Ron Paul. Fantasy, Fallacy and Foible

By: Ronald West

Ron Paul’s speech at Ralph Reed’s ‘Faith and Freedom Coalition’ in this new  season of straw polls and presidential aspirations, demonstrates stark contrasts to the popular image of Ron Paul embraced by Pagans, Wiccans, atheists, some socially liberal conservatives, as well as some gays, lesbians, and many peace loving progressives with a conservative bent. This may seem perplexing but it is not a unique circumstance in a sense of position on political issues, actually it is a quite common quandary. Politicians in the current system must serve ‘god and money.’

If ever there were a serpent who served money, all the while pretending to serve God, his name could be Ralph Reed. Ralph Reed stands for everything many, many Ron Paul supporters would find particularly abhorrent: The Bush family and Corporate excess. Just what is Ron Paul proposing to these people? Who is Ron Paul, really? Where is his money invested? Relative to Ron Paul’s position on money and where is his money invested, who/what is he really rubbing shoulders with, particularly at Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition? Ralph Reed’s history is one of long association with Bush neo-conservative policies.

It is agreed in many circles too much money is printed and the whole Fed thing has become part and parcel of a criminal racket that does not tax the rich [Ron Paul proposes abolishing the income tax altogether] but NEW solutions are called for, going back to the past simply does not work .. except that people give up the idea of becoming rich and turn to self-sufficiency again. And contrary to Ron Paul’s statement in his speech, government did NOT regulate too much, the bubble went unchecked to burst because regulation on bankers had been reeled back.

There is a big problem with a modern ‘gold standard.’ These days there simply are too many people for gold to be a viable currency. If all the world’s gold were divided between all the world’s people equally, you might need a microscope to see your share. Miniscule amounts of money would be the result, and except that governments on a gold standard hyper-inflate the value of gold reserves, the entire planet would have to be strip mined to make it work.

Recalling Thomas Jefferson’s vision of an agrarian based society with free artisan and independent local merchant, we might have to look at something like that in downsized local (sustainable) economies .. but for anything like Jefferson’s vision to actually happen, the corporate oligarchy has to be dismantled to rid ourselves of excess and erosion of individual liberty. This is what people are not looking at, if for reasons of corporate owned news, corporate owned justice and corporate owned government. How does Ron Paul fit into the corporate scene? I had a look at the investments of Ron Paul, multi-millionaire:

Vista Gold, Kinross Gold, Newmont, IAM Gold, Barrick Gold, Golden Star Resources, Golden Cycle Gold Corp, Pan American Silver, Great Basin Gold, Eldorado Gold, Freeport McMoran Gold & Copper, Apollo Gold Corp and Placer Dome mining corporations.

When it comes to multi-national mining corporations, things get sleazy as quick as you can blink an eye. Now, because 13 multi-national mining corporations are a bit much to shove down the reader’s throat with analysis, I drew a name out of a hat and came up with Barrick Gold. We’ll look at what Ron Paul’s money has been up to there.

Barrick Gold, in Tanzania: “Ongoing conflict between the mine and local communities has created a climate of fear for those who live nearby. Since the mine opened in 2002, the Mwita family say that they live in a state of constant anxiety because they have been repeatedly harassed and intimidated by the mine’s private security forces and by government police. There have been several deadly confrontations in the area and every time there are problems at the mine, the Mwita family say their compound is the first place the police come looking. During police operations the family scatters in fear to hide in the bush, “like fugitives,” for weeks at a time waiting for the situation to calm down. They used to farm and raise livestock, “but now there are no pastures because the mine has almost taken the whole land … we have no sources of income and we are living only through God’s wishes. … We had never experienced poverty before the mine came here.” They say they would like to be relocated, but the application process has been complicated, and they feel the amount of compensation they have been offered is “candy.”

What of the man who wrote a book on the subject? Sued by Barrick Gold to keep the book tied up and off the market. Ron Paul has invested in a ‘golden’ genocide? But wait, There’s more.

Barrick Gold & Bush: “In the waning days of his failed presidency, Bush I invoked an obscure 1872 statute to give a Canadian firm, Barrick Corporation, the right to mine $10 billion in gold from U.S. public lands. (U.S. taxpayers got a whopping $10,000 fee in return.) Bush then joined Barrick as a highly-paid “international consultant,” brokering deals with various dictators of his close acquaintance. Barrick reciprocated with big bucks for Junior’s presidential run.”

