Worst. Greenberg. Ever.
Here the author shows evidence that Paul Greenberg is an American Artifact***********************************
Paul Greenberg thinks that Ron Paul is a populist. Mr. Greenberg is frequently condescending and elitist, but it was his ability to do so while being so spectacularly wrong on the facts that helped put this column, (Ron Paul American Artifact) over the top as the Worst. Greenberg. Ever.
"The populist impulse remains strong in American politics. So long as there are uncertain times and people looking for simple answers to questions that are anything but simple,...." Greenberg tuts, but the man condescends about the wrong Ron.
"They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right." -Ronald W. Reagan, "A Time for Choosing"
Ron Paul offers real answers. And the real answers are often simple- they just aren't easy. Living within your means is a simple way to avoid bankruptcy, but it isn't easy. It especially isn't easy when the giant companies that own the media also have interests in continued government spending and debt. It is especially true in an environment where global corporations, with no particular loyalty to this country, own the media and also own the companies that service government contracts from the welfare state to banking to the military-industrial-complex. That last is something which that other "populist", President Dwight Eisenhower, warned us about.
Yep, when Ron Paul talks about reducing government spending at home and abroad he gets between Greenberg's masters and their easy money. They would prefer to lobby the government to take your earnings under threat of force in order for the government to purchase what they are selling, while Paul would have you keep your earnings and only give them to these people if they produce something that you choose to buy of your own free will. They can't have that, so they hire small men like Paul Greenberg to mock and insult honorable men like Ron Paul, and then use their media to spread the insult nation-wide. Follow the money and you will understand the reason for the insults and distortions from the corporate media's hirelings.
(I am just getting started. Click Wednesday below and scroll down for rest of article, or if sent straight here then just scroll down)
posted by Mark Moore (Moderator) at Wednesday, February 20, 2008
2 Comments:
Greenberg speaks condescendingly of "populists" because he is the opposite extreme. He is an elitist.
An elitist believes that since he and his cronies in high position are so much smarter than the average Joe, that gives them some kind of right to exert more and more power over average Joe's earnings, and run average Joe's country in a manner which is against Joe's interest but coincides nicely with their own.
This explains why Greenberg goes for statist solutions, and can be counted on to heavily mock and insult any candidate for public office who wants to return control of average Joe's earnings and nation to average Joe.
Greenberg and his friends are so much wiser than us you see. Why, the answers are so "complex" that our poor little heads would explode just thinking about them. Better to leave control of your money and country to your betters!
Greenberg goes on...
there will be Ron Pauls to channel our dissatisfactions and direct our anger and frustrations onto some nebulous villain, like The System.
..but he goes on in error. Ron Paul names specific departments of government that he would cut, such as the mis-named "Department of Education", he mentions specific countries from which he would withdraw our costly military presence. The "System" he names for elimination is also specific: The Federal Reserve Banking System.
Greenberg later says as much without noticing that he contradicts his own earlier claims that Paul complains of a "nebulous" system.....
Dr. Paul is as American as a tintype, a reincarnation of a once familiar type — the money crank — who had a simple, single-cause explanation for any and all problems with the American economy. Namely, that a small, insidious group is manipulating the money supply.
It comes as no surprise to find that Ron Paul believes the Federal Reserve System is an illegal, unconstitutional and generally nefarious conspiracy. It goes with the mental territory he inhabits, and with what Professor Hofstadter described in a noteworthy essay as “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.”
The Federal Reserve banking system is a series of quasi-private banks which can create money out of thin air and charge the American people interest on that money. The bankers love it because they make interest on money they created out of thin air, and the politicians love it because the banks let them spend that money first before it devalued the rest of the dollars held by ordinary citizens.
Of course, this produces inflation, which is a hidden tax and therefore more popular with politicians than the straight-forward kinds of tax increases.
Greenberg frequently commits character assassination by using the straw man technique. He constructs a caricature straw man which he makes sound ridiculous by ascribing to them positions that the real intended target does not actually hold. But he slaps the name of the intended victim of his journalistic malice onto the straw man which he has constructed, thereby persuading his readers that the actual person's real positions are ridiculous.
Add to that gratuitous ridicule, such as labeling disagreement with his politics as a mental disorder ("the Paranoid style in American Politics") and you have the favorite slime technique of this award-winning "journalist".
That the whole thing is a tissue of lies and distortions does not seem to bother him much. He does it like someone who enjoys his power to mock and ridicule others. He knows that his victims don't have a national media to get their side of the story out, so he behaves with the sociopathic glee of a school-yard bully who knows that the much smaller child he is humiliating can do nothing to defend themselves.
To cite a specific straw man example, let's examine his gross distortion of Dr. Paul as a "money crank" who believes in "a simple, single-cause explanation for any and all problems with the American economy. Namely, that a small, insidious group is manipulating the money supply".
