The military can only be fighting to protect your freedoms, when it is fighting directly against an attack on your freedom. The only two examples of this, for the USA (in modernish history), are 9/11 and Pearl Harbour.

The fact of the matter is, by fact that there is fighting, is a curtail on your freedoms. War costs money, and in order to get that money, the Government must impose upon your property rights. Let's not forget, however, that Governments always use war as an excuse to take away more of our liberties. Would there have been a Patriot Act without 9/11? Probably not (at least, not in its all-invasive form). Espionage Act without WWI? No. Would Roosevelt been able to lock up over 100,000 Japanese Americans without WW2? Would Lincoln's constitutional atrocities been tolerated without the Civil War?

So, you have to be very careful. How can the military be used to spread liberty and democracy in the Middle East, when the very same action is being used to curtail liberties at home? War for freedom, almost by definition, is double-speak.

According to my Facebook, the Senate today voted (61 Ayes) for the NDAA 2012. Which included in it the ability for the President to indefinitely imprison any person, US Citizen or not, without trial and without charge, all in the name of "The War on Terror". Obama, earlier in the year, ordered the assassination of US Citizen Al-Awaki and his 16 year old son. President Obama also started bombing Libya, and the Congress turned a blind eye.

  The Patriot Act included, amongst other things, the ability for the FBI to self-write warrants. Under the Patriot Act, if you are handed one of these warrants you are not allowed to tell anyone about them. So, if you run a bank, and the FBI hands over a self-written warrant to search a customer's account, the bank cannot inform the customer. If you are handed one of these warrants, you can not tell a single soul - not even your own family, the Patriot Act even forbids you from discussing such warrants in open court, under oath, when directly questioned about said warrant - not only does this infringe your right to free speech, but it also makes it illegal for you to tell the truth in court!

Using one of these self-written warrants, they can enter your home while you are not there, and place bugs in there. They do not have to tell you about these bugs up until 18 months after they were placed.

  Under the Espionage Act, you cannot criticize the Government during war time. There are also the conscription laws that assumes that, essentially, your life is your Government's.

You have troops dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, supposedly in the name of freedom or democracy, yet there's a President in the White House who can assassinate and imprison citizens, and bomb countries without asking anyone's approval. You, as a citizen, can be forced to fight in a war, whether you agree with it, or not. The FBI now has powers beyond that of even the Stalin or Hitler regime.

It's a shame, because the first law that Congress passed - enshrining the Declaration of Independence into American law - states that it is the "duty" of the citizens to abolish any Government that becomes tyrannical [paraphrased], yet we're now in a situation in that if any citizen tried to uphold the law, the President could theoretically order their assassination, or imprisonment, and most of the media/population would probably side with the President!

For the love of God, I hope Ron Paul wins in Iowa. I really do.

I'm not sure I'd like to see Ron Paul as president, but I would absolutely LOVE to see him as the nominee. That way his views on topics like the War on Drugs and our military presence over seas would get national attention, and hopefully change a few minds.

These ideas need exposure.

Edit:

Also, it's "soul" and not "sole", sam.  :P

I predicted Iraq would be a disaster.

As for domination of a strategic country and it's vast natural resources... uhhhh not really.

China has a bigger share of Oil and Natural resources then the US does.

So if the plan was to invade Iraq to make sure China could get all the oil Europe used to get and create an Iraqi regime that is closer allied with Iran

then yeah, it was a BRILLIANT success.

I can't see why Bush would of wanted to do that though.

I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about.

Why would you want him nominated, but not win? Are you telling me that you favour Obama over Paul? What policies of Paul's do you disagree with so much, that you'd rather have Obama in his place. 

SamuelRSmith said: I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about. Why would you want him nominated, but not win? Are you telling me that you favour Obama over Paul? What policies of Paul's do you disagree with so much, that you'd rather have Obama in his place.

He's libertarian to the core.  That's great when it comes to social and military policy.   I think further deregulation for corporations, however, is a BAD IDEA, and that's the most important issue on the plate at the moment.

Not to say that the regulations we have in place are working.  We just need limits on what corporations are capable of doing.  They are entities that can be nearly as powerful as governments, yet libertarians propose we give them as freedom as people to wield that power.  And unlike the government, they aren't held directly accountable to people.  That's a recipe for disaster, and the 2008 collapse is a clear example of that.

But this is merely arguing for/against an ideal.  I'm not sure what Paul's specific plans are in regards to bank regulation, etc.

Also, I dislike the idea of returning to a gold standard.  Things are only worth whatever value people project upon them, and I think gold is losing its value in the eyes of many non-speculators.  It's long ago lost any real value to me*, and I don't see it being any less volatile than paper money in the long run.