Ron Paul’s Barrick Gold investment not only contributes to the destruction of communities and war across Africa, it is handed American public lands for a song and is in bed with the Bush dynasty, not to mention being a big polluter.

Let’s have a look at the cyanide heap leech process by these mining corporations Ron Paul trusts to police themselves and do right by our environment. On average, 75 TONS of rock is crushed into cyanide heap leach to get ONE gold wedding band. That only works in 3rd world countries where labor is dirt cheap and environmental laws non-existent. Then you need the wars (corporate control by proxy) to run over those 3rd world people’s lives and control things when they rebel at their traditional lifestyle and community destroyed to accomplish having access to land you can trash for the minerals .. here is your ‘Christian just war’ in Afghanistan with its [Pentagon] raw mineral estimate of $1 trillion, a war Ron Paul did not condemn in his speech.

And if there is deregulation of the mining industry as Ron Paul would have, taken together with abolishing the EPA [founded by the Nixon administration who were ethical giants by today’s Republican standards] with sweetheart mining deals already delivered to Ron Paul’s mining corporations by the Bush family, America will be, by definition, a 3rd world country. That is, a country relentlessly trashed by corporations with a proven track record. How does that square with Ron Paul’s claims of people relying on ethical self discipline? Ron Paul proposes deregulation of corporations, and in such a case of corporations without oversight, the actual freedom of individuals in community acquires a literal flavor of a very poor, dead, and/or broken environment.

Meanwhile, an inflated price of gold only means gold costs more of the paper currency, a faith based system, much like stocks, and with a reasonably, responsibly managed system, goods do not necessarily inflate at the same rate. But in the current circumstance of a criminal corporate enterprise governing our politics, people who own gold/gold stocks are in a win-win with or without a gold standard, and would end up among the most world’s most wealthy in a gold standard economy when money supply is sharply reduced and dependent on them. On the other hand, without a gold standard, they simply continue to capitalize on economic disaster when the price of gold rockets, pointing to the possibility of engineered economic crisis for the profit of a few. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens suffer either way.

Government is a required evil if for no other purpose, than to stop criminal behaviors run amok, our founders recognized that, and Ron Paul is proposing to let corporate criminals run amok. When the land and community have been destroyed and water poisoned, it is a bit late to put criminals in jail, because putting criminals in jail, does not clean up the mess. And how do you put a corporation in jail? Meanwhile, Ron Paul’s mining investments will have made him an exceedingly rich man. Should the investor go to jail? I don’t think Ron Paul could claim he was taken in like a Bernie Madoff victim, and he appears to be proposing a ‘legalized’ violation of our constitutional [and certainly not ‘Christian’ but purposely ‘secular’ as determined by our founders] ‘right to life.’ The ‘right to life’ mentioned but not enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, is a right to live in community that does not have poisoned air, poisoned land, poisoned groundwater, poisoned rivers, a legacy of  irreparable scars due to socially criminal corporate behaviors. The founding purpose of our government had been in fact to prevent just such events.

Ron Paul, if he were serious about cleaning up corporate corruption, would have accepted Jesse Ventura’s offer to run with him if he would leave the corporate oligarchy [two party system] and quit the Republican party. But that seems off the table since his kid (Rand Paul) was elected by the religious right to the Senate. Ron Paul’s boy is a piece of work, remember Jesus saying “You will know them by their fruits” ?  Ron’s ‘fruit’ hasn’t a clue, if a ‘Christian’ were expected to act on Jesus admonition to care for our poor. Only the rich make it in the ‘Paul’ theology.

Meanwhile, Ron Paul has made a show of hiring ‘renown’ constitutional ‘scholar’ Bruce Fein to advise his campaign. As seriously corrupt corporations related to investment have turned up in a short exam of the reality of Ron Paul’s personal money, it follows we should have a short exam of his new ‘constitutional expertise.’

