America's Last Chance...?

[Knife]

Second, if Paul adheres to the Constitution like he says he will, and that guides his actions, he's grounding his actions upon a source of ordered lawmaking first, not only addressing the needs of the moment from the perspective of the moment, which is a for more chaotic way of doing things.

I don't doubt that Paul would adhere strongly to his interpretation of the Constitution. Paul has been nothing if not consistent in his statements.

Unfortunately Ron Paul's interpretation of the Constitution is insane. He thinks that a sizable portion of the federal government is unconstitutional, and thinks Constitutional guarantees for equal treatment under the law do not apply to the States, who could individually decide on abortion, gay marriage, segregation, and slavery under his interpretation.

I like that he opposes torture, I'm down with stopping drone attacks and other violations of other nations' sovereignty, but I can't vote to put that interpretation of teh Constitution into the White House, where he might actually get to appoint a Justice or two to a lifetime at the Supreme Court!

I agree, Mr Paul seem more like a strict observer of the Articles of Confederation rather than the Constitution.

[General Brock]

Of all the Bullshit you've spouted, Brock, I'd like to see evidence of the bolded bit below:

There was no way Obama could be a messiah, but ending the wars was kind of a big core promise to renege on. Instead, he dragged his feet out of Iraq, and turned up the heat in Afghanistan and expanded it into Pakistan. Then he thrashed Libya and sent troops to hunt some obscure warlord in Uganda. Ditto civil rights. Would it really have been that hard to restore civil rights? Did those really have to be removed at all to continue prosecuting the wars and ensure security at home anyway? A proven senseless liar of Obama's credentials yet somehow Ron Paul is to be demonized?

Because as far as I can tell, Obama campaigned on ending Iraq (which he did and stuck to the agreed timetable) and focusing on Al Qaeda, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Conceded on Afghanistan. I should not have trusted my memory on this, given its unreliability, and it undermined the rest of the post.

It seems that Obama has flip-flopped so much - after winning the Democratic primary he did a flip-flop and signed on to the FISA amendments for surveillance instead of filibustering it, promising to get out of Iraq, but doing so in the most recalcitrant manner possible, criticizing Shrub for unilateral intervention in Iran yet doing the same in Libya, promising to close Guantanamo but not, rejecting the Military Commissions Act but not, implying disapproval of the Patriot Act but renewing it, implying disapproval of increasing the debt ceiling but increasing it anyway, drawing up a secret hit-list of Americans to assassinate just blew my mind on the flip-flop on common sense morality, etc. etc..

I've been brain damaged and conditioned to see everything Obama does as a flip-flop so even when there wasn't a flip-flop he just flops by default. I mean, how many flips can a flop like Obama flop before a flip-flop flips right out?

I'll probably be seeing imaginary Ron Paul flip-flops apart from his flip-flop on 20 year-old newsletters that never amounted to a hill of beans as legal documents, but fortunately Ron Paul had made so few in recent memory I can see a little straighter when I look at what he's doing.

However, the rest stands; it wasn't necessary to suspend civil rights while pursuing expanded wars against Islamic brown people so why demonize Ron Paul for old newsletters when his message now is wanting to stop the wars and bring back civil rights and adhere to the Constitution?

"If we have actionable intelligence about high value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will"

And guess what? He delivered.

Did he ever deliver something. Musharraf is self-exiled from Pakistan under threat of arrest if he returns. I'm unclear as to what happened. Maybe all those drone strikes killing civilians. The Drone Wars has a nice ring to it, though. Or maybe that secret agreement between Musharraf and the U.S. that the U.S. could stage a unilateral raid against Bin Laden on Pakistani soil if they ever found him and Pakistan would protest.

The New World Order is a modern incarnation of the very old notion of conquering the world by force and deception, bringing all nations under one single authoritarian governing authority whether they like it or not, in servitude to a minority of privileged persons.

I suppose asking you to provide evidence for your paranoid delusions is too much.

Yes it would. They can look it up and judge for themselves. I was asked to give a brief explanation of it, and I did. They can interpret for themselves President Bush Sr's speech to Congress on March 6, 1991 mention of 'new world order' and the entire corpus of conspiracy theory surrounding it. I don't see it as much of a conspiracy, though, its just business as usual, those who can extend influence and control doing so just because they can.

Get off your high horse, you arse. People who recognise that sometimes the individual is not as important as a society are not less decent than idiots like you.

The proper balance between individual rights and society rights has always been contested as both want the other to be responsible to their needs to the level and manner in which they would like to become accustomed, and I was posting to one specific request on my take on it, in the conflicted spirit I felt the request was being made.

That post was openly qualified as lacking depth, that others more qualified should be listened to, and that the poster should do his or her own research, and never said I wasn't pretentious, but lacking in knowledge and maturity.

[Simon_Jester]

However, the rest stands; it wasn't necessary to suspend civil rights while pursuing expanded wars against Islamic brown people so why demonize Ron Paul for old newsletters when his message now is wanting to stop the wars and bring back civil rights and adhere to the Constitution?

Because if that's Ron Paul's platform, he is campaigning on his own personal honor. Not on what he says, but on his caliber as a man- can he be relied upon to do good and avoid evil?

His old newsletters make him look like he was a small-souled man, full of greed and ambition and foolishness, in 1990 and 2000, nowhere near the size of person you're now making himself out to be. He may not be worse than any other politician... but if he's as bad as all the others, why trust him especially as guardian of constitutional rights?

So that doesn't work. I have no reason to trust Ron Paul's honor enough to elect him purely because he's honorable, which is what you want me to do.

And if I don't worry so much about whether his honor is squeaky-clean, I have to look at his policies, which are utter shit in almost every single area except an end to drone bombings that frankly won't make a damn bit of difference one way or the other fifty years from now, all hysteria from the libertarians aside.

What will make a difference are anti-gay pogroms in Mississippi, starving mothers in Chicago, and the collapse of future Americans into near-permanent subservience to powerful corporations... all of which Ron Paul seems willing enough to go along with, as matters of policy.

Yes it would. They can look it up and judge for themselves. I was asked to give a brief explanation of it, and I did. They can interpret for themselves President Bush Sr's speech to Congress on March 6, 1991 mention of 'new world order' and the entire corpus of conspiracy theory surrounding it. I don't see it as much of a conspiracy, though, its just business as usual, those who can extend influence and control doing so just because they can.

Bullshit. You have not answered or explained anything. Bush's speech doesn't mean anything, except that he used the words 'new,' 'world,' and 'order' all in a row. That is not proof of a conspiracy by anyone to do anything, any more than 'axis of evil' means that there is a secret bunker where Iraq, Iran, and North Korea were collaborating to hurt the US.

So answer some damn questions for a change. Duckie and Broken did a good job with that, allow me to repeat:

I have to agree with Duckie here. I still don't get what this NWO is.

When was it founded and by whom? Does it stretch back into the mists of time to the glory that was Rome? Perhaps to the Avignon Papacy or some Renaissance philosopher? Was Napoleon Bonaparte an agent of the NWO or a monkey wrench in the established order of Europe? How about Rockefeller and Krupp?

Who currently heads it and how is it organized? Is Bill Clinton a member? How about Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev? Is Dick Cheney one of their leaders or is that too obvious?

Is it a secret society or more of a council? Does it have an chief executive and is he elected or appointed? How dense is the hierarchy and how much information and influence flows among those levels?

How does it recruit new members and how does it keep them from ever reveling what they know if they have a change of heart? Do you have join Skull and Bones or can you just work your way up through the military-industrial complex? What about the masons, are they part of it or a rival? Are blackmail and murder their chief weapons or tools of last resort?

Is this a secret society primarily confined to the West or has it infiltrated China and India for instance? Did Nixon go to China purely in order to pave the way for the NWO to take over China's leadership?

These are basic questions that should be asked and answered in regards to this NWO. To counter a movement, it is best to know the movement, how it works and is organized, how it came about and its goals. So far all we have been informed of is that the NWO is some nebulous enemy to be feared and opposed.

What is the NWO? Who is in charge? Is it a small cabal of people, or a wide, distributed network? What exactly do you mean by the New World Order? Are their policies corporatist, or socialist? Is the New World Order organized? Armed? Does it have secret agents who can fight and kill for its cause?

Or is the New World Order just this weird fog you believe in that turns everyone who disagrees with you into weird zombies, so that you don't feel obligated to stop and think over what you're saying to them? Because it's the weird zombie effect that's stopping them from understanding you, not that you're not making sense?

[General Brock]

...

OK, to break this down: Ron Paul represents the last, best hope for the guttering flame of American Liberty™ and what we can presume is "true constitutionalism". Yet Ron Paul, even if he were to be elected president despite the massive conspiratorial forces which would be arrayed against him actually achieving the White House, would find himself isolated and powerless in the White House, unable to actually do anything. But that's OK somehow because, as president, Ron Paul can explain to the American people that the New World Order™ is a Bad Thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, and with the credibility loaned him by saying it sitting behind a desk in the Oval Office —which will make The Conspiracy™ and their puppets in Europe and Japan sit up and take notice and then America will be able to start back on the road to liberty, constitutionalism, and rainbows and puppies for all. Never mind that if The Conspriacy™ has the power to exclude Ron Paul from the GOP debates (which, strangely, hasn't happened), they could also as easily make sure that his messages to the people from the Oval Office never actually get out into the public, since the Media™ are also part of The Conspiracy™. Never mind also that, if our "puppets" in Europe and Japan are part of the New World Order™ either from intimidation —or because they see advantage in being part of it— they'd no more care what President Ron Paul or his voters had to say than if Ron Paul just got his own TV show on FOX. But somehow, someway, the election of Ron Paul is our only chance, and a slim one, to avoid the complete descent into tyranny by 2016.
...

The irony burns.

I'd have to agree. Mr. Roberts is trusting that that Americans will universally agree to that interpretation of events and unite to fight against its effects.

