I watched these two YouTube clips of R. Paul and they reminded me of all the other interviews and debates and clips I've watched and heard of him, that somehow, although on the surface of things he talks in a good populist voice, that somehow he's missing something, or he's just misunderstood how things work. The libertarian in him despises government of any kind for the most part and for any reason except defense. The current crisis is not about how Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were funded. It's much bigger than that as every single private investment bank on Wall Street has now been reorganized or closed, and they weren't subsidized by the U.S. government, until now. He seems either to have not heard about or not understood the credit derivative swaps, that are the lions share of the bailout, all of which were totally unregulated by any government oversight, a situation I presume he favors. And then there's all that blather about the Federal Reserve Board, which isn't even a government entity. The FSB is made up of bankers from the 16 member banks, all of which are private, and a Chairman appointed by the President and confirmed by Congress. The reason their deliberations are secret is because they're not a government agency. They don't answer to anyone in Congress or to anyone in The White House for their decisions, although the Chairman can be replaced by the President. It's part of the smoke and mirrors of how the economy is run and for whose benefit. Paul just seems not to know what he's talking about some time.

Wow, it's all trolls all the time here in Gary's little corner of Salon. What happened is they're all still smarting from your clever and insightful psychological profile of Palin as dominatrix. You see, they were all "thinking" the same thing, but when Gary gave it a voice, the truth of their own secret desires shocked and stunned them and they're still pissed at Gary for it. Gary, for what it's worth, I thought the Palin-as-Dominatrix article was hysterical.

He stands by actual principles that are excessively applicable to the way things are going.

I know all about his principles, and no doubt he's the real deal, not a phony about them, but I still think that his extremism is dangerous. It isn't his principles so much that concern me, it's what he believes. Yes, he's right about some things. Sometimes he sounds like Noam Chomsky but I have this suspicion that it's Ayn Rand he's been studying, and she was a crackpot. Greed on Wall Street was not the problem, a lack of government oversight was, coupled with the restructuring of capital markets over the past thirty years to favor the religion of the free marketers. It's the philosophy guiding the system that was the problem not the behavior of the money lenders. Given the philosophy that created the environment, the behavior was entirely predictable. As Gore Vidal has pointed out, you don't need a government program to teach people how to be selfish and greedy, that's a given. You need a government program (incentives, tax breaks, policies, rules, whatever) to encourage people to cooperate with each other to build a bridge, keep the roads paved and not exploit their neighbors. Or to not so distort the economy through fear and greed that everyone suffers.

In the world according to Ron Paul, I don't see how you avoid ending up with 12th century feudalism.

People invest so much emotional energy in the mere presence of discernible "principles" that it borders on fetishism and idolatry. I'm not sure what they mean by it sometimes. Sometimes I think they have "principles" confused with "belief".

No wonder our democracy is flailing if this is all we see of the salon reader base, the supposedly learned intellectual group. All chest-pounding, no analytical thinking.

frankfurter, you get my vote. I've been casually wadding through these comments and thinking the same thing. Thank you for articulating it, mostly a collection of mindless rants based on prejudice and ignorance. SALON, GIVE US BETTER COMMENTERS!

How would that work? With any slavery, and feudalism is slavery, you need a strong controlling government to keep the slaves in line.

Actually, all you need is a strongman with a gun telling you to get back to work, which is a kind of "government."

Since Ron Paul supports our constitution, are you saying that our constitution, if followed to the letter, would result in slavery?

It did up until 1865, after we fought a civil war over it.