Who is Bruce Fein? Bruce Fein was [then congressman] Dick Cheney’s ‘research director’ in the Reagan/Bush I whitewash of the CIA Iran-Contra scandal. Fein has worked for the ‘American Enterprise Institute’ which was a major policy architect for George W Bush. Fein also has worked for the ‘Heritage Foundation’ or that is to say supports the corporate wealthy with Reagan ‘trickle down’ economics, which had initiated the policies we have seen, over time, destroy the American middle class. Both organizations are tied to CIA and other American or multi-national corporate friendly intelligence agencies and are responsible for many of the corporate friendly policies resulting in the very individual liberty losses Fein and Paul both claim to find reprehensible, a case of crocodile tears.

Asking Bruce Fein to advise on constitutional issues is like asking CHEVRON, Monsanto, or for that matter, Barrick Gold, to be your lawyer.

Relevant to this, the religious right power elite sit among the wealthiest of the corporate power corrupt. The related underlying Ron Paul campaign agenda appears to be setting corporations free from any vestige of control. The only way that can be accomplished and preserve any pretense of liberty, is to grant the same freedom the corporations wish to possess, to the individual. This strategy reflects the fact there is no way to grant corporations control over people on paper and preserve the lie of freedom. It is Edward Bernays deceit at its best.

What you do not see from Ron Paul in his speech, is the idea corporations are NOT citizens afforded absolute liberties. But in fact they cannot be. Corporations are not individual human beings. They cannot know a Human’s self disciplined ethics. They cannot sense a spirit of responsibility as a sentient being. They cannot know god or country. Corporations primarily serve the purpose of money and Jesus had stated “You cannot serve god and money.” Had Jesus known of our founders’ intent and our secular constitution promising individual liberty, he might have as easily stated ‘As well, you cannot serve corporations and your country.’

Ron Paul’s ‘freedom’ agenda proposes a science fiction medieval society in which our constitution is a Christian Lord, a corporation is a fief, directors are nobles, politicians are clergy, shareholders are the landed gentry or freemen, and everyone else is a bond servant or serf, in effect re-establishing the very things our founders had sought to do away with. Our constitution is NOT the Magna Charta, which had only served to free the Barons from a King.

Ron Paul had stated in his speech public schooling should be abolished in favor of education by home school and the church. Should it be a crime to educate in the home or at the church? No. Is it a treason against our Constitution to teach in the home or at the church our nation’s constitution is a Christian heritage ‘dominion’ ? Yes. In fact, were the USA Constitution to be honored in home school and church, it would require revoking the educational privilege of any parties or organizations that educated on our constitution contrary to established secular principles. In America, liberty never included any right to impose Christian values or any values, other than accurate and lawful American constitutional ethics, on others. And insofar as a ‘Christian’ duty to honor this principle, it had been said by Jesus: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” and deliberately secular Constitution is our modern Caesar.

Yet in a context of our constitution and government, Ron Paul pushes in his speech: “Our Christian heritage.” This is contrary altogether to our founders intent. It is written in the 1797 American treaty with Tripoli “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] and as the said States have never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Islamic] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries”

What notables of the 4th United States Congress were sitting in the [32 seat] Senate which debated and approved this statement signed by President John Adams? Rufus King was a delegate to the Continental Congress, attended the Constitutional Convention and was one of the signers of the United States Constitution. Frederick Frelinghuysen served as a delegate to the Continental Congress. Timothy Bloodworth was a delegate to the Continental Congress. William Bingham was a delegate to the Continental Congress. Pierce Butler attended the Continental Congress, and the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Jacob Read was in the Continental Congress. Samuel Livermore was a member of the Continental Congress. John Langdon served in the Continental Congress. Theodore Sedgwick was a Delegate to the Continental Congress. Richard Potts served as a member of the Continental Congress in 1781, and as member of the Maryland convention which ratified the Constitution of the United States in 1788. John Henry was a delegate to the Continental Congress. Humphrey Marshall was a member of the 1788 Virginia convention which ratified the Constitution of the United States. John Brown was in the Continental Congress. James Gunn was a delegate to the Continental Congress. John Middleton Vining was a delegate to the Continental Congress.

In the event Ron Paul would wish to argue these men [preceding] were ignorant of what they had debated and approved as members of the United States Senate in relation to Christian heritage playing no role whatsoever in the founding of these United States, and should find himself in this trap, we have a very familiar character whose familiarity with the philosophy and spirit of the time should finally dispel any such notion:

Thomas Jefferson: “..a singular proposition proved that it’s protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word ‘Jesus Christ,’ so that it should read ‘a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion,’ the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.”

