This is intended to be emailed. Please copy it and email it to your usual suspects.
Please put aside your preconceptions for a moment.
The following statement is both simple and true, even if you haven’t yet thought of him in this way: Ron Paul is the most politically conservative Republican to have had a serious shot at the nomination since Calvin Coolidge declined to run, and chose to return to Vermont, nearly a 100 years ago.. And RON PAUL CAN WIN. National polls consistently point to his support extending across the spectrum. Romney doesn’t have this, and neither does Obama. Both CNN and CBS have found this, recently. Here is the CBS poll: http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2012/01/09/Who-Would-You-Vote-For-in-November-if-the-Candidates-Were.gif
Here is a poll from the Des Moines Register showing Paul winning over Obama decisively in the Buckeye State, something of a national bellweather: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20120218/NEWS09/120218015?fb_comment_id=fbc_10150568275387677_21286437_10150569344772677
In my view, the situation is not complicated. According to recent budget projections, in 2011 we are projected to take in $1.9 trillion, and spend $3.3 trillion. This is a gap of $1.4 trillion, or about $116 BILLION a MONTH. There are various ways of doing the accounting, but this is the rough reality, and we all know it. Our national debt already exceeds $15 trillion, and is equal to the entirety of our annual economic output. Debt loads this size have historically inevitably led to economic catastrophes. Obamacare and the entry of the Baby Boomers into our Social Security and Medicare rolls will only accelerate this process, which is already unsustainable.
What in your estimation constitutes a rational, proportional response to this situation?
Mitt Romney has pledged to cut $20 billion from our annual budget (5% of a very small part of the budget), and in effect appoint a committee to study the issue. Does this sound like a solution that is on par with the size of the problem?
Supposed “conservative” Newt Gingrich called Paul Ryan’s budget plan–which is at least trying to wrestle with the problems we face, “right wing social engineering”. Here is what is interesting about that statement: Ryan’s plan doesn’t even balance the ANNUAL budget until 2040 . During that period, our debt will continue to increase, year on year. Predictably, Gingrich makes no commitments at all with respect to budget cuts.
Ron Paul has pledged to cut annual expenditures by $1 trillion his first year. He is going to abolish the Departments of Education, HUD, Commerce, Energy, and Interior. He is going to abolish the TSA, which is strip searching everyone who flies that it wants to.
He is going to lower the corporate tax rate to 15%. This will have ENORMOUS and IMMEDIATE stimulating effects on our economy.
Self evidently, he will reverse Obamacare, and substantially every Executive Order Obama issued, along with implementing a legal framework removing the ability for the Executive Branch to impose laws without consulting Congress.
He is going to audit the Federal Reserve. For those who complacently assume that the Fed is benevolent, consider the following: our next generation aircraft carrier, the Ford Class, will cost some $10 billion each. Ben Bernanke, without asking any elected officials’ approval, created (just in the second round of so-called “Quantitative Easing”), from scratch, $600 BILLION–the equivalent of 60 state of the art aircraft carriers. And we don’t even know who got the money. We have no way of knowing. But we can assume it went to the already rich, and not to ordinary Americans, who will be hurt by the inflation that clearly will follow whenever the economy recovers. This is absurd.
With regard to foreign policy, talk with a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. Ask them what good we are doing there. Ask them if they think we should be there. If you can find one who thinks that we are protecting America–now, after 10 years of war–then go buy a lottery ticket because it’s your day to defy the odds. Paul gets more donations from active duty military than all the other candidates combined. They are tired of fighting, and it is hard to blame them. It is impossible to measure progress. They sweep an area, destroy weapons caches and arrest some people, then three months later things are the same as before. Although only one percent of the population, veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars constitute 20% of the suicides.
