Allison Bricker

Social news site reddit.com interviews 14th Congressional District representative, Ron Paul. Questions were asked and voted upon by the reddit community, with the top ten questions asked during the course of the interview.

1. Kitanata: Dr. Paul, you have stated that you do not support Net Neutrality. Could you define Net Neutrality as you see it, then elaborate on what aspects of Net Neutrality you do not support and why? Thank you.




2. Fauster: Do you think that scientists are politically motivated with regard to issues of global warming and evolution? As a medical professional, you probably understand the value of deferring to specialists outside areas of your expertise. Nonetheless, you openly disagree with overwhelming scientific consensus in these two areas. While hardly anyone thinks Greenland will melt in twenty years, the overwhelming majority of scientists believe the effects of climate change will be lasting and severe in the next 50-100 years. With regard to evolution, almost all biologists, geologists, and physicists would say it’s better characterized as a law than a theory. Do you think the Bible provides a superior account of the origins of life on Earth, and thus claim a different source of expertise? Or rather, do you believe that scientific claims are grossly wrong, biased, or politically motivated?




3. SquirrelOnFire: Congressman Paul, The current health care legislation seems to be moving closer to the insurance industry’s ideal (minimal change + mandatory insurance) each day. What can be done to tip the balance of power in the congress away from lobbyists and towards the voters? Thank you for agreeing to speak with us.




4. Blackf1sh: Congressman Paul, Government investments in science and technology have historically yielded great returns. For example, it has been estimated[1] that, “technologies derived from quantum mechanics may account for 30% of the gross national product of the United States.” Money from the US government has led to the development of the internet[2] and a long list of NASA spin-off technologies have contributed to our daily lives[3].

   In contrast, the risk-averse private sector has little incentive and a poor track record for funding these types of long-term projects. Although the exploratory research in academic settings is often inefficient at achieving specific goals, it has the unique potential to yield unexpectedly amazing results on decade-long timescales.

   How can one justify reducing the budget for science and technology in spite of the quality of life and national security afforded by the developments from government-funded research?




5. Rightc0ast: Dr. Paul, Regarding the theory of evolution, I realize you have said you don’t feel the issue is important, but it’s been a topic discussed at great length at reddit, and other web sites. We’d really appreciate an answer to this.

   Allow me to clarify. Many people mistakenly confuse actual evolution with abiogenesis, or life coming from inanimate matter. Evolution is not a theory of creation. It is a theory encompassing genetic drift and selection, and describing changes in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. Do you accept evolution in this regard as the foundation upon which nearly all biological knowledge is based, or do you truly believe change within species from generation to generation does not occur?




6. DoesMyKeyboardWork: Dr. Paul, What would a “return to sound currency” look like? Realistically, how would it play out? Would people exchange their dollars for a new gold/silver backed currency?

   As much as I agree with you (donated for the original money bomb, sticker on my car, wrote you in for the election), the defeatist in me thinks this is impossible and the entire system is eternally ruined. Thank you (and sorry for the pessimism)




7. TheHiveQueen: Dr. Paul, How do you reconcile the fact that you believe that the Federal Government has no place in Gay Marriage debate with your support of DOMA?




8. Playeren: Sir, should the government be able to keep secrets from the public at all? And Is ultimate freedom more important than ultimate security?




9. Chungkaishek: Dr. Paul, Given your well-established belief in the merits of the free market system, I’d like to know how you feel about the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA establishes restrictions and requirements on businesses, something I imagine goes against free market principles, yet it also ensures, for example, that a blind customer with a service animal such as a seeing eye dog will be treated like any other customer and not turned away for bringing a dog into a store.

   Should a free market decide which customers get service, or is this the responsibility of the federal government?




10. Jboeke: Dr. Paul, I’m trying to be a good libertarian, but I’m conflicted. I live in Phoenix, AZ and we just started up our light rail system earlier this year. I love it! I use it to commute to work and take it to the bar on weekends so I don’t drive drunk.

