You know, you'd get a lot farther if you acknowledged that yeah, we have actually read about Ron Paul. The points that you laid out are well and good, but not the points you left out. His views on Education reform are extreme and ridiculous. Why not take baby steps and get rid of the crap like No Child Left Behind instead of destroying the entire system, which has spots that are working. I'm sorry, but the free market is not a magic bullet that solves all problems. It solves many problems, but not all of them. Of schools in California ranked by the number of students that default on their student debts, the for-profit schools dominate the worst of the worst. Their education is worthless. Education is a common good that benefits all: even if you're not educated, you are benefiting from the people in your society who are. Making some bogus voucher from public money and using it to put some kid in a private religious/anti-science school is both unfair to people who prefer public schools that are already underfunded and a misuse of tax dollars from taxpayers who want nothing to do with that private school. And, as soon as you let the anti-education crowd get a grip on education, we lose the common good that comes from it, and our jobs will disappear overseas and we'll lose technological leadership. His economic views also smell of a sort of extreme, ridiculous change. I want an example of them working in real life. And his views on abortion are beyond stupid -as in catholic church stupid. It makes me angry how little informed he is. He's willing to throw away people's freedoms on a flimsy philosophical whim that a friggin ZYGOTE is a human life. Preposterous. I understand concerns for fetuses, because they're developed enough to have a primitive brain and may be able to process pain. But a zygote? Blastocyst? Does he even know the difference between the three of them? Does he ever wonder why pregnancy last nine months rather then 5 minutes? He's also woefully misinformed on Global Warming, falling victim to the twisting of statistics by the oil companies. He's clearly science illiterate, and that's not proper for a country on the leading edge of scientific advancement. His immigration views are also out of whack. He promises a lot of border strengthening but no promise to streamline the legal immigrant process so that foreigners have more incentive to come legally. Either welcome people so they're on record and on the tax process, or be stubborn about your racism and deal with more tax-draining illegal immigrants who come because they don't have another option. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Also, he avoids the idea of doing the effective thing and punishing employers of illegals. Also, he's anti-birthright citizenship. That's punishing people for crimes somebody else committed. This is the thing: I don't want a candidate that talks ideology and nothing of reality. I want a candidate who acknowledges that all ideologies have faults and that there will be exceptions to their use of ideologies for places where the ideology doesn't work. I am so tired of politicians blathering about buzzwords. The only reasons I voted for Obama last time was because he wasn't blathering about conservative, fear mongering, buzzwords. Some of Ron Paul's stuff I agree with: like being anti- National ID card and a lot of what you said, but he's hindered by his pandering to the wackaloon conservative base. tl;dr: I hate purists. Ron Paul sounds like a free-market, economic freedom (but anti- personal freedom and anti-facts) purist.
I voted for the third party and they aren't so hot now. The grass ain't always greener. As a matter of principle though, yes.
