Greenwald: Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies

[DirkGently]

83. He's got a point, muddied a bit by Paul's underlying craziness. On paper, Obama's taken positions

that are at least as antithetical to progressive policies as Paul's, and far more so in some cases. But Obama makes sure his anti-progressive positions can somehow be shoehorned into the mainstream. Paul's style is to advocate things that One Simply Does Not Say, like legalizing drugs, or not going to war somewhere. That's the reason some are glad he's around saying them -- no else will.

And then you've got the underlying crazy. The gold standard thing. And Paul is a hateful bigot, whatever his grandfatherly manners and present denunciations of all the crazy crap from his old newsletters.

And, of course, Paul has the luxury of just saying what he'd do, while Obama has to actually deal with the Senate and the public responding. If we were just comparing the talking game, I'd say Obama wins as a progressive hands down. Remember, this was the guy who wasn't going to prosecute medical marijuana, once upon a time.

Interesting, though. WOULD President Paul, (after distributing to all white male landowners their bags of gold dust with which to purchase groceries) end U.S. military aggression in the Middle East? Would he do something so egregious and repellent as sign a bill codifying Bush's illegal interpretation of the Constitution that says we're always at war, and therefore anyone can be thrown in a hole whenever the President says so?

Kind of funny, though, to see all the vicious, narrow-minded, partisan attacks, on the basis that Greenwald predicted vicious narrow-minded, partisan attacks. Guess there's some kind of anti-irony field around the site today.