And we can bring this statement of Jefferson around to the American revolution philosopher Thomas Paine via John Adams: “Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been in vain.” What does the John Adams quote [naming Thomas Paine] point to, on the subject of our supposedly [so-called by Ron Paul] ‘Christian heritage’?

Paine wrote many things about religion when inspiring our people’s efforts at liberty, including “My own mind is my own church” and most importantly “Mingling religion with politics may be disavowed and reprobated [rejected] by every inhabitant of America”

In fact the mood of the nation at the time of our founders writing the constitution was to recognize there is a deity no one religion or heritage could claim exclusive to any other religion or heritage, when having anything to do with these United States. Relevant to this ‘open to all, exclusive to none’ multi-cultural society established by our founders is the statement of Benjamin Franklin: “If the Mufti of Constantinople were to send an emissary to preach to us Mohammadism,  he would be provided a pulpit”

Ron Paul, in his pitch to the ‘Faith and Freedom Coalition’, like his audience, has the cart in front of the horse. It is freedom first, and the Christian heritage and faith does not stand out in relation to our nation’s founding as any different to that of [in Jefferson’s words] the heritage or faith of “the Jew, the Gentile .. Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination” despite the religious right’s ‘Liars for Jesus’ attempted rewriting American history.

In other words, according to the treaty language “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion” approved in the Senate during Washington’s presidency, by leading personalities at the time of our nations founding, and signed by founding father John Adams when he had shortly after become president, everyone is on an equal footing according to our Constitution, there is no exclusive American religious heritage whatsoever, none. All religious heritage is in fact excluded: in the governance of these United States. It follows, a Christian value of ‘right to life’ cannot be a value imposed on precisely ½ of our citizens.

The Christian definition has no constitutional foundation at all. Our ‘right to life’ in the Declaration of Independence’ refers to a quality of life. And in the case of Ron Paul’s position on abortion, it is her ‘quality of life’ that is at issue, and is not the decision of some sanctimonious men. Rabbits reabsorb their litters in times of lean and human abortion has been around for millennia. Relative to this, for the woman, it can come down to making the unenviable decision of whether to raise a child in poverty for a man who’d abandoned her, among possible other hard decisions concerning future, hard choices a man does not face. There is no valid constitutional rationale for imposing a religion based tangible slavery that put Ron Paul’s claims of individual liberty (for women) to death with a sword of hypocrisy.

Ron Paul and Ralph Reed’s ‘Faith and Freedom Coalition’ have the nouns precisely backwards. Freedom comes before faith, in the annals of our founders. Indeed, were biblical texts used to validate our laws, the Christian ‘right to life’ could be extended to the ludicrous punishment of men for masturbation, according to some passages of the Old Testament, ad absurdum.

A solution? DO NOT VOTE for Ron Paul (or anyone)

Sources:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ron_Paul

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4EbCis-Zuc

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ralph_E._Reed,_Jr.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G4PpxnfilA

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/treaty_tripoli.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Congress

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Convention

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Constitution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Ratifying_Convention

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine

http://www.liarsforjesus.com

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/05/ronpaulgold.html

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15265

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d50SYyLqFNo

http://www.amazon.com/Noir-Canada-Pillage-corruption-criminalité/dp/292316542X/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314215089&sr=1-3

http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd02152003.html
http://meic.org/mining/hardrock-mining/cyanide_mining

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv23rI68vwU&playnext=1&list=PL1F0F46E300FC548D

http://www.nationofchange.org/koch-responds-buffet-my-business-and-non-profit-investments-are-much-more-beneficial-society-13139

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence

http://www.scribd.com/doc/62758433/Decoding-Cyanide

http://survivalacres.com/wordpress/?p=1573

http://blogs.alternet.org/penucquem/2011/08/07/rescuing-jesus-from-st-paul/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYgVglm2xFY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Fein

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Enterprise_Institute

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heritage_Foundation

http://www.sisterzeus.com/Pennyroyal.htm

http://www.feralscholar.org/blog/index.php/2011/06/19/why-i-wont-vote-and-you-shouldnt-either/

http://www.scribd.com/doc/58185081/On-Edward-Bernays-and-Propaganda

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dePMo9MK30

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10311752

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b6kf5PIzX4&feature=player_embedded