However, a critical number of Americans may no longer care about the values of the Constitution and want to square their laws and policy with it by any interpretation, and there's really no-one to wake up.

By comparison, there are any number of biblical fundamentalists high and low apparently wanting to square law and policy with their particular interpretation of the bible.

Part of the problem may be, when drawing upon experience to formulate law and policy, non-religious types who aren't using religion for their ends draw upon many root sources of information to guide them and have drifted away from obsession with the Constitution, whereas the religious consult the bible on a daily basis and live in a world where its constantly a part of the background noise and a foundation to the other sources they use to operate in the modern world.

[UnderAGreySky]

Conceded on Afghanistan. I should not have trusted my memory on this, given its unreliability, and it undermined the rest of the post.

I shall remember that sentence.

It seems that Obama has flip-flopped so much - after winning the Democratic primary he did a flip-flop and signed on to the FISA amendments for surveillance instead of filibustering it, promising to get out of Iraq, but doing so in the most recalcitrant manner possible, criticizing Shrub for unilateral intervention in Iran yet doing the same in Libya, promising to close Guantanamo but not, rejecting the Military Commissions Act but not, implying disapproval of the Patriot Act but renewing it, implying disapproval of increasing the debt ceiling but increasing it anyway, drawing up a secret hit-list of Americans to assassinate just blew my mind on the flip-flop on common sense morality

Aww... excuses, excuses. You couldn't be bothered to do your own research, so changed the facts to fit your argument! You got it wrong on Gitmo too, but I don't blame you. I blame... uh...

I've been brain damaged

Yes, yes you have. Self-inflicted, most likely.

how many flips can a flop like Obama flop before a flip-flop flips right out

As many as Ron Paul can when answering about who was responsible for his racist and homophobic writings.

However, the rest stands; it wasn't necessary to suspend civil rights while pursuing expanded wars against Islamic brown people so why demonize Ron Paul for old newsletters when his message now is wanting to stop the wars and bring back civil rights and adhere to the Constitution?

Nope, it wasn't, and I've never argued that it was a good thing to do.

Did he ever deliver something. Musharraf is self-exiled from Pakistan under threat of arrest if he returns. I'm unclear as to what happened. Maybe all those drone strikes killing civilians. The Drone Wars has a nice ring to it, though. Or maybe that secret agreement between Musharraf and the U.S. that the U.S. could stage a unilateral raid against Bin Laden on Pakistani soil if they ever found him and Pakistan would protest.

He delivered Bin Laden. He promised that he would order such a raid and he did.

Yes it would. They can look it up and judge for themselves. I was asked to give a brief explanation of it, and I did. They can interpret for themselves President Bush Sr's speech to Congress on March 6, 1991 mention of 'new world order' and the entire corpus of conspiracy theory surrounding it. I don't see it as much of a conspiracy, though, its just business as usual, those who can extend influence and control doing so just because they can.

NO, you imbecile. YOU show ME proof. What a politician says in a speech is irrelevant. You have given no proof, which means the assertion is false and you're either a liar, a loon or both. "They can look it up and judge for themselves" is the biggest cop-out given by wackos like you, and it means you're full of shit.

But anyway, I looked it up. And apparently it consists of the following:

2.1 End Time
2.2 Freemasonry
2.3 Illuminati
2.4 Protocols of the Elders of Zion
2.5 Round Table
2.6 Open Conspiracy
2.7 New Age
2.8 Fourth Reich
2.9 Alien Invasion
2.10 Brave New World

So I can only presume you have proof about a Jewish Adolf ' King Arthur' Hitler from the planet Zaslon will arrive after the apocalypse, carve ankhs on our forehead and exile us to an island where we won't have sex.

the poster should do his or her own research

And so I have, and I have concluded that you, like many Paultards I see on the internet, should never be allowed to operate any machinery more complicated than a food blender with two speed buttons.

[General Brock]

Because if that's Ron Paul's platform, he is campaigning on his own personal honor. Not on what he says, but on his caliber as a man- can he be relied upon to do good and avoid evil?

His old newsletters make him look like he was a small-souled man, full of greed and ambition and foolishness, in 1990 and 2000, nowhere near the size of person you're now making himself out to be. He may not be worse than any other politician... but if he's as bad as all the others, why trust him especially as guardian of constitutional rights?

So that doesn't work. I have no reason to trust Ron Paul's honor enough to elect him purely because he's honorable, which is what you want me to do.

The trouble with that is, most of the other GOP candidates are arguably small-souled. Of course, if you're a Democrat, well, Obama's actions in office do not demonstrate a man of great soul either, all the worse that he can talk the talk. I've said before, perhaps this search for integrity in a candidate isn't objective and so leading you astray; there really aren't any with true integrity atm, just those you're willing to meet halfway and those you can't or won't.

Politicians are tools. In fact they're such tools, they're multitools. In using tools, you use the right tool for the job, and make sure you have the right jobs prioritized and the tools on hand to do them. Lets head down to the engine room and look at a couple of high profile political tools.

The Obama 2008 is a snazzy tool in cool-blued mettle that tends to bend when you try to turn it one way, to the left, even a little. When you try to reach for stuff with it, it falls short. As a hammer it starts up on its own and does kinetic actions in unexpected directions. People have gone "OWS!" as their fingers were rapped by it. One really can't be sure of the integrity of this tool, and save for die-hard early adopters, a lot of folks want to return it for their remaining credit.

The Ron Paul Monkey Wrench (RPM) is a little greasy, old, but sort-of maintained. The paint has chipped and one sees some ugly but familiar flaws that have been dealt with before, poorly glossed over. It comes with an integral manual, the Constitution, which is good since the shop copy is adulterated with Patriot Act and NDAA and other assorted crazy glue inspired sticky notes. The pipes are leaking cash pretty bad and there is some blood, and 'access denied' signs are appearing at places where you need to get to fix things. The RPM promises it can really crank down on that.

Maybe the jobs can wait. Maybe they can be shuffled until a better tool finally comes along. Odds are the RPM won't make it to the job site. Maybe the Obama 2008 will meet inflated expectations more than inflate disappointment. Maybe.

And if I don't worry so much about whether his honor is squeaky-clean, I have to look at his policies, which are utter shit in almost every single area except an end to drone bombings that frankly won't make a damn bit of difference one way or the other fifty years from now, all hysteria from the libertarians aside.

It must be tough not to condescend to be a single-issue voter. Some kids being born right now in the Middle East or Africa may see a difference, living past age 50 in a peaceful world America didn't try and bomb out, and if its not peaceful, may America not be responsible for that. Perhaps the difference will be not having that first drone strike on American soil murdering an American citizen because a President of the day was judge, jury, and executioner and unaccountable.

There is a real threat in Ron Paul, in that if he got in, he won't end the wars and let them continue while committing all the other reactionary deregulation the ultra-right in the Senate, Congress, and Corporations have long sought. I'm not that blind, its just that I see them happening anyway without Paul. Despite his platform, bad cuts may at least be made under a more normal governance process free of war hysteria and guided by debate on what the Constitution says America should be all about through the laws it lives by.

What will make a difference are anti-gay pogroms in Mississippi, starving mothers in Chicago, and the collapse of future Americans into near-permanent subservience to powerful corporations... all of which Ron Paul seems willing enough to go along with, as matters of policy.

Since these events are already underway under the present administration, and were underway under administration before that, the difference is governance by a more sane set off values, not values fostering increasingly deranged governance in the worse possible areas. Obama may be a sane man, but the values he's working under are insane. Ron Paul may be insane, but the purported values he prefers working under are not.

Bullshit. You have not answered or explained anything. Bush's speech doesn't mean anything, except that he used the words 'new,' 'world,' and 'order' all in a row. That is not proof of a conspiracy by anyone to do anything, any more than 'axis of evil' means that there is a secret bunker where Iraq, Iran, and North Korea were collaborating to hurt the US.

So answer some damn questions for a change. Duckie and Broken did a good job with that, allow me to repeat:

I have to agree with Duckie here. I still don't get what this NWO is.

Well, I've been warned not to post whole articles in a thread, so here's a link to one interpretation of NWO from the Wiki:

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_ ... _theory%29

Its reflective of most of the common explanations for it you'll find anywhere. Its not mine, but I incorporate it and its what most people mean when they say NWO.

When was it founded and by whom? Does it stretch back into the mists of time to the glory that was Rome? Perhaps to the Avignon Papacy or some Renaissance philosopher? Was Napoleon Bonaparte an agent of the NWO or a monkey wrench in the established order of Europe? How about Rockefeller and Krupp?

Who currently heads it and how is it organized? Is Bill Clinton a member? How about Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev? Is Dick Cheney one of their leaders or is that too obvious?

Is it a secret society or more of a council? Does it have an chief executive and is he elected or appointed? How dense is the hierarchy and how much information and influence flows among those levels?

How does it recruit new members and how does it keep them from ever reveling what they know if they have a change of heart? Do you have join Skull and Bones or can you just work your way up through the military-industrial complex? What about the masons, are they part of it or a rival? Are blackmail and murder their chief weapons or tools of last resort?

Is this a secret society primarily confined to the West or has it infiltrated China and India for instance? Did Nixon go to China purely in order to pave the way for the NWO to take over China's leadership?

We may have a different use of the term "New World Order". To me, its the natural direction of the world towards one world government. Sometimes powerful organizations and people may have a hand in events, sometimes the people are more or less spontaneous actors at the right time and place. I don't regard it as a fixed plan with identifiable conspirators with NWO membership cards over the centuries like a lot of conspiracy theorists. Its not even a conspiracy to me. Its the next level up from the nation-state. Its not quite world empire.

These are basic questions that should be asked and answered in regards to this NWO. To counter a movement, it is best to know the movement, how it works and is organized, how it came about and its goals. So far all we have been informed of is that the NWO is some nebulous enemy to be feared and opposed.

