Ya, I agree. Hannity seems to try to position himself as being just like RP, except for foreign policy.

It's from 2009 but somehow hits reddit today. It seems people there already got over Ron Paul as sometimes ago he was idolized there.

What is funny about it is that Ron Paul, self declared creationist, is forcing his religious dogma on others and calling it "scientific argument".
What if next he decides preventing conception is also bad and tries to ban contraception ?

Also I agree with a point made on reddit that he is not libertarian at all. He uses his "more rights to the states" slogan to actually take away liberties from people. Like abortion, same sex marriages, homosexual rights etc. He knows that once some southern states have power to ban those and discriminate against sexual minorities it will happen and Constitution probably won't help either as Ron Paul is trying to take away SCOTUS jurisdiction (it's in the bill).

Ugh I hate this kind of crap. I thought his stance was not pushing his values on anyone? Honest question no troll

Good catch on the 2009 thing. I did get it off of reddit. I wonder what his stance on contraception is and I do wonder what his thoughts would be county health clinics giving away contraceptives.

No. I knew there was data suggesting that pot being legal did not result in increased use of pot. I did not know of any data about rates of hard drug use given pot is legal, which is what we were clearly talking about. It is also non trivial to predict future rates based solely on past data from other countries....but that isn't a topic that can reasonably be discussed here.

No. I was suggesting that I didn't think his argument was correct. If hard drug use goes down with legalization of marijuana, it is very unlikely to be for the reason he said... that pot is awesome. My statement "but I'm not sure less people would try harder drugs" didn't insinuate what you somehow think it does, and was based on the fact that it seems unlikely hard drug use would go down because everybody just smokes pot if pot was legal given legalization of pot did not produce large increases in pot usage.

lol

Isn't Sanctity of Life Act just pushing it back to the states?

And of course he wants to push his values on others. No theft, no murder. These are key libertarian values which libertarians believe must be defended with force if necessary.

While I disagree with him on abortion, he does make good points about how as a doctor he is legally liable for injuring a fetus, or if you kill a pregnant woman you can be charged with killing two people. I think most people would agree with these types of things, but there's a strange disconnect which occurs somewhere on the way to pro-life/pro-choice.

max/suzzer,

fwiw, i apologize for being a prick to you. i'll be avoiding negativity ITT from here on. i'm going to try to be happy and get along w/ people and stuff.

i think abortion is the most complex/debatable topic on the table.

RP's stance is "not pushing his values on anyone" provided that they don't engage in violence/theft/fraud. abortion, clearly, slots into the "violence" category according to RP. the extent to which it is violence (murder) is of course quite discussion-worthy.

If the first part then that is fine, I was just going on the quoted part of the act he mentioned. I don't mind it being a state issue. But not a fan of banning abortions overall

just wondering but do only religious people not want abortions?

Ron Paul On Hannity 10/24/2011

lol Sean acting like he couldn't figure out how anybody could label him a statist. I know Ron has to be diplomatic here, but I really wish he could have just started ripping into the laundry list.

lol i love how hannity is butt hurt about paul's comment. I also love RP using cain's strategy of people misquoting him

Rand Paul gets asked about his dad's statist quote by Hannity on his radio show.
Then Ron Paul gets asked about the statist quote by Hannity on his radio show.
Then Ron Paul again gets asked again about the statist quote by Hannity on his TV show...

And Ron Paul looks completely unprepared, sort of denies the quote, then talks around the question. Big mistake in preparation by Ron and/or his campaign staff. He could have hit a home run if he came prepared with facts/quotes from Hannity during the Bush years. It would have been a home run like the Meet the Press question about the differences between Romney and Obama. It should have been obvious that Hannity would bring up the statist quote and ask about foreign policy.

Besides that, the interview went well. He's got nothing to lose really. He should do O'Reilly's show as well. He's not going to pull a Cain and say he's pro-choice or some big blunder like that. His supporters aren't going anywhere. He can only increase his support.

