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Try not to mistake
bigotry for patriotism All I wanted to do this week was talk about college football. I’ve been consumed with how much the idea of a playoff disgusts me, departing players and coaches and classic versus spread offenses for weeks and wanted nothing more than to rant about it. Ron Paul has denied me that satisfaction. The former physician, current Texas senator and long-time lunatic running for the Republican nomination has been a joke to me throughout the pre-election. I find it amusing that someone vying to head the federal government would base a campaign on how to eliminate ... the federal government. It’s like the president of the American Cancer Society applying to be C.E.O. of Marlboro. According to Paul, every tax is unnecessary, every politician is evil and every foreign negotiation is part of some scheme to eliminate America’s sovereignty. He is the poster-child for why you should never trust anyone with two first names. Paul’s latest radio advertisement pushes him past amusedly irrational and into the realm of unacceptability. In the commercial he vows a fight against terrorism, claiming he will employ “stealth warriors” to hunt terrorists down, and that he would completely cut off student visas to terrorist nations. Stealth warriors? Who will be appointed his defense secretary, G.I. Joe? Will the Cobra Commander be elevated to the top of the nation’s most-wanted list? Paul has claimed in the past that he wants the U.S. to stop any and all military intervention overseas, which I guess means that these warriors would not be your typical Navy SEALs, Army Rangers or CIA agents currently assigned to such tasks. Rather, they would be some sort of renegade hired hands that, if caught, would deny any affiliation with the U.S. similar to the Dirty Dozen or A-Team. Of course we won’t have to worry about them getting caught because ... they’re stealth warriors. Paul’s intention to call our troops stealth warriors is confusing, but admittedly harmless. What isn’t so harmless is his intention to deny foreign scholars the opportunity to be educated here. Under this system, recently slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto never would not have been able to study at Harvard. Pakistan is well known for harboring terrorists, so a trip to Cambridge to study with the world’s elites in an effort to bring knowledge and prosperity to her homeland would have been off limits. Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, but make sure the land from which they come is absent of turmoil. For citizens of “terrorist nations,” knowledge can be a vehicle from which they escape and hopefully fight the evils that plague their people. Denying a scholar the opportunity to pursue higher education because they were born in Iraq would be akin to the U.S. turning its back on Einstein during World War II because he hailed from Nazi Germany. Would Israeli and Palestinian students be denied equally? What about students from Northern Ireland? Could they study in the U.S., or does the terrorist label only apply to maniacs strapping bombs to chests of a slightly darker shade? Thousands come to this country from nations much less fortunate than our own to study. This country - and the world as a whole - is a far better place as a result. Paul tries to mask his propaganda as patriotic, but at the core of it rests a despicable racism. The man is not a patriot, he is a bigot. Nothing more and there is nothing less. The joke has ceased to be funny. |
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"All I wanted to do this week was talk about college football.” That was the beginning of the article written by Pete Cunningham in last week’s paper. His article instead goes on to attack the Presidential candidate Ron Paul. My suggestion is he should stick to the hard hitting issues surrounding college football. His grasp of the details on other subjects is, at best, ignorant. Pete attacks Ron Paul as a bigot. Let us examine his record. He is a veteran of the United States Air Force, he has delivered over 4000 babies as a doctor, and he has served for almost 20 years in Congress as a representative from Texas. He supports allowing Americans to keep more of their own money, eliminating the IRS, ending private control of American monetary policy by ending the federal reserve, returning the United States to a country focused on the principles found in the constitution, and receives the support of current and former military more than any other candidate. To Pete this speaks of bigotry? Pete doesn’t like the idea of restricting foreigners from terrorist nations from going to school here in the United States. Our openness to foreigners from nations that support terror led to the attacks on 9-11. Pete doesn’t want to discriminate against the possibility someone from a country that hates us might want to kill us. Well Pete, get up off your butt and enlist. Go to Iraq, like I did, and see those wonderful people you want to live next to you. Watch a car bomb kill fellow soldiers while you sit helplessly taking the American flag off the antenna of your HUMMVE because you are a “liberator” not an “occupier.” For that matter you personally invite those foreigners from countries that preach hate against America into your home, let them sleep under your roof, risk the safety of your family and then write about bigotry. Until you do all that and experience the hate personally, stick to college football. That is something you can screw up entirely without leading to the death of innocent Americans. -Tom Lowe United States Army, Retired Operation Iraqi Freedom Veteran |