"Of course we shouldn't stay in Afghanistan and Iraq. We shouldn't stay in Germany and Japan either. I just don't know what Ron Paul's got to do with it. Do you really believe he's going to change the momentum of the modern military/corporado culture?

Seems to me that one of the fundamental conflicts in all of American history is the question of states' rights vs. the role of the Federal Govt. As someone who grew up amidst the civil rights movement and saw the National Guard sent to Arkansas to allow little kids to go to school, I take a pretty dim view of 'states rights'. We have some pretty goddamn medieval states: Arizona, South Carolina, Mississippi. Ron Paul's so-called adherence to strict constitutionality is a little off-putting. We have enough fucking fundamentalist ideologues running the show already."

Now that gets closer to what I was hoping to see--I mean, I really do want to talk about this stuff. And your past responses to my own posts have been illuminating, and I do respect your views and choose to learn from them especially when they rub up against my own.

Your question, "Do you really believe he's going to change the momentum of the modern military/corporado culture?" is perhaps best answered by another question, "if not him, then who?" Has Obama made strides against mili/corpo? Did Bush? Clinton? Pre-Bush? Reagan? Ford? Nixon? Johnson? All of these people campaigned as though they were for what is good, and against what is bad, and yet became just another notch on the straight-ahead rudder of the mili/corpo boat.

At least Ron Paul has a decades-long record in Congress (not continuous, but still that long) of being consistently against these things. Say what you will of his chances to enact his ideas: I believe he might get shot, but never bought.

So I ask again, specific to the points brought up in that video linked above, with what do you find fault? (And I'd be happy to talk about my own problems with that video, but dangit, I can't seem to get that kind of focus going in this particular conversation.)

Herring405