I'm confused with what you're saying. What do you think Ron Paul wants to do with education? Get rid of it? Turn it into anti-science/ultra religion? Where are you getting this info? Nothing Ron Paul does will reflect his personal beliefs, because a libertarian puts his beliefs aside for everyone's civil rights. How do you think we had education before 1980 when the DOE was put into effect? He wants to get government out of the schooling system is all. He doesn't want to destroy education. He doesn't want the government taking taxes from people to pay for other kids, telling kids how and what they should be learning, and basically owning the children until they are 18. Having the government control what our children are learning is ridiculous. It should be the job of the school and teachers to determine how they are going to teach the kids. If the school doesn't keep up with other competing schools, they'll go out of business. So all schools have incentive to keep efficiency and learning at an all-time high. If they don't, parents won't send their kids there and the school won't have the money to run. The way it is now, the schools don't have any incentive to be efficient since they get paid no matter what. Incentive is what drives the free market. It keeps prices low and quality high. It works in every aspect of business. Hospitals, schools, construction, community centers, etc. When the government gets involved with all these regulations, loopholes, and bailouts, it distorts the market and effects both the business and consumer negatively. The FDA is a good example of this. It's Austrian Economics. Watch or read about it. It's really insightful stuff. And why do you need an example to know if it works? There's never an example of something working before it actually happens. There's examples everywhere showing that corporatism doesn't work, so we know we shouldn't keep doing what we're doing. While not a completely free market, a good example is the computer hardware/software industry. There are very little regulations. There's numerous competitors who keep having to outperform each other in fear of losing demand, so the technology keeps advancing, which makes prices drop. Remember when shitty computers in 1995 were like $1,800? This is the concept of a free market. The corporations are fighting for the consumer. Again, all businesses would work like that in a free market. Banks, schools, hospitals, police/security, construction, cable companies, etc. Lasik eye surgery is a wonderful example in discussions of both free markets and the healthcare debate. Since its inception, the quality has skyrocketed while the cost has declined. If all healthcare was like that, the prices would be a tiny percentage of what it is today. Instead, there's no competition and the government intervenes. Our prices go up, quality goes down, and the insurance companies rape us. Think about everyday life. To a large extent, especially in the developed world, you have a "free market" of human association and behavior. You decide who to befriend, what to cook for breakfast, where to hang out, where to work, when to piss, how you get your chores done, and much more, all without the government. If we know freedom works in one field of human interaction, we can reasonably consider it to work for any other. From my personal experience, how about the Grateful Dead parking lot scene? While I am always amazed at how "anti-free market" these individuals are, they operate in a nearly 100% free market. Vendors selling everything from burritos, to chicken salads, to drugs, shirts, clothing, back rubs, tickets, rides to other shows; everything is open for sale, all the prices are mutually agreed upon, no violence is used (besides the bad apples that occur regardless), and there is very little police/protection service (other than to bust for drugs), so people cooperate and interact peacefully on their own. The FDA doesn't need to stand over these unregulated burrito and BBQ stands to make sure the food is cooked. The individuals make sure the food is cooked because they want people to buy it. The system operates almost without any flaws and it is, in my eyes, the last free market one can actual go to and experience. Remember, a free market in its true stance is theoretical. Nothing will ever become "it". However, the degree to which "it" is, is possible and can be seen. You do know that Ron Paul is an obstetrician/gynecologist, right? He's delivered over 4,000 babies. I think abortion will forever have good points for either side of the argument. Again, he's a libertarian and believes that everyone has civil rights. He sees abortion as taking away the rights of the baby. He also makes the argument that if you are in a car accident and kill a pregnant woman, you're not just charged with killing the woman. If our law is like that, shouldn't our abortion policy reflect that as well? I mean, in some states you can still get an abortion at 24 weeks. That's pretty fucked up no matter what side of the argument you're on. http://www.ronpaul.com/on-the-issues/global-warming/ Being skeptical of Global Warming is hardly something to hold against someone. He's not against science. Again, he's a doctor. He also endorses the internet 100% and embraces technology. His immigration views are spot on. First and foremost, he wants to get rid of all the incentives that illegal immigrants have for coming over here. Welfare, free education, jobs, and birthright citizenship. He also wants to stop the war on drugs and legalize them. Not because he likes them, but because it should be an individual's choice on what we do with our bodies. It's a civil right that's been taken away from us. Drug use would also go down if it were legalized, the cartels would diminish, deaths from violence would decrease to virtually 0, and drug users wouldn't be going to jail anymore for victimless "crimes" and ruining their lives. Once you address those, there's no incentive to come here illegally and the border won't need really any patrol or security. Also, he's not racist lol. And how is repealing birthright citizenship punishing anyone? He's against deportation. Here's some words about what he thinks about immigration: “My approach to immigration is somewhat different than the others. Mine is you deal with it economically. We're in worse shape now because we subsidize immigration. We give food stamps, Social Security, free medical care, free education and amnesty. So you subsidize it, and you have a mess. Conditions have changed. And I think this means that we should look at immigration differently. It's an economic issue more than anything. If our economy was in good health, I don't think there'd be an immigration problem. We'd be looking for workers and we would be very generous." - http://2012.republican-candidates.org/Paul/Immigration.php Hey, look at that. If we were in a free market and had a thriving economy, there would be more jobs than we know what to do with and illegal immigration wouldn't be a problem. Good. Then you'll love Ron Paul. He uses history as knowledge and has a vast understanding of economics and foreign policy. Reality, baby! A lot of what he proposes used to be done in the past when our country actually worked the way our founding fathers intended it to. No income tax, competing banks instead of the Federal Reserve, the gold standard, no Department of Education and many other bureaucracies, no drug wars, actually following the constitution, and most importantly, giving everyone all of their civil liberties and freedoms, which is what this country should be revolved around. The government shall do nothing that infringes upon our rights as individuals.
