. Take a good look. I'm not sure whether you paid attention during geology class, but the only real country that isn't a member is Western Sahara, (which is due to the fact its political control is currently unclear). This is just so you can get an image of the reach of this organization.

With that in mind, we turn to the purpose of the U.N., which is to assist cooperation for the purpose of social progress, human rights, economic development and international security. The U.N. is an organization that intervenes when two or more parties have a conflict, thereby preventing war (or civil war), and attempts to bring about concerted efforts towards improving the situation in impoverished countries.

The U.N. has been criticized a lot, and there have been times where they simply failed in their efforts, but it's not exactly a flash in the pan. It has been recognized as a serious contributor to the drop in violent conflicts around the world. Here's what the first Human Security Report, written in 2005, had to say: "The first Human Security Report documents a dramatic, but largely unknown, decline in the number of wars, genocides and human rights abuse over the past decade. Published by Oxford University Press, the Report argues that the single most compelling explanation for these changes is found in the unprecedented upsurge of international activism, spearheaded by the U.N., which took place in the wake of the Cold War."

Ron Paul wants to denounce its membership of this organization, and for what reason? Because you believe it's better if countries communicate with each other directly rather than through the mediation of the U.N.? If it weren't for their mediation, the world would be a much more violent place today. That's also why so many countries are a member of the U.N.: because it does work, despite the fact they failed to prevent some bloody conflicts from occurring. It's true that they could have done more in the Rwanda, Congo and Srebrenica. It's true there's currently an ongoing conflict in Darfur that has now largely dimmed down but should have gotten more attention before. But what good will leaving the U.N. do? Will that somehow solve all these problems? It's a very strong protest, I agree, but it does not pose a substantial solution, does it?

Or perhaps you don't care about the U.N. at all and feel that the U.S. should be isolated from the rest of the world, which is also one of the things Ron Paul wants. I don't understand this, as it doesn't take international security into account. Keep in mind that the U.S. has soldiers in more places than just Afghanistan and Iraq. Suddenly leaving all these places will likely cause a shock wave of violence to occur in those regions. There's no realistic possibility of international organizations, like the U.N., being able to replace those forces all at once. Isolationism, all economic repercussions notwithstanding, would also be a security disaster, not only to the world, but evidently also to the U.S. itself.

Also, he's opting for the US to become a hermit, so, this makes sense from the perspective he's explained.

But why is this good?

I get it, he wants it because he's an isolationist. He wants to leave the U.N. too. But what is the merit of this position? What good can possibly come from it?

These are the things that I hardly, if ever, see Ron Paul supporters explain.

So, he's predujice, racist, homophobic, anti-semitic, etc.
Though, at the same time, many of his comments if thought of with the perspective of the upholding of the constitution, of liberty, etc, you can clearly see he's going with the basic of his belief and not going to attack a single group.

The interesting thing here is that Ron Paul supporters usually say that they don't trust other politicians, or that other candidates have shown themselves to be unreliable in the past. They say that Ron Paul is a man you can trust. ("Honesty" and "trust", weren't those John McCain's calling cards in 2004? "I will say things that you'll want to hear, and I'll say things that you won't want to hear. But I'll always tell the truth.")

So, what is exactly the reason for trusting him? He doesn't exactly have an edge over the other candidates. What has he ever done that would make us all trust him?

On the contrary, one must consider that saying politically incorrect things is entirely off-limits if a Republican nomination is seriously the goal. Would Ron Paul be able to gather any support if he actually made racist and anti-semitic comments? No. Especially with a black candidate poised to take the nomination for the Democratic party, that simply is not possible in this day and age. That's why he has not made such comments during his race and is currently distancing himself from the disparaging comments that were made in the Ron Paul Political Report in the early 90s.

It's not very hard to understand why he would stress his desire to "uphold the constitution". It's his strongest defense against the comments that were published in his newsletter articles. It gives people the ability to support him even if they believe he really is a racist; since he would "obviously never act upon those beliefs". This was also said when a video was posted on Digg in which Ron Paul claimed to "not accept the theory of evolution". It was said that "he obviously would not act upon his belief", and that "evolution cannot be definitely proven". The former is just plain funny, as the purpose of running for president is gaining the ability to strongly influence the country to take the direction you believe is right, so it makes no sense that he would not also make his personal beliefs an issue. The latter is simply incorrect. Admittedly, it's true that the theory of evolution cannot be proven to be right in the same way that 2+2 is proven to be 4, but that's because empirical claims made in science can never be proven to be logically necessary, as they depend on certain unproven assumptions about our world. However, if that's a reason for claiming that evolution is unproven, there's also no proof to claim that the Earth is round, or that the Earth exists at all. This sounds complicated, but when you think about it, it's really common sense (to most people).