    But, light rail was a big public works project which took millions in taxpayer money from the three different cities and the Federal government. Unfortunately, I can’t imagine a scenario where something like light rail would have ever been built by the free market. How can I enjoy this project and still be a good libertarian?

Joseph Marohl

“GLAAD president Jarrett Barrios, who saw the film Friday, said that ‘the movie was a well-intentioned series of sketches — some hit the mark and some hit the gay community pretty hard and reinforce some damaging, hurtful stereotypes.’” –Sandy Cohen

Brüno may seem less shocking because we already experienced that response with Borat, but I think in most respects Brüno is the better movie.

I suspect many mainstream reviewers’ meh responses are an unconscious attempt to diminish the discomfort of having to observe homophobia with neither the usual sentimental treatment of its victims nor the comforting illusion that it is entirely contained to certain subgroups in our society—this movie makes you FEEL homophobia, even if you are gay and not homophobic at all. Brüno, after all, is a homophobe’s “straw man” of a gay person: Who wouldn’t look down on Brüno?

I don’t mean to imply that people who don’t get or enjoy the movie are homophobes, but the way the Brüno character excites homophobic reactions seems more daring and more informative than the more mainstream-acceptable films that have the sweet, sensitive, misunderstood gay guy die at the end just because “some elements” in our society are not as highly evolved as others.

But Brüno shows us that lots of people on all levels of our culture—from Alabama rabbit hunters to Hollywood bigwigs—lose their shit when confronted with someone like Brüno.

That the movie also delves into America’s conflicted reactions to class, race, violence, children, and the media further complicates our responses to it.

Nobody should feel forced to enjoy this movie. That’s not my point. Certainly not. But I hope GLAAD and other respected spokespeople for the GLBT community won’t let the mainstream media use their well-qualified concerns to demonize a satirical film for doing its job without pulling punches.

Satire has a long history of condemning its society’s inhumanity, dullness, and obscenity and, for its troubles, being accused of being inhumane, dull, and obscene.

Joseph Marohl

I want to be Brüno. In my day I’ve lost a job, been kicked by a cop, spent a night in jail, and logged upward to 30 or so mean-spirited messages on my phone—all for conducting myself in perfectly legal, private, and on occasion even community-spirited ways outside the heterosexual norm. But, damn, I’ve never told a Palestinian terrorist to his face that he needs to do something with his uninteresting hair or approached protesters from Fred Phelps’ (God-Hates-Fags) Westboro Baptist Church to help me disengage from my partner to whom I’m chained and handcuffed while anally impaled by a TV remote. Sacha Baron Cohen has—and he’s not even gay.

Unlike Borat, the character Cohen explored in 2006’s quasi-documentary Borat: Cultural Learnings of America …, Brüno is not a stranger to Western culture. Borat was naïve because of geographic isolation, and Brüno too is naïve, but because of self-absorption—less because he’s gay (over-the-top über-gay) than because of his involvement in the fashion industry—a world to itself (as any watcher of Bravo knows) every bit as tribal, myopic, dim-witted, and cruel just for the sport of it as any real or fictitious Kazakhstan.

Brüno is so out of touch with the media’s concept of “real issues” as to think Hamas is hummus, Ron Paul is RuPaul (so did I, for about a month, I blush to admit), OJ is a traditional African name, Darfur is in Iraq, and John Travolta is straight. The film’s focus is on homophobia—homophobia in show business, in religion, and on the streets and among African-Americans, politicians, and good ole boys in the South. The few reviews I’ve read have attempted (from whatever motives) to downplay this aspect of the film. But the movie also deals with the West’s celebrity and fame obsession, its hair-trigger willingness to take offense, the follies of its public relations firms, its touchiness over matters relating to race and class, and, yes, post-Reagan-era gays’ simultaneous yet contradictory fixations on the outré and mainstream assimilation.

