Rand Paul

RON PAUL, RAND PAUL, AND THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY
June 9th, 2012 by Arvin Vohra

Ron Paul has more courage and integrity than any other per son I know of . He argued against the War on Drugs when it was at its height of pop u lar ity. He chal lenged the Fed long before it became pop u lar to do so; in fact, he almost sin gle hand edly made it pop u lar to do so. He has fought against social secu rity, the pre scrip tion drug sub sidy, corn sub si dies, and count less other pop u lar sta tist boondoggles.

But, although he aggres sively attacked Rick Perry and Newt Gin grich, he never really attacked uber-statist Mitt Romney.

Ron Paul under stood how prob lem atic the Fed was back when most of us thought it was essen tial for eco nomic sta bil ity. I doubt he sim ply didn't notice the sim i lar i ties between Rom n ey care and Oba macare, or Romney's Key ne sian tax-and-spend poli­cies. Nor do I think that Ron Paul, who is about to retire any way, would have been par tic u larly afraid of any backlash.

I can't pre sume to know Ron Paul's moti va tion. But I do know that there are cer tain pres sures that a man of integrity won't ignore. He won't ignore pres sures on his moral ity, his friends, or his family.

For months, the Repub li can estab lish ment has been openly threat en ing his son, Rand Paul. In Jan u ary, nation ally syn di cated con ser v a tive talk show host Mark Levin said, "If Ron Paul decides that he is going to go third-party…I will do every thing in my power to defeat his son in Ken tucky. I will do every thing in my power to defeat his son Rand Paul in Kentucky."

If that's what the Repub li can estab lish ment said on national radio, what were they say ing behind closed doors?

I have no doubt that Rand Paul endorsed Mitt Rom ney after a dis cus sion with his father, with his father's encour age ment, and with great reluc tance. His choice was to swal low a dis gust ing pill and live to fight another day, or end his polit i cal career in the Repub li can Party.

Ever since I got involved in pol i tics, I have got ten repeated requests to run as a Repub li can, and a few to run as a Demo c rat.. I have turned those offers down because I know that there is no future in it for me. I'm unwill ing to attack gay mar riage, to sup port cor po rate sub si dies, or to pre tend that abor tion is the most impor tant issue in Amer i can pol i tics. (In order to be suc cess ful, Rand Paul has been forced to talk about abor tion con stantly, and pro pose var i ous "Life Begins at Con cep tion" bills.) And I'm cer tainly unwill ing to back big-government sta tists like Mitt Romney.

That's why we need a strong Lib er tar ian Party. The notion of "work ing within" the Repub li can Party is ludi crous. If the Repub li can estab lish ment can pres sure Ron Paul into for go ing attacks on a super-statist like Mitt Rom ney, then what could they do to the rest of us?

Ron Paul ran as a Lib er tar ian can di date for pres i dent in 1988. And if our party were bet ter funded and had more clout, he prob a bly would have joined us for future cam­paigns, includ ing his many suc cess ful con gres sional cam paigns. We need to make the Lib er tar ian Party stronger, so that Amer i can states men will never need to choose between their prin ci ples and get ting elected.

For that, we all have to work together. You can join the LP at https://www.lp.org/membership. Make sure to also join the LP face book page at http://www.facebook.com/libertarians.

And join your state party (there is a list here: http://www.lp.org/states). We have great can di dates this year, includ ing Gary John son. Now let's work together to get them elected.

****************************************************************************
Arvin Vohra cur rently serves as Rep re sen ta tive At-Large on the Lib er tar ian National Com mit tee, and on the Exec u tive Board of the Mary land Lib er tar ian Party. He is the inter na tion ally pub lished author of two books, includ ing Lies, Damned Lies, and Col­lege Admissions.



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On Saturday, June 9, 2012, Dan <dan_ust@yahoo.com> wrote:
>  
>
> From my readings, what happened is the Romero films play in Europe and, as they were successful, were quickly imitated by local talents. (IIRC, "Zombi 2" was called "Zombi 2" and not just "Zombi" because Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" was labeled "Zombi" in Italy, but one gets the feeling they wanted to bring in fans of the Romero film to see this one.) I don't think you had to go to special theaters or anything like that, but these were probably films that were churned out, like many Westerns, shown for a few weeks in many theaters, the repackaged for TV or someplace else. Some of this, no doubt, was background noise -- merely a movie you might go to because it was playing, you were stoned, and you wanted to do some heavy petting in the theater. :)
> I was unaware of the MTV connection. That might've been how I was first exposed to the film, but I think I saw it on VHS when I was fairly young -- probably something I wasn't supposed to watch and did anyway. I do remember being scared by it. :)
>
> I hadn't thought of the gaming connection. That sounds like an intriguing line of research.
> Regards,
> Dan
> ________________________________
> From: Dan Clore <clore@columbia-center.org>
> To: LeftLibertarian2@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Saturday, June 9, 2012 5:31 PM
> Subject: Re: [LeftLibertarian2] Zombies
>
>  
> On 6/8/2012 5:58 AM, Dan wrote:
>>
>> Films by Fulci (Italy), Lenzi (Italy), Jean Rollin (France), and de
>> Ossorio (Spain) come to mind. (Though, to be sure, the de Ossorio's
>> "Tombs of the Blind Dead" seems mostly unlike a zombie film until the
>> very end, IIRC.) The thing about these films, unlike the more recent
>> craze is they didn't seem to be as popular back then as recent
>> zombie films are now. (I'm going mostly on reading and hearsay here,
>> but for any of you who were cognizant in the 1970s and 1980s: Do you
>> think I'm wrong here?)
>
> Well, I checked the old RE/Search volume on Incredibly Strange Films,
> which has a very nice article on Romero, but it doesn't cover these
> foreign films. I don't think anyone but horror afficianados, more
> specifically gore movie afficianados, would even be aware of them.
> Return of the Living Dead, on the other hand, I remember being heavily
> advertised on TV when it came out. Also around that time, MTV would show
> Night of the Living Dead each Halloween, which meant a lot of exposure
> back then.
>
> But I think you're right that it's not until after that time that the
> genre took off, becoming a mainstream cliche. By now there have been
> quite a few of these zombie movies from major studios, with big releases
> and heavy advertising.
>
> I wonder if games like Dungeons and Dragons didn't play a role in the
> changing conception of zombies. The zombies in the game are close to the
> voodoo zombies of old horror movies, who follow their master's orders
> and can be turned by clerics, but in your typical hack-'n'-slash dungeon
> crawl, where monsters tend to turn up at random and seem to do nothing
> but sit in their rooms waiting for adventurers to bust the door down,
> the master tends to be absent and they're basically just slow, animated
> corpses you have to kill or be killed. (That's especially true of
> computer games where monsters turn up at random and role-playing is
> pretty much absent.)
>
> --
> Dan Clore
>
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