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Why Jews should Support Ron Paul.
Ron Paul wants to set Israel free of Washington meddling, just like he wants to set America free, too.
For those Paulites finding this blog through a Google alert, this is my first attempt to reach out to all you news-obsessed Paul junkies and say that, yes, I am one of you. I’m probably the only one, however, who lives in what you guys would call the “West Bank”. Hence, a “Settler” of “Samaria,” which is the Jewish term for the upper piece of this land generally thought of as Occupied Palestine. I was born an American Citizen, continue to hold that citizenship, and yes, I am voting by absentee in the Florida primary for Ron Paul.
There are so many reasons why Ron Paul is the absolute best candidate for Israel of any presidential candidate out there. Paul has a serious problem though in presenting his Israel case to the Jews. I will write future posts on how he can win the rest of my stiff-necked people over to his cause, but for now, I will try to explain why Israel needs Ron Paul.
The worst thing Israel can possibly do for itself is to continue to take foreign aid from America. Aside from any other of Paul’s positions, his ending foreign aid would be the best thing for Israel since…I don’t know…sliced pita. There are three reasons for this. The first, and least important, is economic. The second, more important reason is psychological, which perpetuates the middle east conflict. The third, and most important, is moral. Let us deal with the least important first.
Economic: Israel’s annual GDP is over $200 billion. We have a population of about 7 million people. To compare this with the largest Arab country on the planet, Egypt, with a population of 83 million, their GDP, with a population 12x the size of the Jewish State, is less than ours at about $190 billion. They are in recession. We are in a boom. It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic, but Israel is the richest country by far in the region per capita.
The amount of money we get from America is a paltry $3 billion in loan guarantees, 70% of which is not even real money. It’s monopoly money called USAID dollars that can only be spent in America to buy spare F16 parts. The reason America gives us over $2 billion in monopoly money that we can only spend in the US every year is that they want to keep those jobs at Lockheed Martin so Obama can say “look at these unemployment numbers!” (Which stink anyway and are double our own.)
As a result, we can’t develop our own airplanes which we certainly could do if left alone, and they’d be better than anything Lockheed could produce. Then we could export them to America, or better yet, give the Americans some monopoly shekels they could only spend in Israel and secure some more jobs here! (No, I wouldn’t advocate that, but you see my point.)
The point is, accepting American aid which totals a measly 1% of our GDP damages our fighter plane industry. But that is the least of our problems.
More importantly, the psychological issue. Jews are still mentally in exile mode even though we have our own country again. We think we’re dependent on everyone and fear pure independence. 2000 years wondering from slaughter to massacre will do that to a nation. Almost everyone here believes American aid is absolutely essential and it makes us feel weak and pathetic even though we are by far the strongest country in town here in the Middle East.
A Jew who thinks he is weak and pathetic is willing to cower, and a Jew willing to cower gets his brothers and sisters killed. Every time a rocket falls on Sderot or Beer Sheba, we feel we have to cry to America instead of take care of the problem. Every time there is a terrorist attack, we have to call up the White House to see what we’re allowed to do about it.
If you are an American and you’re reading this, imagine that after September 11 you had to ask Israel what you could do about it. It is emasculating and sad, but this is what we do because we feel we need free American airplane parts. We don’t, but we want to feel like we have a father, and we certainly don’t want to be on our own. We take American money not for any real economic need. We take it because we want a cultural father. Read more about this here.
Imagine, for a second, that there were no foreign aid in this region. Foreign aid makes up 80% of the Palestinian Authority’s GDP. 80%. It’s hard to even call that GDP. It’s not product. It’s just stolen American taxpayer money. Palestinians don’t produce anything. It’s hard to produce anything when your entire national aspirations are negative, i.e., get the Jews out.
Without foreign aid, the Palestinans have nothing. What would happen then? They’d just leave, especially if we paid them to do so. We have enough money to pay every Palestinian family $100,000 just to get up and out and move to Dubai who are desperate for people to build their oil-driven skyscrapers. Talk about solving the conflict. All we need is the will to do it. And to get the will, we need independence. And to get independence, we need liberty. To get liberty, we need to stop taking free money from anyone.