I'll just cite Ron Paul directly then Education is not an entity that squanders money (unless you're counting overpaid administration when there's underpaid teachers, then that is a problem that should be solved by reforming the bureaucracy rather than destroying the whole system). It is an investment. Paired with Income Tax, the government has an incentive for its citizens to prosper and be educated, by receiving more taxes from them. It takes around 2 years for the government to make a return on investment on someone like me. And I get a nice, high paying job when I'm done with it all. I like the win-win situation here. Given, it has problems like the catastrophic No Child Left Behind Act. But that problem's solution is to repeal or reform it, not to throw out the entire system. Iterating over the problems on the existing system is a much faster solution track then to start over every time there's a snag. But notice what he says about our education system. He calls it "indoctrination." The solution to that is to place more emphasis on argumentative logic and rhetoric (both are already taught in High School), and perhaps add mandatory psychology (which was elective where I was from). Those three combined are a crash course on critical thinking. As long as topics like those are in the curriculum, the kids are indoctrination proof. The government couldn't even twist those courses, as it needs to teach it truthfully to the future scientists that create fancy weapons, and the engineers who will pay a nice income tax. But that's not really what right wingers say when they mean "indoctrination." Ron Paul is pandering to the right, and the right HATES science, HATES biology, and HATES "Big Pharma." What education is really getting in the way of is religious indoctrination. Real indoctrination that parents wish for: Where they never even allow their children to learn what evolution even IS. Education, by contrast, showcases as many ideas at once as possible, exposing kids to many different ideas and viewpoints. An educated kid would argue against evolution by learning about it from both sides. But educated creationists don't actually exist; I've never seen a single creationist that actually understands the theory of evolution. They've learned of it entirely by other creationists who tell them lies, and they can only parrot their arguments as they've never looked at it themselves. If you've seen a creationist that really, truly understands evolution, PLEASE SHOW HIM TO ME!* it is clear by his reference to "psychotropic drugs" and indoctrination that he is addressing the anti-science crowd with this stuff. They are the people who mistrust education. It is they who have trying to claw their way into forcing lies like creationism into schools. They are the people taking their kids out of school and homeschool them so they have complete control over their indoctrination. They are the vast majority of homeschoolers. And these are the kinds of people that will be empowered by deregulating the education system. And this is a perfect example of where free-market ideas fall apart. Education should be run by experts in their fields, not local no-nothings who have nothing but misconceptions about what they indoctrinate kids with. The quality of education will wither if its power is taken from the experts. The south will become a nation of indoctrinated zombies. Like I said before, the free market is a great idea for many fields. It is terrible for others. That hinges on the fact that the free market delivers what people want, not what people need. What the people want is to be indoctrinated. What they need is to be led by experts. It's a small price to pay in terms of freedom compared to the freedom proper education opens up. You give a little to get a lot. That's what I mean about not being a purist. A purist using a greedy algorithm would be fuming over losing their "freedoms" to be properly educated, and not consider the freedom of opportunity they get in the long run, and the freedoms they get in not living in a country that indoctrinates them. * They would not be using buzzwords like "irreducible complexity," references to tornadoes in junkyards, mousetraps, a crocodile giving birth to a duck, grandmothers who are apes, the laws of thermodynamics, attacking theory of albiogenesis or the big bang and think they're related to evolution, etc. Unless said burrito maker can make a ton of $$$ by cutting corners by jeapordizing the health of his consumers, like how McDonalds saves resources by making their coffee unnecessarily piping hot that direct contact with the fluid can cause a third degree burn and send someone who made a simple spill be rushed to the hospital. Or how Taco Bell never seems to care about giving food poisoning and diarrhea to tons of