During the Vietnam War, an Army major famously told reporter Peter Arnett "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it"
Welcome to Dr. Ron Paul's (R.-Tx) prescription for America. If he ever becomes President, you won't recognize the place.
Rep. Ron Paul's got a public image as a sort of amiable eccentric -- Uncle Fuzzy in DC. He favors legalizing marijuana, getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan and generally cutting the defense budget, and ending corporate welfare -- all positions that get him a sympathetic hearing with a lot of Americans. And he knows how to sound sensible, principled, and down-to-earth.
That's good for him, because it helps camouflage one of the country's most extreme right-wing politicians -- a very close ally of the John Birch Society (JBS), which is best understood as a sort of seed bank for right wing ideas, rather than an active political agent -- but one with long arms in today's political landscape.
Rep. Paul's ideas are so extreme that no sensible voter would give him a second look if it wasn't for the Uncle Fuzzy persona.
How extreme? Here's some of what Uncle Fuzzy told a group of young followers he'd do if he made it to the Oval Office.
Not very fuzzy, is it? And that's just part of his list. You can read the whole text here.
Where did Rep. Paul get these ideas? Well, mostly from the seed bank of the John Birch Society. While he's not a member, he's been close to it since at least the 1970s.
"Ron Paul may not be a member of the John Birch Society, but you need a micrometer to tell them apart," says Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at Political Research Associates who's been tracking the JBS and other right wing groups for years. Berlet sometimes writes for The Huffington Post.
In recent years the JBS has played a major -- and acknowledged -- role in the Tea Party, which is better known for being funded by the likes of the Koch Brothers.
The Koch Brothers, who deny they're JBS members, are themselves sons of a JBS founder, Fred Koch. The JBS itself says it never discloses its member list.
But the JBS makes no bones about its connections to the Tea Party. "We've been helping train the Tea Party for some time, teaching it how to organize and avoid some of the mistakes we made," says Bill Hahn, a JBS spokesman.
Rep. Paul himself has no problem discussing his close JBS ties. Giving the keynote address at the JBS' 50th Anniversary dinner, for instance, he said "I'm sure there are people in this room who probably helped me at that time [win the 1976 election] because I know so many of you have over the years."
Then he told the room a story about his first news conference in Washington. Someone from Houston asked if he was a JBS member. "I'm not a member [of the John Birch Society]," he told the reporter, but "...the members of the John Birch Society have been very good friends of mine and have been very helpful in my campaign."
More recently, Rep. Paul made his sympathies with the JBS, as well as a good glimpse into his short-term agenda, perfectly clear during a speech he made to the South Texas chapter of the JBS in August, 2009. There's a three-part video of this speech on YouTube that you can see here, here, and here. It's not just a sobering speech for anyone without far-right sympathies; it almost sounds sensible -- a clear indication of just how deeply JBS ideas have penetrated the American mainstream.
The JBS is pretty obscure today, partly by choice. It needed time to regroup after William F. Buckley Jr. and Barry Goldwater cast it out of the conservative movement in 1962 for being too crazy -- crazy enough to threaten their plans to elect Goldwater President, and turn America to the right. But it dug in, survived, and is enjoying a renaissance today.
How crazy the JBS was in the old days bears repeating. They didn't just insist President Eisenhower was a Communist agent; they believed the world is in the grip of what Berlet's employer, Political Research Associates, calls "...an unbroken ideologically-driven conspiracy linking the Illuminati, the French Revolution, the rise of Marxism and Communism, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the United Nations." Political Research Associates is a progressive think tank based in Somerville, Mass.
These same ideas are floating around among Rep. Paul's supporters. In June, 2009, for instance, somebody calling himself Robert W. Benjamin wrote on the website of Rep. Paul's Campaign for Liberty about how the "satanic" Rothschild family, operating through the Illuminati (allegedly based on the teaching of the Talmud), took over the Freemasons and now controls the so-called Lucifer Trust, supposedly financed by the Rockefeller Foundation.
Ideas like that would have been enough to throw the JBS into the twilight of short-wave radio broadcasts and booths at gun shows. But luckily for it, many of the very rich people pushing the ideas now afflicting American politics have JBS roots -- including the Koch Brothers and Richard Mellon Scaife. Scaife, also son of a JBS founder, is the man who financed Bill Clinton's impeachment.
Again, Rep. Paul's not a JBS member. But considering his close ties to it, and the close similarity of their views, it may not be necessary for Rep. Paul to be a JBS member to have deep sympathies -- and connections -- with it.
For instance: According to Rep. Paul, one of his first political mentors was Larry McDonald, a Congressman from Marietta, Georgia and JBS chairman.
In his keynote speech to the JBS, in fact, he says that when he was thinking about running for Congress in 1974, "The first person I called was Larry McDonald, a great American...His advice, I remember, was 'Run in the party where you think you can win,' because he realized the parties were irrelevant -- it was just to see where you could be the most successful."