If we need weapons, we should buy them or build them. No charity.
Imagine being able to accept or reject a deal based on our own calculations instead of Washington’s. Imagine that the next time Hamas bombs our cities, we can go in and actually finish the job and destroy them, and Ron Paul will get the call on his red phone in the oval office and say to Netanyahu, “Why are you calling me? Do what you want!”
The most important reason to stop taking American aid is that it is simply immoral to do so. America is in so much debt that debt has lost all meaning there. Israel is the only Western country on the planet left that has a balanced budget and isn’t bolted down to a currency union made up of debt drunk PIIGS.
We are the last bastion of fiscal responsibility left on the planet and we’re taking money from American taxpayers?
This is wrong, it’s immoral, and it must stop. Whether we like it or not, the world always looks to us, the Jewish people, for moral guidance. If we don’t provide it, we are hated. It’s as simple as that.
If we are hated, the world loses spiritual direction. When that happens, things get dark and gloomy.
Ron Paul is the only candidate running truly driven by real moral principles. His biggest moral principle is that of liberty given by God and not Government. The concept of God-given liberty is something that the Jewish People brought to the world when we had our little thing called the Exodus from Egypt when God came down, fought the Egyptian government Himself, and told Pharaoh that governments cannot enslave nations. Without the Jewish Exodus, the founding fathers of the great nation of America would have had absolutely nothing to work with.
We brought liberty to the world. Ron Paul understands that well. That’s why he wants us, the Jews, the Israelis, to be free. So lets stop taking their money.
Ron Paul stands for the Jewish value of Liberty. And so should we.
“Everyone makes mistakes,” the aphorism goes. Of course, but some more than others. Unfortunately, in the cable news age, it is often difficult to identify who’s winning the political prognostication game. Conjecture lobbed from the anonymity of online blogs and round-the-clock punditry is forgotten with time, but sadly, so are the accurate predictions of thoughtful commentators. While most of our nation’s leaders would rather forget their casual, daily speculations, time has consistently vindicated one independent voice on the Hill: Texas Congressman Ron Paul.
The good doctor hasn’t just proved right in some general “freedom works” sense. His predictions have been repeatedly, even eerily, reliable. For example in 2000 during at a time when terrorism failed to receive a single mention in Bush’s inaugural address, Paul seems to have foreseen the terrorist attacks that would occur just 17 months later on 9/11. “We are placed in greater danger because of our arrogant policy of bombing nations that do not submit to our wishes,” he said referring to the bombing in Iraq and Serbia.
“This generates the hatred directed towardAmerica, even if at times it seems suppressed,” he continued, “and exposes us to a greater threat of terrorism, since this is the only vehicle our victims can use to retaliate against a powerful military state… The cost in terms of liberties lost and the unnecessary exposure to terrorism are difficult to determine, but in time it will become apparent to all of us that foreign interventionism is of no benefit to American citizens.” While 9/11 left most Americans confused, Paul remained steady. “Though many Americans have just become aware of how deeply we are involved in this war,”he wrote, “it has been going on for decades. We are obviously seen by the terrorists as an enemy.”
His prediction long-forgotten, the president ignored the congressman’s diagnosis of the causes of the conflict—namely, U.S. Middle East interventions—and instead embarked on epic quest to remake the Middle East. Paul predicted not only Bush’s global war on terror, but also his domestic anti-terrorism laws like the PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act, a rejection ofhabeas corpusand the legalization of torture that quickly followed. As far back as 1999,he foresawthat “whena foreign war comes to our shores in the form of terrorism, we can be sure that our government will explain the need for further sacrifice of personal liberties to win this war against terrorism as well.” After9/11,he repeatedthis prediction to no avail.
