spotted via justin, reblogged...

spotted via justin,

reblogged via bpousman, verbalresistance:

Ron Paul’s “South Was Right” Civil War Speech With Confederate Flag

20.01.2012 - Ron Paul has made no secret the fact that he thought that the South was right in the Civil War. Here he is giving a speech in front of a giant Confederate Flag about why he believes the North was wrong in the Civil War and why the South was right. […]

The country is so crazy divided along the two party lines, because honestly, we’d be much better off being two or three different autonomous countries. I’d love to have a choice to pick either a super liberal country with high taxes, but excellent social programs, or an extremely fiscally conservative country with low-to-zero taxes, and a lack of social safety net.

Instead we are trapped in this never-ending hell in which two groups of people who will never agree, keep meeting somewhere in the middle, or juggling the nation back and forth, and creating an absolute mess.

I trimmed down this thread - if anyone is interested in reading it in its entirety, as well as the video that was attached, that I couldn’t bring myself to post on my personal blog, then please click here.

Two quick points that made me laugh / cringe when watching this:

1) I love that Ron Paul hypes the “pain and suffering” of solders in the Civil War, while kinda’ sort of failing to acknowledge, even briefly, the decades and decades and decades of pain and suffering of slaves.

2) I also love that of the 11 countries he cites, as having found different ways out of slavery, he cites the buying out of slaves from slave-owners. I assume the country or countries that did this, did so via their Governments… which would be Ron Paul promoting that our Government should have used tax dollars for a large-scale Federal department tasked with the tracking down, paying for, overseeing and follow up in purchasing of the several-million slaves that lived in the United States just before the Civil War. Or maybe he just thinks that would work on a state by state level - I really don’t think he has a clear idea of what he is promoting there… seems to be just rambling, really.

Moving on.

And this part is more in response to Justin, who wrote, “I’d love to have a choice to pick either a super liberal country with high taxes, but excellent social programs, or an extremely fiscally conservative country with low-to-zero taxes, and a lack of social safety net.”

This is what I found to be very, very strange… we *have* had that exact choice.

To be fair, this choice between A and B wasn’t really an option during Justin’s lifetime, or mine for that matter, since we are close in age; but the idea that our country has never existed without social safety nets, safe working conditions, safe drinking water, fair wages, public roads, advanced telephone and power grids, fire and police departments, an educated public… I could go on and on; the idea that if only people had the option of living in this would-be utopia… is stunning. I’m beside myself.

People that lived long before myself or Justin did indeed have the choice of no social safety *anything* vs social safety something, and they fought hard for the latter, in many cases people died fighting for their Government to better protect the pursuit of happiness in future generations.

verbalresistance