McDonald himself is an interesting character without his being Rep. Paul's political mentor. What makes him interesting, though, raises questions about the sort of people Rep. Paul thinks are appropriate for him to be hanging around with.
Before he ran for Congress, McDonald was an internist in Marietta and had a thriving practice treating cancer patients with laetrile, a so-called miracle cure for cancer. In fact, laetrile, also called vitamin B-17, is cyanide; the FDA calls it a "quack medication" with no cancer-fighting qualities at all, and in 2004 it sent a man to jail for 60 months for selling it.
In the mid-70s, according to the JBS spokesman, Mr. Hahn, the JBS denounced laetrile. This may have had something to do with the fact that people who were taking laetrile to cure their cancer were dying instead.
But that didn't stop JBS members, including McDonald, from promoting it, and in fact the two major figures in the laetrile movement, Robert Bradford and Dr. John Richardson, were JBS members. Both were convicted in 1977 of smuggling laetrile into the country.
According to a long series published in 1976 in The Atlanta Journal, Larry McDonald used his laetrile practice to buy an arsenal of guns. Jim Stewart, who along with Paul Lieberman reported the series, told me how, posing as a cancer patient wanting to be treated with laetrile, McDonald gave him a pile of forms that he said Stewart needed to fill out,. Stewart retired from CBS News, where he covered national security, after 34 years as a reporter.
In the pile, said Stewart, was a federal gun purchase permit. McDonald later used the permits he acquired this way to buy weapons -- something he and Lieberman proved were used by McDonald by being taken into the attic where they were stored, taking a gun, and giving it to an officer of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), who traced the gun to one of McDonald's patients.
According to Stewart and Lieberman's reporting, McDonald turned his laetrile practice over to another doctor, Dr. Robert C. Shuman, when he decided to run for Congress in 1974 -- about the same time Rep. Paul first asked McDonald for advice on running for office.
Shuman, they reported, was a JBS member who would only treat patients with laetrile if they made a contribution to the Larry McDonald for Congress Committee -- and joined the John Birch Society.
The reason this is ancient history is important isn't just because it raises questions about Rep. Paul's judgment, and the people he's associated with who've helped him get where he is today, but because the people helping him today are likewise JBS members -- and some of them promote laetrile.
These last include one G. Edward Griffin, a California businessman who sometimes speaks at Ron Paul rallies -- much like John McManus, JBS' President, who warmed up the crowd at the 2008 Ron Paul rally, Rally for the Republic.
By his own account, Mr Griffin is a life member of the JBS, promotes laetrile (he's written a book about it called World Without Cancer), and today heads something called Freedom Force International. Mr. Griffin calls this group an international organization that seeks political power to fight what he considers collectivism, and says it's allied with -- but not part of -- the JBS. As it happens, he urges Freedom Force members to also join the JBS.
Interesting company for somebody many people think of as amiable, eccentric Uncle Fuzzy.
I gave Rep. Paul's office several chances to respond to us for this story. His Congressional press secretary referred me to his campaign, which never replied.
Visit my website, Reinbach's Observer.
We demand of each other peace, liberty, equality, justice, charity and the opportunity to fulfill our lives however we wish without unnecessary interference. In return, we will provide for each other these very same things under a neutral and transparent system of mediation and government codifying our reciprocal responsibilities to each other.
It's very simple stuff which doesn't need to come from any think-tank to be understood and popular.
The manipulation of the debate is over. This ultimatum is no secret.
Politically aware populations cannot be controlled.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr7ePrCAqzo
Feel the shift?
I don't mind the smear campaign. One can take information and spin or justify it any way one wants. But it is not "extreme" to want real solutions to our nations ills. And to be honest, one who realizes the problems this country is facing knows that because the government was allowed to grow extremely bloated, corrupt, and impotent... the solution does look extreme.
we are 15 trillion dollars in debt
we owe trillions entitlements that we cannot pay for
we are fighting in 3 wars, and have thousands of military bases
we have the highest population of citizens in prison in the world
we bailout the rich at the expense of the middle class
our real unemployment rate is at 15 or 16 percent
inflation keeps getting worse
no manufacturing
In order to solve these problems....one cannot continue down the same path that got us into this situation.
These problems are a result of big government: of government entitlements and warfare, government tied into partnerships with lobbyists and corporations, government tied into the Federal Reserve
The solution, is then smaller government. It is a tough solution and one that may initially shock people. - but if you look into the constitution, the bill of rights, and the history of our nation you'll find a blueprint on how to successfully run a country.
Having said that, it does seem to me that Rep. Paul's prescriptions are supply-side economics, trickle-down theory, and small government ideas on steroids. These seem to me to be what got us here. In fact there's a large and strong body of evidence, shorn of explanations to the contrary, that suggest the entire point of the above was to land us in the current pass, so prescriptions like Rep. Paul's, and those of the GOP leadreship in general, could be presented as the only solution.
