Ron Paul on Fear

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I just received this in my notices from LewRockwell.com. I am not a staunch supporter of Ron Paul for several reasons, but I swear, he is on my frequency with this essay. I am giving the whole text below, but you can also read it with other details (including an ad for his book) here: The Fear Factor.

The Fear Factor

by Ron Paul

While fear itself is not always the product of irrationality, once experienced it tends to lead away from reason, especially if the experience is extreme in duration or intensity. When people are fearful they tend to be willing to irrationally surrender their rights.

Thus, fear is a threat to rational liberty. The psychology of fear is an essential component of those who would have us believe we must increasingly rely on the elite who manage the apparatus of the central government.

The statement “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” has been attributed to Benjamin Franklin. It is clear, people seek out safety and security when they are in a state of fear, and it is the result of this psychological state that often leads to the surrender of liberty.

As Washington moves towards its summer legislative recess, indications of fear are apparent. Things seem similar to the days before the war in Iraq. Prior to the beginning of the war, several government officials began using phrases like “we don’t want the smoking gun to come in the form of a mushroom cloud,” and they spoke of drone airplanes being sent to our country to do us great harm.

It is hard to overstate the damage this approach does psychologically, especially to younger people. Of course, we now know there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, let alone any capacity to put them to successful use.

To calm fears, Americans accepted the Patriot Act and the doctrine of pre-emptive war. We tolerated new laws that allow the government to snoop on us, listen to our phone calls, track our financial dealings, make us strip down at airports and even limited the rights of habeas corpus and trial by jury. Like some dysfunctional episode of the twilight zone, we allowed the summit of our imagination to be linked up with the pit of our fears.

Paranoia can be treated, but the loss of liberty resulting from the social psychology to which we continue to subject ourselves is not easily reversed. People who would have previously battled against encroachments on civil liberties now explain the “necessity” of those “temporary security measures” Franklin is said to have railed against.

Americans must reflect on their irrational fears if we are to turn the tide against the steady erosion of our freedoms. Fear is the enemy. The logically confusing admonition to “fear only fear” does not help; instead, we must battle against irrational fear and the fear-mongers who promote it.

It is incumbent on a great nation to remain confident, if it wishes to remain free. We need not be ignorant to real threats to our safety, against which we must remain vigilant. We need only to banish to the ash heap of history the notion that we ought to be ruled by our fears and those who use them to enhance their own power.

I have been complaining about some of these issues ever since I got back from Brazil (especially the Patriot Act), and only recently, by reading State of Fear by Michael Crichton to research global warming, did I realize that fear is the biggest political enemy we now face.

I don't know how Ron Paul would implement what he says in this essay in present-day Washington, but these words are the sweetest of all music to my ears. Thank goodness someone in the running is saying them.

Michael

[Peter Grotticelli]

I was arguing with a friend of mine about the Kyoto Protocol yesterday. He is unfamiliar with objectivism. He maintained that industries would not act by themselves to stop global warming "until it is too late." That same cliche led to the invasion of the formerly secular (hence benign) Iraq.

[Chris Grieb]

Pete; I don't think that a country being secular is enough to ensure that it is benign. Iraq embraced an ideology that was close to Nazism.

I want it understood that the reason for the invasion were not good enough but this does it not mean I think Iraq benign.

Edited August 1, 2007 by Chris Grieb

[BaalChatzaf]

I don't know how Ron Paul would implement what he says in this essay in present-day Washington, but these words are the sweetest of all music to my ears. Thank goodness someone in the running is saying them.

Michael

Only one question is relevant. Will Mr. Paul kill our enemies or not? I get the sense that he will talk any real threat to our existence to death, until it is too late and we will bleed. The best way to deal with an enemy is to kill him before he kills you. And God Damn the collateral damage. If the price of our security is killing a billion people most of them innocent, let is do it now when we can. We will remain blameless since it is our enemies who made such killing necessary.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Wolf DeVoon]

We will remain blameless

Shut up.

[BaalChatzaf]

We will remain blameless

Shut up.

Why? I am simply stating the truth. Either we kill our enemies or they will kill us. Which do you prefer?

He who does not learn the lessons of history is doomed to repeat them. We killed Germans and Japs in WWII including hundreds of thousands of women and children. It was well we did. We made warfare so unpleasant for the Germans and Japs that they gave up war.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Dragonfly]

Do I discern a repetition of moves...?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

Same old crap. Bob is scared out of his mind.

This is a great example—a concretization here on the forum—of what Ron Paul was talking about: forgo rights to appease fear.

I don't think I would like to be around Bob if he were drowning. Instead of letting himself be saved, he would panic and drag the person saving him down and drown them both.

In his panic, he tries to do this intellectually.