Or if Iran is a concern, ask yourself: what exactly are we supposed to attack, and what will be the military benefit of it? Can we, with even the best of military strikes, one using ground penetrating bombs to enter deep down bunkers, PERMANENTLY prevent the Iranians from getting nukes? Of course not. To suggest we can, without a regime change–which no one is seriously pursuing–is ludicrous. What will happen is we will give the Iranian government vast increases in their domestic political support–pushing us further from our goal, which is not a nuke-free Iran but rather peace in the region, with the two not necessarily being contradictory–and simply DELAY them. We move one step forward and two back.
Again, ask any combat veterans you know how eager they are to attack Iran, and what difficulties they see. The only way to do it right is to conquer and occupy the nation, and I think most would agree that the threat at this point will not justify that enormous expenditure of American lives and wealth. The Iranian leadership may talk nuts, but most of them will prove in my view in the end attached to their own lives and positions.
With regard to electability, Ron Paul consistently places within a couple points of Romney when matched against Obama. He can count on everyone right of center to vote for him simply because they cannot stomach Obama. But he also appeals to large swathes of the Left, who share with the Right a fear of government power grabs, and who have a distaste for foreign wars.
To repeat, PAUL IS ELECTABLE.
Here is the question: do you want to sacrifice genuine conservatism–low taxes, huge decreases in the size and power of the Federal Government–for a one or two point advantage in the polls, and for a candidate NOBODY–except the banking community–is enthusiastic about?
Please ponder this carefully before you vote in your primary, and please pass this email along to everyone you think might have an interest in reading it.
A VOTE FOR ANYONE BUT PAUL IS A VOTE FOR THE STATUS QUO, WITH ONLY MINOR AND COSMETIC VARIATIONS.
End note: I have ignored Rick Santorum because his social conservatism–for example his deep opposition to homosexuality–will simply not play outside a small core demographic that doesn’t even comprise, in my view, the majority of the REPUBLICAN party, much less the national electorate.
10 replies on “Letter to Ron Paul Skeptics, Revised”
He can NOT win an actual election. If he could, he'd have actually won a state nominating contest already. Good grief.
Moreover, and I thought long and hard about even leaving this comment, as it only encourages people like you…any president who would gleefully abolish the dept of education, thereby relegating some children to a substandard education based upon the state their parents chose to live in, is absolutely disgusting. The system we have now is very imperfect, but at least it tries to accomplish that. RP's idea would not only be a disaster, it would reduce the freedom of children. If you think anything else, you're lying to yourself. A competitive market by default creates winners and losers. While this is a good thing in many cases, it is not in all, and your boy cannot seem to figure out where it matters and where it doesn't. The L and R sides are horrible, to be sure, and the fact that we only get two choices in the US is bad as well, but RP is a god damned idiot. Get over it.
You are displaying the common Statist conceit that creating a bureau to solve some problem is necessarily better than leaving the people affected alone. There is no empirical basis for this belief, and in fact it is transparently obvious that the support of leftists like Barack Obama for teacher's unions that protect the incompetent and predatory, and opposition to proven solutions like vouchers and charter schools, CAUSES a lack of performance.
What has improved since the creation of the Dept. of Education? We are right at the top in per student spending, and right at the bottom when compared to virtually every industrialized nation in outcomes. Much money, poor results. Who can defend this? Can you?
As far as electability, that is obvious: he has broad bipartisan appeal, but not sufficient appeal to Republicans to have yet won a primary. Since Democrats and independents can't normally vote in these things, all we get is that of registered Republicans, many of whom seem to have come to conflate fighting foreign wars with conservatism. The reality, of course, is that if the government is getting bigger, it is not being run by actual conservatives.
It is admittedly an uphill fight to get the nod, when the media vacillates between ignoring and condemning him, and when his policies will be devastating to very powerful entrenched elites.
At the same time, though, rational minds will readily apprehend that if the goal is both peace and economic strength, we owe ourselves a few steps in a new direction. We have tried the alternatives, and they have plainly been wanting.