At the end of his answer he says that the republicans failed under Bush. He said in a debate that the results under Reagan weren't great.

All he had to do was calmly defend his statement with a couple examples of terrible policies the repubs had under Bush. He doesn't even need to mention Hannity directly if he doesn't want to. Just use examples that Hannity defended and say "conservatives supported x and y policies under the Bush administration." This wouldn't have been seen as picking a fight with the the host. His staff should have crafted an amazing response.

He did great with his examples of foreign policy. Should have done the same in response to the statist question.

Video: Ron Paul on Freedom Watch 10/24/11

The problem is that there is no well established definition of life in science so saying "it's scientific consensus that life begins at conception so it deserves constitutional protection" is making definitions on the fly and pretending it's science.
Also denying evolution is probably the biggest insult possible against science so when you combine the two you get... you name it... certainly not someone reasonable.

Ah ok gotcha, didn't know RP said that.

After checking out the link, doesn't it seen more like it's trying to give states the right to decide whether abortions are legal or not? Also isn't trying to make it so our tax dollars aren't funding abortions?

I'm just glad punter is still here to remind us that the most important issue in our presidential election is evolution. Also where is this quote from: "it's scientific consensus that life begins at conception so it deserves constitutional protection"?

Yes, that is his point.

while this is true, i think you'd be hard-pressed to find many scientists who would claim that a fetus isn't alive.

ETA: i'm also against government regulation of abortion. and really, if you read what he's written on the issue, ron paul is too, at least at the federal level. if he was a state legislator i'm not sure if he would push for an outright ban in his state or not. i doubt it. but he would certainly push for never having his state support abortion, whether by spending on it or otherwise.

From http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill...ill=h111-2533:

And following:

Which says: "Even if it's not Constitutional or in contradiction to other laws Supreme Court should shut up because I says so".
Fortunately this nut of genius is enough make this bill not passable even among republicans.

There is also youtube video with RP declaring life at conception as "scientific argument". I am too lazy to find now.

While it's not the most important issue it says a lot about RP capability of making educated decisions. If he is too dumb to make up his mind about evolution or what science says about life at conception then it's safe bet he is also too dumb to make any educated decisions when it comes for example to economy.

It's just completely dependent of what definition of life you fancy to adopt. Imo it doesn't matter it's just nitpicking language matters and completely misses the problem.

The problem is this: giving power to the states or small communities to ban others people freedoms is not libertarian. It's contradictory. RP wants a solution which will effect in many people being deprived of their rights.
Let's take other example: same sex marriages/partnerships. If RP is in power Texas will deprive people of same sex of any rights and nobody will have a say in that. How you call it "fight for liberty" is beyond me.

It's enough to take quick looks at the history of USA to see that in fed gov vs states battle it was fed who fought for people basic liberties and RP wants it back to 19th century.

willie24: That's a subtle but not unimportant shift in the terminology, of course. Many of the cells that constitute my body are "alive" but that's not what people are talking about when discussing biological criteria for life. (I doubt a zygote meets any consensus criteria, for example, to the extent that such a consensus exists.)

There are better places to have that discussion, though.

but you can't say "it's just semantics, it doesn't matter", and then claim that a fetus isn't a life!

you could say that parents own the fetus until it comes out. seems kind of tricky and dangerous, but maybe that would work?

or you could say that humans really don't have any natural right to their own lives, rather, that they gain this right via contract that fetuses aren't subject to. also pretty tricky.

again, i'm not an anti-abortion guy, but in paul's book he makes a pretty good point that abortion is legal, and even killing a baby who survives an abortion happens and is accepted, yet everyone's always clamoring to charge a teenage girl with murder when she dumpsters her newborn. is that consistent?

Like I suspected you just made the last quote up.

Are you saying there's no scientific argument that life beings at conception?

Lol it obviously is of the utmost importance. Because once you define life and decide that there is human life, then the rights of that life trump the choice of the woman.

Consequences be damned, I would vote for this man

who got suzzer back on drugs? jfc, can't stand when he goes on his drug rants.