The first part of Greenberg's assertion is a straw-man, not the actual position of Dr. Paul.
The second part of the assertion, that a small group is manipulating the money supply, is known fact. They are called the Federal Reserve Board and by law manipulating the money supply is what they do. They do this every time they adjust interest rates (among other things), and Greenberg's idea that one has to be some kind of paranoid to believe this commonly known fact is a lot nuttier than anything I have ever heard from Dr. Ron Paul.
It is a real measure of Greenberg's boldness that he dares to portray Paul as a nut for believing what we all know is true- the Federal Reserve Manipulates the Money supply.
And that brings us back to the straw-man first part of Greenberg's claim, that Paul believes there is a "simple, single-cause explanation for any and all problems with the American economy". Ron Paul believes there is a simple single-cause explanation for ONE problem with the American economy, to whit, inflation.
Ron Paul notes that the cause of inflation is too much money chasing too few goods. Ron Paul is not a nut for believing that, everyone who knows anything about economics believes it. It is the standard textbook explanation for inflation taught in freshman economics class in about every college in America.
That is why I am so confident that Greenberg is not just mistaken when he attacks Ron Paul on this stuff, he is dishonest. He has to know Ron Paul is right about things like this, yet he still chooses to corrupt his God-given talents by using them to try and make this noble man out to be a nut.
The cause of inflation is too much money chasing too few goods. The Fed was started in 1913. The Great Depression came along after 16 years of wild money creation. The U.S. dollar held a value of 35 dollars to the ounce of gold for decades prior to 1913. Now, gold is over twenty times that amount as measured in dollars. The dollar has lost 96% of its purchasing power since the creation of the Fed in 1913, and it is losing purchasing power at an accelerating pace as they create more and more of it to finance reckless spending.
Oil was $20 a barrel when George W. Bush took office. Now it is over $100. In terms of oil, the dollars in your paycheck have lost 80% of their purchasing power over the last seven years. And it is not just oil. Copper is going up, food is going up. Everything but your paycheck.
The fact is that they are not going up so much as the dollar is going down. And Ron Paul is the only politician honest enough to talk to you about it. He is the only one to say we should take away the banks/governments power to create money out of thin air (which is a hidden tax). And Paul Greenberg's job on behalf of the people getting rich from this scheme is to slime the guy who is trying to save your family from the coming financial disaster.
Greenberg also makes reference to some racist remarks made in a newsletter that had Ron Paul's name on it, though he did not write the letter or approve the stories. The letters went out after he had left politics and returned to private life. So bogus were the accusations that even a man as arrogant as Paul Greenberg hesitated to use them, so here is what he did, he pulled a Huckabee. That is right. Just like when Huckabee asked an innocent question about "Don't Mormon's believe that Jesus and Lucifer were brothers?", Greenberg repeated the outrageous accusations against Paul and then tried to cover his rear by adding, "but I don't think Paul is really that kind of man".
The head of the Texas NAACP vouched for Ron Paul, but that does not stop Greenberg from repeating the rot, it only incites his cowardly tendencies to make the comment while trying to separate himself from them. It was a lot like Huckabee, except that Huckabee was closer to right about Mormon doctrine than Greenberg's slime was about Paul.
I don't have time or space to refute all of the man's rot, for it is always easier to hurl out condescending insult and innuendo than it is to point by point explain why the accusations are not true. It is easier to throw pottery than to sweep up broken pottery.
Still, I cannot wish you a good night and a pleasant tomorrow without mentioning the biggest error in the whole thing. The one that completely undermines the whole premise of the article. Greenberg tries to link Paul to some of the Populists leaders of our past, but Ron Paul is not a populist. His positions are the antithesis of those historically espoused by populists in American history. Populists traditionally call for easy money, like William Jennings Bryan and his free-silver politics. Ron Paul calls for honest money.
Greenberg is simply 180 degrees off on the central point of his screed. Paul is not a populist, he is a Constitutionalist and an Austrian-school economist. He would be right at home with the Founding Fathers and Ludwig Von Mises, not the populist fringe personalities Greenberg tries to tie him to. Hey, if the Constitution is an artifact, then they should repeal it, if they can. Ignoring it is ignoring the law of the land.
Here is a quote from a Founding Father and from Von Mises of the Austrian School, see if Ron Paul would not fit in with them....
"A private central bank issuing the public currency is a greater menace to the liberties of the people than a standing army." "We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." - Thomas Jefferson
There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved. The credit expansion boom is built on the sands of banknotes and deposits. It must collapse.
-Von Mises
Worst green burg as ever for the difficulties and for the different situations. The perpetual time of the green touch of the superiorpapers org in simple and with the accentuation of the induced nature of green burger.
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