“When we retaliate for this horror we have suffered, we must be certain that only the guilty be punished,”he cautionedon September 12, 2001. “More killing of innocent civilians will only serve to flame the fires of war and further jeopardize our security.” While theU.S.has not suffered a terrorist attack since September 11, this is certainly not the result of our nation building effort inAfghanistan. As Paul describedin 2001,Middle East nation building “ironically enough, could serve to further Osama bin Laden’s twisted plans for a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West,” forwarding “his hateful plan.”
After our invasion ofIraq,bin Laden confirmedPaul’s view. “DespiteAmericabeing the greatest economic power and possessing the most powerful and up-to-date military arsenal,” he gleefully pointed out, “19 young men were able, by the grace of Allah, the Most High, to change the direction of its compass.”In 2010, Rolling Stone Magazine asked Bin Laden’s son Omar if there would be more attacks.“I don’t think so,” he replied. “He doesn’t need to. As soon as America went to Afghanistan, his plan worked. He has already won.” In other words, we fell right into the trap of which Paul had warned.
In part because Paul realized it was a trap, he also foresaw the devastating consequences of an Iraqi invasion. He warnedof “massive Iraqi civilian casualties” that would result in “more worldwide condemnation.” Boththe civilian casualties(at least 100,000) and condemnation quickly came to fruition with even theUN Secretary callingthe war “illegal” in 2004. In 2002, he also predicted the war would costtwice as muchas the White Houseestimateof a pathetic $50-$60 billion. In 2008,he revisitedhis predictions. “My ‘radical’ predictions were in fact, not ‘radical’ enough,” he explained. “I warned of a draining 30-year occupation. Now, politicians glibly talk about a 100-year occupationas if it is no big deal. On cost…we have already burned through around $550 billion inIraq, at a rate of about $2 billion per week.” Today,the totalstands at over $800 billion.
Furthermore, it came as no surprise to Paul that our invasion failed to turn up any WMD’s as even President Bush has admitted.Addressing the House in 2002,Paul asked,”Is it not true that the reason we did not bomb theSoviet Unionat the height of the Cold War was because we knew they could retaliate? Is it not also true that we are willing to bombIraqnow because we know it cannot retaliate—which just confirms that there isno real threat?”
Paul even discerned the political consequences of the war in 2002, seemingly prescient of the 2006 elections when Democrats retook the House largely on an anti-war message.“There are even good political reasons for not initiating this conflict,”he said. “War is not popular. It may seem popular in the short run, when there appears to be an immediate victory and everyone is gloating, but war is not popular. People get killed, and body bags end up coming back. War is very unpopular, and it is not the politically smart thing to do.
Paul also thoughtthatRussiamight use the Iraq War as an excuse to invadeGeorgia, a forecast realized in 2008.He even predictedthe current uprisings in the Middle East writing in April, 2002 that “Peace, of sorts, will come to theMiddle East, but will be short-lived… Some of our moderate Arab allies will be overthrown by Islamic fundamentalists.” While we do not know who exactly has overthrown/is overthrowing Mubarak and Gaddafi, we do know that both of them were our “Arab allies.”
The doctor has not simply been on a recent hot streak, either.In 1983,he advocatedclosing our overseas embassies because they “helped to precipitate theIranhostage crisis and possibly even in Lebanon,” referring to the terrorist attack on our embassy there.While not a prediction exactly, it took less than a year for the prudence of his position to be demonstrated when terrorists struck the Kuwaiti embassy in December of 1983 and Lebanese Embassy again in 1984.Severalrecent embassy attacks continue to impress the importance of his position.
Nor have the congressman’s forecasts been limited to foreign policy.In the 1980s,he predictedthe savings and loan crisis andviolence from Ronald Reagan’sexpanding drug war, and although it may be fashionable in the GOP today to oppose bailouts, it was Ron Paul in 1979who sawthat the Chrysler bailout was “merelythe prototype, the harbinger, of crises to come.”It’s hard to disagree in light of the recent bailouts it and GM received in 2008 and 2009.
