CommentsDisplaying barrycooper's 10 most recent comments.

• Bill Ayers: ‘I Get Up Every Morning and Think…Today I‘m Going to End Capitalism’

  April 2, 2012 at 4:24pm

  Whenever you see the phrase “end capitalism”, what you need to read is “impose a tyranny on everyone, run by people just like me, who have never had real jobs, created jobs, contributed to the national wealth in any way, but who still feel uniquely entitled to tell everyone else how to live their lives.”

• Frances Fox Piven: ‘Time for Another Surge From the Bottom’

  March 18, 2012 at 5:23pm

  Right or left, I encourage everyone to read this piece from the HuffPo on the real nature of economic disparity in this country. It has nothing to do with the profit motive, per se, and everything to do with using the legally sanctioned power to create money to extract wealth from the actually productive. If the OWS start focusing on THIS 1%, they will have my support. Of course, most of them gave up actual thinking long ago, but somebody needs to be running the show, and the bots will line up wherever they are told to line up.

  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-mullen/how-the-fed-steals-for-th_b_1343283.html

• Romney on ‘Cadillacs’ Comment: If People Think There’s Something Wrong With Success, ‘Vote for the Other Guy’

  February 26, 2012 at 3:56pm

  Biggest misconception is easy: that he will do ANYTHING to curb out of control spending. When we look at the balance sheets after his first year, they will look just like they would have under Obama, with the exception that he will not step on the pedal with Obamacare, which may well get struck down in court anyway. We borrow $120 a month now, and will under Romney. There will be no change.

  Why and how people fail to grasp this is unclear to me.

  Ron Paul is the only credible conservative. I think he can be with justice compared to Calvin Coolidge, both in temperament and politics. We do not need a government that does things. We need a government that does not PREVENT US from doing things. Paul will move us rapidly and decisively back in that direction.

  My short case for him, focused on the only issue that should matter to most, that of spending, is here: http://moderatesunited.blogspot.com/2012/02/letter-to-ron-paul-skeptics-rerevised.html

• Santorum: Separation of Church and State Not ‘Absolute’

  February 26, 2012 at 3:48pm

  OF COURSE the separation is not absolute: our nation was founded in no small measure to sponsor religious freedom. Our Founding Fathers prayed at the Constitutional Convention and often afterwards. If you read the First Amendment, it plainly says that speech will not be abridged, and that religious speech is a type of speech. And how on earth could you eradicate the influence of religion on government, when the people running it are religious? Obviously, people like John Kennedy–who never liked to go more than a day or two without cheating on Jackie–intend anti-religious bigotry of precisely the sort that caused the Pilgrims to come here in the first place.

  Having said that, though, Ron Paul is every bit as solid on enabling the sundry States to integrate religion however they want, and more important Ron Paul is the ONLY candidate who is going to do ANYTHING about our out of control spending.

  I want to be clear: people assume, based on the R next to someone’s name, that they favor spending cuts. When it comes to Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum, that belief UTTERLY unfounded. They have promised to cut NOTHING, and that is from OBAMA’S budget, which is what got us a Republican House in 2010.

  Paul is the only one whose election will make any difference. I have written a short case for him here: http://moderatesunited.blogspot.com/2012/02/letter-to-ron-paul-skeptics-rerevised.html

  Think, people, THINK. What will freedom mean when we are broke?

• ‘Thomas Paine vs George Washington’: Santorum and Beck Part Ways on Libertarianism

  February 24, 2012 at 11:56am

  Conservatism is really quite simple: it is individualism, self reliance, and the small government both imply. If you are not for smaller government, you are not a conservative. It is that simple.

  By that standard, Santorum is not a conservative. Conservatism is not telling people what they should and shouldn’t do. It is granting them the space and right to live their lives, to pursue their own moral orders, as they see fit, and it is above all avoiding radical moral agendas that are demanded of others at the point of a gun.

  Santorum has no plan to reduce the size even of Obama’s government. He will continue spending at the same levels. All he will do is prevent the current problems from getting WORSE, as they plainly will once the full weight of Obamacare’s taxes and spending hit, and as the Baby Boomers put their full weight on the Medicare and Social Security rolls.

  There is only one fiscal conservative in the race, and that is Ron Paul. My short case for him is here: http://moderatesunited.blogspot.com/2012/02/letter-to-ron-paul-skeptics-rerevised.html

• Ron Paul: U.S. ‘Slipping Into a Fascist System’

  February 19, 2012 at 9:38am

  He is right. I would have fought hard against anyone who used that word just a few years ago, but now when I read about our own Congress authorizing the denial of habeas corpus and due process to American citizens merely ACCUSED of crimes, of raids on Amish farms, of denying cow owners the right to drink the milk of their own cattle, of people being physically molested simply as a result of wanting to fly on private jet airliners, of Executive orders in the hundreds vitiating the intent and letter of the Constitution, of the Supreme Court plainly exceeding its mandate to such an extent that it often operates as an extension of the Legislative Branch, of an unregulated Federal Reserve gifting hundreds of billions of dollars to already prosperous banks, I agree.