What is the NWO? Who is in charge? Is it a small cabal of people, or a wide, distributed network? What exactly do you mean by the New World Order? Are their policies corporatist, or socialist? Is the New World Order organized? Armed? Does it have secret agents who can fight and kill for its cause?

Oh, you want me to commit to my own words.

The New World Order is first and foremost an umbrella idea, one planet united under one governmental authority. Under that is how that government will come about, its principles of governance, means of expression in terms of divisions of geography and power, enforcement, rights and responsibilities of its citizens, and any religious or ideological purposes. When I use NWO, this is the core definition of this in mind, but the way the world is unfolding and ordering itself towards that end, by those apparently trying to see it through, is foremost. Those who think they might secretly be trying to see it through are less important to me, because I can't do anything about what I can't prove or see until it reveals itself.

Those who fear it are those who have a stake in the existing condition of a plurality of sovereignties. It is not at all nebulous; they don't want to lose the familiar advantages of independence, identity, and self-defined freedom and purpose that exist in the absence of a New World Order seeing fruition. The scholarship behind NWO is interesting, but may be little more than listing a few people and organizations who knowingly or unknowingly have participated in a quest for a New World Order.

The NWO is a powerful idea. It stands on it own. It isn't a conspiracy, although people may conspire around the idea. It doesn't matter if there really is a centuries old organization calling itself the NWO conspiracy; you can't copyright a natural idea. Common sense acknowledges the possibility of nations becoming so bound yet divided by their interrelationships that a higher sovereign body is needed to police those relationships, and so formed voluntarily - or by force.

Today, judeo-christian ultranationalists are the driving force towards that unity. Or, they would like to be, using the overwhelming resources of the United States. In Bush the Elder's speech, I saw embracement of the idea by a coterie of American neocons. Any other parallel movements to unity may have been co-opted, displaced or just watching this drive.

Whether Bush the Elder was referring to the idea of a NWO or just stringing the words together, its clear he meant that the then-existing world order was to be changed into, well, a new world order. It very possible they know all about the idea and have embraced it, as Napoleon, or at least his supporters, once embraced the Enlightenment as the coattails to global power. In any case, even new world order means expanding influence and power that could realize the New World Order by default if successful enough.

Or is the New World Order just this weird fog you believe in that turns everyone who disagrees with you into weird zombies, so that you don't feel obligated to stop and think over what you're saying to them? Because it's the weird zombie effect that's stopping them from understanding you, not that you're not making sense?

I wish I'd invested in guns and tinned goods.

I'll tell you what doesn't make any sense to me. Obama sanctions the deaths of people who weren't truly enemies of the United States till neocons gave them no real choice, but Ron Paul who hasn't killed anyone yet and wants to stop people being killed right now is at best charitably viewed as a monster in waiting. This is based on crude comments made in 20 year old newsletters he disavowed and may not have even written himself, but nonetheless indulged. "Eek! A racist homophobe!" and all of a sudden bright lightbulbs become dim torches on a witch hunt as easily as one could flip a switch or speak a trigger word.

I see no tremendous difference between Obamas' eloquent changes of heart than Ron Paul's clumsy one, save that Obama's changes of heart get people killed and silence criticism of that, while Ron Paul's did not. An islamophobe may or may not act on the notion. Not maybe being an islamophobe did not stop Obama from killing muslims. Ron Paul may or may not be a racist homophobe, but he sure hasn't acted like a militant one. And that's not even really the point of Ron Paul.

The New World Order is happening. Its always been happening. Its a big idea but hardly a mysterious one. The power of human beings has multiplied to the point where what was once just an idea, could become a reality. How do you want it to come about? What do you want to to be all about? Do you want it to come about, because while it might arise under American hegemony, it also implies America might be subsumed deeper than Russia ever was by the Soviet Union to the point of being consumed should it ever come apart as did the Roman Empire.

What if its still beyond grasp, and the blood and treasure and above all positive values of what the United States of America tried to be - with diminishing will since 1787 - to itself and the world, are lost for nothing? Let's not call it the NWO anymore. Lets call it world hegemony. That's more politically correct. Hegemony does not necessarily imply the taboo one world government. I wonder it those who only knew tribe and turf were as blind hostile to the nation state when it became apparent.

This isn't about Ron Paul. Its about what America can and should stand for. Yet if not Paul then who will stand for the Constitution, and find this person fast, find these people fast, and put these people into office high and low for your own sakes.

No-one outside America cares if America chokes or thrives, only what it can do for them, and no small number of Americans themselves act the same way regardless of what passes for feeling in them, patriotic or otherwise.

People who pride themselves in powers of reason and debate and can full well back that up, in my opinion are overlooking the most important thing about the Ron Paul phenomenon. The values he claims to stand for, and that he's the only one standing for them, and that is what is powering the phenomenon.

This is a serious problem. You won't help Ron Paul live up to his promise, and you can't find someone to replace him, and don't even appear to regard rule by the Constitution to be particularly important although its a key plank flanked by ending war and restoring civil rights. Despite understanding the importance through your own self-governance of relating to clear, fair ground rules and purpose, not ruled by the crisis of the moment. Also, tolerance of the failings of others willing to correct themselves and passingly able to live up to the standard.

Lady: "Well Doctor, what have we got a republic or a monarchy?

Benjamin Franklin: "A republic - if you can keep it. They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." (Quote kitbash mine)

What have you given up? What have you got now? What have you too look forward too? Ask yourself why Ron Paul is the only one advocating the obvious.

I'm done plugging Paul. He's getting in the way of his own message here. Its the American People's Constitution. Maybe stop bashing Paul and try examining the viability of applying Constitutional rule once again and keeping the notion mainstream.

[K. A. Pital]

"Project for a New American Century" is pretty much an official NWO organization. The fact that it does not say "NWO" but instead uses "New American Century" does not change the nature of the "thinktank" which produced the last pleiade of American imperialists (Rumsfeld, etc.)

Just thought I'd mention this here before it goes on.

[Patrick Degan]

...

OK, to break this down: Ron Paul represents the last, best hope for the guttering flame of American Liberty™ and what we can presume is "true constitutionalism". Yet Ron Paul, even if he were to be elected president despite the massive conspiratorial forces which would be arrayed against him actually achieving the White House, would find himself isolated and powerless in the White House, unable to actually do anything. But that's OK somehow because, as president, Ron Paul can explain to the American people that the New World Order™ is a Bad Thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, and with the credibility loaned him by saying it sitting behind a desk in the Oval Office —which will make The Conspiracy™ and their puppets in Europe and Japan sit up and take notice and then America will be able to start back on the road to liberty, constitutionalism, and rainbows and puppies for all. Never mind that if The Conspriacy™ has the power to exclude Ron Paul from the GOP debates (which, strangely, hasn't happened), they could also as easily make sure that his messages to the people from the Oval Office never actually get out into the public, since the Media™ are also part of The Conspiracy™. Never mind also that, if our "puppets" in Europe and Japan are part of the New World Order™ either from intimidation —or because they see advantage in being part of it— they'd no more care what President Ron Paul or his voters had to say than if Ron Paul just got his own TV show on FOX. But somehow, someway, the election of Ron Paul is our only chance, and a slim one, to avoid the complete descent into tyranny by 2016.
...

The irony burns.

I'd have to agree. Mr. Roberts is trusting that that Americans will universally agree to that interpretation of events and unite to fight against its effects.

However, a critical number of Americans may no longer care about the values of the Constitution and want to square their laws and policy with it by any interpretation, and there's really no-one to wake up.

Congratulations, you managed to completely miss the point of the critique —which is that, if a President Paul would be powerless to do anything, by Mr. Roberts' own argument, then electing him in the first place as some sort of symbol or Cassandra would be utterly pointless. Which means Paul Craig Roberts' entire argument —even minus the loonier conspiracy wank woven all through it— is nonsensical on its face. This is separate from the other problems a Paul presidency would mean for a country that actually exists in the 21st century rather than the later 18th, which is where Mr. Paul seems to want to regress American political and constitutional evolution toward.

By comparison, there are any number of biblical fundamentalists high and low apparently wanting to square law and policy with their particular interpretation of the bible.

Part of the problem may be, when drawing upon experience to formulate law and policy, non-religious types who aren't using religion for their ends draw upon many root sources of information to guide them and have drifted away from obsession with the Constitution, whereas the religious consult the bible on a daily basis and live in a world where its constantly a part of the background noise and a foundation to the other sources they use to operate in the modern world.

Holy Writ is a shitty guide for formulating a basis for key life and social decisions in the modern world, and the constitution is not and was never meant to be interpreted in the same manner as Holy Writ.

[Simon_Jester]

"Project for a New American Century" is pretty much an official NWO organization. The fact that it does not say "NWO" but instead uses "New American Century" does not change the nature of the "thinktank" which produced the last pleiade of American imperialists (Rumsfeld, etc.)

Just thought I'd mention this here before it goes on.

I'm going to quote something I originally wrote to Brock, because I think it deserves not to get totally lost in the maze of what I said below, and because it specifically addresses what you just said too.


The neocon ideas expressed in the New American Century are in many ways dead- they're obsolete, overtaken by events much as the internationalist dreams people had about the UN in the mid-1940s were overtaken by the Cold War. Obama may be vaguely supportive of them, as long as it doesn't cost him any money or effort, but he doesn't care enough to start new wars over it. Neither will his successors, Republican or Democrat. Any use of slogans favored by the neocons circa 2000-2005 is going to be a domestic political maneuver, in hopes of getting the reflex muscles of American jingoism to twitch in favor of whoever sues the slogan.

The new New World Order you should be far more worried about is the rise of multinational capitalism that doesn't need you, or your country, to flourish. To fight that, the last thing we need is libertarians, who have a huge blind spot in their ideology where corporate power is concerned, and can only fight it indirectly at best.