In the 1990s, he was alone in Congress prophesying the destruction of dot-com bubble.“In the 10 years that Greenspan has headed the Fed, $2 trillion of new credit has been created. This generous dose of Fed credit has fueled the 5-year superboom on Wall Street,”he warned.“Government officials continue to try to reassure the American people that there is no inflation to worry about.Stock prices, though, are greatly inflated…and probably represent the greatest financial bubble known in history.”When the crash came two years later in 2000, Paul’s warnings were forgotten, and Greenspan was handed the reigns of the recovery.
Greenspan’s response to the dot-com crash—the creation of more credit—led directly to another even larger crash the following decade.As early as 2002, Paul and hisAustrian economist friendswere describing our distorted housing market with what turned out to be remarkable accuracy. “Like all artificially-created bubbles, the boom in housing prices cannot last forever,”he warned.“When housing prices fall, homeowners will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out. Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a loss. These losses will be greater than they would have otherwise been had government policy not actively encouraged over-investment in housing.”
Even in 1998,Paul was warningthatthe “moral hazard created by federal deposit insurance” could create“systemic risk posed by any future episode that might involve the imprudent use of derivatives and excessive amounts of leverage,” a near dead on description of the 2008 crash. In 2003,Paul reiteratedhis concerns about the housing market, explaining the inevitable collapse of Fannie and Freddie. “The special privileges of Fannie, Freddie, and HLBB have distorted the housing market by allowing them to attract capital they could not attract under pure market conditions. As a result, capital is diverted from its most productive use into housing… Perhaps the Federal Reserve can stave off the day of reckoning by purchasing GSE [Government Sponsored Enterprise] debt and pumping liquidity into the housing market, but this cannot hold off the inevitable drop in the housing market forever. In fact, postponing the necessary but painful market corrections will only deepen the inevitable fall. The more people invested in the market, the greater the effects across the economy when the bubble bursts.” He was right; he wassoright, but again, like with the war on terrorism, the ones most complicit in creating the problem were again in charge of finding the solution.
Paul knew that this would be the case, however, and also predicted the outcome: our current debt crisis. Writing in 2002,he expectedthat “a major economic downturn” “will decimate U.S. Federal Government finances, with exploding deficits and uncontrolled spending. Federal Reserve policy will continue at an expanding rate, with massive credit expansion… The Congress and the President will shift radically toward expanding the size and scope of the Federal Government. This will satisfy both the liberals and the conservatives. Military and police powers will grow, satisfying the conservatives. The welfare state, both domestic and international, will expand, satisfying the liberals. Both sides will endorse military adventurism overseas.” President Obama with missiles and bombs rather emphatically confirmed that last prediction in Libyalast week.
Part of his independence is Paul’s firm belief that both parties are corrupted and do not deliver on their promises.In 2009, for example, as the debate about health care reform heated up,he said, “Whether they are Republicans or Democrats, they are going to support the corporations.Even in medical care reform, who do you think is going to come out well on this?Corporations, drug companies, and insurance companies, they are being protected.Some conservatives accuse Obama of wanting socialized medicine.I don’t think so.I think he wants to perpetuate corporatism.”Not only was he right that Obama would strikea compromisewith both the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries later that year, but he was also right before the election when he saidthat Obama’s promise to remove troops fromIraqwould turn out to be “pure political talk.”
Ron Paul’s uncanny ability to predict the future has people calling him amodern day prophet.Paul, however, is no prophet. He just has the intelligence to look dispassionately at the facts and the courage to speak his mind, even when Federal Reserve economistscall hima “pinhead” and his fellow Republican presidential candidateslaugh at himon the debate stage. Paul saw the danger of our interventionist foreign policy, not by magic, but by simply looking at what Osama bin Laden has said about his motivations He foresaw the housing market collapse and savings and loan crisis through a basic understanding of economic laws. Both predictions relied on his belief that government cannot centrally plan the world. “Central planning makes promises it cannot possiblykeep,”he wrotein 2008. “Freedom empowers the individual. Central planning dehumanizes the masses. There may always be a struggle for power and government, but for this reason, freedom will always win out in the end.” Let’s hope so, Dr. Paul.