Brüno the film is, of course, not for everybody. Anybody offended by the “exploitative” and “manipulative” way Cohen’s Borat pushed real, everyday people into revealing their servility, bigotry, and foolishness is not going to like Brüno’s button-pushing any better. Anybody offended by the potty humor and near pornographic explicitness of South Park will leave the theater shaking his head in disbelief that this movie received only an “R” rating.

But, as I’ve said before, Cohen works in the tradition of Menippus, Swift, Twain, and Lenny Bruce, whose diatribes against the inhumanity, stupidity, and obscenity of their respective cultures were (and still are) accused of being misanthropic, insane, and dirty.

At least one critic has accused the movie of being disjointed, but I felt that Brüno was structurally and thematically more coherent than Borat. The film follows many of the predictable conventions of modern romantic comedy—Boy ventures out in search of love and personal advancement, ultimately finding them in an unexpected place.

And unlike another summer comedy, like, say, The Hangover—which I enjoyed very much, without once laughing out loud or caring one instant for the characters’ bizarre and increasingly outlandish escapades—I laughed quite a bit during Brüno and was strangely moved by its climax (at an already infamous mixed martial arts spectacular in Arkansas), at which insight comes to our protagonist in the midst of one of the most vicious mob scenes ever committed to film (and it’s real).

The comedy is weakest when it depends on pratfalls and buffoonery, for example, Brüno’s mishaps in a Velcro suit. The best laughs come with a good bit of cringing. And I probably flinched six times for every time I laughed. I’m not sure which gives face muscles the more exercise, cackling or wincing, but my cheeks were sore as I left the cinema (fill in your own butt pun here).

Ha, I just said “fill in your own butt”!

My recommendation? See it if you think you’re up for it. Don’t, if your idea of funny is “nice”—no doubt Patrick Dempsey and Calista Flockhart should be coming out with something really sweet and cute any day now. Brüno is anything (and everything) but “nice.”

The Smoking Argus

In their never ending attempt to obtain a government love license, the homosexual movement has apparently found a loophole. The government must immediately seek to close this glaring omission of the law and stop the notion that love can be obtained without government’s consent. In a post 9/11 world, love must be reserved for those who are capable of providing the government with subsequent generations of offspring in order to ensure the proper repayment of debt. If we allow just anyone to love, then how will the bankers government continue to keep us safe, strong  and free from the evil spooky gays terrorists.

(much [unlicensed] love to Young Americans for Liberty for posting this video.)

Source(s): The Onion News Network

Joseph Marohl

Karl Rove, echoed by many other Republican talking heads, tells us that investigating torture (not torturing itself) is the moral equivalent of a military dictatorship.

***

Business students in India are reading Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf to pick up on the Fuhrer’s management techniques—10,000 copies of the book have sold in the last six months in New Delhi alone.

***

Within a month, two American fifth-graders, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover and Jaheem Herrera, hanged themselves after being taunted for being perceived as gay—after guardians of the boys pleaded with school officials to take action against bullying by other school children.

***

Our new friends and allies in the Middle East, the Iraqi militia, reportedly are gluing shut the anuses of arrested homosexuals and then forcing them to drink a diarrhea-inducing drink, causing an excruciating death. These vicious acts, currently numbered at 60, stem from recent religious decrees demanding the death penalty for homosexuality.

***

Sci-fi author and Mormon Times columnist Orson Scott Card has joined the board of the anti-same-sex-marriage, anti-homosexual National Organization for Marriage (NOM)—last July he wrote, “Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down.”

Joseph Marohl

I think I may be ready for whatever 2009 has to offer because I’ve been living like there’s no tomorrow for most of my life.

Periodically shamed by my own lack of providence, I find myself now in nearly the same boat as my peers who day by day put something by for a rainy day—all of us are soaked now, umbrella-less in the cold showers. Their investments are disappearing; mine, such as they ever were, went kaput at the end of the 1990s.