people. The fact is that often the market won't regulate itself until someone dies from it. And even then, without government intervention or our trusty lawyers, they might not regulate at all. You're also not considering the scaling problem. For a small town, communism is a PERFECT system. It's practically how our small hunter-gatherer ancestor comunnities lived for thousands of years. That means it should work for an entire nation of millions and millions of people, right? Nope! Same is true for software. It's why Google and other businesses have beta testing periods that slowly increase the number of people on the system. They wanna see where the weaknesses in their system is when they scale up. Systems break down in ways you don't foresee them coming. That's another reason why I don't like idealogical purists: they see it works in the small scale but don't consider the large scale. So basically, that grateful dead concert isn't gonna cut it for the entire USA. You just can't assume your system can scale up x10,000 to apply to 300,000,000 people in the same way a concert applies to 10,000. This only goes to show how far he has betrayed his own area of expertise to pander to the right wing base. Sickening. He's a politician just like any other. Maybe if he gets elected he can thumb his nose at the conservatives and stick to libertarianism. But that sounds like a far off bet. The only, ONLY, case for the belief that human life starts at contraception is a supernatural one. I am all about religious freedom, in that people should not be told what religious beliefs to have by the govt. Therefore, until the pregnancy is at a point where the fetus is developing a sentient brain that feels pain, abortion is a choice. Period. (Pun intended). Oh I want the war on drugs done and gone. That is a waste of time. So is spending a zillion taxpayer dollars building useless fences. You should see the episode of Bullshit by my favorite libertarians, Penn and Teller. They rip the whole border thing apart. yes, I'm getting terse. I've put too much time into this. I could have written like 5 pages on the wiki. [/QUOTE]
Bingo. I have nothing personal against you, travz, but I really wish you'd stop insinuating that people don't know what they're talking about. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they're ill informed. Most of what I know about the fundamentals of economics, for instance, was taught to me by a conservative professor who spent 50% of his time ranting about liberals, so I'm not opposed to having my views challenged. The fact that I'm a liberal atheist who grew up in the Bible Belt should be evidence enough that I can think for myself. But I shouldn't even have to say that. Yeah, my last post was pretty smartass-y (smartasses gonna smartass?), but I'm wary of any dogmatic adherence to ideology. I literally can't think of anything you've posted in one of your screeds that I haven't heard a million times before from other libertarians (condescension included). That's why I made that little dig: the parallels between libertarians extolling the virtues of the Church of Paul and the Christians trying to spread His word on Sunday mornings is fucking uncanny.
Nah, I only took one class for my general education requirement, but I'm still kind of interested in the subject. Enough to stay informed, at least. EDIT: I just realized that I admitted to learning something in school. MAYBE THAT PROFESSOR ONLY WANTED ME TO THINK HE WAS CONSERVATIVE?!?!?!
Letting local/state governments to completely control schools is a bad idea. If that happens you'll get schools in Texas saying evolution is a lie, for instance.
If I could vote for none of them, that would be ideal. They ALL scare me. They're politicians. Politicians are scary fucking people. Oh wait. I just won't vote. True.
I could write a treatise on the pros and cons of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff if it'll win back some of that respect.
You need a hug bro, nullus. So when does it become a baby? Zygote? Morula? Blastocyst? 1 day? 1 week? 1 month? Theres no gray area, its a person. It has a future. I see what you did there. I'm taking micro right now, yes. And what Mr. Paul has to say, as a logical person, I know is much better for us than any socialized economy. Not that I'm going to pretend to be any kind of genius, its my first business class. Oh gosh and that would be terrible, kids knowing we're created from a God and didn't evolve from mutated monkeys. Back to the main topic, Rick Perry FTW, Texas is full of all kinds of win. Though If Paul won the nomination I'd have no problem voting for him, he seems like the guy who might be crazy enough to get something done. But then again he is the guy that said to protect the border with 'machine guns and barbwire' lololol.
