We can't learn if we think we know too much to risk being wrong
Yes, you read that title correctly. Jon Stewart nailed this on Monday. I'll let him do the talking.
Posted by
MarkC
at
5:12 PM
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3 comments:
Good clip, thanks, Mark.
Yeah, it is curious to see how Ron Paul is being treated given the larger political movement in his direction for domestic liberty and limited government (and even the ostensively anti-war progressive movement). But the country is not quite there yet and certainly not the lagging inertia of mainstream politics and media, as Jon illustrates. But Jon fails to mention that Paul and his fan-base have a not-entirely-undeserved reputation of being extreme / crazy at times.
Ron Paul is an ideologue and I think a fair chunk of his philosophy is the future, either by choice or calamity, but I doubt we can jump straight from here to there, and from what I've seen he doesn't really lay out transition plans besides "Just stop it!". I'm not sure he's capable of half measures.
And boy does he have some grand designs, like withdrawing from the UN and all foreign aid and entanglements, returning to the gold standard, dissolving the Fed, etc. They are exciting in a principled sort of way but there are clearly some big negatives to them and it is impossible to calculate their net ramifications. It's like unraveling a tangled web. The moderators were right to question how he'd deal with Congress. He'd certainly make an interesting president chock full of hope and truly radical change.
His face reminds me of a thin Mr. Magoo. I'm also reminded of the saying: "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they attack you. Then you win." In Paul's case, maybe his ideas will win even if he doesn't.
"Ron Paul is an ideologue and I think a fair chunk of his philosophy is the future, either by choice or calamity, but I doubt we can jump straight from here to there, and from what I've seen he doesn't really lay out transition plans besides "Just stop it!". I'm not sure he's capable of half measures."
That struck me as a pretty good take on Paul. While the non-defensive war in Iraq was unjustified, and it really bothers me that people like Rick Santorum defend it and then use similar language when speaking of Iran. ON the other hand, it also bothers me when Ron Paul talks like Iran isn't a threat just because they don't have an Air Force and Navy capable of invasion. When Iran gets a nuclear weapon, they won't need to invade us to make life hell on earth in America. Their missile program has made tremendous advances in the last couple decades, and the delivery problem strikes me as an easier one to solve than the warhead problem. For one thing, you can work on successively increasing the range of dual use capable launch vehicles by sending up cheap satellites and nobody can embargo you for it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRWy50SswS0
There don't seem to be any good choices on what to do with Iran, just like there don't seem like any good choices when it comes to voting for president.
That said, it is less immoral to be soft on war to the detriment of one's safety than to start wars of aggression.
I will say, though, that Ron Paul getting the nomination would be a huge step in the right direction when it comes to actually having substantive discussions on the issues. He doesn't stick his finger in the wind every time public opinion changes, which gives him the ability to make the case for principled positions on issues this country desperately needs to have sincere discussions about.
Good comments.
Just as a clarification, I didn't post this to advocate for Ron Paul. I actually don't know all that much about his positions (I don't follow political campaigns much until voting is imminent).
I was making a statement more about the media, and its editorializing toward its desired ends, than about Ron Paul as a candidate. Fox News doesn't view Ron Paul as a valid candidate, so they ignore him. That's an editorial decision, and it weakens their claim to being an impartial news organization (not that anyone buys that claim anymore anyway, about any of our news organizations...).
Mark
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