Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Republican audience boos the Golden Rule

During a Republican presidential candidate debate last night in South Carolina, Ron Paul (R-Texas) got boos from the audience when he suggested that the United States should apply the Golden Rule to its foreign policy.



The Guardian provides fuller context with an extended clip and notes that this comment from Paul was a follow-up to his belief that the U.S. could have (and should have if possible) captured Osama bin Laden rather than assassinate him.

Ron Paul was also booed when he attempted to explain why the US did not need secretly to enter Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden. Paul pointed out that the US had managed to capture Saddam Hussein alive, and that the Iraqi government had put him on trial. The line did not go down well with the audience or his Republican rivals.
and

Here's the transcript of Ron Paul's comments, after being asked about his opposition to the US assassination of Osama bin Laden:

There is proper procedures rather than digging bigger holes for ourselves. That's what we have been doing in the Middle East, digging bigger and bigger holes for ourselves and it's so hard for us to get out of that mess. And we have a long ways to go. We are still in Iraq and that's getting worse and we are not leaving Afghanistan and the American people are sick and tired of it, 80% of the American people want us out of there. I am just suggesting that we work within the rule of law. Like only going to war when you declare the law.
Given the probability that many of those Republican voters who booed identify themselves as Christians, one might wonder if they experience any cognitive dissonance at booing what is supposed to be one of their bedrock moral precepts.

4 comments:

Michael Morris said...

Are we creeping toward Mike Judge's vision of a future presidential address in "Idiocracy"? You'd think it would take a complete empathectomy to boo the Golden Rule. I give a bit of its history as well as showing Gingrich's and Paul's opposing worldviews as seen through the unpreachable Bible verses at my blog post: http://biblefunmentionables.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/boo-unto-others/

ghost of lucy said...

What cognitive dissonance? "Onward, Christian soldiers...."

Anonymous said...

Just as Gingrich(?) said: Anyone believing for a second that Pakistan did not know full well about the whereabouts of Bin Laden, like Ron Paul, is from another planet.

btw. Islam does not know the golden rule, more, they despise and laugh at us for it.

Anonymous said...

Republicans, schmepublicans-everyone "boos" anything related to Christ or His teachings nowadays. Why is this surprising to people?