Ron Paul: Hypocrite or Liar

    One of the things that I really want to see happen during the Republican presidential nomination contest is someone take Ron Paul to task. In the recent presidential debate, Rick Santorum began to do so but the limitations of the debate precluded anyone from really shedding some light on the Ron Paul myth.

To me, Ron Paul is a career politician, a hypocrite, and for someone who is credited for being some sort of anti-establishment knight in shining armor, he is as much a part of the establishment as any other person who has served as a Congressman for nearly two decades. But the real source of my disdain for Ron Paul’s politics stems from his dangerous, head-in-the-sand, isolationist defense and foreign policy positions. It is this area where I not only disagree with Ron Paul, but where his obnoxious repetition of the same isolationist, bumper-sticker slogan, remarks offend me.

According to Ron Paul, not only does the United States need to apologize to the world, we should have no part in world affairs. That is the exact same type of thinking which allowed two planes to fly into the World Trade Center, another in to the Pentagon, and a fourth one into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Yet according to Congressman Paul, as he said in a 2008 presidential debate, we brought that upon ourselves.

Ron Paul is correct when he claims that we could cut spending at the Pentagon. Being a government controlled department, I am sure that there are some programs that can be dispensed with and savings costs that can be found while still allowing the D.O.D. to to operate effectively. However, he is not correct to suggest that the United States has no interests or national defense interests in the Middle East. He lies when he says as he did in the last debate that we went in to Iran to find al Qaeda and didn’t find them. And that we went there to find Weapons of Mass Destruction and didn’t find them” First of all we did not go there to find al Qaeda and secondly not only were WMD’s just one of many reasons for going to Iraq, we also found evidence that Saddam did have, and was developing WMD’s. The fact that Ron Paul would blatantly lie to create a punch line that offers a cue for his obnoxious followers to cheer at with screams, yells, and deafening shouts, truly disgusts me.

It further disgusts me when Ron Paul wants to balance the budget by having the United States turn its back on the cause of liberty and in the defense of this nation. It is my understanding that the primary responsibility of our government is to defend us. As such, if the government spends money on anything, it is the military and not much else. Ron Paul himself believes that unless something is specifically authorized by the Constitution, Congress should not pay for it.

Or does he?

Just looking at Ron Paul’s most recent legislative history, not his ancient history, but his recent history, Ron Paul who is an ardent opponent of federal subsidies, sponsored legislation that would have the government provide $2.3 million to fund research into shrimp-fishing, $8 million to pay for marketing of wild American shrimp, and money for renovating an old movie theater in Edna, Texas that closed in 1977. He is also the sponsor of no fewer than 10 earmarks in a water resource bills, including two projects to improve the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, at a combined federal cost of roughly $400 million.

Ron Paul even wants the federal government to flip the bill for removing a sunken ship from Freeport Harbor in Texas. The self proclaimed King of less government even wants the feds to take charge of maintaining a Texas waterway called the Pix Bayou Navigation Channel. In 2007 alone  Congressman Hypocrite had 65 earmarks. All totaled they amounted to the tune $400 million.

Another great example of Paul’s false image is his support for term limits . While he supports them and his newly elected senator son in Kentucky has sponsored term limit legislation, Ron Paul has served 11 terms in the House. In other words, he is saying hey, don’t do what I do. Now that’s the kind of leadership we need. For his part, Ron says that he believes in term limits but not not self limits. That is like speaking about  the virtues of having self control while drinking your 18^th shot of tequila while sprawled out on the floor of your neighborhood bar with your pants around your ankles.

Ron Paul’s libertarianism has many commendable ideas but he is hardly principled. Principles are solid stands that one takes based on the sincerity of their beliefs. Principles are not just preached, they are practiced. If they aren’t, then the one who preaches but doesn’t practice those principles is nothing less than a hypocrite.

Ultimately, Ron Paul represents a noble cause, but he is not a noble representative of that cause. His type of reckless, holier-than-thou, na na na-na-na, childish, libertarianism is more harmful than helpful. As the poster boy for left-wing libertarians, Ron Paul has demonstrated that his political hypocrisy has a limited ceiling of support that he is unable to build upon. If the proper principles of  libertarianism are to ever be applied to government, the movement needs someone who is capable of uniting Libertarians with Republicans. Much of the TEA movement has a libertarian streak, but many of these people are “Responsible Libertarians”. They do not believe in anarchy but they do believe, to paraphrase Texas Governor Rick Perry, ‘that Washington DC should be as inconsequential to our lives as possible’ but should not relinquish its responsibility to defend and protect our liberty.

Now it is my greatest hope that at least one of the Republican presidential candidates actually has the chance to call Ron Paul out for what he is truly is, and take the utmost advantage of that opportunity.  And as for my fellow commonssense conservative Republicans, the next time one of Ron Paul’s petulant, holier than thou, followers stands up and screams when they hear something they don’t like, scream back and tell them to stop drinking the kool aid.