Honestly, I'm beginning to think the job of fighting the world hegemon is going to fall to whoever figures out an intellectually honest version of socialism that doesn't fall into the traps of 20th century communism.

The trouble with that is, most of the other GOP candidates are arguably small-souled. Of course, if you're a Democrat, well, Obama's actions in office do not demonstrate a man of great soul either, all the worse that he can talk the talk. I've said before, perhaps this search for integrity in a candidate isn't objective and so leading you astray; there really aren't any with true integrity atm, just those you're willing to meet halfway and those you can't or won't.

I'm all right with that interpretation- though there are individuals with integrity, I'm not sure any of them are running for president this year. If I had to pick a Republican candidate with personal integrity, I'd actually pick Rick Santorum, not Ron Paul- and I think Santorum would be almost as bad as Paul if he actually got into office.

Thing is, when I look at Ron Paul and what he wants to do- not vague promises about "restoring constitutional government" that can mean anything to anyone, real actions- I cannot meet him half way. The only good things he'd do are pulling troops from Afghanistan, which will at most save a relatively modest number of deaths and possibly cause Revenge of the Taliban to kill more, and end the drone bombings, which will save a still smaller number of lives. On all other issues, I expect his policies to make things worse, or to cancel themselves out.

I would no more meet this man half way than I would a man who wanted to set my house on fire. You wouldn't say "fine, you can set half my house on fire and I'll save the other half" to that.

The Ron Paul Monkey Wrench (RPM) is a little greasy, old, but sort-of maintained. The paint has chipped and one sees some ugly but familiar flaws that have been dealt with before, poorly glossed over. It comes with an integral manual, the Constitution, which is good since the shop copy is adulterated with Patriot Act and NDAA and other assorted crazy glue inspired sticky notes. The pipes are leaking cash pretty bad and there is some blood, and 'access denied' signs are appearing at places where you need to get to fix things. The RPM promises it can really crank down on that.

...Your extended metaphor stopped making sense pretty fast. Ron Paul isn't a tool at all- he's a thermite charge. You don't use that on an engine you want to fix.

And if I don't worry so much about whether his honor is squeaky-clean, I have to look at his policies, which are utter shit in almost every single area except an end to drone bombings that frankly won't make a damn bit of difference one way or the other fifty years from now, all hysteria from the libertarians aside.

It must be tough not to condescend to be a single-issue voter. Some kids being born right now in the Middle East or Africa may see a difference, living past age 50 in a peaceful world America didn't try and bomb out, and if its not peaceful, may America not be responsible for that.

I don't think that changing America's policies now will change the way Iraq or Afghanistan look in fifty years. If we wanted to really fix that, we'd need to travel back in time and smack Bush upside the head when he invaded Iraq in 2003. And I don't know what we'd do about Afghanistan, since it actually made sense to invade Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in the first place since they were actively harboring Al Qaeda. In case you've forgotten, Al Qaeda had just killed more of our civilian nationals than pretty much any other foreign body in our history. What were we supposed to do, laugh it off?

See, this is one of the big intellectual dishonesties about your position. You want to blame the Iraq War on anyone and everyone who isn't Ron Paul, then say "Ron Paul is better because the Iraq War killed X people." The problem is that the war was started by someone who is no longer in office, and that we did not have the option of reviving all the dead bodies by ending it. Ron Paul might end the war in a hurry, but the pile of bodies would end up about the same size regardless, because most of those people were already dead, and were going to die even before Obama took office.

Perhaps the difference will be not having that first drone strike on American soil murdering an American citizen because a President of the day was judge, jury, and executioner and unaccountable.

I don't actually believe Obama has the slightest intent of doing that. His successor, or another man twenty years down the road, very well might... and I think we need someone better than Ron Paul to prevent that.

What will make a difference are anti-gay pogroms in Mississippi, starving mothers in Chicago, and the collapse of future Americans into near-permanent subservience to powerful corporations... all of which Ron Paul seems willing enough to go along with, as matters of policy.

Since these events are already underway under the present administration, and were underway under administration before that...

Bullshit. Obama isn't trying to abolish welfare, Bush didn't either, but Ron Paul seems to want to. Obama isn't trying to give the states a free hand to enact discrimination policies, Bush didn't either, but Ron Paul wants to. Obama isn't trying to abolish the regulatory agencies that at least allow us to bring corporations back under control, Bush didn't either, but Ron Paul wants to.

Well, I've been warned not to post whole articles in a thread, so here's a link to one interpretation of NWO from the Wiki:

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_ ... _theory%29

Its reflective of most of the common explanations for it you'll find anywhere. Its not mine, but I incorporate it and its what most people mean when they say NWO.

So "NWO" is a nebulous, vague thing that may or may not contain any given thing. It can at once contain Zionists and Nazis, communists and capitalists. It is everything and nothing, tangible and intangible, incredibly ancient and yet as new as the wireless Internet.

Doesn't that make it a perfect conspiracy theory? You can point to anyone and call them part of the "New World Order," and imply that they're complicit in all sorts of crimes against the people. But even if every single allegation you make is false or unsubstantiated, it doesn't reflect on whether the "New World Order" exists, because you never bothered to say what it is. So you're free to just spam allegations without actually nailing down anything you believe, or saying anything falsifiable.

I've had enough of this bullshit.

We may have a different use of the term "New World Order". To me, its the natural direction of the world towards one world government. Sometimes powerful organizations and people may have a hand in events, sometimes the people are more or less spontaneous actors at the right time and place. I don't regard it as a fixed plan with identifiable conspirators with NWO membership cards over the centuries like a lot of conspiracy theorists. Its not even a conspiracy to me. Its the next level up from the nation-state. Its not quite world empire.

Ahhh. So when you say "New World Order," you don't actually mean the same things that other people mean by it. Why use the word then? Why not say "globalization?"

And if your premise is that the flows of capital and economic power are bringing about this evolution toward a world-state, then why is your ideal presidential candidate the anarcho-libertarian laissez-faire capitalist Ron Paul? Why aren't you a socialist, like Stas?

Oh, you want me to commit to my own words.

The New World Order is first and foremost an umbrella idea, one planet united under one governmental authority. Under that is how that government will come about, its principles of governance, means of expression in terms of divisions of geography and power, enforcement, rights and responsibilities of its citizens, and any religious or ideological purposes. When I use NWO, this is the core definition of this in mind, but the way the world is unfolding and ordering itself towards that end, by those apparently trying to see it through, is foremost. Those who think they might secretly be trying to see it through are less important to me, because I can't do anything about what I can't prove or see until it reveals itself.

Very well. Who harbors this idea? How does it advance? What mechanisms are being used to bring countries together? Regardless of who it is, you're implying that someone actually plans this trend, so how do we recognize those plans ahead of time for what they are?

Is an international treaty on copyright part of the NWO? What about a treaty on food safety? Maritime law? The Geneva Conventions?

Is NATO part of the New World Order?

Are Third World industrial powerhouses like China complicit in the NWO? What is their 'foreseen' role, are they dominant or are they subservient? What about impoverished nations like much of Africa, do they have a place in the NWO or are they just ignored?

Is the New World Order to be essentially capitalist, or socialist? Or some other thing as yet unnamed and unimagined?

Will it be multiracial, or will it have some races dominating others?

How does the New World Order envision the role of, say, Israel? Pakistan? Russia? Brazil? Are there countries that would be honestly better off under a New World Order? Surely there must be winners and losers. And if you understand these trends so well, I'd think you could predict where they are.

Today, judeo-christian ultranationalists are the driving force towards that unity. Or, they would like to be, using the overwhelming resources of the United States. In Bush the Elder's speech, I saw embracement of the idea by a coterie of American neocons. Any other parallel movements to unity may have been co-opted, displaced or just watching this drive.

If that's so, then the NWO has no real influence in Latin America, Europe or Asia, which means it's a laughable idea- the US may be big but it's only a quarter of the world economy at best. The other three quarters will just drive on and ignore our 'new world order' until it becomes a sad joke.

Which is pretty much what's happened to neoconservatism. The neocon ideas expressed in the New American Century are in many ways dead- they're obsolete, overtaken by events much as the internationalist dreams people had about the UN in the mid-1940s were overtaken by the Cold War. Obama may be vaguely supportive of them, as long as it doesn't cost him any money or effort, but he doesn't care enough to start new wars over it. Neither will his successors, Republican or Democrat. Any use of slogans favored by the neocons circa 2000-2005 is going to be a domestic political maneuver, in hopes of getting the reflex muscles of American jingoism to twitch in favor of whoever sues the slogan.

The new New World Order you should be far more worried about is the rise of multinational capitalism that doesn't need you, or your country, to flourish. To fight that, the last thing we need is libertarians, who have a huge blind spot in their ideology where corporate power is concerned, and can only fight it indirectly at best.

Honestly, I'm beginning to think the job of fighting the world hegemon is going to fall to whoever figures out an intellectually honest version of socialism that doesn't fall into the traps of 20th century communism.

By the way, that world hegemon- I wouldn't mind calling it "new world order," it's a perfectly descriptive word for a new system of how the world works. The problem is all the intellectual baggage that comes along with it. Pat Robertson raving about the Bilderbergs and the Trilateral Commission. The endless vagueness on what the NWO really is, so that it can be used by anyone as an excuse to hate anything, because it can contain Nazis and Jews, communists and ultracapitalists, ancients and moderns, all at once.

So whenever I hear the words "new world order" used in a sentence by someone whose political views come from the American framework, I can be 95% confident that the rest of what they say will be gibberish. I wasn't disappointed here.

What have you given up? What have you got now? What have you too look forward too? Ask yourself why Ron Paul is the only one advocating the obvious. I'm done plugging Paul. He's getting in the way of his own message here. Its the American People's Constitution. Maybe stop bashing Paul and try examining the viability of applying Constitutional rule once again and keeping the notion mainstream.

