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Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

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Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#101

Post by MCRed »

natmaster wrote: post #64
lubos wrote: post #30

This is not surprising. Rand Paul, similar to his father Ron Paul, has very libertarian political views which means they prefer no government involvement, not just in the Internet but anywhere. This is not as good as it sounds. For example, he doesn't support FED in controlling money supply. But FED was instrumental in making USD the most stable currency in the last 100 years. He doesn't like energy regulations and b…

Please leave your anti-science anti-intellectual comments outside of hacker news. "FED was instrumental in making USD the most stable currency in the last 100 years" - baseless argument. comparing fiat money to fiat money says nothing about efficacy of fiat money. "Too bad when California deregulated their energy market..." - http://www.tylervigen.com/ Furthermore, where does this money appear from? If the government…

I'm the kind of guy who would marry another guy. So, I have standing to have an opinion about Gay Marriage.

I don't want the government in marriage AT ALL. Making the laws "more neutral" means getting gender out of the laws. This is a correct first step. Marriage is merely an expression of the right of freedom of association, which all people have. You don't need new laws to make it exist. But you should get rid of laws that violate it.

Alas, most gays and lesbians are more leftist and wanted some sort of recognition form the government.... if they had taken the position of getting government out of marriage completely, they would have found many christians (whose ideas of what their marriages should be are regularly infringed upon by government) as allies.

I'll take Rand Pauls government out of marriage over Bill Clinton (signed DOMA) and the democrats (3/4 of which voted for DOMA) and Obama (he was anti-gay marriage before he was "for" it) anyday.

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#102

Post by fennecfoxen »

jonah wrote: post #39
fennecfoxen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably Rand Paul, like many Republicans (and no small number of Democrats), accepts the idea that people can exercise their rights through government-registered entities which they own, called "corporations". These are entities without intrinsic rights, but a well-known intellectual framework called "corporate personhood" which dates back to some of our earliest jurisprudence in this nation says that you treat th…

My issue with this situation is that these corporations generally have orders-of-magnitude louder megaphones through which to exercise these rights. It really skews the one-person-one-vote ideal this democracy is built on. (Yes, individuals exercising an out-sized influence through money and access is a part of the same issue.) This is why things like Citizen's United and Super-PACs are so horribly distorting the fun…

We've always had and will always have private citizens who have orders-of-magnitude-louder megaphones: big-money bogeymen like Rupert Murdoch could be plenty effective at buying megaphones. Or think of any celebrity Twitter account, from Taylor Swift to Obama himself. And we'd disempower a variety of political activity (ostensibly) backed by the common man if private-sector labor unions couldn't spend money on politics and rich CEOs could.

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#103

Post by DennisP »

rayiner wrote: post #61
higherpurpose wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when Ron Paul ran in the primaries, and in one of the first debates from 2011 I believe, they asked the Republican candidates whether they support a stronger Patriot Act or not. Like all the other 4 or 5 other candidates tried to out-match each other in how much stronger they would like the Patriot Act and other such laws to be. Ron Paul? He was the only one who said he would do away with it. Full stop. If…

> I believe, they asked the Republican candidates whether they support a stronger Patriot Act or not. Like all the other 4 or 5 other candidates tried to out-match each other in how much stronger they would like the Patriot Act and other such laws to be. It's worth thinking about the significance of that. These guys aren't doing it because it's wildly unpopular with voters.

That's true but it's only GOP primary voters they were concerned about.

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#104

Post by chucksmart »

chucksmart wrote: post #87
morgante wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Constitutionally, the president doesn't control a state religion, abortion, marriage, etc. The Establishment Clause is pretty clear that states should not and cannot enact state religions, and its up to the federal government to enforce that. The fact that Rand Paul is clearly biased by his religion makes him distinctly un-libertarian.

The Establishment Clause prohibits the Federal Congress from establishing a national religion; the 14th Amendment on the other hand has been interpreted to establish a universal standard of morality for the nation as decreed by the Supreme Court. One might say the 14th Amendment and the Establishment clause directly conflict. And the 14th Amendment has won.

Power vacuums are always filled. Prior to the 14th amendment; the states filled the power vacuum of 'police power & moral standards' which was intentionally denied the Fed. With the 14th amendment; the power to establish 'moral standards' was taken from the states; and filled by the Supreme Caliphate. If the Supreme Caliphate applies the moral standards of Congress to moral issues like abortion and marriage it is 'problematically' over-riding the Establishment Clause. If it applies solely its own 'moral standards'; then the Supreme Caliphate is consistent with the Establishment Clause. Language usually gives lip service to latter path.

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#105

Post by [deleted] »

lettergram wrote: post #22
JulianMorrison wrote: post #11

The man is such a disaster in so many other ways, that getting one thing right is more of a half-cup of punch in a turd-bowl.

Could you expand? Your comment doesn't really add anything to the conversation, expand my knowledge, or even explain why anyone should value your opinion... I don't mean to be rude, but it was a rather harsh comment, without much (if any) addition to the conversation.