  Our most pressing danger is not an attack on Israel. That is Israel’s most pressing danger. Our most pressing danger is not a terrorist attack. We have had none in ten years, despite the patent simplicity of causing random violence.

  Our most pressing threat is the size and power of our government. If we lose our freedom, it does not matter who our external enemies are, as we will have lost our soul as a nation. This is preventable, but only if we grasp how hot the water we are in has become.

• Did Actor Denzel Washington Really Call Atheists ‘Sociopaths?’

  February 15, 2012 at 7:43pm

  This is the kind of piece that has caused me to visit the Blaze only rarely. I think Denzel’s head is in the right place. Sociopaths feel no larger sense of connection, no sense of consequence, no sense of judgement. These are all supported by denying a creator, a larger reality, and larger responsibility.

  If Ayn Rand had been a theist of any sort, she would not have developed the philosophy she did, and her followers would not be encouraged to develop narcissistic personalities.

• Filmmaker Oliver Stone Would Vote for Ron Paul Over Obama

  January 26, 2012 at 6:40pm

  Ron Paul’s basic stance, that the task of our military is to defend our borders, not coerce global peace in a Pax Americana, is really just an extension of the philosophy that if no one is bothering you, you leave them alone.

  Plainly, many of the less pretty things done by the CIA and other American operatives overseas during the Cold War have to be seen in that context: we were fighting a global menace which clearly had the intent of conquering the world, and which clearly had the military and financial power to make it happen.

  What are we fighting now? My area recently got a battle group back from Afghanistan, and I’ve talked with a lot of guys right off the planes, that I meet in bars. They spent their time finding terror camps and weapons stashes. But if you think about it, how exactly are the “graduates” of these camps going to get over here and hurt anyone? Do they load their Semtex and AK on a plane,and fly here? Of course not. They attack Afghanis and us. Nobody on American soil is being protected.

  The salient danger, now, is financial collapse, and it is BY FAR the greatest danger we face. It is so large that in my view we need to simply stop fighting wars overseas–beyond limited scale covert operations–and focus on getting our government in check.

  Here is my case for Ron Paul: http://www.moderatesunited.blogspot.com/2012/01/open-letter-to-ron-paul-skeptics.html

  It is intended to be emailable. If you like it, copy it, and send it along

• More ‘Embarrassing’ Ron Paul Newsletters Emerge on Race, Israel, & More

  January 18, 2012 at 9:10am

  I think I will keep reading the Blaze to respond to these sorts of vitriolic attacks, cobbled together like Frankenstein’s monster from things written 30 years ago.

  Here is an email I wrote arguing the most basic virtues of Paul candidacy, which you can cut and paste and email to whomever you want: http://moderatesunited.blogspot.com/2012/01/open-letter-to-ron-paul-skeptics.html

  It originally had more links in it, but they disappeared–and will disappear for you–when you cut and paste it. I kept one: that showing Paul in a statistical dead heat in November against Obama. What is important to consider is that Romney excites NOBODY but the banks, and Paul excites bipartisan support–admittedly for different reasons. What needs to be remembered is that despite the attacks on him, Paul remains a VERY viable candidate against Romney, and the ONLY candidate who has a credible plan to attack the large problems we have.

• Ron Paul Denies Saying He Wouldn’t Have Ordered Bin Laden Raid in Pakistan — But Here’s the Video

  January 17, 2012 at 11:55am

  I am surprised to say this, since I am a big fan of Glenn Beck, but as conspiratorially minded and sometimes nuts as the site is, Infowars.com is a better use of my time than this place. I echo another poster, but here is my problem with this article, and the premise upon which it is based:

  Supposedly he contradicted himself. But read quote one, and quote two.

  1: So President Ron Paul would therefore not have ordered the kill of bin Laden, which could have only have taken place by entering another sovereign nation?

  And Dr. Paul was equally clear in his response:

  I don’t think it was necessary. No.

  2: “You believe international Law should’ve constrained us from tracking down and killing the man responsible for the most brazen attack on the US since Pearl Harbor?”

  Paul responded: “Obviously no, I did not say that.”

  Read both carefully, and listen to the setup, plainly intended to suggest anyone who did NOT order the killing was effectively an apologist and almost accomplice in mass murder.

  He did not say he would not have gone after Bin Laden because of international law, but because it was UNNECESSARY. For any stupid people reading this, let me point out that from 9/11/01 until his de facto execution ten years later, Bin Laden does not seem to have planned ONE attack.

  Are we safer now that he is dead? Are we? If he was doing something close to nothing, it is hard to see how safety has improved. This was a mission of revenge, not na