Still Freaking Out Over Ron Paul? Stop Hyperventilating Already and Put Some Goods on the Table

[Puregonzo1188]

32. But he strikes a chord with other people as well. People who should be (and are our allies).

Someone I know who is very leftist, a supporter of Occupy Wall Street, was inspired to get her PhD in theology by Cornel West and African-American just started posting pro-Ron Paul for President stuff on her facebook. Why? Because of his comments on Bradley Manning.

I am not saying she's right and I suspect she doesn't know the truth about all of Ron Paul's positions, particularly his views on race, and if she does I think she's being short sighted. But we can't just right off all of his supporters as racist in the Montana Militia--they aren't.

I am not Ron Paul supporter by any stretch of the imagination--I am gay, a Marxist, and an atheist and find his homophobia, bigotry, Christian fundamentalism, and economic ideology deeply unsettling. But at the same time I can empathize with OP's sentiment, though I find it very poorly worded and deeply troubling in some parts, point about how are we going to address this issues and people who support Ron Paul because of them? We need to have some better answers then derided people and calling them racist or lunatics or what not--since that's not going to work and we seriously need to nip this Ron Paul shit in the bud.

The simple problem is that Ron Paul's appeal to some on the left is not entirely the result of uninformed individuals, but a larger failure of the left that no one wants to address since it's a pretty inconvenient truth.

Instead of spending our time rallying to the defense of a corporate politician and a failed political system we should have been building a broad-based progressive movement for economic justice for all, and against imperialism.

And maybe it's about time we have an honest discussion about Israel.