What makes you think I'm any more opposed to free speech, free elections, or anything else that can sanely be called 'constitutional rule' than you are? The fact that I'm a federalist, that my beliefs about economics and authority and civil rights are some twisted maze (I call myself a "social republican )... how am I, or anyone, even arguing that nations should not have constitutions, or should be governed by decree by unaccountable authority figures?

All this pounding of the Founding Fathers drum seems pointless and self-righteous to me. It's all posturing, no substance.

[General Brock]

Aww... excuses, excuses. You couldn't be bothered to do your own research, so changed the facts to fit your argument! You got it wrong on Gitmo too, but I don't blame you. I blame... uh...

Excuses are never enough. Explanations are much more useful. Why did I make such an obvious error in the heat of an intense post? Especially since I should have known better off raw memory alone? Could it be that I've come to dislike the actions of a political figure so much that being reasonable and circumspect is less of a priority? Seems to be a lot of that going around.

I've been brain damaged

Yes, yes you have. Self-inflicted, most likely.

I never did get over the totem-thieving, voice-stealing rip-off of Fitzpatrick's Che Guevara as a leftist icon of continuous revolutionary hope to a neocon sigil of endless war taken hook-line-and-sinker as the former. That was just serendipitous genius psyops and maybe I internalized the inversion of emotional truth too much and damaged something.

how many flips can a flop like Obama flop before a flip-flop flips right out

As many as Ron Paul can when answering about who was responsible for his racist and homophobic writings.

Ron Paul is a one-note wonder; the "I didn't write them, I didn't read them" disavowal combo. O-Blam!-A has made "We can do it!" flip-flop, fall-short, a signature theme of his presidential career.

He delivered Bin Laden. He promised that he would order such a raid and he did.

Between those still not convinced Bin Laden wasn't already dead to those who figure he was a lame duck figurehead insofar as being able to forment terrorism, Obama created just another martyr and denied the satisfaction due process would have lent to 911 closure. It did nothing more than contribute to indulging a culture of violent executive expediency.

This is at odds with what one would expect from a mild-mannered and erudite constitutional lawyer.

NO, you imbecile. YOU show ME proof. What a politician says in a speech is irrelevant. You have given no proof, which means the assertion is false and you're either a liar, a loon or both. "They can look it up and judge for themselves" is the biggest cop-out given by wackos like you, and it means you're full of shit.

That's ridiculous. What a politician says in a speech is always relevant in some way. For example, how many major speeches as Ron Paul given that highlight his racism and homophobia? For that matter, how is it that a political speech is irrelevant yet old disavowed newsletters somehow are relevant? I'd say the former were more 'canon' than the latter.

But anyway, I looked it up. And apparently it consists of the following:

2.1 End Time
2.2 Freemasonry
2.3 Illuminati
2.4 Protocols of the Elders of Zion
2.5 Round Table
2.6 Open Conspiracy
2.7 New Age
2.8 Fourth Reich
2.9 Alien Invasion
2.10 Brave New World

So I can only presume you have proof about a Jewish Adolf ' King Arthur' Hitler from the planet Zaslon will arrive after the apocalypse, carve ankhs on our forehead and exile us to an island where we won't have sex.

The only Jewish Adolf Hitler rumor I've ever came across was that his mother worked as a waitress in a Jewish-owed restaurant, became pregnant by the owner, and Adolf grew up resentful that he was never acknowledged by his father.

As for your list, it's structured to take NWO myths and reduce them to intellectually incorrect blanket taboo, shielding against considering the political implications of a powerful politician who worked in intelligence gathering using the words "new world order", and ignores the most basic use of the term New World Order, the creation of one world totalitarian government.

the poster should do his or her own research

And so I have, and I have concluded that you, like many Paultards I see on the internet, should never be allowed to operate any machinery more complicated than a food blender with two speed buttons.

[/quote]

All you've done is what many anti-Pauls do and elaborately construct a path away from having to consider as an election issue that the wars should end and governance should adhere more closely to the Constitution.

Based on liberal intellectual snob appeal and its sensitivity to political correctness, and the relative intellectual weakness of some Paul defenders, who unwittingly contribute to such a path.

As for Obama on Guantanamo - considering that I was not alone in assuming at first glance that Obama promised to close Guantanamo, I have to wonder how it is that Obama can skillfully confuse people on his supposed liberal intentions and play on their anticipations, then deliver what is often the opposite, yet not be considered a threat. Then, a more plain spoken politician such as Ron Paul is far worse for not being skilfully deceptive and plainly speaking what he considers to be the electorally important issues.

Link: http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/12/what ... -campaign/

[General Brock]

Congratulations, you managed to completely miss the point of the critique —which is that, if a President Paul would be powerless to do anything, by Mr. Roberts' own argument, then electing him in the first place as some sort of symbol or Cassandra would be utterly pointless. Which means Paul Craig Roberts' entire argument —even minus the loonier conspiracy wank woven all through it— is nonsensical on its face. This is separate from the other problems a Paul presidency would mean for a country that actually exists in the 21st century rather than the later 18th, which is where Mr. Paul seems to want to regress American political and constitutional evolution toward.

Well, yes, some people are nonsensical enough not to give up trying for the right cause no matter how futile that cause actually is. Put it to him, and Mr. Roberts would probably say something to the effect that giving up is unAmerican and maybe any remaining impulse to succeed should be applied it to something worthwhile.

As for timelines, the dominant fount of values in America today is the holy bible, which apart from the new testament supplement in the iron age, is still firmly rooted in the darkest days of the bronze age. The quran, which popular America knows little if anything about, was written in the seventh century, but worth mentioning as more 'modern' in a temporal sense. The lore of the founding fathers in the 18th century makes it more modern than either. So at the risk of being tempocentric, one conclusion would be the Constitution is a far better choice for grounding than the vacuum of positive governing values now apparent and what ever else it is that has now rushed in to take its place.

This is the 21st century. Where the 18th century constitution fell short, perhaps, was detailing rights and freedoms but failing to detail as well the responsibility. An attempt at drawing a bill of responsibilities may be found here:

http://charltonrose.com/misc/billresp/

A tea party site also copies it, but cites the link, so I don't know for sure who Judith Rose is or where she's coming from, and there are probably more attempts at this if one sought to delve further. However, this is a digression from the main topic and I keep getting hanged doing that so maybe never mind.

There is no symbol or Cassandra or anything like at all at the moment. One would be a huge improvement. There's always the off-chance of escaping the fate of Cassandra and actually being listened to and acted upon just enough to do some good. Stop the Fed, OWS, SOPA/PIPA resistance, are grounded in a desire for accountability and freedom. However, their roots are shallow, seeded in the here and now yet reaching taller than they perhaps realize, and may not tap deeper while their opponents have the easy momentum of concentrated wealth and corruption to tide them aside.

Its going to be a long road reforming American governance, and it either starts somewhere or not at all, grounded in something that worked, and if that was only for its time, well, that's a problem if the blessings of liberty have been dissipated by posterity, not affirmed by it.

Holy Writ is a shitty guide for formulating a basis for key life and social decisions in the modern world, and the constitution is not and was never meant to be interpreted in the same manner as Holy Writ.

Yet many people use, or think they use, holy writ in their daily lives in the postmodern world all the time, letting it colour just about everything they do, including many of the privileged few who formulate law.

The trinity of words, lore and ideals from the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and the Constitution, do not appear to dominantly inform the direction and end of law and policy, to keep Americans free and prosperous (and a positive example to the world). Something else appears to be, and judging from the results, it may not be well suited to the task of informing the governance of anything at all, let alone a 21st century superpower.

[UnderAGreySky]

Between those still not convinced Bin Laden wasn't already dead

Yes, all three of you.

those who figure he was a lame duck figurehead insofar as being able to forment terrorism, Obama created just another martyr and denied the satisfaction due process would have lent to 911 closure. It did nothing more than contribute to indulging a culture of violent executive expediency.

This is at odds with what one would expect from a mild-mannered and erudite constitutional lawyer.

Um, he promised to do something, and did it. Whether or not OBL was orchestrating any attach was not the point. He was the very definition of "high value". Obama's manners have nothing to do with it.

That's ridiculous. What a politician says in a speech is always relevant in some way. For example, how many major speeches as Ron Paul given that highlight his racism and homophobia? For that matter, how is it that a political speech is irrelevant yet old disavowed newsletters somehow are relevant? I'd say the former were more 'canon' than the latter.

Let me lay this down for my own sake, because I have difficulty believing you're this stupid

1) You claimed there is a "New World Order" Conspiracy
2) You were asked for proof
3) You pointed to a speech by GHW Bush.
4) You were told that a speech about something DOES NOT constitute proof it exists
5) You now say "Since Ron Paul hasn't given a speech showing his racist views* and homophobia, he can't be racist or homophobic".

I'm having trouble responding to this. Your logic makes no sense whatsoever.

Do you not realise a speech about any conspiracy DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AS PROOF of that conspiracy?

Do you not realise a speech - or newsletter - is proof about YOUR OWN BELIEFS?

Let me put it in simpler words: If you posted on this board tomorrow that black people are superior in every way to white people, anyone could be justified in calling you racist, but no one could be able to cite proof that "Black people are superior because General Brock said so".

Do you get that?

I never did get over the totem-thieving, voice-stealing rip-off of Fitzpatrick's Che Guevara as a leftist icon of continuous revolutionary hope to a neocon sigil of endless war taken hook-line-and-sinker as the former. That was just serendipitous genius psyops and maybe I internalized the inversion of emotional truth too much and damaged something.

Er, what?

That is some seriously bizarre shit.

[Patrick Degan]

Congratulations, you managed to completely miss the point of the critique —which is that, if a President Paul would be powerless to do anything, by Mr. Roberts' own argument, then electing him in the first place as some sort of symbol or Cassandra would be utterly pointless. Which means Paul Craig Roberts' entire argument —even minus the loonier conspiracy wank woven all through it— is nonsensical on its face. This is separate from the other problems a Paul presidency would mean for a country that actually exists in the 21st century rather than the later 18th, which is where Mr. Paul seems to want to regress American political and constitutional evolution toward.