"proven solutions like vouchers and charter schools"? Really? Charter schools have NOT proven to be as effective as public. HAVE NOT. We have many students coming back into our public schools who are behind our students. What reports or information are you reading exactly? I'd say your sources aren't up to current knowledge.
Leaving aside the merits of charter schools, and the idea of vouchers you ignored, given the manifest, pervasive and expensive failure of the Dept. of Education, how can you justify its continued existence? Once the basic needed elements are in place, there is no evidence more money creates better outcomes; nor do larger, money-sucking burocracies.
Part 1 (it's worth reading both parts, I promise)
So I read your reply awhile back, but got busy at work. Now that I’m bored, I’ll reply again, both to your reply to my comment, and your reply to that other anon comment (which wasn't me).
First, I need to get some things straight, since you’re confused. I do not believe that creating bureaucracy is a good thing. I think bureaucracy makes things more expensive and complex, by design. But, I’m also able to get my head out of my ideological ass, and see the need (read that again, good and need are different things) for bureaucracy, in some situations.
Second, calling Obama a socialist pretty much nullifies your opinion to anyone who is able to accurately take in the political landscape. By all accounts he’s a moderate, and hell, go back to 196X, make him white, and he’d have almost been a REPUBLICAN. I’m sure that must grouse you a little, but dude, open your eyes. If you want to call him a crappy President, cool. Talk about how he’s not made good on XYZ campaign promises, cool. Call him a socialist? You’re dissing yourself as far as honest intellectual dialogue goes.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s get to the real meat, your total ignorance to education in this country, called out based upon your replies to my and the anon comment.
I think you’re really confused about the Department of Education, based on your ‘what good has it done!” statement. It’s actually been a Federal agency/office since 1953 (1868 if you really wanna split hairs). In that time, what good has a Federal dept of ed done?
My first exhibit is that over that time period, America became the envy of the world in many respects, but among them, the quality of our K-12 education system. It always differed a little by state, but following an actual Federal role in education, we saw a gradual acclimation to a uniform set of standards for all kids. Why should child1 get an education that is qualitatively different from that of child2, just because child1’s parents live in state1, and not state2? Because state1 decides to do it that way? How’s that fair to the child? And moreover, how’s that make any sense from a national readiness standpoint? Show me any other nation on earth that beats us in terms of test scores in K-12, which also allows its constituent province/county/state to determine educational standards. Show me. One. It’s all I ask.
But it didn’t stop there, this particular agency also helped with social programs, in addition to education, designed to help the poor and otherwise needy to get a leg up. What happened? If you look at a long time series, you’ll see the wage/achievement/etc gap between blacks and whites narrowed to its lowest level in the mid to late 70’s. It wasn’t until the gipper got in there that it started to widen again, along with the income gap. Shocking, I know. Linda Darling-Hammond wrote a nice paper about it, well cited, well received, authoritative. I suggest you look it up.
Part 2 (rollin rollin rollin)
The cost thing you bring up is more evidence of ignorance. We spend the most money, and have some low results? Why is that? Well, on the spending side, it's because among other things (as opposed to most other education systems in most other countries), ours has to pay for both the retirement and healthcare of its employees. Once you back out those costs, we’re not too far off what other advanced industrial nations pay for education overall (many of those nations also don't offer things like music, art, sports, etc, as part of their normal offerings. We do, and it costs money. I've been to other nations and seen their education systems, even worked in them. Have you?). If you want to argue that we shouldn’t be paying for those things, well OK, but as it stands now, we do, and that’s why the costs are what they are. You should really do your homework. It’s also funny, if you look at us overall, we’re right in the middle in terms of achievement. If you isolate the upper income public schools, we SMOKE the other countries. Just like other stuff (healthcare, higher ed, k-12 ed), if you've got the $ necessary to access the level of services, we've got the best [thing] anywhere on earth. But society isn't made up of just the wealthy and motivated, and like it or lump it, our society works best when people are well educated and healthy. The cost to get to that far outweighs the costs associated with not being there.
