Tom Woods on 26 Things Non Ron Paul Supporters Appear to be Saying

I couldn’t resist this one. It’s awesome. From Tom Woods blog.

(1) The American political establishment has done a super job keeping our country prosperous and our liberties protected, so I’m sure whatever candidate they push on me is probably a good one.

(2) Our country is basically bankrupt. Unfunded entitlement liabilities are in excess of twice world GDP. Therefore, it’s a good idea to vote for someone who offers no specific spending cuts of any kind.

(3) Vague promises to cut spending are good enough for me, even though they have always resulted in higher spending in the past.

(4) I prefer a candidate who plays to the crowd, instead of having the courage to tell his audience things they may not want to hear.

(5) I am deeply concerned about spending. Therefore, I would like to vote for someone who supported Medicare Part D, thereby adding $7 trillion to Medicare’s unfunded liabilities.

(6) I am opposed to bailouts. Therefore, I will vote for a candidate who supported TARP.

(7) The federal government is much too involved in education, where it has no constitutional role. Therefore, I will vote for a candidate who supported expanding the Department of Education and favored the No Child Left Behind Act.

(8) Even though practically everyone was caught by surprise in the 2008 financial crisis, which we are still reeling from, it’s a good idea not to vote for the one man in politics who predicted exactly what was bound to unfold, all the way back in 2001.

(9) I am not impressed by a candidate who inspires people, especially young ones, to read the great economists and political philosophers.

(10) I am concerned about taxes. Therefore, I will not vote for the one candidate who has never supported a tax increase.

(11) I believe it is conservative to support bringing the Enlightenment to Afghanistan.

(12) Even though I lost half my retirement portfolio when the economy crashed from the sugar high the Federal Reserve’s artificially low interest rates put it on, I would like to vote for someone who is not really interested in the Federal Reserve.

(13) Even though 50 years of the embargo on Cuba did nothing to undermine Fidel Castro, and in fact handed him a perfect excuse for all the failures of socialism, I favor continuing this policy.

(14) If someone has a drug problem, prison rape is the best solution I can think of.

(15) Even though the Constitution had to be amended to allow for alcohol prohibition, and even though I claim to care about the Constitution, I don’t mind that there’s no constitutional authorization for the war on drugs, and I will punish at the polls anyone who favors the constitutional solution of returning the issue to the states.

(16) I believe only a “liberal” would think it was inhumane to keep essential items out of Iraq in the 1990s, even though one of the first people to protest this policy was Pat Buchanan.

(17) The Brookings Institution says Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract with America was an insignificant nibbling around the edges. I favor people who support insignificant nibbling around the edges, as long as they occasionally trick me with a nice speech.

(18) I am deeply concerned about radical Islam, so it was a good idea to depose the secular Saddam Hussein — who was so despised by Islamists that Osama bin Laden himself offered to fight against him in the 1991 Persian Gulf War — and replace him with a Shiite regime friendly with Iran, while also bringing about a new Iraqi constitution that makes Islam the state religion and forbids any law that contradicts its teachings.

(19) Indefinite detention for U.S. citizens seems like nothing to be worried about, especially since our political class is so trustworthy that it could never abuse such a power.

(20) Following up on (19), I believe Thomas Jefferson was just being paranoid when he said, “In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”

(21) Even though the war in Iraq was based on crude propaganda I would have laughed at if the Soviet Union had peddled it, and even though the result has been hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, four million people displaced, trillions of dollars down the drain, tens of thousands of serious injuries among American servicemen and an epidemic of suicide throughout the military, not to mention the ruination of America’s reputation in the world, I see no reason to be skeptical when the same people who peddled that fiasco urge me to support yet another war as my country is going bankrupt.

(22) I do not trust the media. But when the media tells me I am not to support Ron Paul, who says things he is not allowed to say, I will comply.

(23) I know the media will smear or marginalize anyone who would really fix this country. But when the media smears and marginalizes Ron Paul, I will draw no conclusion from this.

(24) I want to be spoken to like this: “My fellow Americans, you are the awesomest of the awesome, and the only reason anyone in the world might be unhappy with your government is because of your sheer awesomeness.”

(25) I think it’s a good idea to vote for Mitt Romney, whose top three donors are Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, and Morgan Stanley, and a bad idea to vote for Ron Paul, whose top three donors are the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, and the U.S. Air Force.

(26) I have not been exploited enough by the cozy relationship between large financial firms and the U.S. government, and I would like to see it continue.

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Ron Paul Supporters: A Guide to Arguing with Neocons 101 – Iraq and Afghanistan

Until a few months ago I was a neocon, hoping that Mike Huckabee would run for president so I could vote for him. Until I started listening to Ron Paul and a paradigm shift snapped my brain nearly off the stem. To Ron Paul supporters trying to court the neocon vote, here’s what you need to understand about the neocon mentality. Please use this guide to speak with them on their terms in order to convince them to come to our side.

Rule Number 1 in the neocon brain: America is a fundamentally good country and most of the rest of the world is evil.

I understand that this may seem a bit childish to believe, but it is extremely deeply rooted in the neocon mentality. You won’t get through to them if you deny this principle. We are in Iraq and everywhere else because we are good and we sincerely want freedom for all Iraqis. We bombed Lybia to save lives. Iran really is a threat to the world. They really, truly believe this. They’re being sincere. It’s not a game to get oil or power or control of the world. It has nothing to do with “empire” in their heads. Empires bring to mind the Emperor in Star Wars and crazy people like Caligula. Not the United States. They can’t bare to think that America is anything resembling an evil empire. Once you even hint that, they’ll stop listening entirely.

Given that, how do you work around the goop?

Work with them. Agree where you can. Avoid sensitive words and terminology. The truth is, and all Paul supporters would agree, America really is a force for good in the world, or at least it can and should be. Agree on that. You must make it clear to them that you believe this. The only question is “how” to be a force for good in the world. Don’t say things like “we’re in Iraq for the oil”. Say that you, too, want freedom for all Iraqis. Don’t you? Yes, you just don’t believe that we have to station troops there to do it, or spend a dollar enforcing it.

From there, you’ve got to curve it around. Tell them you’d support the Iraq war if war were declared by Congress with a clearly defined goal. But every undeclared war America has ever fought without a clear goal has been lost. Talk like a person interested in American victory. Korea, Vietnam, now Iraq and Afghanistan have all been lost causes. Neocons understand victory and defeat. They want to win, and they don’t want to lose. So tell them that if we want to win, we have to have Congress declare a war and declare a clearly defined goal. Until then, our troops will continue to die to no end and you can’t stand defeat. So in the meantime, we HAVE to pull them out until Congress can get its act together and stop letting them die for nothing.

And you care about America too much to let them keep dying for nothing.

Tell them you would support any just war that the Congress declares. Tell them you want victory as much as they do. That’s rule number 1.

Don’t use the word “constitution”. It just doesn’t interest them. I know that’s hard to accept, but it’s the truth. It means very little to them in a practical sense, so just talk in the language of victory and defeat.