AS. I. JUST. SAID. In the post Handyman quoted me (thanks for NOT reading what I spent an hour and a half writing), a life's significance is determined by the level of its brain development. A zygote cannot feel pain. It cannot feel love. It has no friends. It doesn't know what a friend is. It cannot think at all. It doesn't get hungry or thirsty. It has no dreams, and it has no suffering. It has to brain, and therefore cannot process any of these thoughts at all. A zygote is functionally the same as a tumor: a ball of cells that keep multiplying, but a tumor is a living thing too. An ant has more brainpower than a zygote. So does a mosquito. A zygote is not a person, it only has the potential to be a person. You have the potential to be a criminal, because you can probably curl your first and have enough strength to punch someone. Does this mean I should arrest you now for battery, or should I wait and see if you actually realize that potential? A adult woman, by contrast, IS a living thing. She can feel pain, and she does have friends. The suggestion that a non-sentient entity is more important than a fully grown woman, much less an ant or a tumor, is preposterous. Furthermore, if you let nature run its course, only a few fertilized zygotes ever live long enough to see birth. Many are washed out by the mother's next period (does that make all women mass murderers?). A lot of the time a malfunction happens and the potential child aborts itself. Like I said, the ONLY case for arguing a zygote is life is though supernatural argument, because a zygote does not have any physical world components to be a sentient thing. Therefore, it is not the business of the govt to ban it. I know for a fact that it's not a living being and I know for a fact that there are no such things as a supernatural anything, but if you have a different religious opinion than me, we would merely argue over it until we're blue in the face.
*I can't delete posts T_T* You should at least choose between sticking a needle in your eye and sticking a log in your eye, at least. Consider a non-vote to be equal to voting for who you dislike the most.
Well my argument isn't necessarily supernatural, I'm really asking when does it become a baby? You said life's significance is determined by brain activity, when is their enough brain activity for you to consider it human? If you can pinpoint a time of said activity, why is it not human before, and human after? I really wish we could argue in person because I think we'd be a lot more friendly! But let me counter this argument, I have a lot more brain activity than a younger child, is that child any less of a person than me? Am I any less of a person than the person making above a 2.8 GPA? I've also heard pro-choice arguments on development. I'm taller and more muscular people than a lot of people I know, but does this make me more human? Are the beasts that play for the Oklahoma State Cowboy (#5 holllller!) football team that are generally taller and way bigger than me make them more human than me?
What you just implied is an insult to the first amendment guaranteeing the separation of church and state.
Travs was talking about the policies of Paul, and how he was separating government and school, therefore schools would be independent from government, and could do what the community felt necessary, this is how I took it anyway, and I could be wrong. Besides that creation is just as valid a theory as evolution, I mean really.
You're still missing my point: A zygote cannot feel pain or suffering. You can feel pain, the football players DEFINATELY can feel pain, and I can feel pain too. You, me, and the football players all understand friendship, too. The unethical part of killing isn't the part about losing life (it happens to everyone eventually), it's the purposeful creation of suffering from that which is being killed, the great loss to the friends of person being killed, and because the entity in question does not want to die. A zygote cannot feel suffering, doesn't understand friendship or love, has has no desires like the desire to keep living, thus, it can be aborted with a clean conscience. Once it reaches a certain threshold of understanding, it becomes unethical to kill a fetus. If a fetus is part of the living club, then it logically follows that everyone older than that is part of the living club too. By the way, creationism is not a scientific theory. There has been not a single shred of evidence proposed that supports creationism over evolution. Creationism has had no testable hypotheses. Something CANNOT be called a theory if it doesn't even have any tested hypotheses!