Moreover, it’s been well documented for decades that you need to spend more, up to 2x, on kids from concentrated poverty. Argue with me about the efficacy of that if you like, but again, that’s why. Other nations do that, we don’t, and we get the results we get.
You attempt to refute the other anon comment by just talking about how the DoE has failed, as if its failure is a de facto call for charterizing and voucherfying our education system. I mean, WOW. As to your point about ‘proven solutions,’ where are you getting that? Read a few actual academic studies, chief. You need to control for the demographics of the kids, the type of school, and the location of the school. Most studies don’t do this, because, well, it’s really hard (do you understand hierarchical linear modeling and how to control for nested cohort effects? I barely do, but if you're interested in accuracy, you need to learn how to do it). However, some do, and when they do, the results are unmistakable: after you control for aforementioned three areas, public schools on average produce higher test scores than any schooling system other than the traditional rich kid private schools. Diane Ravitch has done some nice work, but she’s the celebrity in the group. Chris and Sarah Lubienski at UIUC nailed this dead on in 2006, the CREDO institute at Stanford also nailed it. Others have as well. Charters were a great idea; a school that is free of some of the bureaucratic XYZ of a traditional public school. A great place to try out new ideas and incubate methods of learning, for use in a wider school context. What they’ve become is the go to choice for reform advocates. Their original design had them as an accessory for public schools, not a replacement or even alternative. This is where they should stay. Merits? Yes, they have a few. But their drawbacks far outweigh their merits.
Part 3 (hat trick!)
And finally, there is plenty of evidence that more money creates better outcomes. I assume you’re looking at how education budgets go up every year, but there’s not appreciable increase in test scores? Follow that logic out…if there were a say, 3% jump in costs each year, and that was accompanied by a 3% jump in achievement, our kids would be getting scores 100% better than the scores their parents got. Read that again, and marvel in how little sense it makes. The cost of a candy bar can do that, achievement on a test in absolute percentage terms cannot. Inflation in cost does not equate to inflation in performance, nor should it. I don’t know why ignorant people think it should, or I do, but things just aren't that simple. I personally would LIKE it to, but I’d also like my girlfriend to actually tell me when she’s upset. It would make my life so much easier. Sadly, that’s never going to happen. The problem is not that more money does not produce better results. It does. The problem is that we've underfunded education so much for so long that the amount we'd need to inject into the system to actually see change in a short period of time (say, 7-10 years) is massive, nay, gargantuan. And ergo, politically unpopular. But, if you want the most productive society possible (which is good for all people), you should really focus on paying whatever is needed to grow smart people.
I’ll close by saying that I’m not a teacher, nor am I a member of organized labor. I’ve actually voted against organizing in my workplace, twice. I just can’t deal with the ignorance you’re spouting off here. You’re grossly misinformed, and clearly not qualified to discuss how education in this nation actually works, since you understand so little yet are so sure you’re correct. You’re the worst kind of armchair policy person, and sadly, very typical of Ron Paul supporters. What worked back when the ink was fresh on the Constitution doesn't work now, because the world has changed in ways that are simply too profound. The framers were VERY smart to make the document just vague enough that it is still applicable, in a manner of speaking, but it's so wrong to take it word for word, I cannot begin to describe it.
I chose to send my kids to Catholic schools. My premise was simple: they can kick out the bad apples. You can't do that in public schools. Those apples stay, and rot. Not just the kids: the teachers, too.
Do you have kids? Do they go to a public school? If they do, they are exposed to all sorts of seedy behaviors. Kids nowadays grow up watching Spongebob, eating popcorn, and playing video games.
How is this for a plan: since I am forced by law to pay for the education of my kids–whether I have any or not–why not make that process transparent, put a dollar value to my share of the community pool, and send my kids to whatever schooo, public or private, that I want? I suspect particularly in low income neighborhoods they would want their kids in schools teaching Christian values.
