The reason i maintain some optimism is that i think philosophically we're in pretty good shape... People...want to know the truth... - Ron Paul

Clearly, language threatening to wipe a nation or a group of people off the map is to be condemned by all civilized people. And I do condemn any such language. But why does threatening Iran with a pre-emptive nuclear strike, as many here have done, not also deserve the same kind of condemnation? Does anyone believe that dropping nuclear weapons on Iran will not wipe a people off the map? When it is said that nothing, including a nuclear strike, is off the table on Iran, are those who say it not also threatening genocide? And we wonder why the rest of the world accuses us of behaving hypocritically, of telling the rest of the world “do as we say, not as we do.”

Certainly the Patriot Act would have never been passed, because it wasn't available to us... It was almost 400 pages long, and became available less than an hour before it was debated on the House floor... The congressmembers were intimidated, "if I do nothing, my people gonna be mad, because they want us to do something". And the people are frightened. When they are frightened, they are much more willing to give us their liberties. But giving up their liberties won't make them safer, that's the real sad part of it.

Special interests and the demented philosophy of conquest have driven most wars throughout history. Rarely has the cause of liberty, as it was in our own revolution, been the driving force. In recent decades our policies have been driven by neo-conservative empire radicalism, profiteering in the military industrial complex, misplaced do-good internationalism, mercantilistic notions regarding the need to control natural resources, and blind loyalty to various governments in the Middle East.