I’m OK with this. I’m used to it. It may even be my element. I’ve always had a fondness for inclement weather. Clement weather’s for wusses.

I’d like to say my amused pessimism is the product of a hard, tragic life. But it isn’t. Most Somalis would envy my childhood, but by post-WW2 US standards, it was no great shakes either. I was brought up an only child in a working class environment (i.e. US military bases) by emotionally stunted parents (asocial, uncommunicative, distant, occasionally berserk) and from time to time, when the folks were strapped for cash, I had not-quite-Dickensian holidays: once I got just an orange and some unshelled pecans for Christmas, and in the eighteen years, give or take, of childhood, I had precisely one (modest and cheerless) birthday party. I was different (i.e. “gay) and raised in a series of hellfire-and-brimstone churches we usually fled once my mother decided they were too liberal.

I suspect it was in my nature to be bleak from early childhood. This was brought home to me recently when I happened to pay attention to a large framed picture of me at age seven or, at most, eight. My eyes stare placidly ahead, not even a shred of a smile on my lips, not miserable, though, more matter of fact. Maybe too much phlegm, as Hippocrates might have diagnosed my appearance.

Even as a child, I looked a bit like a character in Charles Addams cartoons—macabre New Yorker drawings republished in books through the 1960s, and I checked out every one of them multiple times from the base library. By the way, “macabre” was my favorite word as a child—and I’m fairly certain that I was the only seventh grader at my school who knew what “black comedy” is.

In adolescence I was Harold without Maude. I was convinced that I would die before age eighteen, so now, 37 years later, it’s all gravy. Thin, flavorless gravy. But gravy.

So today I live in a world where the government is bailing out once intimidatingly successful corporations so the CEOs can go home with nothing less than the full $28 million they were led to believe they deserve. As little as I watch the news on television, I’m struck by the number of gray, drawn faces under $500 haircuts, flickering in the cathode rays, terrified that their gross worth may soon fall short of a million.

Did you see The Big Chill? The 1983 comedy of alienated idealism in the Reagan years. I loved that movie, but I haven’t seen it in ages. One part I remember fairly vividly was Richard, the character played by TV actor Don Galloway, who, commenting on a friend who’s taken his own life, says, “The thing is… no one ever said it would be fun. At least… no one ever said it to me.” Of course, in the story’s context, Richard is a philistine, a reject among the radicals-turned-yuppies whom the film glorifies.

But I say, “Well said, Richard. Well said.”

I live in a culture that fights terrorism by shopping and visiting Disney World. A culture where six figures is the cutting-off point of the middle class. Even Richard was a successful Republican businessman, whose values, while stoic, were out of step with the new brand of conservatism epitomized by Ronald Reagan.

My frame of reference is several floors down from this. My favorite movie of all time is Robert Altman’s 1975 Nashville, in which a song, written by actor Keith Carradine*, recurs as a kind of motif. The song is tongue in cheek, but it does reflect an existential truth about our society’s little people. It goes like this:

“The price of bread may worry some, / But it don’t worry me. / Tax relief may never come, / But it don’t worry me. / The economy’s depressed, not me. / My spirit’s high, as it can be, / You may say that I ain’t free, / But it don’t worry me / …. / Y’say this train don’t give out rides / Well, it don’t worry me. / All the world is taking sides, / But it don’t worry me / Cause in my empire life is sweet / Just ask any ’bo you meet. / And life may be a one-way street, / But it don’t worry me.”

*It’s worth a side note to add that Carradine’s father, John Carradine, played Jim Casy, the “lousy-with-the-spirit” vagabond preacher in John Ford’s 1940 film of The Grapes of Wrath. And Keith’s brother, David, played the hobo minstrel Woody Guthrie in Hal Ashby’s 1976 biopic Bound for Glory.