*Aside from "It's gold!  How much can I get for it from some idiot!?"

It's mostly propaganda. The military are there to protect national interest first and foremost, and that doesn't necessarily include fighting for freedom. Freedom is also subjective and when the military or government speaks about freedom it's their interpretation of the word that matters and nothing else.

makingmusic476 said: SamuelRSmith said: I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about. Why would you want him nominated, but not win? Are you telling me that you favour Obama over Paul? What policies of Paul's do you disagree with so much, that you'd rather have Obama in his place.  He's libertarian to the core.  That's great when it comes to social and military policy.   I think further deregulation for corporations, however, is a BAD IDEA, and that's the most important issue on the plate at the moment. Not to say that the regulations we have in place are working.  We just need limits on what corporations are capable of doing.  They are entities that can be nearly as powerful as governments, yet libertarians propose we give them as freedom as people to wield that power.  And unlike the government, they aren't held directly accountable to people.  That's a recipe for disaster, and the 2008 collapse is a clear example of that. But this is merely arguing for/against an ideal.  I'm not sure what Paul's specific plans are in regards to bank regulation, etc. Also, I dislike the idea of returning to a gold standard.  Things are only worth whatever value people project upon them, and I think gold is losing its value in the eyes of many non-speculators.  It's long ago lost any real value to me*, and I don't see it being any less volatile than paper money in the long run. *Aside from "It's gold!  How much can I get for it from some idiot!?"

I'll try to answer everything except the gold standard question (simply because I don't fully understand the arguments for a hard currency, myself) - although I will point one thing out, Ron Paul is in favour of competing currencies.  Basically, Ron Paul will allow taxes to be paid in any currency, at the moment, the only reason that the dollar is the official currency, is because it is illegal to use other currencies, and all taxes must be paid in dollars. Ron Paul's idea is that if there is some kind of competition, it will force institutions like the Federal Reserve (which, under Paul, would be far more open) to act in a way that keeps the dollar valuable. His belief is that, ultimately, the Fed would not be able to compete with a hard currency, and the hard currency would eventually replace it. If the hard currency starts losing its value, some other currency would rise up.

As for the corporation thing - you have to remember that most of the corporate power comes from the fact that the Government are so involved in the markets. Under Paul, corporations will get no benefits, no subsidies, no tax breaks. They will have to compete with smaller businesses on a fair playing field. Not only that, but because the Government would have less power, there would be less to corrupt over. That post I made on Facebook the other day, with pizza being declared a vegetable, through corporate interest... that wouldn't happen under Paul, because the Federal Government wouldn't be in the business of deciding what goes on school children's dinner plates.

2008 was not a result of poor/lack of regulations, it was a result of too much Government. The sub-prime crisis began because the Government mandated that banks should make riskier loans in order to achieve the "American dream" of owning a home, this was made worse by the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates too low. The crisis spead to the UK because of the FSA, a government institution set up by Gordon Brown in the early 2000s, which basically, through a series of regulations, enforced the notion of "too big to fail" which dramatically changed the British banking sector, and encouraged them to buy into the sub-prime mortgage scandal.

I agree that subsidies, benefits, and tax breaks by and large need to be removed.

However, I think you're underestimating the effect the repeal of regulations like the Glass-Steagall Act had on the financial crisis.

The merging of depository and investment banking gave banks a financial incentive to pool sub-prime loans into securities, which they then proceeded to advertise as AAA investments and even bet against these very same investments.

It wasn't just a matter of people defaulting on loans they couldn't afford.  Banks were using these mortgages to make additional profits in other ways, which encouraged them to increase lending in addition to any persuasion by the federal government.  They built a house of cards on top of an unsustainable bubble - a bubble that was being further inflated by that same house of cards.  It was only a matter of time before it all collapsed.

The Glass-Steagall Act was put into place in our struggle to get out of the Great Depression, and only a decade after its repeal things went to shit.   A correlation doesn't show causation, but there's plenty evidence for causation to be found.

I had read a great article on the 2008 financial collapse awhile back, but I can't seem to find it.   However, this does a decent job of explaining in further detail what I mentioned above:

http://www.stock-market-investors.com/stock-investment-risk/the-subprime-mortgage-crisis-explained.html

I think that right now we have too much bad regulation and not enough good regulation.  Ron Paul, I believe, thinks we have too much regulation in general.

Edit:

I also think we need stricter limits on how corporations can interact with government officials (campaign finance reform, forbidding politicians from working for corporations that have been affected by legislation they've worked on, etc.), something I assume Ron Paul would be against.

War keeps the weapon industry going, it is not about freedom, innocent lives, it is about greenbacks!