***Official Ron Paul video thread***

[wtfsvi]

Do you think Ron Paul has fundamental disagreements with Borodog? I think it seems like that is the case.

Maybe this is an opening to get back the money you lost from your donating-addiction, borodog [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[Borodog]

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Yes, because I'm sure they included "Stormfront poster" in their donation.

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You and I both know that the argument "it is too hard" is rubbish.

Just refund those that have been brought to your attention. It's not hard. It's not difficult.


And if it is too hard for Ron Paul to reject the support of neo-Nazis, I can only shudder how he will navigate the role of President of the USA.

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Here's the thing: I AGREE that it would be a [censored] PR move to NOT return a donation from a known white supremist if it is brought to your attention.

But what you are doing is insinuating that if Paul makes a different decision (even a bad one) then he must automatically be a Nazi, or his positions must be closely aligned with Nazis, or most closely aligned with Nazis of the candidates standing, or however you want to put it. Which is obviously bull [censored], no matter you how try to spin it.

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I paraphrased.

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Then don't enclose it in quotation marks.

Quotation marks are marks to denote quotations. It's not rocket science.

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Fine. I retract the quotes.

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I did not attribute what was in the quotes directly to you;

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Yes, you did. You responded to me, and used the word "you" (to refer to me directly) three times in that one sentence.

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I already said that I paraphrased. Meaning that however incorrectly I used the quotes I did not mean them to be a literal quote, simply an accurate paraphrasing of what you are insinuating.

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The beauty of the internet is that people can say stuff and seemingly always have a straight face.

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It is representative of what you said, as your cosmetic FYP in bold indicates.

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There is a pretty big difference between saying someone is most closely aligned with the Nazis, and not saying someone is most closely aligned with the Nazis.

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What is trollish is continuing to insinuate that Ron Paul's positions "must most closely represent those of Nazis of the candidates standing" because he refuses to give money to Nazis.

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While I respect your sophistry to reverse the issue at hand (from 'refusing support from Nazis' to 'funding Nazis') it's actually not credible.

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It's perfectly credible. Who is in possession of the funds? The Paul campaign. Who would you like to see receive the funds? White supremists.

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Of course, the logical next step from your point of view appears to me to suggest that candidates should more actively fundraise from amongst the Nazi community - failing to take their money is functionally equivalent to giving them money.

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Not in the slightest. Perhaps you've heard of this thing called "ownership"?

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Fine. You think he should give money back to unidentifiable anonymous donors.

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You create the straw man repeatedly, in quite a clear contravention of the post that you quoted - when I specificly said that this was absurd.

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It isn't absurd. From what I can tell, there seems to be possibly a single identifiable donor. Personally, I think the campaign should give the money back, purely for PR reasons. But if the campaign doesn't, that doesn't make Paul a white supremist as you are insinuating.

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We get it. Perhaps you think its a bad PR move to do otherwise. You probably have an argument there. But to continue to repeatedly insinuate that if he sticks to his previous statement and principled position,

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It is not principled to take money from anyone and everyone. That's quite the opposite of principled - it is very unprincipled.

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It was donated anonymously over the internet, buried among tens of thousands of donations from complete strangers who have never met Dr. Paul. Dr. Paul never met these people, and did not "accept their support" (oh noes; scare quotes!). They made a credit card donation on a website.

In fact, I will *explicitly* say that philosophically it makes absolutely zero difference if some moron wants to give his money away to someone who fundamentally disagrees with him. No, strike that. It is clearly morally worse to return the funds to the hands of the white supremist. The *only* reason to give the money back is pure PR, and that is not your reasoning. Your insinuation is that not giving the money back makes one a white supremist, which is absurd

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It isn't my fault that you want money to be channeled to members of white supremist groups instead of to someone working for peace, liberty and limited government. That is what *you* are *literally* calling for.

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No, I'm not literally calling for that.

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Do you know what the word "literally" means? Because, yes, you are.

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See how your principled position can be portrayed as evil and nazi-supporting? Annoying, isn't it?

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While your linguistic gymnastics are quite impressive from a purely technical viewpoint, they're not the least bit impressive in any substantial way - because my view is not Nazi supporting.

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And neither are any of Ron Paul's views. But you would know that, if you bothered to learn anything about the guy before you spent your entire day smearing him.

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Claiming that the rejection of Nazi-support is in itself Nazi-supporting is self-evidently absurd.

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My point exactly.

If you had just said, "Boy, it would be pretty [censored] stupid to keep that neo-nazi money", I would have said, "Yep." But you just had to end every [censored] post with something like "Unless of course he agrees with the neo-nazis, then by all means keep it."

In the middle of the Ron Paul [censored] video thread, filled with rabid, slathering Ron Paul supporters. And this is supposed to NOT be trolling? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

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An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who intentionally posts controversial or contrary messages in an on-line community such as an on-line discussion forum or group with the intention of baiting users into an argumentative response.

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I mean, come on.