Joseph Marohl

I’m hard pressed to find much to distinguish what director Gus Van Sant accomplishes in his biopic Milk that was not already accomplished in the Academy Award-winning 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, directed by Rob Epstein.

Both are excellent films. Both use archival footage to chronicle the life and times of America’s first openly gay public official. Both use Milk’s taped last will—recorded in the event of his assassination—as the thread upon which to construct the plot. Both regard their central figure as both a devious politician and a true American idealist.

What most obviously distinguishes the more recent film is the bravura performance (another one) by Sean Penn as Milk. Penn breaks my heart in this. Not just because of his character’s fate, which, like the Epstein documentary, opens the film, so that the imminence of death is felt at every step, but mostly because Penn captures Milk’s magnetism and mannerisms, along with, more profoundly, merely human moments—like the thrill of falling in love or fighting for a great, just cause.

Van Sant’s film covers Milk’s life from 1970 to his death in 1978 and appropriately reduces the events subsequent to Dan White’s assassination of Milk and Mayor George Moscone to a brief captioned epilogue.

Instead, it provides deeper insight to Milk’s loving relationships with Scott Smith (James Franco) and Jack Lira (Diego Luna). Van Sant is able to use these relationships to portray a more complex picture of gay life—not pleading for tolerance and equality, as did the documentary—but showing how the personal and the political can converge and clash and presenting us the audience with a fuller panoply of gay characters than we usually get to see at the movies.

Josh Brolin’s nuanced performance as Dan White is also remarkable. Whereas Epstein’s film mainly presents White as the iceberg that would eventually sink Milk’s Titanic, Van Sant’s film shows the pressures of maintaining and upholding hetero-normativity as a political issue and the toll of staking too much of one’s self-identity on one’s being “normal.”

What makes the new film in many ways a more (or differently) elegant film than its predecessor is its attempt to show how, over and over, Milk and White attempt and fail to reach out to each other—especially in a realistic scene of White’s drunkenly pathetic exchange with Milk at the latter’s birthday party—and this is the tragic heart of the film.

Joseph Marohl

Me, I’m elated by Barack Obama’s win. I wasn’t one to be dazzled by every aspect of the man’s style and certainly not all his stances, but in the last months I came to feel he has the makings to be the best President this country has ever seen—and the nadir George Bush reached in the last eight years makes Obama’s promise shine all the brighter.

The Bush Administration have brought the country low—bankrupt, globally despised, torn between two wars, baselessly arrogant, fearful (no, terrorized … and by its own government!), stripped of essential civil liberties, and contemptuous of the poor, the aged, and the ill.

Whether I’m right or wrong about Obama right now, he needs to be great just to offset the mess we’re all in. More to the point, it is the American people, as a whole, who need to exhibit greatness, for no elected official, however novel or charismatic, can do the work of rebuilding the nation’s character.

My hopes, such as they are, are wrapped on the new President’s being everything I think he can be.

Still, for me, though, the great disappointment—in the midst of my current high—is that California appears to have passed Proposition 8, negating the court’s decision earlier this year permitting lesbians and gay men to marry whom they please. Arizona and Florida have passed similar measures, either banning or reinforcing an existing law banning same-sex marriage. Arkansas voters decided to ban gays from being able to adopt children.

As speaker after speaker recalls Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream at what one hopes can be the dawn of a better America this morning, we must face the truth that electing a mixed-race President is a gigantic step forward, indeed, but pushing others back down at the same moment reveals that America has yet preserved its ugly side—in its homophobia and religious fear and bigotry.

Allison Bricker

With Election Day only one week away, voters in 3 states, Florida¹, California², and Arizona³ will again be voting on whether same sex couples should be allowed to “marry”. The debate regarding whom can marry is yet another example of politicians creating and fostering a wedge between Americans.