Today, the United States Senate failed to protect American liberty, voting to reject an amendment by Mark Udall to a Defense authorization bill that is almost certain to pass.
The Defense authorization legislation grants the U.S. military the power to put American citizens within the borders of the United States into prison without any criminal charge, without any time limit. All that the federal government will need to do to imprison Americans will be to merely accuse them of terrorism, without substantiating those charges with any evidence.
mark udall amendmentSupporters of this radical expansion of government power, which violates the right to fair trial guaranteed to us in the Constitution, say that it’s necessary to protect Americans from terrorism. Of course, Americans have been protected from terrorism for years without the need of arbitrary imprisonment without criminal charge.
Furthermore, antiterrorism experts say that these new government powers could actually cripple government efforts to thwart terrorism. FBI Director Robert Mueller has written an advisory letter that the provisions of the Defense authorization bill “may adversely impact our ability to continue ongoing terrorism investigations before or after arrest, derive intelligence from those investigations, and may raise extraneous issues in any future prosecution”.
The Udall Amendment would have removed the legislation’s unconstitutional power of imprisonment without criminal charge. This afternoon, that amendment failed to pass. It was rejected by a coalition of Republicans and Democrats who have become comfortable with the existence of totalitarian government powers. The vote wasn’t even close: 37 for Senator Udall’s protection of American freedom, 61 opposed to the Udall amendment, and 2 senators who didn’t show up to vote.
A roll call of the vote follows:
Democrats who voted FOR arbitrary imprisonment of Americans in the USA:
Senator Robert Casey, Senator Kent Conrad, Senator Kay Hagan, Senator Daniel Inouye, Senator Herb Kohl, Senator Mary Landrieu, Senator Carl Levin, Senator Joe Manchin, Senator Claire McCaskill, Senator Robert Menendez, Senator Ben Nelson, Senator Mark Pryor, Senator Jack Reed, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Senator Debbie Stabenow, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Republicans who voted FOR arbitrary imprisonment of Americans in the USA:
Senator Lamar Alexander, Senator Kelly Ayotte, Senator John Barrasso, Senator Roy Blunt, Senator John Boozman, Senator Scott Brown, Senator Richard Burr, Senator Saxby Chambliss, Senator Daniel Coats, Senator Thomas Coburn, Senator Thad Cochran, Senator Susan Collins, Senator Bob Corker, Senator John Cornyn, Senator Mike Crapo, Senator Jim DeMint, Senator Michael Enzi, Senator Lindsey Graham, Senator Charles Grassley, Senator Orrin Hatch, Senator Dean Heller, Senator John Hoeven, Senator Kay Hutchison, Senator James Inhofe, Senator Johnny Isakson, Senator Mike Johanns, Senator Ron Johnson, Senator Jon Kyl, Senator Mike Lee, Senator Richard Lugar, Senator John McCain, Senator Mitch McConnell, Senator Jerry Moran, Senator Robert Portman, Senator James Risch, Senator Pat Roberts, Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Jeff Sessions, Senator Richard Shelby, Senator Olympia Snowe, Senator John Thune, Senator Pat Toomey, Senator David Vitter, Senator Roger Wicker
Democrats who voted AGAINST arbitrary imprisonment of Americans in the USA:
Senator Daniel Akaka, Senator Max Baucus, Senator Michael Bennet, Senator Jeff Bingaman, Senator Richard Blumenthal, Senator Barbara Boxer, Senator Sherrod Brown, Senator Maria Cantwell, Senator Benjamin Cardin, Senator Thomas Carper, Senator Chris Coons, Senator Richard Durbin, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senator Al Franken, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Senator Tom Harkin, Senator Tim Johnson, Senator John Kerry, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Senator Frank Lautenberg, Senator Patrick Leahy, Senator Jeff Merkley, Senator Barbara Mikulski, Senator Patty Murray, Senator Bill Nelson, Senator Harry Reid, Senator John Rockefeller, Senator Charles Schumer, Senator Jon Tester, Senator Mark Udall, Senator Tom Udall, Senator Mark Warner, Senator Jim Webb, Senator Ron Wyden
Republicans who voted AGAINST arbitrary imprisonment of Americans in the USA:
Senator Mark Kirk, Senator Rand Paul
Senators who didn’t bother to participate in the vote:
Lisa Murkowski, Mark Begich
via Attack On American Liberty Remains – US Senate Rejects Udall Amendment | That’s My Congress.
