I'm Not Much of a Ron Paul Fan But You Have to Love His Honesty

MR. RUSSERT: How many troops do we have overseas right now?

REP. PAUL: I don't know the exact number, but more than we need. We don't need any.

MR. RUSSERT: It's 572,000. And you'd bring them all home?

REP. PAUL: As quickly as possible. We--they will not serve our interests to be overseas. They get us into trouble. And we can defend this country without troops in Germany, troops in Japan. How do they help our national defense? Doesn't make any sense to me. Troops in Korea since I've been in high school?

MR. RUSSERT: What...

REP. PAUL: You know, it doesn't make any sense.

MR. RUSSERT: Under President Paul, if North Korea invaded South Korea, would we respond?

REP. PAUL: I don't--why should we unless the Congress declared war? I mean, why are we there? Could--South Korea, they're begging and pleading to unify their country, and we get in their way. They want to build bridges and go back and forth. Vietnam, we left under the worst of circumstances. The country is unified. They have become Westernized. We trade with them. Their president comes here. And Korea, we stayed there and look at the mess. I mean, the problem still exists, and it's drained trillion dollars over these last, you know, 50 years. So stop--we can't afford it anymore. We're going bankrupt. All empires end because the countries go bankrupt, and the, and the currency crashes. That's what happening. And we need to come out of this sensibly rather than waiting for a financial crisis.

MR. RUSSERT: So if Iran invaded Israel, what do we do?

REP. PAUL: Well, they're not going to. That is like saying "Iran is about to invade Mars." I mean, they have nothing. They don't have an army or navy or air force. And Israelis have 300 nuclear weapons. Nobody would touch them. But, no, if, if it were in our national security interests and Congress says, "You know, this is very, very important, we have to declare war." But presidents don't have the authority to go to war.

At minimum, Paul clearly recognizes the insanity of our foreign policy.

There's lots of other interesting-- and brutally honest-- stuff in that interview; it's really worth a read.

The one thing Paul really has is an amazing consistency to his views of government. Personally, I thinks he takes things too far-- it's why I don't think Libertarianism is an optimal political system. And his ideas on how to change the government are essentially never going to happen without some amazing revolution occurring.

But he is still an amazing breath of fresh air in the political landscape.

TO BE PERFECTLY CLEAR-- when I say "honesty" and "brutally honest", I don't mean to say that he is necessarily RIGHT. I just mean that he personally is being honest about his views.


Here and here are a couple of egregious examples about things he doesn't get quite right.