Marriage as an institution, is a purely religious ceremony conducted by a church to bless the union of two individuals under the eyes of that religion’s deity and theocratic dogma. Whereas, a “Marriage License” is merely a conglomeration of 1600+ legal benefits, liabilities, and tax designations, i.e. “CIVIL-RIGHTS” granted by a state.

Since CIVIL-RIGHTS are granted de jure (in law) they are subject to the “Equal Protection Clause” of the 14th Amendment to the United States Federal Constitution. Ergo, CIVIL-RIGHTS fall directly under the principle affirmed by Brown v. Board of Education⁴. Currently, states are maintaining two separate unequal civil institutions by allowing heterosexual couples to obtain a singular license containing the 1600+ legal designations via the courts, whilst requiring same-sex couples to piecemeal together the numerous legalities ad hoc. Thus what costs a heterosexual couple approximately $40.00 can cost thousands of dollars for same-sex couples in court costs and attorney’s fees.

The two very distinct paths in securing these civil rights quite laughably, does not even rise to the legal standard extolled under Plessy v. Ferguson⁵ which found that governments could only sustain separate civil institutions if they were of no difference in quality. The current structure is indeed separate, but is nowhere close to equal when contrasting the time, research, and monies spent by heterosexual couples against the time, research, and monies spent by same-sex couples.

Moreover, the state’s “marriage” license really has nothing to do whatsoever with sanctifying or blessing either union. As such, labeling the aforementioned a “marriage” license is nothing but an attempt by politicians to use the fear of “redefining [theocratic] marriage” as a wedge in order to secure their own slime ridden seats in public office.

It is far more accurate and unduly less divisive to call the license what it indeed is for both heterosexual and same-sex couples; a civil contract of partnership. Any arguement to the contrary regarding the accuracy of a marriage license would result in the government affirming a unique religious philosophy, thus breaching separation of church and state.

If an individual church wishes to refuse “sanctifying” a ceremony between same-sex couples then they, as a private institution are free to do so visa vi their inherent right to free association. Their action has no legal consequences whatsoever. The debate over the recognition of same-sex couples needs to be debated amongst the church itself and its congregation. Individual members of the congregation are free to form their own congregation in “protest”, interpreting the scriptures as more inclusive and less exclusive much in the same spirit of Martin Luther. Regardless, the debate over the sanctity of unions is best left to the four walls of a chapel, whilst the legality of said partnerships is best left confined within the four walls of a statehouse.

Additionally, governments previously acknowledged the necessity of legally securing partnerships whether by common law or same-sex. In the 19th century, “Boston Marriages”⁶ as they were called, secured the rights of women living with one another under the same roof, much in the same way today’s “marriage” contracts secure the ability of probate and fiduciary responsibility. It was not until the beginning of the 20th century when modern “marriage” licenses came into existence⁷ that Politicians first used the wedge of “traditional marriage” as a way to prevent interracial marriage. One would hope, that 100 years later we would not be fooled by the same ruse yet again.

However, until we call bullsh!t on these politicians carelessly throwing around the word “marriage”, they will continue to use the word solely as a tool to divide the people against one another.

Source(s): ¹Florida Marriage Protection Amendment, Proposition 2 • ²CALIFORNIA INITIATIVE to ELIMINATE RIGHT of SAME-SEX COUPLES TO MARRY, Proposition 8 • ³PROPOSING AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF ARIZONA; AMENDING THE CONSTITUTION OF ARIZONA BY ADDING ARTICLE XXX; RELATING TO MARRIAGE, Proposition 102 •⁴347 U.S. 483 BROWN ET AL. v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA ET AL.APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF KANSAS. Argued December 9, 1952. Reargued December 8, 1953. Decided May 17, 1954. • ⁵ PLESSY v. FERGUSON, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) 163 U.S. 537 • ⁶ Psychology of Women Quarterly, Volume 18 Issue 4, Pages 627 – 641, Published Online: 28 Jul 2006 • ⁷ “Taking Marriage Private”, New York Times, Published: November 26, 2007