Ron Paul

Dear Readers,

Uh-oh!

I think I might be having a small political identity crisis.

Now, don’t start panicking. Telemoonfa is still conservative, and he’s still Republican. I’m not thinking of switching parties. I’ve been a Republican ever since I registered to vote, and I’ll probably be Republican for my whole life.

But now I’m thinking that last November, maybe, just maybe, I should have supported Ron Paul instead of Mitt Romney.

Have you heard much about Ron Paul?

I’ve looked in to him a little, and I like him a lot.

I think he’s a great man. He doesn’t seem like the usual politician. He’s not afraid to say what he thinks, even when his opinions and ideas aren’t popular at the time.

And his supporters were often really hardcore. I remember one time that here in Flagstaff it was snowing, and there were a bunch of people standing outside city hall with Ron Paul signs. And I remember there were a few guys standing in the University Union at Northern Arizona University, giving out Ron Paul pamphlets and starting conversations with students, trying to get them to vote for Ron Paul. I remember sort of thinking that maybe I should have been that outspoken for Mitt Romney. I didn’t do anything for Mitt’s campaign except vote for him and talk to a few people about him.

Ron Paul is really lovable. He seems to have a genuine personality, unlike, say, Hillary Clinton and other politicians, who can manufacture emotions, and who say just what they think people want to hear.

Ron Paul’s foreign policy ideas are different than most Republicans. He voted against the Iraq War, and he wants us out of there and Afghanistan as soon as possible.

One thing that doesn’t set well with me about Ron Paul is his tone about how the US sort of caused 9/11 because we were in the Middle East meddling in the affairs of other nations. His tone seemed a little unpatriotic to me, but maybe there’s more truth to his arguments than I’d like to admit. Paul says he’s not an isolationist, but he’s a non-interventionist.

Another problem spot for me is that Ron Paul, as far as I can tell, supports the legalization of marijuana and other drugs, gay marriage, and of prostitution. Ron Paul is pretty much a libertarian. He thinks that everything that doesn’t hurt anyone else ought to be legal. That’s sort of the same thing that Milton Friedman thought, and that’s sort of the same thing that a lot of libertarians think. But that’s not what I think. I think that really harmful drugs, gay marriage, prostitution, and other things like that ought to stay illegal. I’m not sure exactly why I think that way. There are good arguments for and against legalizing all those things, but that’s a subject for another blog post.

Ron Paul already got me to do something I don’t normally do. I wrote to the elected officials who are supposed to represent my voice in our wonderful representative democracy! Today I emailed my Representative, Ann Kirkpatrick, to ask her to support HR 1207: Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009. I also emailed Jon Kyl and John McCain, my two Senators, and asked them to support the Senate version of that bill.

What is HR 1207, you wonder? Well, according to Ron Paul and a lot of other people, the Federal Reserve is a secretive private central bank that messes with the economy. I don’t understand economics very much, but according to Ron Paul, perhaps even more important than reining in reckless government spending is dealing with the Federal Reserve better. The Federal Reserve is a private bank that prints the money and causes inflation and weakens the dollar and manipulates the economy to reward a few elitists… It’s pretty interesting stuff. I hope it’s not a bunch of hogwash conspiracy theory baloney. It sounds real. I don’t know much about economics, but if Ron Paul is right about the Federal Reserve, then it’s a bad bad bad bad thing that needs to go away.

HR 1207 is a bill that Ron Paul started to make the Federal Reserve more transparent. He’s trying to audit the Federal Reserve, because right now, Congress has no idea what the Federal Reserve is doing. It’s as if the Federal Reserve is operating behind closed doors… it’s some secret combinations / Gadianton Robber stuff, if you ask me.

I never hear Mitt Romney, or any other politician, really, talking about abolishing the Federal Reserve, you know. Why doesn’t Mitt talk about it? Mitt’s a huge economy buff. What’s his opinion about it? Maybe I should write him and find out.

Another thing I like about Ron Paul is his opinion about national sovereignty and the UN and such. Here’s a quote from Ron Paul’s speech at the big 2009 meeting of the Conservative Political Action Committee, where Ron Paul is talking about some old-school Republicans: “They were so old fashioned that they believed we had to follow the Constitution and it was designed to defend this country. Nothing more than that. Not the giving away of our sovereignty, not to listen to the UN and the World Bank and the IMF and the WTO- we don’t need any of those!”

Wow, now that’s refreshing! It sounds radical, but how radical is it, really? I’ve thought for a while that the United Nations isn’t doing that much good. They waste tons of money, they spend billions of dollars fighting global warming, and they could be a stepping stone to a New World Order.

Wasn’t the UN formed to keep us out of wars? Well, how well has that worked out so far? There have still been lots of wars, and I think the US can handle itself pretty well… it’s nice to have allies, but we could still have allies without all the bureaucracy that comes with the UN.

Overall, if I went back in time about 7 or 8 months, knowing what I know now, I think I’d still vote for Mitt Romney. I think Ron Paul has some great ideas, but I think that Mitt Romney is a better leader. And I think maybe Romney doesn’t talk about getting out of the United Nations or abolishing or at least auditing the Federal Reserve because he doesn’t want to look like a quack and destroy his presidential ambitions. (It’s a shame that wanting to abolish the Federal Reserve makes one look like a quack, but that’s the way it is.) But I believe that once Romney got into office, he would do everything he could to make the country better, including radical-sounding things.

I’m glad there are people like Ron Paul around. I think Dr. Ron Paul is a good guy.

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa