Ron Paul on Elizabeth Warren: 'She's a Socialist'
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on Tuesday declared that Democratic Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren was a "socialist."
At a campaign event earlier this year, Warren told supporters that there is "nobody in this country who got rich on his own."
"You built a factory out there -- good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that maurauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory," she said.
ABC News's Terry Moran asked Paul why Warren was wrong.
"Because she's a socialist," Paul replied. "She wants the government to do all this."
"Educating children is socialism?" Moran wondered.
"That is a socialist idea, that it should be collective," Paul explained. "I preach home schooling, and private schooling and competition in schools. But what she forgets -- she's right. You know, by the use of force, the government comes with a gun and they take money and they build a highway that, incidentally, you can use because you don't have any other choices."
"So in Ron Paul's ideal America, there would be no public highways, no public education?" Moran pressed. "There'd be no public air traffic control system? There'd be no public protection for workers in coal mines?"
"That's an overstatement because it might be a lot better," Paul said. "I think France has a private air traffic controllers."
It isn't the first time Warren has been called a socialist.
An unemployed supporter of the the tea party lost his cool at a Warren campaign event last week and called her a "socialist whore."
"If you're the intellectual creator of that [Occupy Wall Street movement], you're a socialist whore," he said. "I don’t want anything to do with you."
After the meeting, the candidate told The Huffington Post that she “actually felt sorry for the guy.”
“He’s been out of work now for a year and a half. And bless his heart, I mean, he thought somehow it would help to come here and yell names.”
It stops losing it's "ouch" factor when you accuse everyone who likes the idea of Social Security or Medicare or.. ANY of these ideas, of being a socialist. It makes you sound like Ayn Rand, or McCarthy.
"Everyone's a socialist! I'm the only one who isn't!"
But perhaps he brings up a good point. Maybe we should start adopting that word as being associated with those programs. Then it'd stop being the "Nazi fascist Satan-worshipper"-type of insult that it is today.
The USA USa Usa usa us... u...== us??? We all better get on the post national post political bandwagon (can I play the Sousaphone?)> As a species;;; Ron says we've matured enough to ensure that the collectivism is passe and self interest is the foundation for compassion... what an effin' prince... as we used to say back home.
The circular rantings of a sick man. When you espouse beliefs based on the amount of time and energy you have spent supporting rather than actually looking at analysis and fact you are a force for destruction. History of full of examples of people supporting things because it's easier than admitting they are wrong.....
Let's blame wall street corruption on the government. Let's blame monopolies on the government. Let's blame corporate hegemony on the government. Let's blame the government for following Keyensian economic policies.
When you mix one part hydrogen and two parts water, Mr. Paul would explain the result as the byproduct of white men and free markets.
likes to say, "there's no such thing as a 'free market'-all markets are creations of man." The term "free market" is one of those Frank Luntz feel-good phrases designed to confuse red state Americans into thinking that regulations are bad. Socialism is another one of their favorite go-to phrases which has been rendered basically meaningless due to misuse.
... I'd like to point out:
Moran could even better have said (ahem):
THAT'S NOT A FUCKING ANSWER TO THE ACTUAL QUESTION I ASKED.
An American journalist actually doing their job? That's so 20th Century.
I don't believe in God. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life.
-Andrew Carnegie
...to expect a journalist to do their job.
Such a NICE compliment from the crazy man experiencing a moment of lucidity.
American-Style socialism is the way to go, and I appreciate Paul's support.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/11/07/expla...
I like/love our National Parks and the protection of our Commons. Support good politicians and leaders!!
We need more people to vote for like Elizabeth Warren, Brooksley Born, Cynthia McKinney, and others. These are the type of people who foster and create healthy societies!!
Join the Fight! http://elizabethwarren.com/
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
mentioned women, we wouldn't have a disasterous economy and burgeoning police state.