Michael

[Wolf DeVoon]

for the record, on war crimes:

Flag, Faith, and Family Values

[Brant Gaede]

I don't know how Ron Paul would implement what he says in this essay in present-day Washington, but these words are the sweetest of all music to my ears. Thank goodness someone in the running is saying them.

Michael

Only one question is relevant. Will Mr. Paul kill our enemies or not? I get the sense that he will talk any real threat to our existence to death, until it is too late and we will bleed. The best way to deal with an enemy is to kill him before he kills you. And God Damn the collateral damage. If the price of our security is killing a billion people most of them innocent, let is do it now when we can. We will remain blameless since it is our enemies who made such killing necessary.

Ba'al Chatzaf

I guess we will remain blameless because there won't be anybody else left!

"Our security?" What does your security require? I can take care of myself.

Living is a non-secure occupation. Security is death--one's own.

You keep on coming with collectivist premises except for a woman's right to an abortion.

If you were an Objectivist I would remind you that Objectivism is not an a la carte philosophy.

You are saying "our" enemies have moral equivalence but inferior weapons so stomp them. If you were a Muslim you'd want to stomp Americans any way you could, too. It's all subjectivism, which is necessary since you have explicitly eschewed and denigrated philosophy as such on this forum. So a million or a billion. What's the difference? Anything is actually permissible for any hackneyed reason.

--Brant

Edited August 1, 2007 by Brant Gaede

[Barbara Branden]

Michael, context is everything. I don't like Ron Paul's article, not because I approve of fear but because I dislike the purpose to which he puts his homily.

Barbara

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Barbara,

I don't understand. Could you please explain what you mean?

The only purpose I see for now is that Paul states he is against the forfeit of individual rights through the mechanism of letting fear override rationality. That is stated in his very first paragraph and maintained throughout the article.

Is there another purpose to this article I am not seeing?

Michael

[Steve Gagne]

for the record, on war crimes:

Flag, Faith, and Family Values

Wolf --

Well done.

Only one "ever-so-slight" point of contention: to refer to the the disgusting religious hypocrisy of the current administration as "faith".

As a "man of faith" myself, I know that if I'm talking from "revelation", I'll say so (you do not have an unearned "right" to impune my integrity and presume I am lying), and I cannot, under any circumstances, expect you or any other human being to agree with me unless and until you receive the same "revelation", testable against a pre-existing, recognized (objective) standard. When it should happen that you receive the Word (if ever) is NOT MY CALL. But that doesn't mean anyone has the right to censor what I may say based on it.

If, on the other hand, I'm dealing from abstractions of the concretes I've evaluated by my own reason (denying the impediments of an unearned guilt or pain), I simply remember the "revelation": "Come now, let us REASON together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. "(Isaiah 1:18). I remember this, not as a "theistic command", but as a better poetic expression of a truth than I could muster on my own: advocates of "faith" MUST be advocates of true "reason". Though they must, in their confidence, be willing to make "jumps" fit only for "creative" people, that would not necessarily be apparent to a cursory, mundane inspection by those for whom the activity under question is not particularly relevant, these would only be evaluated as "irrational" by those whose first principles were based not in reality but in a value system based in an abstract symbology, i.e., an ultimately imaginary, subjective basis. As an example of a a true, rational, faith-based enterprise, I submit "Samaritan's Purse", run by Franklin Graham, the son of the reverend Billy Graham.

But back to the non-interventionism of Ron Paul (or RuPaul as my best friend calls him). In an ideal world, his viewpoint would would be nearly unanimous, as in the results of a "poll" from last week:

[BaalChatzaf]

for the record, on war crimes:

Flag, Faith, and Family Values

There is a completely straight line that connects Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Those bastards started it and we finished it right proper.

If thine enemy smite thee on thy cheek, rip his head off and shit down his neck.

Concerning your article:

Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military targets. There were soldiers and war material in both places. That is what made them targets. They were NOT civilian targets. No Japanese city was a civilian target. In every Japanese city, civilians were put to work making war materials. Many had lathes, drills and grinders in their houses for machining small pieces. For your historical information more people were killed when the Shimada district of the city of Tokyo was burned to the ground by a raid of over 400 B-29s loaded to the rafters with incendiary bombs (125,000 burned to death, 1.25 million made homelss). I noticed you did not declare the B-29 something that is mala in se. Why is that? What difference does it make if 400 planes drop incendiary bombs or one plane drops a tactical nuclear weapon. The folks on the ground end up equally dead or maimed. In a war you kill your enemies. It is that simple. And the Japanese started it, just in case you have forgotten. When a totalitarian regime makes war it transforms ALL its "civilians" into military assets. The men are for fighting if they are fighting age. The women are for turning out future warriors and the children are either future warriors or baby making machines, depending on their gender. Thus the so-called "civilian" population is a casualty de guerre. That is the way it is. The allies killed 700,000 "civilans" on the enemy side during WW2 which was a totally just and defensible war. They started it. We finished it. Simple as that.