Still, Ron Paul supporters will gladly assume that it's perfectly acceptable to defy logic and centuries of scientific development for the sake of believing Ron Paul is righteous and will not betray our rights, despite the fact he has made it very clear that his views conflict with what we consider to be right. Such as the position of evolution as a proven theory that children should learn about in school. But what reason do we really have to assume that this is the case? Ron Paul supporters say that he would never remove the right of black man to vote, but he voted against renewal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That's because that's what a politician does. They don't just state what they feel, they act upon their beliefs and try to get their jurisdiction to take the direction they want it to take. That's the entire purpose of his political career and his current candidacy.

I understand the Libertarianism philosophy, and I understand the Anarchistic philosophy at the most basic level. That is all I need to know to know that I agree with one and cannot stand by the other.

It's true, there are differences between anarchism and libertarianism. The label I gave to the latter was not incorrect, though. You can accurately think of libertarianism as "neo-anarchism", despite that not being any officially recognized or associated label.

Basically, both schools of thought find that a large government is inherently bad and should be either minimized or abolished. Why do they want this? Both agree that a smaller government, simply by virtue of being smaller, is better. Anarchism is more extreme in that regard, but both generally follow the same line. Modern libertarians who aren't shy of comparing the two (apparently, many are; that's not surprising) probably will think of libertarianism as "anarchism done right".

Like said, the main differences between the two are that libertarians want to keep their government, yet minimized as much as possible, while most anarchistic philosophies want to completely abolish it; and libertarians endorse hierarchical capitalism. Being able to support one and oppose the other is entirely possible, but the differences between the main lines of both philosophies are really not that great in many regards. So, logically, you should not condemn the other one so strongly. I actually don't know why you specifically disagree with anarchism. I'm guessing it's these two main differences that were mentioned, since those are the most important ones, but it would be nice if you'd specify your disagreement.

I think the main difficulty when arguing with a Ron Paul fanatic is the fact that they usually don't have that many solid and proven arguments to back up their beliefs. It's all very intuitive to them, it seems. That's partially because libertarianism simply doesn't have any success stories. Many of their individual points, if taken apart and traced back to actual occurrences "in the wild", really don't seem to be working very well. But that's not even illogical, seen as how libertarianism would tear down some important developments of the past century. How can that be good? It's as if a bunch of people decided to make a collection of ideas that are either unproven or proven to be bad. They gave it a name and started riding on the sentiment that personal freedom is important. It is, but there are some freedoms we shouldn't have, as they're proven to be bad. Such as the freedom to revoke the black man's right to vote.

And please note that this isn't a personal attack against you. It's an attack against libertarianism as a whole. And I'm sure that, if you were to do the appropriate research into the subject, you'd also conclude that there is no real way these ideas would work in practice. As for your support for Ron Paul, well, I'd reconsider that! Especially if, for some strange reason, you feel that Barack Obama is your second choice. That's really the strangest thing about all of this. The reason why I suggested before that you simply don't know too much about libertarianism is actually based upon that. I actually don't think there are other candidates that are further apart than Barack Obama and Ron Paul.

If you're going to vote for Barack Obama, then that's great, but I do think you should do it for the right reasons!

Man, I spent like an hour on this post. I am not good at conputer

EDIT:

Yes it does.

You know, the thing about these Ron Paul supporters is that they can't accept even the vaguest possibility of them being wrong. They will not be proven wrong. It's just not going to happen. That's why they approach every single point of criticism with "no you're wrong, because" instead of "this is a valid concern, but we can explain this with". No. Whenever they see criticism, they immediately go on the defense. There's not even any argumentation. Just look at the posts of BlizzardVeers and Phanixis. One didn't even explain why he supports Ron Paul and the libertarian viewpoint, the other basically just quoted Omega's post and said "nah" to every single point he made. He didn't even try to back up the "facts" he mentioned. Such as his "fact" that "the U.N. has a habit of pulling us into wars". He says it like it's a fact, while it is in fact ridiculous, and does not mention even a single shred of evidence to back up such a ludicrous claim. Neither wrote a post in which they actually explain why they're right, like Omega and I both did.

This is also why I assumed before that BlizzardVeers didn't know too much about libertarianism and his own candidate. Because supporters of Ron Paul usually claim to know a lot about everything, but cannot back up those claims. We've seen it yet again here with Phanixis' post.

Supporting an alternative candidate like Ron Paul is probably very exciting, because a lot of people in our demographic (people in their teens and early twenties) like to be alternative. But in the end, you can't substitute a good understanding of politics and the world with a standard list of demagogic statements.