Here's another puff piece for Ron Paul.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28669

In it, Dr Paul's view on the withering away of the state is summarised thus

"Ron Paul has said that he does not support ending welfare before an economy is created that makes a welfare state unnecessary."

There you go. Reminds me of a poster I once saw, saying

What do we want?
Gradual change!

When do we want it?
In due course!

PHume, if I were you, I would be throroghly researching Ro Paul's backers and maybe, if you are into free trade of information, without fear or favour, reporting back on your findings.

Daniel Kogov, I would either distance myself from Ron Paul or else change parties. This guy really has very little in common with The Greens. Maybe you should consider the League of Rights - from my recollection of one of their books I read, back in the early '80s, it sounds like the RonPaulists' mixture of free enterprise, free markets and free nonsense. (I tell you that for free).

Or maybe the Citizen's Electoral Council? There's another mob that might suit your tastes.

Hadn't seen that one, Sir Vivor. That's hilarious.

>>"Ron Paul has said that he does not support ending welfare before an economy is created that makes a welfare state unnecessary."<<

Considering his views on "creating an economy" (which already puts him offside with Peter Hume, who believes that government intervention in the economy is nothing short of ritual embezzlement), that is another way of saying "never".

Ron Paul's vision for the US has a great deal in common with what has made North Korea great. International isolationism is neat when you sell it to the public as "protecting errr jerbs" (see South Park for details), but utter folly as a survival policy.

Also, it is significant that no-one has yet asked him the question, "how will you achieve this, Ron?". The answer, one suspects, could only be an extension of his response to welfare reduction. "When this has been achieved, then that can be done..." and so on. But where does he start?

Oh yes. Kill the Fed. That will achieve what, in real terms?

Tipping over the first domino, only to discover that it doesn't connect with the next one, or the one after that... The US will become a laughing stock, and they will rapidly gain the distinction of actually making the Eurozone look competent.

Which will be some achievement.

Fascinating to watch, though. Go Ron Paul!

The left that had illusions in Obama is now looking for a saviour from the so-called Libertarians? Abolish Roe v Wade, the state mandating life beginning at conception (hence abortion being murder), use the troops against Mexican immigrants, no environmental regulation, go on the gold standard and abolish the Fed. Abolish social security. One member of the ruling elite wants the exploitative relationship between labour and capital to happen with no government 'interference', except to save the market, of course and the soft left falls down before him. This isn't liberty.It is the road to serfdom. That doesn't mean support for the parties of capital, the Democrats and Republicans. This is a debate among the one percent about the way forward. The alternative is not to have illusions in top down politics but to build an organisation in which the mass of the people determine their own future, not rely on the latest demigod, whether it be Ron Paul or before him Barack Obama. It says much about the Left in the US and here too that a right winger like Paul can get their support by saying a few things (but for different reasons) that that soft Left should be saying about opposing wars, and on drugs, for example.

Here's part of what an article in counterpunch (http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/20/ron-paul’s-anti-imperialism/) says:

'...the rationale undergirding Paul’s positions posits that wars and foreign meddling are deviations from true capitalism, not inevitable consequences of it. This conflicts with what all plausible theories of imperialism contend, but so what; theologians are accustomed to offending what evidence and sound reason establish.

'Therefore Paul would bring the troops home not for any of the reasons genuine anti-imperialists would — because they’re on the wrong side of liberation struggles or because their military adventures sustain a long overripe capitalist order – but because what they’re doing, indeed their very existence, is, by his lights and according to the theology he assumes, bad for business. Paul wants to save capitalism from forces that he thinks lead it astray; forces that, in truth, are inherent in the economic system he supports. If he is on the side of peace in the Middle East and elsewhere, it is for no reason other than that peace is, by his lights, a by-product of getting capitalism right.

'It is hard to see how anyone with a modicum of sense could fail to see that just the opposite is true. But this is the way of theology. Endeavoring to make the lesser argument appear the stronger is older than God.'

Daniel, one other point. I would have thought the left (including, if I stretch the word's meaning to its boundaries, the Australian Greens) should have been arguing to support a left wing candidate. You know, someone like Jill Stein of the Green Party of the United States or another left opposition candidate. At least Jill will be dogging Obama and whoever of Romney or Gingrich wins the Republican nomination all the way to November with genuine left wing views.

Thank you, Pericles, for some necessary common sense. Libertarianism in the current GFC - yes, probably not a goer.

And thank you, Passy, for trying to get what's left of the left back on track. It might have been easier back in 1871, but good luck.

Wow: thanks to both Pericles and Passy.....

You won't see that too often.

It's going to be a strange year. Buckle up