All stores that hire shippers or own their own trucks must use their own private roads to do so. Where does Ron Paul live? I would like to recommend unzoning his residence so it can be the first to get paved over when a company buys his land out from under him for pennies on the dollar.
America tried capitalism, since like forever, the results of that experiment are all around us. Funny that all the european countries that Americans sprang from are now socialist, maybe it's because while America was busy killing each other, Europe had found the right mix of sharing and caring. I could be wrong, but history proves me right.
Doctor Paul is a selfish, isolationist, insane sociopath.
and it's gotten worse ever since.
We have crony capitalism and the result is the monopoly type system you see today.
p.s.
(Europe isn't a good example of socialism because they are collapsing too as we speak)
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
With or without cronyism, unrestricted capitalism leads to monopolies. Accumulation of capital leads to greater ability to purchase competetors and market to customers, which in turn leads to greater economies of scale, which means more excess capital to spend on buying out competetors and marketing until market dominance is reached, at which point you can simply shut out competetion, whether they have a better product or busniess model or not. Without a societal check (ie government) on the growth of corporations, they will inevitably grow to the point of stifiling development and monopolizing markets.
"Competition is a sin".
these guys pretend that exxon is the same thing as the blacksmith down the road from adam smith's house. like if you just had some initiative and grabbed your bootstraps you could start your own multi-billion dollar global conglomerate and home school your kids while you did it. everyone who's not a millionaire is just lazy. as if there is some ideal world out there where there would just be upper class people and no one else. the trash would magically disappear. cars would build and service themselves. vegetables would grow themselves ship themselves cook themselves and then levitate onto a plate that made itself so you could have a nice dinner.
to get back to the simpler, and much better, days of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle."
Tool.
CTHULHU 2012 "Why vote for a lesser evil?"
Before 1930, there was all kinds of rampant crony captitalism.
The Civil War was full of profiteers.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
"He's an idiot."
(I'm having a bad day.)
“Why not go out on a limb? That’s where the fruit is.”
-Will Rogers
So during the disastrous George W. Bush decade in which the financial collapse happened, we were following the Keynesian economic model Mr. Paul?
I think Ron's nose just grew a couple feet there.
- Tom
and yes we were indeed following Keynesian economics.
and yes Ron Paul knew it would collapse. (because he knows Keynesian economics is a proven failure)
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
been following Keynesian economics. We've tried 30 years of trickle-down, supply-side Reaganomics, which has been an absolute abject failure. Laissez-faire regulatory policies and multi-national corporate empire building using our SOCIALIST military as hired muscle is not Keynesian, but thanks for playing.
Yep.
I don't believe in God. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life.
-Andrew Carnegie
The motto for America has changed from "The business of America is business" to "The business of American is theft".
fraud and rigged insider markets. With no SEC or Justice Dept oversight. Guess I'm just dumb.
Most of his economic theories are tied up with the current thoughts by the GOP. Provide tax cuts for the wealthy. Little was spent on the people, just the war machine and tax cuts. That is no a Keynsian model. And anyone with half a brain knows it.
...Keynesian economics if they bit him in the ass. And it's not like it's hard to understand the theory behind Keynes' economics.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
word socialism is a bad word is an idiot or scared to lose their excuse to be greedy bastards, capitalism.
Socialism combined with Democracy is what this country needs, end the 1%!
Is it the 21st century yet?
The "American System", dates back to the early-to-mid 19th century, and built upon framer Alexander Hamilton's vison for an independent, self-sufficient, industrialized America. Public infrastructure, central banking, and public schooling were fundamental to that vision. The opposition party, under Jefferson, another framer, purchased an enormous tract of land from France, exceeding the letter of executive constitutional power in doing so, and paving the way for homesteading throughout the 19th and into the 20th centuries. Furthermore, public highways are explicitly, and specifically, provided for in the Constitution, which grants Congress the power to establish postal roads.
All of which is to say, it bears pointing out that when Ron Paul says that those comments are the mark of "socialism", and suggests that Warren is a marginal figure for taking this view, he's actually revealing that his vision for America is a profound break not only from what America is today, but what it has been, and what it's aspired to be, going all the way back to the founding. Ron Paul's vision for the future is not about 'returning to the founders' vision', it's about breaking sharply from that vision and replacing it with a Randian dystopia. And it's about time someone started calling him and his on that fact.
the Whiskey Rebellion. Damn Washington. Almost as bad as the Alameda County Sheriff's Dept.
"That's fu*#ing retarded."
Big City Mayor
It's hard when you start labeling styles of government in my experience. Fascism is the total control of corporations if I know right. Hitler and the Nazi supporters were National Socialists. Mao and the deaths in China were done under Communism. America has Capitalism.
I think the ideal system has aspects of all of that, but led by intelligent, wise, healthy leaders. Any system run by a person like George Bush is going to fail the people. Any system run by a person like Elizabeth Warren or Paul Wellstone will probably support the people. A healthy society is complex enough to probably have to include aspects of many different systems, but the key component is wise good compassionate leadership.
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Well spoken.
99%
Hitler and Stalin had one thing over the right in America. They saw their country as a socialist enterprise. One that everyone was forced to participate in, and sacrifice and duty to the people as a whole was the ideal.
They did more to advance their economies, infrastructure, and society in a few years, than we have in decades.
I don't believe in God. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life.
-Andrew Carnegie
and society in a few years, than we have in decades."
Unfortunately, with a great amount of domestic and imported slave labor. While they may have made the trains run on time and built up industrial societies, they did much more to terrorize their own, and other, nations. Not two guys we should admire as potential role models.
I didn't say I admired them as a whole. My family personally suffered at the hands of the Nazi's. Long story, but they raped my grandmother.
I'm just saying they had one thing right: A desire to advance the nation as a whole, not just the rich. Class was wiped away.
I don't believe in God. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life.
-Andrew Carnegie
"Class was wiped away"? Are you serious? Honey, the rich did just FINE under Hitler. Just because he had a mighty good propaganda machine that pumped out Happy Horseshit movies doesn't mean any of it was TRUE.
Christ, next thing you know you're going to be telling us that the masses in China really were all smiling and adoring followers of Mao, and that Kim Jong Il's place really is a fairyland of worker's bliss.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
Whoa Whoa Whoa. While German industrialists did very well in the Reich, the Nazi party line was about a nationalist team spirit, unifying all classes to a single purpose, thus the name, National Socialism. It was never about the redistribution of wealth among Germans.
I use it as an example of getting shit done, no matter how horrific the whole Nazi state was. You know damn well what the Communist ideal was all about too.
I'm not painting a rosy picture of anything here, just what the vision of these regimes was, as far as lifting their countries out of poverty. I never said I agreed with the methods.
I don't believe in God. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life.
-Andrew Carnegie
There's an amazing lack of perspective here. We, as humans, tried your model, Mr. Paul. It sucked, that's why we started doing it a different way, from the first tribe that established a hierarchy and decided that every person gets a hut, even if that person isn't chief. Who, prey tell, Mr. Paul, would enforce the contracts your libertarian utopia would surely rely on? Private enforcement firms? Surely not the government. We don't want them coming with force of arms telling us what to do.
Well in 1850 Libertarian land, anyone to the left of Paul is a socialist. I guess I should get a law degree and be my own consumer advocate. Maybe I should just hit the tables in Vegas too, as under Paul, it would be a safer bet. Now that's taking responsibility for my own finances.
I don't believe in God. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life.
-Andrew Carnegie
Ron Paul seems like a harmless crazy old man, until he starts calling other people names. Then he just seems creepy.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
Ron Paul looks like a seriously DANGEROUS man, no matter what he's saying. But maybe that's just me.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
Ron Paul has is his opposition to the wars. The rest is batshit nuts.
So the 2012 meme is any democrat running for office is a socialist. Check.
You, "Dr." Paul, are a lunatic.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
speak without insulting one's intelligence?
socialist over a capitalist any day....because I would prefer...the better human being.
these two nut jobs need to go and crawl back into the hole they came out of. that kind of crap they push wouldnt do anything but create chaos in this country- just absoloutly foolish thinking and to me no one seems alarmed this guy is even allowed to be on television spewing this junk-
roger allen
....is feudalism.
The lord looks after his serfs. When they are no longer useful to him, they are tossed out.
The Big Corporation owns everything and everybody. I don't see the difference
That's right Terry, he's an anti-civilization, anti-commonwealth, anti-modern, pro-authoritarian neo-feudalist crackpot. If you're short on time just use crackpot from now on.
reporters, do your job, and ask anyone who uses the term socialist or socialism to define it in context.
Elizabeth Warren is nowhere close to being a socialist, but Ron Paul is clearly a full on lunatic.
And of the very best kind.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
OK, bub.. we can characterize you in three words too - you're an idiot.
The rethugs are afraid of Warren!
NOBODY 2012
Doesn't the state of Texas require a license to practice medicine?
Someone should tell this clown about the Multiplier Effect and that GDP includes GOVERNMENT SPENDING.
Why are we fighting conservatives over there when they are already here
eventually his inner lunatic idiot has to come out to get some fresh air.
CTHULHU 2012 "Why vote for a lesser evil?"
The scariest part is he is still the most sane Republican candidate.
He's an asshole. Just like the rest of them. In fact, he's worse. The others simply have no frame of reference to the lives of regular people. They are purely creatures of privilege.
Ron Paul and his idiot son are completely divorced from any type of reality. They're trapped inside some cockeyed universe contained in a shitty science fiction novel.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
So, if there were no government built highways, the choice would be what exactly?
Shitty,unsafe, toll roads built by the Robber Barons.
'Talk to the hand'
Proof Ron Paul is a Liar. He knows good and well what a socialist is, and he knows full well Elizabeth Warren is not one. He just wants to get ahead anyway possible.
me-oww!
See American School of Economics.
Why are we fighting conservatives over there when they are already here
And you Ron Paul are a sociopath, idiot, and failed human being. in other words, a republican.
By the way, socialism is what made America great and different in past era's. Why do you think many of the colonies were Commonwealth's, you imbecile?
P.S. It's better to be a socialist, than a SOCIOPATH. Wingnut's hate it when I say this.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
"The State Is Not Great: How Government Poisons Everything"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXNRzI64L9Q
...to get to a fallacy.
"The more someone gets to keep what they produce, the more incentivized they are to produce in the first place" - Do you honestly believe a man who earns $2million pa works twice as hard (or for that matter, harder) than a man who earns $1million pa? This is the same argument neo-liberals give against the corporate gains tax; that for some reason if you're only earning, say 6% on investments rather than 8% you're just going to throw up your hands and say 'it's not worth it, I'll stick it under my mattress instead'.
"Under coercion, one party will be worse off..."
Here it equates the state with coercion when in many cases the state is acting to break the coercive effect the amalgamation of capital and therefore power in the hands of private interests brings; cases in point, anti-trust laws and monopoly laws.
"If you could force your customers to buy..."
The assumption here is that the same psychology and restrictions are at work in the private sector as are at work within the state. Teachers aren't motivated to teach badly by a lack of alternative to public schools if they are sufficiently motivated to teach well by virtue of having entered the profession with that goal and deriving happiness from it; human beings are not rational maximizes. You can exercise control about how government regulated services are run in so far as there can be public inquiries into how they are run, officials who run them who fail to meet standards can be fired (and a desire to avoid that is sufficiently motivating) and if society does not like the goals governing the education system they can vote someone else in to run the government.
Etc, etc.
This isn't argument, this is idiocy. By all means be a libertarian on philosophical grounds, but the arguments for libertarianism on economic grounds are a merry-go-round of erroneous claims.
"Government poisins everything" is the favorite talking point of ignoramouses who know nothing of our history.
From the beginning, our country has always prosperred due to the people's govenmnt working for them: Erie Canal, Westward rail system, Highway system, Rural projects for electricity, etc..., etc...,. it was always the can-do attitude of the american people, put to good use through good government legislation and projects.
The private sector has never done a damned thing to improve this country. They just come along and take advantage of what the government invested in. This is the way it actually was, before the corporate fascists convinced fools that government was the problem and oligarch oppression through corporate fascism is really what made us great - even if it ddn't.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
Ms. Warren shares your concerns over Wall St. excess and the problems of central banking. The 'they' are the corporate power behind their puppets like Reagan who started this class war against the middle-class. The 1% have looted the wealth of the nation. So Mr. Paul socialism is a model that provides roads, schools, universal health care, regulations, military etc. just like say, Norway. Your Ayn Rand utopia is fiction and your lack of compassion makes you unsuitable for leadership. Frankly Mr. Paul, America can do better than a self-centered libertarian.
are a stupid a-- CREATIONIST!
Ed-words
If Ron Paul came up to me in a mental health hospital and started talking his libertarian interpretation of the constitution,I would think that he was one of the patients.
Perhaps we should follow his libertarian understanding of the constitution and return the Louisiana Territory to the French. After all Jefferson did not have the constitutional power to purchase the territory, and while we are at it, why don't we give Alaska back to the Russians,Gadsden Purchase back to Mexico,Texas back to Mexico,Hawaii back to the Hawaiin's,California back to Spain.....etc....
'Talk to the hand'
Using Mr. Pauls' definition Jesus was a socialist too.
To these whackos, Jesus was a full on COMMUNIST. And technically, they'd be right.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
You say that like it's a bad thing, Dr. Paul.
We're all socialists, to one degree or another. Socialism is just one extreme on the political continuum, opposite fascism.
Ron Paul revealing yet again that his reputation as some sort of erudite voice howling in the wilderness is sorely exaggerated. Warren isn't a socialist, Warren is a liberal. The view she's articulating is a liberal (or republican (SMALL R) one. It isn't socialist, It's not 'ah well... there's a spectrum and...'; the view she's expressing is as inconsistent with socialism as it is with libertarianism. It seems that for Paul anything which isn't his own strange Rothbardian christian libertarianism is socialism.
That said, you're wrong too. 'Fascism' can't be placed very easily on the 'political spectrum' as the spectrum was drawn up in the 20th century in two party countries (the US and the UK) almost exclusively with reference to economic policy. Many people prefer a 2D 'spectrum' with an economic axis and a liberal/permissive vs authoritarian axis, but frankly we should just be adults and talk about the differences between philosophical positions in a reasonable amount of depth. Fascism historically (though not recently if you want to talk about movements like the Contras in Nicaragua etc which tend to be neo-liberal economically due to their US involvement) tended to have economic policies which were a mix of (Keynesian) interventionism (what Paul would dub socialism) and corporatism. As such on the 'left vs right' scale historical fascism probably falls a lot closer to socialism than it does to, say, the conservative neo-liberalism espoused by the Republican party. But that's just an accident of the single-axis system. (In fact it's common for the European far right to mix both far right views in a conventional sense - jingoism, racism, homophobia, sexism etc - and far left populist economics). The significant thing they have in common in the 2D axis is that they're both socially authoritarian, but one problem with the 'axis' model is it can lead you to facile conclusions like 'national socialism is bad, therefore the opposite of national socialism is good', but of course on the 2D scale the opposite of national socialism is libertarian. And libertarianism, for reasons Warren pointed out, and indeed the crowd at the GOP debates had highlighted, is crackers too and morally opprobrious.
Anyway, this just re-affirms that Americans cannot employ political terms correctly.
Fascism is government controlled by corporations. We know damned well what it means.
But thanks for trying to prove how much smarter you are than the rest of us.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
Comments are closed on this entry