[deleted]

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#106

Post by morgante »

natmaster wrote: post #92
morgante wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Rand Paul is a libertarian (I was simply responding to the parent). As for abortion, even if you consider the fetus a "person," I don't see how a libertarian would make a good case for the government to force the mother to continue to sustain and provide for it. > Removing regulation over social issues from government IS a very libertarian philosophy. Delegating to the states is very different from remo…

> I don't see how a libertarian would make a good case for the government to force the mother to continue to sustain and provide for it. So all neglect laws should be removed? > The libertarian thing to do would be to ban such regulation. That requires a constitutional amendment. Those are not easy to get passed.

> So all neglect laws should be removed?

I am not a libertarian, so I wouldn't. But several libertarians I know have said we so, and also argue that there should be no duty to feed the poor, etc.

> The libertarian thing to do would be to ban such regulation. That requires a constitutional amendment. Those are not easy to get passed.

That depends on what regulation we want passed. The First Amendment already includes some pretty important limits on the power of government (included limits which Paul seems loathe to enforce).

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#107

Post by MCRed »

lubos wrote: post #30

This is not surprising. Rand Paul, similar to his father Ron Paul, has very libertarian political views which means they prefer no government involvement, not just in the Internet but anywhere. This is not as good as it sounds. For example, he doesn't support FED in controlling money supply. But FED was instrumental in making USD the most stable currency in the last 100 years. He doesn't like energy regulations and b…

Do you consider losing %98 of its value "stable"? The US Dollar has lost at least that, probably closer to %99.9999, though it's harder to measure now that the fed is not giving us reliable stats anymore.

Do you realize the FED is a private bank, owned by the upper %1 of the %1? And that giving them an interest rate on ever dollar in circulation was probably the worst example of a government granted monopoly ever?

Do you realize that the incentives are completely aligned against us? The government wants to deficit spend with impunity, the fed wants to collect rent on the entire economy, so the fed prints money, and makes it look like it's not been irresponsible in doing so? (For instance, via the FOMC, by manipulating the gold price)

It's really amazing to me that Liberals seem to never have met a corporation they like, yet they are universally in favor of the Federal Reserve.

Maybe you don't realize it's a private corporation? Yeah, yeah the governing board is appointed, blah blah, that's like saying one fox appointed another to make sure the henhouse was safe.

And now, thanks to Obama, the Fed has the power to FORCIBLY MERGE smaller banks. No way that could be abused, right?

Read The Creature from Jekyll Island. Learn the fed's history. It's not exactly secret this stuff. But most people never get told. And of course the fed isn't going to advertise it.

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#108

Post by crazy1van »

morgante wrote: post #54
lubos wrote: post #30

This is not surprising. Rand Paul, similar to his father Ron Paul, has very libertarian political views which means they prefer no government involvement, not just in the Internet but anywhere. This is not as good as it sounds. For example, he doesn't support FED in controlling money supply. But FED was instrumental in making USD the most stable currency in the last 100 years. He doesn't like energy regulations and b…

I don't think it's fair to call someone who advocates against abortion and same-sex marriages a libertarian.

> I don't think it's fair to call someone who advocates against abortion and same-sex marriages a libertarian.

Regarding abortion: Libertarians believe in individual liberties. So if you believe that an unborn child is a person, it is very consistent with libertarian-ism to protect its life. The crux of the debate is when does does a fetus become a person.

Regarding same-sex marriages: Again, relating this question to personal freedom, a typical libertarian position is that in the eyes of the law and gov't, a gay marriage should be the same as a heterosexual marriage. However, an individual should have the freedom to not participate in a gay marriage. In other words, saying one person has the freedom to marry who they wish and another has the freedom to not participate in the wedding is very consistent with libertarian views.

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#109

Post by joelrunyon »

lubos wrote: post #30

This is not surprising. Rand Paul, similar to his father Ron Paul, has very libertarian political views which means they prefer no government involvement, not just in the Internet but anywhere. This is not as good as it sounds. For example, he doesn't support FED in controlling money supply. But FED was instrumental in making USD the most stable currency in the last 100 years. He doesn't like energy regulations and b…

He would have authority over the NSA. That's something he could directly end.

However, FED / Deregulation, abortion, same-sex marriage & vaccination are not things that can be resolved by an executive order.

Every 4 years, people have the same arguments about the same things and they're all generally about things that Congress controls - not the President. And the popular ones (abortion, gun control, etc) haven't really changed all that much at all.

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#110

Post by natmaster »

MCRed wrote: post #101
natmaster wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please leave your anti-science anti-intellectual comments outside of hacker news. "FED was instrumental in making USD the most stable currency in the last 100 years" - baseless argument. comparing fiat money to fiat money says nothing about efficacy of fiat money. "Too bad when California deregulated their energy market..." - http://www.tylervigen.com/ Furthermore, where does this money appear from? If the government…

I'm the kind of guy who would marry another guy. So, I have standing to have an opinion about Gay Marriage. I don't want the government in marriage AT ALL. Making the laws "more neutral" means getting gender out of the laws. This is a correct first step. Marriage is merely an expression of the right of freedom of association, which all people have. You don't need new laws to make it exist. But you should get rid of l…

This. Marriage certificates were invented by the government originally to prevent white and black people from marrying. Their only purpose seems to be to oppress.
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