Why does anyone support this man?

[sakuraamplifier]

I wrote before in a friends-only entry about my disdain for Ron Paul, and his campaign founded on the deeply problematic libertarian philosophy. I made the entry friends-only, because I did not want to run the risk of being attacked with the sort of nonsense Paul supporters tend to heap upon anyone who dares disagree with their hero. But now that

Comments

[autokrater]

when i first heard about ron paul i was kind of interested but then i lost interest. i lost interest because it is unrealistic. i think it's cool to actually get back to the constitution and to downsize the government. but it's a little late for that to be honest. if he cut all those programs like he says he would then everything would be in chaos for a while. poor people,like me, depend on stupid government programs that essentially make us slaves to them. it would be awesome to quit all of it but i think failure is our destiny

[sakuraamplifier]

I'm no fan of the way our government is currently run, but I don't think that an immediate and massive scaling back of the government is the answer. Instead, I think we would do much better to refocus where the money goes, focusing more on education and reducing unemployment (and I believe those two go hand-in-hand to a large extent), and much, much less on the military and keeping special interest groups happy. To me, it's not necessarily the size of the government that's the problem, but the direction.

I'm sure Paul is committed to his concept of liberty, but I think that in the end the only people whose interests are well-served by it are angry young white men.

[paulkienitz]

The libertarian idea of how to reform government always skips over the concept of accountability. I guess they just assume there can never really be any.