Tuesday, May 06, 2008; Posted: 01:26 PM
The Texas representative and Republican presidential candidate reeled off what he opposes to some 1,500 enthusiastic supporters at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne on Monday night.
End the war in Iraq and the drug war. Repeal the Patriot Act. Get rid of the Internal Revenue Service and eminent domain law. Ditto for the Department of Education. National health care for all Americans? Who needs it?
"This country is in need of and ready for the message of liberty," Paul said to applause. "The most important part of the constitution was written to restrain the government."
Arizona Sen. John McCain is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, but Paul, who said he has 1 million supporters, has gained a following. Much of it comes from refusing to be part of the knee-jerk reaction about 9/11 and Iraq during the Republican presidential debates.
Paul said 9/11 was blowback for the U.S. backing Mideast dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia and for the 1991 Gulf War. Paul took heat for the contention, but one of Osama Bin Laden's stated reasons for the 9/11 attacks was U.S. bases near Mecca, the Islamic holy city in Saudi Arabia. The bases, which were constructed during the Gulf War to launch attacks into Iraq and Kuwait, were removed and replaced by bases in Iraq when the U.S. invaded in 2003.
Paul cited Iraq as an example of an imperialistic U.S. foreign policy bent on creating profits rather than democracy. Besides leaving Iraq, Paul said the U.S. needs to close many of its more than 700 military bases abroad and use the savings for infrastructure repairs and lowering the approximately $9.3 trillion national debt, which he said leaves America vulnerable to foreign creditors like China.
"Let's travel and trade with people. Let's not fight the people," Paul said. "You can take a position of being strong for America, strong for national defense and against aggressive wars."
Paul labeled McCain, and the Democratic presidential candidates, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, as pro-war and bought and paid for by the Establishment. While Obama opposed invading Iraq, Paul's criticism is based on Obama voting to fund the war and not ruling out invading Iran.
Paul worries fears of Iran are being exaggerated as a pretext for invading it. He said Americans can't afford the loss of lives and dollars.
"All we're looking at today is the disintegration of our empire and the bankruptcy of this country," Paul said in a pre-speech news conference. "That's why our dollar is going down and the commodity prices are going up and gasoline's up."
To Paul the New Deal is "the nanny state," and unregulated markets lead to peace and prosperity. Paul was a friend of the late Milton Friedman, the Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economist who believed in completely unregulated markets and privatization of government-owned assets and opposed government social programs and unions.
Friedman was also an economic adviser to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who oversaw the U.S.-backed 1973 coup that led to the torture and murder of more than 3,000 Chileans. Friedman also advised Chinese dictator Deng Xiaoping, who green-lighted the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. The Friedman model was mostly recently used by the Bush administration in post-invasion Iraq, costing U.S. taxpayers billions and leading to windfall profits for companies such as Bechtel and Halliburton.
Paul blames former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan for the housing crash and wants to get rid of the Federal Reserve, but critics say it was a lack of oversight by Greenspan and the Fed that led to predatory lending and risky investments triggering the crash.
His limited government-antiwar message inspired Hoagland residents Ray and Shirley Scott to campaign for him for the last year. It's personal for the Scotts, who said they helped raise the sons of Army Spec. James R. Miller of Decatur, who was killed in the Gulf War.
For Fort Wayne supporter Heather Barger, Indiana field director for Paul's campaign, it was his opposition to the Patriot Act. "I don't like the government being able to wiretap us for no reason," Barger said.
Paul's reason for campaigning is less about election than his message.
"It can be summarized very simply," he said. "Freedom works."
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