Well, yes, some people are nonsensical enough not to give up trying for the right cause no matter how futile that cause actually is. Put it to him, and Mr. Roberts would probably say something to the effect that giving up is unAmerican and maybe any remaining impulse to succeed should be applied it to something worthwhile.

You again miss the point —symbolic action is worthless. Electing someone just so he can mount a soapbox with the Presidential Seal on it while not being able to actually do anything is not worthwhile action which will accomplish anything.

As for timelines, the dominant fount of values in America today is the holy bible, which apart from the new testament supplement in the iron age, is still firmly rooted in the darkest days of the bronze age. The quran, which popular America knows little if anything about, was written in the seventh century, but worth mentioning as more 'modern' in a temporal sense. The lore of the founding fathers in the 18th century makes it more modern than either. So at the risk of being tempocentric, one conclusion would be the Constitution is a far better choice for grounding than the vacuum of positive governing values now apparent and what ever else it is that has now rushed in to take its place.

This is the 21st century. Where the 18th century constitution fell short, perhaps, was detailing rights and freedoms but failing to detail as well the responsibility. An attempt at drawing a bill of responsibilities may be found here:

http://charltonrose.com/misc/billresp/

A tea party site also copies it, but cites the link, so I don't know for sure who Judith Rose is or where she's coming from, and there are probably more attempts at this if one sought to delve further. However, this is a digression from the main topic and I keep getting hanged doing that so maybe never mind.

There is no symbol or Cassandra or anything like at all at the moment. One would be a huge improvement. There's always the off-chance of escaping the fate of Cassandra and actually being listened to and acted upon just enough to do some good. Stop the Fed, OWS, SOPA/PIPA resistance, are grounded in a desire for accountability and freedom. However, their roots are shallow, seeded in the here and now yet reaching taller than they perhaps realize, and may not tap deeper while their opponents have the easy momentum of concentrated wealth and corruption to tide them aside.

Its going to be a long road reforming American governance, and it either starts somewhere or not at all, grounded in something that worked, and if that was only for its time, well, that's a problem if the blessings of liberty have been dissipated by posterity, not affirmed by it.

. . .

The trinity of words, lore and ideals from the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and the Constitution, do not appear to dominantly inform the direction and end of law and policy, to keep Americans free and prosperous (and a positive example to the world). Something else appears to be, and judging from the results, it may not be well suited to the task of informing the governance of anything at all, let alone a 21st century superpower.

From what I glean from all your temporising, you seem to think that working for true constitutionalism, whatever that's supposed to mean, is more important than working to effect material change in the here and now —which is where all politics have ever been grounded in any age. Returning to the roots of 1789 is not going to solve problems faced by real people in the real world of today. Nor will it ensure a government that doesn't practise wide ranging abuses of power —a point that is demonstrated historically when congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, and several of the members of that congress, as well as the sitting president, were the Founding Fathers.

[General Brock]

The neocon ideas expressed in the New American Century are in many ways dead- they're obsolete, overtaken by events much as the internationalist dreams people had about the UN in the mid-1940s were overtaken by the Cold War. Obama may be vaguely supportive of them, as long as it doesn't cost him any money or effort, but he doesn't care enough to start new wars over it. Neither will his successors, Republican or Democrat. Any use of slogans favored by the neocons circa 2000-2005 is going to be a domestic political maneuver, in hopes of getting the reflex muscles of American jingoism to twitch in favor of whoever sues the slogan.

Early rejectors of PNAC dismissed it as a recipe for endless war and looting the American treasury under the guise of defense and war spending. Not much has changed. Violent regime change under the pretext of human rights remains in effect and the military industrial complex has grown such that its referred to as the military-intelligence complex.

...though there are individuals with integrity, I'm not sure any of them are running for president this year. If I had to pick a Republican candidate with personal integrity, I'd actually pick Rick Santorum, not Ron Paul- and I think Santorum would be almost as bad as Paul if he actually got into office.

Thing is, when I look at Ron Paul and what he wants to do- not vague promises about "restoring constitutional government" that can mean anything to anyone, real actions- I cannot meet him half way. The only good things he'd do are pulling troops from Afghanistan, which will at most save a relatively modest number of deaths and possibly cause Revenge of the Taliban to kill more, and end the drone bombings, which will save a still smaller number of lives. On all other issues, I expect his policies to make things worse, or to cancel themselves out.

I would no more meet this man half way than I would a man who wanted to set my house on fire. You wouldn't say "fine, you can set half my house on fire and I'll save the other half" to that.

From a certain point of view, the house is already on fire, and the only arguments against Ron Paul is that he shouldn't dare come near your burning half with the fire axe and you want a better looking fireman.

...Your extended metaphor stopped making sense pretty fast. Ron Paul isn't a tool at all- he's a thermite charge. You don't use that on an engine you want to fix.

Ron Paul wants to rebuild the engine according to spec. The neocons keep wanting to feed it fiat nitro. Ron Paul's solution would at least require stopping the engine so everyone can take a good look at what's broke and why, and what can be salvaged.

I don't think that changing America's policies now will change the way Iraq or Afghanistan look in fifty years. If we wanted to really fix that, we'd need to travel back in time and smack Bush upside the head when he invaded Iraq in 2003. And I don't know what we'd do about Afghanistan, since it actually made sense to invade Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in the first place since they were actively harboring Al Qaeda. In case you've forgotten, Al Qaeda had just killed more of our civilian nationals than pretty much any other foreign body in our history. What were we supposed to do, laugh it off?

The Taliban were not accorded any real chance to cooperate. They weren't even the recognized government as far as most countries were concerned. No serious attempt to establish an orderly legal framework for arrest and prosecution of Bin Laden was made. The initial raid on Bib Laden's Afghanistan compound might be excusable, but ten years of failed occupation are not. Even in crude eye-for-an-eye terms, America has exacted its pound of flesh and more.

Fighting terrorism is a civilian criminal matter, not a military one. America essentially declared war against the concept of terrorism under the guise of finding one terrorist. Bin Laden is officially dead - killed in Pakistan yet - and the war in Afghanistan goes on to prevent terrorism from recurring there. Bin Laden was from Saudi Arabia.

See, this is one of the big intellectual dishonesties about your position. You want to blame the Iraq War on anyone and everyone who isn't Ron Paul, then say "Ron Paul is better because the Iraq War killed X people." The problem is that the war was started by someone who is no longer in office, and that we did not have the option of reviving all the dead bodies by ending it. Ron Paul might end the war in a hurry, but the pile of bodies would end up about the same size regardless, because most of those people were already dead, and were going to die even before Obama took office.

Is killing and continues to kill. 16 000 troops and some 5000 mercenaries in an embassy the size of the Vatican just means Iraq's been shoved on the back burner because more heat is needed for Afghanistan. I've already gone off the deep end ranting about how O-Blam!-Aaaa was the redeemer of Shrub era policies. Ron Paul was one of the few, and the only longstanding politician of any stature, who consistently held an antiwar position without compromise.

When a war ends the people killed in it do indeed remain dead. However it is not intellectually dishonest in the least to say if the shooting stops now, those who would have been shot now might still survive the residual ordinance and collateral damage left behind. I have no idea why you said those people would be dead anyway.

I don't actually believe Obama has the slightest intent of doing that. His successor, or another man twenty years down the road, very well might... and I think we need someone better than Ron Paul to prevent that.

Where IS this mystery candidate? The neocons seem to have perfected Presidential succession management to a fine art across both political parties.

Wait - this potential for harm shouldn't even exist in the first place and alone disqualifies O-Blam!-Aaaa from Presidential office in spirit, though obviously not fact. That this condition should exist and accepted so casually is just bizarre.

Bullshit. Obama isn't trying to abolish welfare, Bush didn't either, but Ron Paul seems to want to. Obama isn't trying to give the states a free hand to enact discrimination policies, Bush didn't either, but Ron Paul wants to. Obama isn't trying to abolish the regulatory agencies that at least allow us to bring corporations back under control, Bush didn't either, but Ron Paul wants to.

From my perspective it seems Bush and O-Blam!-Aaa simply found more clever ways to mock the intent of the social safety net. O-Blam!-Aaa-care cuts to medicare resulted in doctors having to cut patients, and many small practices which were already in the red are going flat broke.

Link: http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/05/smallbu ... /index.htm

The excuse, that that the doctors were poor businesspeople, rings kind of hollow. At least Ron Paul is open about where he stands, addressing the artifacts of the systematic dirty game against ordinary people.

So "NWO" is a nebulous, vague thing that may or may not contain any given thing. It can at once contain Zionists and Nazis, communists and capitalists. It is everything and nothing, tangible and intangible, incredibly ancient and yet as new as the wireless Internet.

Doesn't that make it a perfect conspiracy theory? You can point to anyone and call them part of the "New World Order," and imply that they're complicit in all sorts of crimes against the people. But even if every single allegation you make is false or unsubstantiated, it doesn't reflect on whether the "New World Order" exists, because you never bothered to say what it is. So you're free to just spam allegations without actually nailing down anything you believe, or saying anything falsifiable.

I've had enough of this bullshit.

So have I. America is headed in bad direction. The world is headed in a bad direction because America took its default level of hegemony after the Cold War and played it out under a vision devised by a coterie of neocon intellectuals.

I have said, the NWO is the creation of one world totalitarian government by violence and stealth in common parlance. I have questioned what that definition leaves out; why does a global government have to be totalitarian, and why can't it be democratically and peacefully arrived at?

It is, after all, very elementary intuitive reasoning that over time conditions favouring a single world governing body could arise naturally, all on its own, and its only a question of who's in charge for whose benefit.