But you can't teach Christian values any more, can you? We are told, in effect, that the DOE is in charge, and that God and Government cannot intermingle.
In my view, our failings are first and foremost MORAL failings. Our children lack discipline, structure, and coherent worldviews consistent with God and country.
All of this has in my view been facilitated and coerced by the Dept. of Education.
And as far as outcomes, correllation and causation are two different things. You cannot say that outcomes improved as a result of the DOE. Our economy was doing well, and more money was spent on education.
I don't disagree that increased spending, up to a point, improves outcomes. I went to a Swiss Gymnasium for a year, and had Ph.D's teaching many of my classes.
At the same time, what I saw were serious, mature, disciplined kids who valued what they were being offered, and who took full advantage of it. They had no expectation that if they slacked off "society" would take care of them.
Universal free education was for many years a core Socialist aim. We got it, and like anything else that appears free, it is not valued by most of its consumers.
I personally see no value in the DOE, and on the contrary see it as contrary to the intent and letter of the Constitution, which very clearly and by design omitted any mention of education. Education is socialisation and thus indoctrination. Plato understood this 2,500 years ago. My centralizing this function, you create the possibility of centralized informational control, as has indeed happened in the killing of God in the classroom.
Finally, with regard to Obama, OF COURSE he is a socialist. You are referring to his actual policy proposals to date. Clearly, radicals have grown to understand the basic Fabian precept that large things start as small things. Clearly, as an example, Obamacare is intended to lead to direct government control of the healthcare system, as well as the higher educational system (since they took over the student loan system, granting them over time leverage with universities).
Obama's father was a Communist, as almost certainly was his maternal grandfather, mother, and most of his early associated like Frank Davis. Obama lacks the intellectual capacity to grow beyond the comic book ideas of the savages that embrace that lunatic doctrine.
Did you know a William Ayers visited the White House? He was on the Guest List. They said it was not THAT Bill Ayers, but then who was it? Silence.
I stand by everything I said.
Of course you stand by everything you said.
Your reply to my reply is so riddled with contradictions and confusion, there’s not really a point to argue with you. But I’ll lay my shit out again, once more.
You sent your kids to catholic school, because catholic school can ‘kick out’ the bad kids…and you’re trying to lecture me on indoctrination? When you’ve got the ability to skim kids out more or less willy nilly, and you teach a decidedly religious curriculum…you’re going to champion those ideas, then tell me that education = indoctrination? How do you talk with your foot that far down your throat? Good grief.
I’d guess that when you were at Swiss Gymnasium, your classmates were not the average Swiss kid, they probably came from a middle/upper middle class background (consider also that Swiss people aren’t typical Europeans, they are on average better off). I’m somewhat familiar w that school system, there are multiple routes you can take for ‘high school,’ Gymnasium being the most rigorous. So you went to school with the upper part of the distribution; did you really expect kids who probably came from comfortable backgrounds, with mom and dad who went to school, earned well, lived well…did you expect these kids to NOT see the value of education? As opposed to kids whose parents didn’t finish high school, and ergo view education as something more disposable?
Do you get where I’m going with this? Get above the trench you’ve dug; even if your views are ‘right,’ not everyone shares them, and to simply expect people to see ‘what’s right’ when values aren’t the same is really, really, really naïve. You don’t see the value in the DoE because you can do it better, because you’re probably smart enough to figure out how. Cool. Me too. My kids will be fine, because I know I can teach them right from wrong, and supplement what a public school doesn’t provide.
OK but…can everyone do this? Should we leave children to rot, because mom and dad don’t get it? From a purely economic perspective, no hippie ‘human dignity crap…smarter people earn more, they get sick less, they get divorced less, and they have fewer kids. This means less wasteful govt spending on welfare and healthcare, more tax revenue for govt (either more $ for govt, or lower rates for everyone), and more consumption in an economy where consumer spending is 70% of all economic activity. I know the ME MINE MYPEOPLE angle is pretty attractive, and easy to explain, but it’s also incredibly myopic, shortsighted, and well, selfish.
