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Showing Original Post only (View all)Greenwald: Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies [View all]
Before the cherry picking begins, it would be helpful to read the entire article. It's interesting and points out the problems with progressives who declare Paul beyond the pale despite his embrace of positions advocated by progressives while embracing Obama who "holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues and himself has done heinous things with the power he has been vested." Is Greenwald correct? Has Obama done all these things of which he's accused below? Are they heinous? At what point, if these actions have been taken, should progressives withdraw their support from Obama and seek a Democrat more in line with progressive beliefs?
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/31/progressives_and_the_ron_paul_fallacies/singleton/
Saturday, Dec 31, 2011 11:15 AM 13:02:12 EST
Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies
By Glenn Greenwald
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The fallacy in this reasoning is glaring. The candidate supported by progressives President Obama himself holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues and himself has done heinous things with the power he has been vested. He has slaughtered civilians Muslim children by the dozens not once or twice, but continuously in numerous nations with drones, cluster bombs and other forms of attack. He has sought to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs. He has institutionalized the power of Presidents in secret and with no checks to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield. He has waged an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, the protection of which was once a liberal shibboleth. He rendered permanently irrelevant the War Powers Resolution, a crown jewel in the list of post-Vietnam liberal accomplishments, and thus enshrined the power of Presidents to wage war even in the face of a Congressional vote against it. His obsession with secrecy is so extreme that it has become darkly laughable in its manifestations, and he even worked to amend the Freedom of Information Act (another crown jewel of liberal legislative successes) when compliance became inconvenient.
He has entrenched for a generation the once-reviled, once-radical Bush/Cheney Terrorism powers of indefinite detention, military commissions, and the state secret privilege as a weapon to immunize political leaders from the rule of law. He has shielded Bush era criminals from every last form of accountability. He has vigorously prosecuted the cruel and supremely racist War on Drugs, including those parts he vowed during the campaign to relinquish a war which devastates minority communities and encages and converts into felons huge numbers of minority youth for no good reason. He has empowered thieving bankers through the Wall Street bailout, Fed secrecy, efforts to shield mortgage defrauders from prosecution, and the appointment of an endless roster of former Goldman, Sachs executives and lobbyists. Hes brought the nation to a full-on Cold War and a covert hot war with Iran, on the brink of far greater hostilities. He has made the U.S. as subservient as ever to the destructive agenda of the right-wing Israeli government. His support for some of the Arab worlds most repressive regimes is as strong as ever.
Most of all, Americas National Security State, its Surveillance State, and its posture of endless war is more robust than ever before. The nation suffers from what National Journals Michael Hirsh just christened Obamas Romance with the CIA. He has created what The Washington Post just dubbed a vast drone/killing operation, all behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy and without a shred of oversight. Obamas steadfast devotion to what Dana Priest and William Arkin called Top Secret America has severe domestic repercussions as well, building up vast debt and deficits in the name of militarism that create the pretext for the austerity measures which the Washington class (including Obama) is plotting to impose on Americas middle and lower classes.
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The parallel reality the undeniable fact is that all of these listed heinous views and actions from Barack Obama have been vehemently opposed and condemned by Ron Paul: and among the major GOP candidates, only by Ron Paul. For that reason, Pauls candidacy forces progressives to face the hideous positions and actions of their candidate, of the person they want to empower for another four years. If Paul were not in the race or were not receiving attention, none of these issues would receive any attention because all the other major GOP candidates either agree with Obama on these matters or hold even worse views.
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