The pre-911 world appeared very much headed in that direction with only a few diehards determined to be reactionary and backwards, against the irresistible force of the end of history, liberal democratic governance economically underpinned by some incarnation of a free market.

If anyone appears to be acting in a direction of global hegemony, why aren't they using peaceful means? Why is any consideration, and application of the slogan 'think globaly, act locally' in this area, automatically non-think, to be written off as intellectually incorrect conspiracy theory?

The neocons are pushing American domestic and foreign policy in irrational directions to irrational magnitude. NWO is one of the most likely explanations; they're having the American people reach hard for that near-mythical brass ring. If a totalitarian America becomes set in stone, there is a problem since America is big enough to be a cornerstone of any hypothetical future single world government.

Ahhh. So when you say "New World Order," you don't actually mean the same things that other people mean by it. Why use the word then? Why not say "globalization?"

And if your premise is that the flows of capital and economic power are bringing about this evolution toward a world-state, then why is your ideal presidential candidate the anarcho-libertarian laissez-faire capitalist Ron Paul? Why aren't you a socialist, like Stas?

New World Order has the cachet of being ominous, and a far better framework for explaining some things than globalization.

Libertarianism marks individual liberty as the core measure of political capital. The level of personal freedom is the only measure relevant to an ordinary citizen as it determines how well the citizen can contribute to society whether under a socialist or capitalist government.

Socialism under the Soviets failed because it constrained individual liberties in favour of the monopoly of privileged holders of state power. Crony capitalism likewise fails for the same reason, but has greater endurance because it has individual liberty at its seed and it takes a certain amount of merit to survive to the point where a monopoly is realized.

The success of any government depends on the degree to which meritocracy can be allowed to inform goals and achievement of those goals. Unfortunately, while many people would prefer to be served by a meritocracy, no-one wants to answer to one, if only because they want wiggle room if they don't measure up.

Very well. Who harbors this idea? How does it advance? What mechanisms are being used to bring countries together? Regardless of who it is, you're implying that someone actually plans this trend, so how do we recognize those plans ahead of time for what they are?

The islamophobe neocons and those willing to go along with them, which is a conspiracy of like minds and cannot be easily opposed. It advances by successfully advocating endless war and erosion of civil liberties, and transferring wealth to itself and so increasing its potential for garnering more political capital. Military and economic arm-twisting based on the political capital fiat cash creates brings countries together.

Those plans were recognized but there was no unity of like minds by the opposition. Isolated instances of corruption or idiocy were opposed in isolation, and defeated in isolation, and there was was no coordinated resistance. Given that the military intelligence complex is harnessed to find those solutions, it should hardly come as a surprise that the antiwar movement was systematically neutralized as easily as Boudica's rebellion was in the end.

Ron Paul so happens to be able to provide that unity of opposition. However, it is a measure of the vulnerability of the American republic that even had he been an unimpeachable saint, he's holding all the eggs at a critical juncture in national history. That's lousy succession planning compared to the neocons, who have scored two presidencies across two political parties in a row.

Is an international treaty on copyright part of the NWO? What about a treaty on food safety? Maritime law? The Geneva Conventions?

Is NATO part of the New World Order?

Are Third World industrial powerhouses like China complicit in the NWO? What is their 'foreseen' role, are they dominant or are they subservient? What about impoverished nations like much of Africa, do they have a place in the NWO or are they just ignored?

Is the New World Order to be essentially capitalist, or socialist? Or some other thing as yet unnamed and unimagined?

Will it be multiracial, or will it have some races dominating others?

How does the New World Order envision the role of, say, Israel? Pakistan? Russia? Brazil? Are there countries that would be honestly better off under a New World Order? Surely there must be winners and losers. And if you understand these trends so well, I'd think you could predict where they are.

Well, based on existing trends I'd the winners are going to be those tight with crony capitalism of the multinational corporations and losers anyone who gets in their way.

The NWO or just the nwo will be defined by privilege backed by right of wealth and might, not the political will to respect civil liberties.

NATO was probably one of the grandest and well-intentioned defensive military alliances ever constructed. At the very least, it was an unspoken pact of peace amongst the nations of the west. As an offensive alliance based on responsibility-to-protect its an awkward betrayal of its originally stated intent and I'm not sure of the long-term effect upon the benefits derived from the original premise.

The BRICS group are too diverse to easily mash together under such a convenient acronym. If they have some greater humanitarian vision guiding them and can defend it with political and economic success, then together they could be accomplishing something. However, say if China decides to refuse to bankroll anymore American debt and can't be coerced into giving money in the form of buying into American national debt, America undr the neocons will try to regime change them and it is doubtful that the BRICS wall will remain united.

If that's so, then the NWO has no real influence in Latin America, Europe or Asia, which means it's a laughable idea- the US may be big but it's only a quarter of the world economy at best. The other three quarters will just drive on and ignore our 'new world order' until it becomes a sad joke.

The impulse to totalitarianism exists everywhere, some countries more open to the idea than others.
Wikileaks let slip that the American ambassador to France wanted to unleash military-styled sanction against EU nations effectively rejecting GMOs. Europe under Brussels may or may not be caving in to the pressure.

While America has the edge in this biotechnology, Europe also has a stake in the industry and may decide to back it for economic reasons over the democratic wishes of Europeans. The whole GMO controversy breaks down into the right to, or not to, own mechanisms of life and the genesis of life. That's a very powerful thing to dominate, and its either embrace it as part of the paradigm or reject it at the risk of it becoming a repeat of Japan's rejection of gunpowder.

To say America is without influence and every nation is somehow hermetic to this ignores the level of interconnectedness and interdependency of nations today. Even an isolated dictator like Gadaffi had an impact when he threatened to let China help realize the African Dream of development by exchanging industrialization for access to resources, at the expense of Europe's once privileged access to cheap African resources.

Any use of slogans favored by the neocons circa 2000-2005 is going to be a domestic political maneuver, in hopes of getting the reflex muscles of American jingoism to twitch in favor of whoever sues the slogan.

Neoconservatism defines the era until another ideological construct either replaces it. The new century is only 12 years in. They were thinking well beyond 2005.

The new New World Order you should be far more worried about is the rise of multinational capitalism that doesn't need you, or your country, to flourish. To fight that, the last thing we need is libertarians, who have a huge blind spot in their ideology where corporate power is concerned, and can only fight it indirectly at best.

Honestly, I'm beginning to think the job of fighting the world hegemon is going to fall to whoever figures out an intellectually honest version of socialism that doesn't fall into the traps of 20th century communism.

The libertarians believe corporate power can be broken by a more genuinely free market where the empowered and enlightened individual holds sway. Corporations must answer to genuine consumer needs and demands and can't buy government power to protect themselves from consumer and openly competitive market forces.

The extreme socialists failed because of their big blind spot common to any big government system, failing to allow the people as individuals to be able to watch the watchers.

By the way, that world hegemon- I wouldn't mind calling it "new world order," it's a perfectly descriptive word for a new system of how the world works. The problem is all the intellectual baggage that comes along with it. Pat Robertson raving about the Bilderbergs and the Trilateral Commission. The endless vagueness on what the NWO really is, so that it can be used by anyone as an excuse to hate anything, because it can contain Nazis and Jews, communists and ultracapitalists, ancients and moderns, all at once.

So whenever I hear the words "new world order" used in a sentence by someone whose political views come from the American framework, I can be 95% confident that the rest of what they say will be gibberish. I wasn't disappointed here.

Usually what one doesn't want to hear can become gibberish. Wading through NWO theories was such a pain I decided to examine if there was an overall meaning to it. After all, government is a big thing to consider even on a small municipal or regional scale.

What makes you think I'm any more opposed to free speech, free elections, or anything else that can sanely be called 'constitutional rule' than you are? The fact that I'm a federalist, that my beliefs about economics and authority and civil rights are some twisted maze (I call myself a "social republican )... how am I, or anyone, even arguing that nations should not have constitutions, or should be governed by decree by unaccountable authority figures?

Its not what just what values you're willing to accept as a nice idea, its what you're willing to do to achieve them, and how the choices to live upon that path come to be.

All this pounding of the Founding Fathers drum seems pointless and self-righteous to me. It's all posturing, no substance.

It was impossible to wrap it in the flag; someone else absconded with it and I'm not qualified to wave it anyway.

The Founding Fathers and how they went about securing their core values of liberty safeguarded by a constitutional republic, was the substance.

[General Brock]

You again miss the point —symbolic action is worthless. Electing someone just so he can mount a soapbox with the Presidential Seal on it while not being able to actually do anything is not worthwhile action which will accomplish anything.

Well if climbing on a little soapbox is such an endeavor, one can only imagine how the long road back to something more closely resembling responsible governance by the people for the people is going to be.

Of course, a lot of trouble is spared simply by not taking any first steps, even giving up on the first symbolic ones. That's defeatism, and its unAmerican, particularly so given the stakes.

From what I glean from all your temporising, you seem to think that working for true constitutionalism, whatever that's supposed to mean, is more important than working to effect material change in the here and now —which is where all politics have ever been grounded in any age. Returning to the roots of 1789 is not going to solve problems faced by real people in the real world of today. Nor will it ensure a government that doesn't practise wide ranging abuses of power —a point that is demonstrated historically when congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, and several of the members of that congress, as well as the sitting president, were the Founding Fathers.

Then as now, people had ideals of purpose or said they did, and strove to realize them - as well as to qualify, deny, or just plain mistake them when more personal considerations came to factor.

The net effect of the Alien and Sediton acts were to affirm the fledgling Republic.

The four bills of the 1798 Alien and Sedition acts were declared unconstitutional by opponents and appear to have been the last straw against a Federalist government seen to be a little too 'big government', having established a large army and navy, imposed heavy taxes to pay for it, established a central bank - the precursor to today's fed - against broadly held wisdom hostile to fiat debt, and used Federal troops to quash dissent. For a while it seemed America would be just another nation of the period, settling internal differences with force or arms.

