Last night Ron Paul made one of his frequent appearances on
The Independents, giving newsworthy comments about the
rancher standoff in Nevada and his own showdown with the
Internal Revenue Service over
donor disclosures.
Then at the 7:22 mark of the video below, Kmele Foster asked
Paul to comment on an
essay that the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
published—actually reprinted, so there was proactive choice
here—stating the following:
The conclusion is increasingly difficult to avoid that elements
of the US government blew up three New York skyscrapers in order to
destroy Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Iran, and
Hezbollah and to launch the US on the neoconservatives agenda of US
world hegemony.
Here’s the video of Paul’s response; a transcript of the
exchange follows:
FOSTER: Dr. Paul one last question: Last week,
actually on the 10th, at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and
Prosperity website, a gentleman named Paul Craig Roberts wrote
about 9/11 and suggested that the United States government was
somehow complicit in that attack. I know in the past you’ve spoken
out forcefully, and criticized folks who have spun such conspiracy
theories. He actually did this on your website. Do you have
anything to say about that, sir?PAUL: Well, it’s just that people should have a
right to express their viewpoints. If you read 99 percent of the
article it was a fantastic article. But that doesn’t mean that—
FOSTER: Yeah, but that one percent is
pretty nasty stuff, Dr. Paul.PAUL: Yeah, I know, but that doesn’t mean that
I endorse what he says, obviously! So I think that’s a little bit
overkill with political correctness. People know my position, I’ve
stated [it] on national television enough times. But Paul Craig
Roberts has some very good views on war and civil liberties, and he
shouldn’t be excluded because he takes this particular position.
But that wasn’t the thrust of the article. So I think that, to me,
the people who overly criticize something like that probably are
the ones who have the problem, because—FOSTER: No.
PAUL: —I think most people realize exactly what
my position is. And I think the government—see, the other reason
[for] the confusion is, I don’t believe in government commissions.
I don’t believe government commissions ever get to the bottom of
anything, whether it’s an assassination committee, or a, you know,
any type of commission they set up. They’re set up to cover the
government, to protect the government, and to make sure nobody’s
guilty of anything.
Some thoughts from me below the jump.
First, and most pedantic, the Truther section of Roberts’ essay
wasn’t one percent, it was more like 30. Here are 492 words of a
1508-word piece Paul described as “fantastic.” I will bold some
highlights:
The most serious blow of all is the dawning realization
everywhere that Washington’s crackpot conspiracy theory of
9/11 is false. Large numbers of independent experts as
well as more than one hundred first responders have
contradicted every aspect of Washington’s absurd conspiracy
theory. No aware person believes that a few Saudi
Arabians, who could not fly airplanes, operating without
help from any intelligence agency, outwitted the entire
National Security State, not only all 16 US intelligence
agencies but also all intelligence agencies of NATO and Israel as
well.Nothing worked on 9/11. Airport security failed four times in
one hour, more failures in one hour than have occurred during the
other 116,232 hours of the 21st century combined. For the first
time in history the US Air Force could not get interceptor
fighters off the ground and into the sky. For the first
time in history Air Traffic Control lost airliners for up
to one hour and did not report it. For the first time in
history low temperature, short-lived, fires on a few floors
caused massive steel structures to weaken and collapse.
For the first time in history 3 skyscrapers fell at
essentially free fall acceleration without the benefit of
controlled demolition removing resistance from below.Two-thirds of Americans fell for this crackpot
story. The left-wing fell for it, because they saw the
story as the oppressed striking back at America’s evil empire. The
right-wing fell for the story, because they saw it as the demonized
Muslims striking out at American goodness. President George W. Bush
expressed the right-wing view very well: “They hate us for our
freedom and democracy.”But no one else believed it, least of all the Italians. Italians
had been informed some years previously about government
false flag events when their President revealed
the truth about secret Operation Gladio. Operation Gladio was an
operation run by the CIA and Italian intelligence during the second
half of the 20th century to set off bombs that would kill European
women and children in order to blame communists and, thereby, erode
support for European communist parties.Italians were among the first to make video presentations
challenging Washington’s crackpot story of 9/11.
The ultimate of this challenge is the 1 hour and 45 minute film,
“Zero.” You can watch it here.Zero was produced as a film investigating 9/11 by the Italian
company Telemaco. Many prominent people appear in the film along
with independent experts. Together, they disprove every
assertion made by the US government regarding its explanation of
9/11.The film was shown to the European parliament.
It is impossible for anyone who watches this film to
believe one word of the official explanation of 9/11.The conclusion is increasingly difficult to avoid that
elements of the US government blew up three New York
skyscrapers in order to destroy Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya,
Somalia, Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah and to launch the US on the
neoconservatives agenda of US world hegemony.
Paul’s answer to Kmele Foster, I think, was illuminating in a
bunch of ways about Paul, about certain tensions within
libertarianism, and tensions within any comparatively marginal
group that has spent decades tilting at windmills. Basically, once
you elevate the importance of a single issue, and a single belief
system about that issue, high enough, you are faced with the choice
of what to do with people who align with you on the question at
hand but veer elsewhere into beliefs that most people in polite
society would find crazy, offensive, or both. One tactical option
is to question polite society in the first place.
Ron Paul elevates opposition to war, and opposition to U.S.
empire, higher than any value. (Opposition to the Federal Reserve,
and also to government encroachment on civil liberties, also rank
up there.) Align with those values, and you’re in. (Key quote:
“Paul Craig Roberts has some very good views on war and civil
liberties, and he shouldn’t be excluded because he takes this
particular position.”)
Criticize the “particular position,” though, and you
can quickly become suspect. (Key quote: “I think that’s a little
bit overkill with political correctness….[T]he people who overly
criticize something like that probably are the ones who have the
problem.”)
You can be consistently anti-intervention while still finding
9/11 conspiracy-mongering (or any number of other pathologies
occasionally indulged in by critics of U.S. imperialism) grotesque.
Just as you can still be a trenchant and massively influential
critic of U.S. foreign policy while tolerating (and promoting)
people with bizarre beliefs. It’s a clash of approaches, and
explains as much about the various
divides within libertarianism as anything else.
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/1eDYwWy
via IFTTT