I personally don't see how larger doses of what got us here will get us out of it. I think the opposite is true; admitting those ideas were wrong, and going back to what a large number of Reagan's own people prescribe. I recognize people of your ilk disagree, and disagree sincerely--but I just don't see how 30 year's experimentation with this result recommends much more of the same, and it does seem to me that Rep. Paul's recommendations represent exactly that.
Naturally, i expeft to be roundly attacked for saying this; but that's life in the NBA.
And I don't see how you can state that republican ideology has been in place for 30 years. In what policies? How? and if so then why is Obama and the dems supporting point for point exactly what Bush did from 2001-2008?
But lets get past the parties and labels for a second: I personally think that dems and repubs are members of the same party right now. It's called corrupt big government. It's called, having no courage to make the right decisions. It's called wars, spending, and impotency.
So what is your solution?
Before Reagan, Johnson tried the War on Poverty.
After the Great Depression, FDR tried the New Deal.
Both of these programs, on the whole, failed to accomplish their goals when you consider the investment, resources, effort given to them.
Ron Paul represents something Jeffersonian, something early American, something that this country hasn't seen in quite some time, something that worked. I assume that perhaps I take the risk of seeming old-school, seeming in the past. But I mean when people say:
Ron Paul stands for civil liberties, anti-war/ against the military industrial complex, following the constitution and the bill of rights, for the gold standard/ending the fed. They are alluding to that kind of early America.
Reinbach "I personally don't see how larger doses of what got us here will get us out of it."
But, sir we've had socialism on "steroids" since at least FDR's era.
The assumption is that big government, regulations, high taxes and inflation of the currency had nothing to do with it; that "30 years" of socialism HAD NOTHING (?) to do with it? But that HAS been the policy of America practiced by both parties.
If America had in place policies that you accuse people like congressman Paul of wanting we wouldn't be in this mess.
Less government and lower taxes would have produced a far better nation due to the fact that a free people can out produce a stagnant economy that is centrally managed as it is now.
Paul wants to break that cycle that is leading us to national ruin.
Both parties have fostered a domestic policy of big government to pay for welfare for the poor and the rich (farm subsidies and tax breaks, etc) and a foreign policy of warfare.
"it does seem to me that Rep. Paul's prescriptions are supply-side economics, trickle-down theory,..." Those are Reagan's not Paul's.
Yea. much better to vote for obama, who will continue the wars, the patriotact, the erosion of civil liberties, the drug war, bailouts, etc.
But at least he doesn't have scary associations to political groups you don't agree with.
WHAT!? We pay for the whole program, the federal government takes a chunk and then TELLS US HOW TO EDUCATE OUR KIDS? Yep! That's the program Andrew is championing. Bush's "No Child Left Behind" program is part of that. And Ron Paul wants to get rid of it. He wants to get rid of the Department of Education. And he wants the tax money to stay in the states (no strings attached) where voters can decide for themselves how to spend the money to educate their children.
If that's scary to you, you probably work for the Department of Education - or - you've been smoking the same loco-weed Andrew has.
A final note: Andrew's main thrust seems to be to link Ron Paul to the John Birch Society. I don't think he's done a credible job, but suppose some JBS members see something worthwhile in Ron Paul's positions on the issues. Does that mean Ron Paul is wrong? Or that some of the JBS members have gotten it right?
Ron Paul is a doctor. He never turned away a patient and never took a dime of medicare or medicaid money. Think he know something about medicine? About the finances of medicine? As he often points out, the cost of phone technology has plummeted because it hasn't been regulated by government, while the cost of medical care, highly regulated by government, has soared. You pay a LOT of money for that government interference. Wouldn't you rather interact directly with your doctor and NOT pay for the government overhead?
The Federal Government is the largest employer in the country. It produces nothing but it costs trillions. You pay for it. If you WANT to keep paying for the government to produce nothing, Ron Paul isn't your guy. If you're sick to death of seeing your tax money go into wasteful actions, then you'll understand why Ron Paul wants to downsize government. Apparently Andrew doesn't get it. Paul's not planning on firing those people. He just doesn't plan to hire replacements when they're gone.
First off, let's take away the name-calling. Andrew Reibach is closely associated with the Communist Party. Why? Because I say so. Sort of like Ron Paul is a John Bircher because Andrew says so.
Now let's look at facts: Gold is gold and silver is silver. If I mint a 1 ounce silver coin, why should it not be as good as a government-issued silver coin? What Andrew leaves out is that Paul isn't proposing the issuance of FIAT money, which is what the government does today. In effect, every time the Federal Reserve issues a trillion dollars in new currency, they REDUCE the value of every dollar you have. It is a TAX and it has wiped out the middle class, reducing the value of a dollar to just 2 cents compared to its 1913 buying power. Mandating the use of REAL MONEY (gold or silver backed) would eliminate the ability of government to levy this hidden tax.
Dietary supplements: The FDA is hell bent on controlling everything from mineral supplements to vitamins. You want to give the Feds the power to force you to get a prescription for your daily multivitamin? Well, that's what Ron Paul is trying to prevent. Sounds real scary when you know the facts, right?