Espousing explicitly Christian values in any public setting is bad form. You want to do that, become Muslim, and move to the middle east. Oh wait, that whole oppressive regime/lack of freedom thing. We are a nation of immigrants, many cultures. I know we are basically a Christian state, but that’s just due to history, not intent. Intent is all can come, all can live, all can be happy. That would directly confine the liberty of say, a Muslim family, if their child were ‘indoctrinated’ as you say, with Christian values in a public school. Yet you forward this idea. Total hypocrite. RP supporter? Give me a break. You realize most of the framers also wrote about how a theocracy to any appreciable degree would be a terrible thing, right? Bummer that you can’t just pick and choose with pieces of history apply, isn’t it?
And finally, my bad dude! I can’t just look at what Obama has actually DONE in office, I need to read bt the lines, connect the dots, and then OBVIOUSLY, he’s a dyed in the wool commie! DUH! That statement is reaching so hard it’s falling over. In short, while claiming to be a Ron Paul supporter, you strike me as a total fucking hypocrite, an ignorant one at that. I’m trying to wrap my head around a guy w a huge boner for RP and the Constitution, yet also simultaneously espouses strong desire for religion in schools, an institution of the state. I was hoping for more.
Ayers is a shithead who belongs in jail. But, I remember GWB holding hands w Bandar Saudi guy, and D Rumsfeld shaking hands w Saddham. Politics.
Put simply, you do not understand the Constitution. I am being very consistent, in precisely the way Ron Paul is. You are confusing decisions I believe should be made at the State and local level with decisions to be made at the Federal level.
As a matter of FEDERAL policy, you cannot say "under God" in any school which receives public funds. This is ridiculous. The Framers of our Constitution plainly intended "indoctrination" to reside with the States and local jurisdictions. That way, you cannot get control of a central entity, and force uniformity of curriculum and belief on the entire nation.
You naively assume that a uniform curriculum is beneficial. I do not. I believe that if States were free to approach the problem of education with greater freedom–that freedom including the freedom to integrate religion on a voluntary basis–we would see as good or better results as we see today.
Another core issue is that of educational unions. We are requireed to give tax money to our local school districts, but we are powerless to demand accountability from them. We have all heard stories about how hard it is to fire incompetent teachers. Most nations are not stupid enough, I suspect, to view incompetence as a protected freedom.
You have in no respect proven or even strongly suggested that the DoE performs any useful function. OF COURSE more money, up to a point, achieves better results. But if you are spending that extra money on metal detectors, drug sniffing dogs, and full time armed guards, it doesn't help the kids much.
Most of what I personally know, I taught myself. This option is available to most Americans. You can go to the library and check out college level courses. But how many people choose to do that? When you consistently see Indians and Chinese at the tops of their classes, is there something inherent in their genetics that causes this? Of course not: they VALUE what they are being given. If all Americans did, we would radically improve our test scores overnight. But we don't.
Education is one of these things that, being highly unionized, is reliably a churner out of Democrats. Obviously, teachers like being protected by law from the consequences of their actions, and in turn they churn out little Democrats who are unable to think and reason, but who are reliably conformist for at least a decade after they are inflicted on the world.
Finally, you have ignored the core contention of this post, which is that WE SPEND MUCH MUCH TOO MUCH MONEY. We have to cut costs. I am quite willing to put Defense on the table. We just need to go much deeper than that.
I heard on the radio that the bold plan of House Republicans to cut annual spending by $19 billion was "responsible". It is not responsible: it is farcical, and the only thing that makes these buffoons look better is comparing them with Democrats, who think we can actually INCREASE spending when we are bleeding money out of our anuses.
With regard to this issue, here is the net: there is a very good reason that our Founders left issues of education to the States, in the form of the Tenth Amendment.