What Would Ron Paul say about the Attacks on Paris?
by Thomas Hoffman
With ISIS escalating it’s presence through the most horrifying terrorist attacks France has ever experienced, France has already begun the process of retaliation. The terrorist ring leader Abdelhamid Abaaoud has been eliminated. With the economy in its current state, and ISIS on the rise we are in need more than ever of a leader like Franklin Roosevelt.
One aspect behind President Roosevelt’s great leadership was that he respected the dangers of the naive thinking behind isolationism. Roosevelt also knew that there were times when a strong federal government was simply a necessity. Regarding Franklin Roosevelt, that leads us to a politician that is about as opposite of him in every way possible, Ron Paul. As France has already begun the process of striking back at ISIS we are guaranteed to see the return of critics like Ron Paul who claim that terrorist attacks are actually inspired a country’s foreign policies.
The late Christopher Hitchens once referred to Ron Paul as “absurd and sinister.” I could think of no better description of one of the most overrated politicians in American politics. Ron Paul has a disturbingly loyal following, especially among younger voters. If Ron Paul were younger, I believe he would have had a serious chance at becoming the 2012 GOP nominee. Whether he is wrong about foreign policies or wrong about domestic issues, Ron Paul posses extremely dangerous ideas. Ron Paul’s foreign policy suggests that certain terrorist actions are a result of U.S. foreign policy. Recently, Germany foiled a serious bomb threat. I wonder what Ron Paul would say about this, since Germany (unlike the U.S.) does not occupy Iraq, and never had a military presence in Saudi Arabia.
Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Beast once pointed out that many of Ron Paul’s supporters were young naive idealists. Truer words were never spoken. One example that proves how naive Ron Paul’s supporters are is the way he proposes dealing with invasive government. Whenever government oversteps its boundaries, libertarians like Ron Paul call for an overall reduction of government. This is an ineffective strategy and there is a more responsible approach to invasive government. When Michael Bloomberg tried to impose his “soda tax,” several states passed an “anti-Bloomberg law” that said the government did not have the right to control what the public ate or drank.
The point is there is nothing wrong with being against invasive government. However the answer to invasive laws like Bloomberg’s is not to reduce the size of government as libertarians like Ron Paul claim. The answer is to get the government involved with protecting our liberties. This proves how naive Ron Paul’s supporters are, they do not understand that sometimes you need government to protect you from government.
In the past few years, the Ron Paul movement seems to be dwindling. He has not been in the spotlight as much as he once was, and his son Rand Paul’s campaign is not doing well. Perhaps the public is beginning to realize that Ron Paul is in fact an “absurd” man, and not one day too soon. Whether he is weak on terrorists or weak on global warming, Ron Paul is an “absurd” man.
Thomas Hoffman is a graduate of Marymount Manhattan College. He majored in Communication Arts, with a Concentration in Professional and Promotional Communication. He has received several awards for writing in The Mortimer Levit Writing Contest.
Photo byh Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America (Ron Paul) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
EDITOR’S NOTE: Yesterday we ran the wrong version of this post by mistake and only learned about it later in the day. So we’ve deleted the earlier version and are posting the new one today. TMV regrets the error on our part.