Dear “Tea Party”: Whether you know it or not, your founding father is below. If you are to be what you claim you are (what you’ve been told to believe you are), then pay attention to what Rep. Ron Paul — who actually is — said on the floor of the U.S. House this week.
If you really think you are “conservative”, isn’t it time you started acting like it? Like Paul (The Elder, unlike The Younger) has been doing now for years? Pay attention. This is for you…
Text transcript follows below…
There is now more information confirming that Saudi Arabia is a principal supporter and financier of al Qaeda, and that this should set off alarm bells since we guarantee its Sharia-run government. This emphasizes even more the fact that no al Qaeda existed in Iraq before 9/11, and yet we went to war against Iraq based on the lie that it did. It has been charged by experts that Julian Assange, the internet publisher of this information, has committed a heinous crime, deserving prosecution for treason and execution, or even assassination.
But should we not at least ask how the U.S. government should prosecute an Australian citizen for treason for publishing U.S. secret information that he did not steal? And if WikiLeaks is to be prosecuted for publishing classified documents, why shouldn’t the Washington Post, the New York Times, and others also published these documents be prosecuted? Actually, some in Congress are threatening this as well.
The New York Times, as a results of a Supreme Court ruling, was not found guilty in 1971 for the publication of the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg never served a day in prison for his role in obtaining these secret documents. The Pentagon Papers were also inserted into the Congressional record by Senator Mike Gravel, with no charges of any kind being made of breaking any national security laws. Yet the release of this classified information was considered illegal by many, and those who lied us into the Vietnam war, and argued for its prolongation were outraged. But the truth gained from the Pentagon Papers revealed that lies were told about the Gulf of Tonkin attack. which perpetuated a sad and tragic episode in our history.
Just as with the Vietnam War, the Iraq War was based on lies. We were never threatened by weapons of mass destruction or al Qaeda in Iraq, though the attack on Iraq was based on this false information. Any information which challenges the official propaganda for the war in the Middle East is unwelcome by the administration and the supporters of these unnecessary wars. Few are interested in understanding the relationship of our foreign policy and our presence in the Middle East to the threat of terrorism. Revealing the real nature and goal of our presence in so many Muslim countries is a threat to our empire, and any revelation of this truth is highly resented by those in charge.
Questions to consider:
- Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?
- Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?
- Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?
- Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 Billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?
- Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?
- If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?
- Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?
- Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?
- Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?
Thomas Jefferson had it right when he advised ‘Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed.’ And I yield back the balance of my time.
Teabaggers might want to switch from tea to something a little more sedative.
The WikiLeaks irony is tame when put up against Ron Paul’s take on the Iraq War. Unlike 99.999% of Teabaggers, Paul was against the war from the day the Bushes started pushing for it.
And what is a Teabagger, anyways, besides a Republican moron who got so embarrassed by the Iraq War that a change in identity was the only way to face intelligent family members across the table at Thanksgiving dinner?
Billy’s insights rule supreme. Perfectly put.
Thanx for posting this Brad. To bad it fell on a bunch of sellout deaf ears on the take.
Whatever the Tea Party might have been or might have become, the GOP moved quickly to co-opt it — it died stillborn. The Tea Party bears a strong (spiritual) resemblance to the Democratic Party in the sense that both have been captured by the interests to which each was originally inimical.
Getting teabuggerers to understand how excessive government secrecy is anathema to democracy?
File under “exercises in futility”.
They’re all immune to inconvenient truths, and they’ll only follow the FOX script spoon-fed to them, which includes the belief they’re acting out of their own free will. And that anything Brad Blog posts is part of a communist plot to destroy amurka.
Don’t stop tryin, though!
Ron Paul is the real deal. I had to register as a Republican temporarily to vote for him in the 2008 primaries (I have since returned to “Decline to State”), but it was worth it. His positions still resonate with me and I’m glad to have him in the House as that rare principled voice of reason who does not allow himself to be bought or sold. Lamentably, the tea baggers will not listen, though. They can only hear people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh who relentlessly yell and shout utter nonsensical garbage…. all the way to the bank.