Ron Paul on War Lies

Ron Paul on War Lies

This is a short video of a speech made on the floor of the US House of Representatives, so no text excerpts. Follow the link to watch it.

One giant problem we have is that our efforts are always splintered into separate little pieces, while we never unify behind a single effort. We see that in our protest efforts, where we always have separate groups staging their own protests. Or in the current case, we see the groups that are closer to the Democrats refusing to protest at all against a Democratic President's wars. What we don't see is one mass unified protest.

We see it in campaigns, where we splinter off into separate campaigns. In the last election, there were three separate candidates who all took nearly identical positions on issues like opposing the wars, opposing the attacks on civil liberties, and calling for the prosecution of Bush/Cheney officials for their crimes. Barr, McKinney and Nader all had nearly identical positions on key issues like these, but they ran three separate campaigns instead on one unified campaign.

Our goal is of course to return America to being a nation with a government 'of the people, by the people and for the people' to recall Lincoln's wonderful turn of a phrase. To do that, we must throw out of power forces that are powerful in their own right, and which also have the power of the incumbency in controlling the power of the US. We want a country that puts the interests of its people first. But if we achieve that, the people and forces now in control will lose wealth, power and influence. And they are determined to hold on to just that.

We face an uphill battle in every fight we wage. We face a government that is turned against us. We face a corporate media that serves the interests of those in power and not our own. We face deceit and trickery. We face dirty tricks and sabotage. We face an enemy that can spend great amounts of money to defeat us and not release its hold on what they regard as the golden goose making even larger sums of money for them. Its nothing for them to spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to retain their control over billions of dollars.

I don't say this to discourage or depress others. I say this to point out that its critical that we stop being stupid. When we fail to unify. When we all splinter and go our separate ways, we weaken ourselves. And we already seem to be fatally weak. One key measure of this is that our political campaigns are lucky to get say 2% or 3% of the vote.

Its ridiculous for us to fail to unify to oppose such great power. So, go give a listen to this speech by Ron Paul, and ask yourself what parts of this you disagree with. Then ask yourself in the last election why we ran two separate campaigns in the primaries (Paul and Kucinich) when neither had anything close to the strength required to challenge in either party? Then ask yourself why we ran three separate Presidential campaigns when none had anything close to the strength required to challenge Obama or McCain?

There is great agreement between the dissenters on the left and the dissenters on the right. Sure, there are differences. But why can't we focus on what we agree on, which to me happen to be the key issues of ending these wars, returning our economy to one that benefits the people and not the elite, and cleaning up our corrupt elections and government?

So, follow the link and watch this speech.