“One section of these provisions, section 1031, would be interpreted as allowing the military to capture and indefinitely detain American citizens on U.S. soil. Section 1031 essentially repeals the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 by authorizing the U.S. military to perform law enforcement functions on American soil. That alone should alarm my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, but there are other problems with these provisions that must be resolved,” Colorado Senator Mark Udall said in a speech earlier this month.
Following an ACLU alert on the legislation, some pointed out that the text of the bill actually exempts Americans from being detained under the new “homeland battlefield” designation under the proviso that “the requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States.”
However, as Republican Congressman Justin Amash told the The Grand Rapids Press today, the language of the bill is “carefully crafted to mislead the public.”
via Yes, Americans Will Be Targeted As Terrorists Under the NDAA | Dark Politricks.
Ron Paul – civil liberty’s last hope — RT.
Profile Muslims. Bring on the drones. Did we learn anything else from last night’s GOP debate on CNN? Well, once again, it appears as if Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul is the only candidate that wants to protect the liberties of Americans.
Speaking from DAR Constitution Hall in Washington DC Tuesday night, Paul and his peers discussed the topics of national security and foreign policy. While it’s been no secret that some of the more hawkish candidates are crazy for increasing defense spending and upping the American military presence overseas, Texas Congressman Ron Paul once again managed to separate himself from the rest of the pack by coming off as perhaps the only candidate truly committed to keeping liberty and freedom in place for Americans.
Something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is that there is a tremendous Military Industrial Complex in this country and its effects on the election process are readily apparent. Last night’s GOB debate on CNN made this abundantly clear as the hacks from the war policy institutes asked ridiculous questions like “Our loving overlords have stopped 41 terrorist attacks since 9/11 thanks to the Patriot Act…” etc. It was really just a sickening show.
Let’s just say though, that Ron Paul is able to triumph over all of the money being thrown into this campaign by the defense contractors like Boeing, Haliburton, etc and win the Republican Nomination. From the polling in Iowa, it looks like he might take that caucus and be off to a good start, so it can happen. If Ron Paul does win Iowa, then New Hampshire, it will look to most people like he may indeed win the nomination. At that point some of the other candidates are sure to drop out, but Mitt Romney has the money to persist and he’s shown the willingness to do that in 2008, and he’s got the Neo-Con establishment behind him.
At that point, in a Ron Paul vs Mitt Romney primary season, you will have three distinct groups running for president:
- The Democratic Socialists will try to elect Barack Obama
- The Corporatist Neocons will try to elect Mitt Romney
- The every day, freedom loving American will try to elect Ron Paul
So let’s say that Ron Paul triumphs over Mitt Romney and it becomes clear that he is going to be the Republican nominee. At that point, what will the Neocons do? They have plenty of money, they have plenty of policy institutes, and they have plenty of voters who are fooled to believing in them. Will they just give up? Will they support Obama? (The defense contractors already donate to both parties, by the way) Or, will Mitt Romney run as a third party?
Think about it, he has the backing and the money. He has the major media outlets – they’ve been cheering for him all along.
What will he call himself? Will he run as a Neoconservative? Will he run as a Tea Party candidate? Or will he simply run as an independent?
I think it would be a very interesting election season indeed if we had a three way run for President between Obama, Romney, and Paul.
PS – This is what Neocon refers to:
