Ron Paul and WikiLeaks

The following was highlighted on MEDIAite.com and says an awful lot about Ron Paul:

Ron Paul’s Passionate Defense Of Julian Assange And WikiLeaks On House Floor

Mr. Paul concluded his speech with a list of questions for the American citizens to consider, the transcript of which is below (via FromTheOld.)

Number 1: Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?

Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?

Number 3: Why is the hostility directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?

Number 4: Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 Billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?

Number 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?

Number 6: If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?

Number 7: Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?

Number 8: Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?

Number 9: Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?

What are your answers?

--Joe

Does Patriotism Matter?

Are these people patriots or traitors?

Senate easily passes wiretap bill

Obama's 'yes' vote draws charge of flip-flop from McCain camp

McCain didn't vote.

What about these people listed on a local blog? Read "Roll Call vote on Dodd Amendment. Here's the good guys."

No mention of the bad guys, though. Are they stand up heroes or sell-out cowards?

Thomas Sowell's commentary in the Sunday, July 6, 2008 Eureka Reporter might shed some light on those representatives that believe the "end (always) justifies the means". I've included the whole article on this blog for obvious reasons even though Joe regards most of this kind of thinking right out of the dark ages. What he says is worth reading . . .

Thomas Sowell --

The Fourth of July is a patriotic holiday, but patriotism has long been viewed with suspicion or disdain by many of the intelligentsia. As far back as 1793, prominent British writer William Godwin called patriotism “high-sounding nonsense.”

Internationalism has long been a competitor with patriotism, especially among the intelligentsia. H.G. Wells advocated replacing the idea of duty to one’s country with “the idea of cosmopolitan duty.”

Perhaps nowhere was patriotism so downplayed or deplored than among intellectuals in the Western democracies in the two decades after the horrors of the First World War, fought under various nations’ banners of patriotism.

In France, after the First World War, the teachers’ unions launched a systematic purge of textbooks, in order to promote internationalism and pacifism.

Books that depicted the courage and self-sacrifice of soldiers who had defended France against the German invaders were called “bellicose” books to be banished from the schools.

French textbook publishers caved in to the power of the teachers’ unions, rather than lose a large market for their books. History books were sharply revised to conform to internationalism and pacifism.

The once epic story of the French soldiers’ heroic defense against the German invaders at Verdun, despite the massive casualties suffered by the French, was now transformed into a story of horrible suffering by all soldiers at Verdun — French and German alike.

In short, soldiers once depicted as national heroes were now depicted as victims — and just like victims in other nations’ armies.

Children were bombarded with stories on the horrors of war. In some schools, children whose fathers had been killed during the war were asked to speak to the class and many of these children — as well as some of their classmates and teachers — broke down in tears.

In Britain, Winston Churchill warned that a country “cannot avoid war by dilating upon its horrors.” In France, Marshal Philippe Petain, the victor at Verdun, warned in 1934 that teachers were trying to “raise our sons in ignorance of or in contempt of the fatherland.”

These were voices drowned out by the pacifist and internationalist rhetoric of the 1920s and 1930s.

Did it matter? Does patriotism matter?

France, where pacifism and internationalism were strongest, became a classic example of how much it can matter.

During the First World War, France fought on against the German invaders for four long years, despite having more of its soldiers killed than all the American soldiers killed in all the wars in the history of the United States, put together.

Yet during the Second World War, France collapsed after just six weeks of fighting and surrendered to Nazi Germany. At the bitter moment of defeat the head of the French teachers’ union was told, “You are partially responsible for the defeat.”

Thomas Sowell is a nationally syndicated columnist and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.