Brooklyn Red Leg
Anarcho-Capitalism FTW!
by Charles Davis / April 28th, 2011
Ron Paul is far from perfect, but Ill say this much for the Texas congressman: He has never authorized a drone strike in Pakistan. He has never authorized the killing of dozens of women and children in Yemen. He hasnt protected torturers from prosecution and he hasnt overseen the torturous treatment of a 23-year-old young man for the crime of revealing the governments criminal behavior.
Can the same be said for Barack Obama?
Yet, ask a good movement liberal or progressive about the two and youll quickly be informed that, yeah, Ron Pauls good on the war stuff yawn but otherwise hes a no-good right-wing reactionary of the worst order, a guy whod kick your Aunt Beth off Medicare and force her to turn tricks for blood-pressure meds. By contrast, Obama, war crimes and all, provokes no such visceral distaste. Hes more cosmopolitan, after all less Texas-y. Hes a Democrat. And gosh, even if hes made a few mistakes, he means well.
Sure hes a murderer, in other words, but at least hes not a Republican!
Put another, even less charitable way: Democratic partisans liberals are willing to trade the lives of a couple thousand poor Pakistani tribesman in exchange for a few liberal catnip-filled speeches and NPR tote bags for the underprivileged. The number of party-line progressives who would vote for Ron Paul over Barack Obama wouldnt be enough to fill Conference Room B at the local Sheraton, with even harshest left-leaning critics of the president, like Rolling Stones Matt Taibbi, saying theyd prefer the mass-murdering sociopath to that kooky Constitution fetishist.
As someone who sees the electoral process as primarily a distraction, something that diverts energy and attention from more effective means of reforming the system, I dont much care if people dont vote for Ron Paul. In fact, if youre going to vote, Id rather you cast a write-in ballot for Emma Goldman. But! I do have a problem with those who imagine themselves to be liberal-minded citizens of the world casting their vote for Barack Obama and propagating the notion that someone can bomb and/or militarily occupy Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen and Libya and still earn more Progressive Points than the guy who would, you know, not do any of that.
Lets just assume the worst about Paul: that hes a corporate libertarian in the Reason magazine/Cato Institute mold that would grant Big Business and the financial industry license to do whatever the hell it wants with little in the way of accountability (I call this scenario the status quo). Lets say he dines on Labradoodle puppies while using their blood to scribble notes in the margins of his dog-eared, gold-encrusted copy of Atlas Shrugged.
So. Fucking. What.
Barack Obama isnt exactly Eugene Debs, after all. Hell, hes not even Jimmy Carter. The facts are: hes pushed for the largest military budget in world history, given trillions of dollars to Wall Street in bailouts and near-zero interest loans from the Federal Reserve, protected oil companies like BP from legal liability for environmental damages they cause from poisoning the Gulf to climate change and mandated that all Americans purchase the U.S. health insurance industrys product. You might argue Pauls a corporatist, but theres no denying Obamas one.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/04/ron-paul-a-lesser-evil/
A fairly good piece and food for thought for those on the political left.