Our own General Sherman (USA) noted, during the Civil War, that it is the civilian population that makes armies possible. Civilians grow the food and turn out the basic material that the military units use and provide the funding. So William T. Sherman made war on the "civilans". He burned the State of Georgia to the ground. He wrecked the houses, fired the fields after stripping them for provisions and ripped up the railroads. He wrecked the place. He did such a thorough job of it they are still talking about Sherman's March down there in not very complimentary terms. If Sherman had an A-bomb he would have used it and slept very soundly at night. When he got through Atlanta, Georgia looked like Berlin. Sherman was one in spirit with General Curtis LeMay and Sir Arthur ("Bomber") Harris (head of British Bomber Command). They were butchers and their butchery made it possible for us to express our opinions. So I am grateful for their butchery. Similarly Philip Sheridan (USA) burned down the Shenendoah Valley to starve the Confederate Army. He also starved the civilians. Tough Nuggies. Such are the infelicities of war. If you want to find out how wars ought to be fought study the doings of Genghis Kahn (another hero of mine). He understood that the way you win the war is to Crush the Enemy, drive him before you and hear the lamentations of his women. In the end, the one that is still standing is the Winner. The only Law of Warfare the counts is the Law that says Do Not Lose. The definition of a War Criminal is a leading personality on the Losing Side (sometimes, anyway).

Ba'ak Chatzaf

Edited August 2, 2007 by BaalChatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

for the record, on war crimes:

Flag, Faith, and Family Values

There is a completely straight line that connects Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Those bastards started it and we finished it right proper.

If thine enemy smite thee on thy cheek, rip his head off and shit down his neck.

Concerning your article:

Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military targets. There were soldiers and war material in both places. That is what made them targets. They were NOT civilian targets. No Japanese city was a civilian target. In every Japanese city, civilians were put to work making war materials. Many had lathes, drills and grinders in their houses for machining small pieces. For your historical information more people were killed when the Shimada district of the city of Tokyo was burned to the ground by a raid of over 400 B-29s loaded to the rafters with incendiary bombs (125,000 burned to death, 1.25 million made homelss). I noticed you did not declare the B-29 something that is mala in se. Why is that? What difference does it make if 400 planes drop incendiary bombs or one plane drops a tactical nuclear weapon. The folks on the ground end up equally dead or maimed. In a war you kill your enemies. It is that simple. And the Japanese started it, just in case you have forgotten. When a totalitarian regime makes war it transforms ALL its "civilians" into military assets. The men are for fighting if they are fighting age. The women are for turning out future warriors and the children are either future warriors or baby making machines, depending on their gender. Thus the so-called "civilian" population is a casualty de guerre. That is the way it is. The allies killed 700,000 "civilans" on the enemy side during WW2 which was a totally just and defensible war. They started it. We finished it. Simple as that.

Our own General Sherman (USA) noted, during the Civil War, that it is the civilian population that makes armies possible. Civilians grow the food and turn out the basic material that the military units use and provide the funding. So William T. Sherman made war on the "civilans". He burned the State of Georgia to the ground. He wrecked the houses, fired the fields after stripping them for provisions and ripped up the railroads. He wrecked the place. He did such a thorough job of it they are still talking about Sherman's March down there in not very complimentary terms. If Sherman had an A-bomb he would have used it and slept very soundly at night. When he got through Atlanta, Georgia looked like Berlin. Sherman was one in spirit with General Curtis LeMay and Sir Arthur ("Bomber") Harris (head of British Bomber Command). They were butchers and their butchery made it possible for us to express our opinions. So I am grateful for their butchery. Similarly Philip Sheridan (USA) burned down the Shenendoah Valley to starve the Confederate Army. He also starved the civilians. Tough Nuggies. Such are the infelicities of war. If you want to find out how wars ought to be fought study the doings of Genghis Kahn (another hero of mine). He understood that the way you win the war is to Crush the Enemy, drive him before you and hear the lamentations of his women. In the end, the one that is still standing is the Winner. The only Law of Warfare the counts is the Law that says Do Not Lose. The definition of a War Criminal is a leading personality on the Losing Side (sometimes, anyway).

Ba'ak Chatzaf

But why did the United States fight all those wars? As for the tactics you so admire I don't care to discuss with you or anyone.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

[

But why did the United States fight all those wars? As for the tactics you so admire I don't care to discuss with you or anyone.

--Brant

I will speak of WW2. The Japs attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 and the Nazi regime declared war on us 4 days later since they were a member of the Axis and signatory to a pact. That is why we fought the Japs and the Nazis. They started it, we finished it Right Proper.

If thine enemy smite thee on thy cheek, rip his head off and shit down his neck.

