Ron Paul and the Empire, Part II

Well, the hammer has finally struck.

Several months ago, I wrote a column in which I described the strategy the establishment would use to attack Ron Paul’s candidacy:

The first step is already in play. The establishment will start by simply ignoring him, by using its power in the mainstream media and their influence over campaign donors. If possible, they will find ways of excluding him from the debates.

This strategy is already failing. The internet and talk radio are outside the elite’s direct control and are being used effectively by Rep. Paul to "get the message out." (And mark my words, sooner or later the oligarchy will come for the internet. This medium has been a royal pain in their derriere from day one.)

If this strategy fizzles, the establishment will move on to ridicule and fear mongering. Ron’s ideas will be grotesquely distorted in establishment media "hit pieces." They’ll say he wants to permit heroin use in public schools, or that he wants old people to die in the streets without their social security checks, or that he wants to allow greedy industrialists to dump toxic waste into our drinking water.

The next arrow in the oligarchy’s quiver will be scandal – real or fabricated. Usually, this takes the form of pictures, billing records, etc. involving financial or sexual hi-jinks. For folks with the right motivation and abilities, it would be child’s play to implicate him in some sort of phony ethical, moral, or financial skullduggery (e.g., doctored pictures, sordid media accounts from "eyewitnesses," etc.)

Since the first two tactics met with limited success, they predictably moved on to the third (scandal) in the form of a scurrilous article in The New Republic. In that screed, James Kirchick accused Rep. Paul of authoring a series of articles that insulted blacks, gays, and a myriad of other "groups."

Ron responded quickly. In a Reason interview, he noted that he did not write the articles in question and did not edit them. To his credit, he did take moral responsibility for inadequately policing the content of a newsletter associated with his name.

What is particularly nauseating about this hit-piece is the host of glaring double standards it represents.

James Kirchick is a prototypical neocon and a supporter of Rudy Giuliani's candidacy for president. Rudy has been, from the start, a staunch supporter of Bush’s "War on Terror," including the invasion of Iraq.

That invasion was conceived long before 9/11 and has taken the lives of somewhere between five hundred thousand and a million Iraqi civilians. Nearly four thousand American soldiers have been killed and tens of thousands more are physically and/or emotionally crippled. Our nation’s reputation has been soiled, perhaps irrevocably.

As has been exhaustively documented, that war was launched in a fog of lies, propaganda, and fabricated intelligence.

So now, five years into the war, we are forced to endure an attack by these same neocons, who are accusing the one viable antiwar candidate of...what?

Even if Ron Paul wrote every word in every one of those articles, how does that compare to the death and destruction the neocons have rained down on Iraq? It takes unimaginable chutzpah, nearly pathological gall, to stand amid mounds of smoking corpses and accuse Rep. Paul of cultural insensitivity.

Has America become so politically egocentric, so utterly consumed with its own cultural fetishes, that we could tolerate watching those who perpetrated the Iraq atrocity (or who supported it) smear a decent man for inadequately supervising a newsletter?

If Ron Paul’s candidacy is now tainted for (allegedly) slandering people of color, what should be the political punishment for Giuliani, McCain, Romney, and others who supported mass death and dismemberment of a third world country?

Even though I anticipated this sort of thing, it is infuriating to watch it unfold before my eyes.

Are we to be spared nothing?

In a very fundamental way, there are really only two candidates running for president this year: Ron Paul, and all the others.

This is because there are really only two issues at stake.

The first issue is our out-of-control foreign policy. America is embroiled in shooting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We spend more on our military than nearly the rest of the world combined. We have troops stationed in over a hundred foreign countries. Manic interventionism has stretched our military to the breaking point, and has ruined our nation’s reputation.

The second issue is our impending economic implosion. Our government, which has shed the last vestiges of constitutional restraint, has made a myriad of promises that it cannot keep. Our outstanding obligations to fund social security, government health care programs, and everything else under the sun are rapidly bankrupting our nation. To maintain these Ponzi schemes, the Fed is debasing our currency and igniting an ugly bout of hyperinflation.

Our predicament is severe and profound. We must immediately begin to shed our overseas obligations and put our domestic house in order. Otherwise, we will find ourselves reenacting the collapse of the Soviet Union right here at home.

Ron Paul is the only candidate who is willing to address these issues. He is the only one who is willing to speak frankly with the American people about our predicament and the painful actions which must be taken to prevent a real catastrophe.

And rather than offering solutions, Obama, McCain, Clinton and Romney, (and the other political hacks running for president) are not even willing to talk honestly about the problems.

As I noted in the previous article, the reason for this is simple: The establishment benefits from the status quo and would be disempowered by Ron Paul’s proposed solutions.

Specifically, as I noted in that previous article, Ron Paul is running on three ideas:

The federal government must function within the strict guidelines of the Constitution.
America should deconstruct its empire, withdraw our troops from around the world and reestablish a foreign policy based on noninterventionism.
America should abolish the Federal Reserve Bank, eliminate fiat currency and return to hard money.

This is not a political agenda. This is not a party platform. It is a revolution. The entire ruling oligarchy would be swept away if these ideas were ever implemented. Every sentence, every word, every jot and tittle of this agenda is unacceptable, repellent and hateful to America’s ruling elite.

So let us all be forewarned. If Ron Paul’s candidacy should rise to serious contention, that New Republic hit piece will be mild compared to whatever comes next.

The rulers of the universe will not go quietly.

January 17, 2008

Steven LaTulippe [send him mail] is a physician currently practicing in Ohio. He was an officer in the United States Air Force for 13 years.

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