The Federalist party under John Adams was voted out of office the very next Presidential election in 1800. This election was hailed as the "Revolution of 1800" by Thomas Jefferson, who led the opposing party to power (referred to ex post-facto as the Democratic-Republican party). Not a shot had to be fired and there was total acceptance by the Federalists of the electoral results. The victory was incomplete; although three of the acts expired on their own, the Alien Enemies Act remained on the books although the popular perception was that all were null and void.

When people talk of the Ron Paul Revolution, they are alluding to this Revolution of 1800, which saw the demise of a party system cozy with that era's Establishment prerogatives and the dawn of a new era of political discourse. Its interesting to read.

Link: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/databa ... fm?HHID=11

Apart from changes of actors, costumes, and sets, and sheer scale, the parallels are remarkable. Even the defamation of Ron Paul mirrors that of Thomas Jefferson, although the slurs of this day are different and much more serious.

Indeed, the level to which the empowered political elite are willing and able, if not driven, to cheat and game the system is not something the original Founding Fathers ever had to face.

[Sidewinder]

From a certain point of view, the house is already on fire, and the only arguments against Ron Paul is that he shouldn't dare come near your burning half with the fire axe and you want a better looking fireman.

No, the argument is that Ron Paul is TOO INCOMPETENT to safety use the fire axe, and likely to kill you by accident, while trying to put out the fire.

[Thanas]

That is most likely true.

However, Simon's point that people should vote for Obama because he prevents further abuse is on its own pretty laughable.

[Knife]

I chalk it up to the lesser of two evils. It sounds trite and cliche, but... well there you go. Obama talks a big game about changed without massively damaging people's lives, while more or less continuing policies like before. Ron Paul is very straight forward that he wants to take a sledge hammer to the system, damage and suffering to the people be damned. Is there a candidate out there who will take a skill saw to the system and not cause wanton destruction and suffering to millions to get their way? I don't know. Until then, I'd rather take the middle ground.

[Thanas]

Just be aware of what you are voting for. If you are fine with voting for somebody who thinks a US citizen should have no right to a day in court if he is tortured for seven years in secret by the US military on nothing but the President's say so, or even shot, then go ahead.

But don't complain about getting labelled accordingly.

[Darmalus]

Just be aware of what you are voting for. If you are fine with voting for somebody who thinks a US citizen should have no right to a day in court if he is tortured for seven years in secret by the US military on nothing but the President's say so, or even shot, then go ahead.

But don't complain about getting labelled accordingly.

The fear of the tiny chance of being tortured until I die by my own government is a lot smaller than the fear of some lunatic whose whole plan is imploding the economy causing me to go hungry and homeless. I'd like both justice and food, but if I have to pick, I'll take the food.

[Rahvin]

Just be aware of what you are voting for. If you are fine with voting for somebody who thinks a US citizen should have no right to a day in court if he is tortured for seven years in secret by the US military on nothing but the President's say so, or even shot, then go ahead.

But don't complain about getting labelled accordingly.

What would you advise for American voters?

Romney will almost certainly win the nomination, and if he doesn't, only Ron Paul strikes me as different on the matter of torture and imprisonment, and we've all gone over the reasons Paul would be awful in other threads.

So both of the major parties will have candidates that support indefinite imprisonment with no legal recourse and no prosecution for torture.

One of those candidates is certain to win the Presidency. American votes only decide which one. A vote for a third party will only lead to splitting the vote for the actually electable candidate you otherwise would have voted for. As bad as Obama is, I honestly think Romney would be worse in at least a few areas, and better in none. We all know the flaws in the American political system, I don't really think we need a rehash, I want to change it as much as anyone else, but what should we do for this election year? If I abstain from voting, that helps the man I want to hold the office the least get elected. If I vote for the third party candidate, the result is the same. You may as well "label" me a Romney supporter, because that would be the net result of any option other than voting for Obama...in which case I would apparently still be a "supporter" of freedom from prosecution for torturers and imprisonment with no legal recourse.

What option should I take to avoid being "labelled accordingly?" Emigration?

[Formless]

One of those candidates is certain to win the Presidency. American votes only decide which one. A vote for a third party will only lead to splitting the vote for the actually electable candidate you otherwise would have voted for. As bad as Obama is, I honestly think Romney would be worse in at least a few areas, and better in none. We all know the flaws in the American political system, I don't really think we need a rehash, I want to change it as much as anyone else, but what should we do for this election year? If I abstain from voting, that helps the man I want to hold the office the least get elected. If I vote for the third party candidate, the result is the same. You may as well "label" me a Romney supporter, because that would be the net result of any option other than voting for Obama...in which case I would apparently still be a "supporter" of freedom from prosecution for torturers and imprisonment with no legal recourse.

Oh, goddamnit, I am sick and tired of this crap. The crap in bold, that crap, what the fuck am I supposed to say to that? Do you realize how dogshit stupid you sound?

Voting for a Status Quo Party candidate makes you responsible for the injustices perpetrated by those two parties. Fair enough. But how the fuck does voting for a third party or not voting at all help any candidate other than the one you voted for? Because that candidate got in? Because it was inevitable that a Status Quo candidate was going to get in? If that is the case, then its tautological that you are "helping" the winning candidate regardless of what you do! Even voting for the other Status Quo candidate can be twisted into being considered "helping" the winning candidate under this logic-- all fucking votes split the vote between candidates, you fucking retard! That's how democracy fucking works!

Here's what you have to do. Vote for a third party or independent candidate. And not just a third party or independent Presidential candidate. The Status Quo Party(ies) hold this nation's balls in a vice because people perceive their candidates to be the only ones who are electable period, and this holds true on multiple levels of government. Take the long view for once, don't think about this one election as the only one that matters. Its the fact people only think about the effects of a vote on this election or that election, only ever care about the effects of their vote on the current election and never the elections to come, that this false dilemma appears reasonable to people and not a pile of steaming horseshit. If you get more candidates from other parties who more accurately represent the will of the people and not the will of the Party into political offices (such as in the House, Senate, and state government positions like Governor), those parties will appear steadily more electable. You don't change the Status Quo all in one go. The world just doesn't work that way. You have to have patience and integrity, because the consequences of voter action are going to be seen long after the votes have been counted.

Of course, perceptions aren't the only obstacles in the way of third party and independent candidates getting into office-- obviously something has to be done about funding, media representation, and our retarded "first past the post" voting system. But perception is one aspect of democracy you have the most control over, and thus responsibility for. Remember the party known as the Whigs? Exactly.

[Simon_Jester]

Formless, do you remember Ralph Nader and the 2000 election?

A lot of Americans do. It's depressed their willingness to vote for third parties, on both sides of the aisle. Because if even a fraction of the people who voted Green had been willing to vote for Al Gore (whose credentials on environmental issues have since turned out pretty well, for instance), there would never have been a President Bush. There might not have been an Iraq War. There might never have been waterboarding at Guantanamo, or unary-executive sycophantic freaks writing torture memos in the Department of Justice. We might have trillions of dollars less national debt.

To be fair, all these things might still have gone wrong anyway. But at least we would have had a chance to avoid the many shameful disasters and follies America has bumbled or charged into in this past decade.

It is very possible that we would be living in a better country today if people eleven years ago had listened to your advice and done the exact opposite.

A lot of Americans are reluctant to take their chances on third parties, because the last time a third party gained any real traction in America, we got a president who was almost as bad as could be imagined from the viewpoint of the people who voted for that third party.

[Formless]

Formless, do you remember Ralph Nader and the 2000 election?

A lot of Americans do. It's depressed their willingness to vote for third parties, on both sides of the aisle. Because if even a fraction of the people who voted Green had been willing to vote for Al Gore (whose credentials on environmental issues have since turned out pretty well, for instance), there would never have been a President Bush. There might not have been an Iraq War. There might never have been waterboarding at Guantanamo, or unary-executive sycophantic freaks writing torture memos in the Department of Justice. We might have trillions of dollars less national debt.

Post Hoc, Ergo Prompter Hoc. Fuck your stupidity with a garden hose, Simon. For all we know, the only thing Al Gore would have been better about was the environment. Everything else is unknowable, because the man never made president.

When Third parties are routinely dismissed with the following circular reasoning fallacy:

The number of votes a candidate receives decides his electability

I (a voter) perceive third parties and independent candidates to be unelectable

therefor I and all other voters should not vote for third party or independent candidates

--why should I give a fuck about how American's ended up with Bush instead of Gore? You cannot blame the election of Bush on people who voted for Nader. That's the reasoning of a dishonest coward.

[Erik von Nein]

And why not? If they had voted for Gore then Bush wouldn't have been elected. Of course, they couldn't have known that Bush would turn out as bad as he did, but the Republicans at the time certainly had quite the laundry list of despicable things to their name, not the least of which revolved around Clinton's sex scandals. And while we don't know how Gore's presidency would have reacted to the 9/11 attacks or how he would have reacted to corporate maleficence in the stock market we do know he wouldn't have done what Bush did with environmental regulations. We can unequivocally say that Gore's presidency would have been better than Bush's presidency.

Does that de-legitimize third party candidates? Maybe not, but it most certainly does give historical context for why people would be hesitant (to say the least) about voting for a third party. Especially a third party that has no chance of garnering more than a plurality of the vote. The only way to change that would be to change the winner-takes-all nature of the presidential elections.

If you're voting as a protest why not, instead, just protest? The Occupy Wall Street people had quite a bit going for them, and if more people were motivated to become more active in politics with donations, letters, calls, or what have you it'd send a much stronger message than "Well, we're actually okay with our opponents winning the election, because then our not-quite-opponents get the message!" How much of a message did it send to Democrats in 2000 when Bush won? Apparently, it was "be more conservative," as that seems to be exactly where they went with it.