That is how one survives on Planet Earth which is filled with war, violence and evil and where human life is cheap. Such is our home. One keeps on fighting until one is killed or one defeats his enemies. That is how it is done. It is all quite simple. What we call Peace is simply the time between Wars. As long as there are evil folk there will be violence and war.

My hero, Curtis Lemay put it this way: The only difference between Peace and War is where we place our bombs.

My other hero, Bomber Harris said: The Germans have sown the wind, and in due course they shalll reap the whirlwind.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited August 2, 2007 by BaalChatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

The United States fought "all those wars" because the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor?

--Brant

Edited August 2, 2007 by Brant Gaede

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

The USA fought all those wars to blast the Japs and Krauts off the face of the earth. Unfortunately it did not succeed and we will only have to do it all again later. Maybe with nukes and a modern ethnic cleansing program based on racial/cultural profiling, with technologically advanced killing zones, we will be more successful in getting rid of every last one. Until then, we should at least make all Japs and Krauts wear a yellow star.

And look at all those damn Muslims! There are about a billion and a half. See what happens without ethnic cleansing? They breed like jackrabbits!

Hell, we might as well throw blacks into the same pot and do it right. They've been nothing but trouble ever since slavery was abolished.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Hell, we might as well throw blacks into the same pot and do it right. They've been nothing but trouble ever since slavery was abolished.

Michael

Category error: Melanin content is a heritable biological characteristic. And it does not determine values nor does it determine behavior. Where as political affiliation and religion mark values and and is correlated to behavior.

Show me what god a man worships, and I will show you the man. Show me a man's political ideology and I will show you the man.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

Now you see we have a problem. We could disagree with the role of melanin content. I know some people from my own neck of the woods do (I grew up a hillbilly). So what the hell. Just to be on the safe side, let's get rid of the problem in one single final solution. Nuke the goddam blacks, too. Whadya say?

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Bob,

Now you see we have a problem. We could disagree with the role of melanin content. I know some people from my own neck of the woods do (I grew up a hillbilly). So what the hell. Just to be on the safe side, let's get rid of the problem in one single final solution. Nuke the goddam blacks, too. Whadya say?

Michael

That makes about as much sense as nuking the Blondes.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

It only depends on who is in charge. That's all the sense you need. The best thing is to be in charge before starting to nuke. Then it doesn't matter who you nuke. Hell, nuke the blondes, too.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

The United States has been an arrogant, expansionist, double-dealing imperial power since before there was a United States. I'm not saying why and I'm not saying it could have been different, but when one comes up for air and looks around one sees that it is primarily responsible for the world it must now, in real time, deal with. It is much better equipped to deal with other countries than with Muslims distributed around the world, including native-born Muslims. So what to do today?

1) Energy independence.

2) Deprive certain Muslim countries of oil revenues. That would be Iran and Saudi Arabia. This would mean grossly traducing their sovereignty. This cuts off money to the terrorists and to Imams advocating terrorism.

(With oil prices eventually coming way down, Russia will be much, much easier to deal with.)

All I'm doing here is pointing out that there is more than one way to fight a war. It is almost physically painful to me to deal with the idea of a one-note, nuke 'em all foreign policy. I've got more points than the two above covering other aspects and I've had them for years, but I generally avoid such explications for there is little point to them.

I know what's going to happen: something big and bad and then the US will do something even bigger and badder and Americans will be much worse off. This has already happened: 9/11, which was just a foreshadowing. About this, Bob is quite right.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

Maybe we should nuke the USA for good measure?

My prediction is that some people are going to do some incredibly stupid and destructive things and the US is going to retaliate (and do a few of it's own). Nether the destructive things nor the retaliations are going to end the world, nor are they going to affect the general standard of living for most of humanity. They will only be bad for those who are in harm's way. These events will sell oodles of newspapers and commercials for news programs on TV.

Despite the prophets of doom (who have been around for centuries yawping nonstop to no avail), it ain't gonna get any worse than that.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

I know what's going to happen: something big and bad and then the US will do something even bigger and badder and Americans will be much worse off. This has already happened: 9/11, which was just a foreshadowing. About this, Bob is quite right.

--Brant

The last one standing is the winner. It must be -us-.

By the way, nuk'em is what brought the Pacific War to a close in 1945. If the U.S. did not use the a-bomb the war would have gone on another two years (at least) with over a million more Allied casualties. The sign of intelligence is to use what works. A-bombs work. We have used them to good effect. It was the threat of nuclear weapons that kept the Cold War cold.

Having been nuked, the Japanese are much more humble and lovable than they used to be.

No more Banzii! The Japanese now think of quieter and less violent ways of screwing us, something that we can both cope with and live with. Rather than making war, they are making better cars than are made in Detroit. That is the legacy of the nuclear age.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited August 2, 2007 by BaalChatzaf