[Josem]

B,

1) I envisage that this will be the last post I make in this thread (unless someone misconstrues a post of mine in here)

2) I admire your passion for Ron Paul

3) Our disagreement over supporting groups by returning their money arises because we are looking at different scales of the transaction. I believe that you're looking at the situation after the candidate receives the money; I am looking at it in the broader context starting from the point of receiving their money in the first place.

I accept that your way is valid and different to mine. I obviously believe that my way is "more valid" (I don't have a good way to express that) because I am looking at it differently. Neither way, I think, is inherently wrong.

3) I obviously don't think there is inherently wrong with receiving the money in the first place - it's obviously not possible to even check a donation until after you've received it.

4) I don't believe that failing to return the money makes someone a white supremacist - obviously, one is only a white supremacist if one believes in white supremacy.

I think it is fair to say, however, (especially after reading the crap that the stormfront folk have written on their website) that <u>white supremacists</u> believe that Ron Paul is an unusually above average candidate for their cause. They may be wrong; If I was a candidate and a bunch of white supremacists endorsed me, I'd make very clear that I disagreed with their views on a variety of issues.

5) I don't have much knowledge of Ron Paul - I only know him marginally more than it relates to these donations. I have never professed to know much more about him (and I suspect that I'd probably agree with a small chunk of what he believes in, mostly as it relates to economic freedom, I think)

6) I didn't actually raise this topic in this thread - I was merely commenting on someone else's comment, and it sort of grew from there.

7) I suspect (hope?) that there is nothing that you strongly disagree with in this post.

[phillydilly]

Just a quick thought.
If Paul's biggest political position is he follows the constitution to the letter, wouldn't he support Stormfront or whoevers right to support any candidate either verbally or thru donations because of freedom of speech, even if he totally disagreed with their viewpoints?

[Kedu]

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Just a quick thought.
If Paul's biggest political position is he follows the constitution to the letter, wouldn't he support Stormfront or whoevers right to support any candidate either verbally or thru donations because of freedom of speech, even if he totally disagreed with their viewpoints?

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Of course he would... That doesn't mean he would accept donations from anyone though.

[wtfsvi]

I don't think anyone disagrees with individuals from stormfront's right to support Ron Paul either through practising free speach or through donating. That doesn't mean Ron Paul is forced to accept their donations.

[MidGe]

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If Paul's biggest political position is he follows the constitution to the letter

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He is ignorant of the constitution! See other posts about some of the statements he made about the constitution of the USA! Don't fall for the elemental trap of an ignorant politician only interested in gaining power through the gap between left and right! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Borodog]

Josem,

Peace.

In any event:

So I went and actually started reading the RP thread there. Even they know Ron Paul is not a white supremist. Some of them talk specifically about his libertarianism being completely at odds with National Socialism (which apparently only a few of them support? The rest seem to be vaguely angry and resentful bitter white guys of the "Well then why can't we have WHITE Entertainment Television? Huh? Huh?!?" variety).

There's about 6 months of posting from a core group of what looks to be several dozen people who like Paul for various misguided reasons. He wants to tighten boarder security because illegal immigration is overwhelming social services at gigantic cost (an issue I disagree with him on, by the way; the answer is to stop handing out money and people will stop lining up with their hands out; I gather Paul feels this is politically impossible); they want to keep the dirty brown people out. He wants to stop foreign aid; they think "Including Israel!" They're generally gun owners and he is pro-2nd Amendment. He's against hate crime legislation, so are they. There's a smattering of people who seem to know something about small government, constitutional, financial and economic issues (constitutionalism, gold standard, Fed, etc.), but it's all whacked out by TEH JOOZ! (they own all the banks and the media apparently; here I thought it was the state that handed out the licenses, turns out it was TEH JOOZ! all along).

I couldn't look through the whole thread, but they seem to either not know or ignore the fact that several of Paul's personal heroes were Jewish (OMG I lost track of how many times someone said "Jewliani" in that thread), or that he thinks they, as racists, are collectivists with a perverted worldview. In fact I didn't see anyone quote or link to anything Paul has actually *written* about anything at all. Interestingly, I did see at the very end someone say, essentially, "Dudes, you are not helping. Everyone hates you. Support someone else."

It is REALLY unfortunate from a RP PR standpoint that one of the guys that has decided to support Paul is the owner/admin of the website, as they have banner ads up (already mentioned) and have even stickied the RP thread. Ugh.

adanthar mentioned that the thread is 570 pages long. It is. However, that isn't 570 2+2 pages. It's 10 posts per page, still that's 5700 posts. However, when you contrast the 5700 posts that these few dozen people have made over six months to just one of the main grassroots Paul support sites, like www.ronpaulforums.com, which has in excess of 30,000 threads, several hundred thousand posts, and many thousands of registered users, and consider that there are multiple such sites operating, it is obvious that these guys are a tiny fraction of Paul supporters.

[Dane S]

Less retardation, more videos

[ojc02]

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If Paul's biggest political position is he follows the constitution to the letter

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He is ignorant of the constitution! See other posts about some of the statements he made about the constitution of the USA! Don't fall for the elemental trap of an ignorant politician only interested in gaining power through the gap between left and right! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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*Desperately trying to avoid replying to trolling*

Edit: Doh!