Another RP hit piece : Paul vs. Bernanke on Value of the Dollar
When you are Ron Paul, your public enemy No. 1 is the chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Because when you are Ron Paul, although you are technically a Republican, you are really a libertarian, and your strict adherence to the gospel of the Constitution leads you to question why the Federal Reserve — the consortium of 12 reserve banks that acts as the U.S. central bank — even exists.
It doesn’t say anything about any central bank in the Constitution. Not only that, the primary responsibility of the Federal Reserve — to control the money flow and availability of currency on the open market — is something that you, Ron Paul, find incorrigible. The government, you believe, creates inflation when it prints money and moves it willy-nilly into the market to control the very inflation you think it’s causing by moving that money around in the first place. Counterpoint: The gold standard was too inflexible, and the average citizen suffers when the government can’t give the markets more fuel in the form of money.
I read a lot of Ron Paul news. I’ve got a RSS feed of a Google news search of ‘Ron Paul.’ As Dr. Paul has become more popular the number of hit pieces have also risen. What I notice is that a huge portion of them, like the one linked above, are full of ignorance and sarcasm. This guy, Z. Bryon Wolf, doesn’t actually try to intelligently argue his point. In fact I have a hard time figuring out exactly what his point is. He speaks as if it were an inside joke, anyone reading this would already agree that Paul’s economic ideas are crazy so the mere mentioning of them is enough. Unfortunately for Mr. Wolf that’s not the case. While I can’t be certain, pieces like this I’d think would be transparent to the average reader. There just isn’t any substance. No counter argument and worse is the problem, and this is a common one, that they claim Paul wants a gold standard. That’s categorically incorrect. He’s a supporter of hard asset backed currencies and ultimately an open market for competing currencies. He uses gold as one example for historical and practical reasons. You can find out more here and here or read any number of Austrian economics book on the topic, like any of the dozens at the Mises Institute website including Ron Paul’s own Gold, Peace, and Prosperity and The Case for Gold. If you are going to write a hit piece on someone you can at least do so research first. Either throw mud and call him names or attempt to intelligently debate the issues. I’m not interested in these halfassed attacks.
Related posts:
- Ron Paul introduces the Free Competition in Currency Act
- Ron Paul in 1983 on the power and morality of central control of the money supply
- Ben Bernanke and Jamie Dimon want more government involvement in markets
- Response to a Russel Shaw’s piece on Ron Paul supporters
- Ron Paul vs. Paulson and Bernanke
November 9th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
First off, the one thing I hate the most in political arguments is mud-slinging and sarcasm. Sarcasm proves nothing and mud-slinging just leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. When discussing politics I make a concerted effort to not be sarcastic and to attack ideas and not people. This is one of the reasons I really have trouble watching broadcast television around election day.
That being said, I don’t think this piece does a terrible job of summarizing what happened. Other than the grad student comment and some factual discrepancies as pointed out by bile I don’t get as negative of a reading as bile does. Thanks for posting the youtube video by the way it really helps to read the piece more objectively.
Lastly one of my major concerns for this campaign would be mud-slinging. I’ve spoken with xyz about this before but I firmly believe if Ron Paul makes it past the primaries you are going to see an unprecedented smear campaign involving things from Ron Paul’s past as well as his non-standard ideology.
November 9th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
I didn’t read the article as overtly negative, but his conclusion towards the end:
kind of irked me. Ron asked reasonable questions, that Ben "Just doing my job" Bernanke failed to answer, questions that the author sounded like he wanted answered too. In spite of his inaccurate introduction, I thought this Wolf guy was going to spin it towards the end to be anti-Bernanke or at least provide an argument in Bernanke’s defense. But he just copped out and called all of it a mental exercise.
November 9th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
It doesn’t really seem like Wolf was trying to spin it at all, at least to me. The opinion part at the end, about whether or not Paul’s ideas are feasible could be left out. It kinda sounds like you’re looking for an opinion piece, is that the case beetlbumjl?
November 9th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
Oh and as far as Ben "Just Doing My Job" Bernanke. Perhaps you could give him the moniker Ben "Befehl ist Befehl" Bernanke. After all it has some wicked alliteration.
November 9th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
i find most, if not all, ron paul hit pieces poorly researched and poorly written. from having a light background in journalism studies in college, i can tell you that most editorials are not so much a person’s actual opinion (as the periodicals would like you to believe) as they are opposing views for the sake of controversy. for the most part, they are fluff designed to fill space in a magazine or newspaper. ron paul is an easy target since any take on him, whether positive or negative will get reads and for most online articles, pages and pages of comments. what both of you seem to be missing is the tone this article is written in. for the non-English majors:
i am surprised that you both are missing the condescending nature of the article. ill break down what i see:
. off the bat, the author is really writing this passage to an audience of one: ron paul. it comes across first as an article for all of us, but he reveals his intention (as most amateur writers will do) at its conclusion: "…is something that you, ron paul, find incorrigible. the government, you believe… control the very inflation you think…" etc… this isnt a m. night shyamalan movie. this is supposed to be a political op ed. theres no twists or surprise endings, here. this is supposed to be non-fiction.
. you may not pay much mind to it, but re-read this article. you dont notice the condescending repetition of ron paul’s name? theres also that i know more than ron paul knows about himself attitude when the author writes, "when you are ron paul, although you are technically a republican, you are really a libertarian…"
. "…strict adherence to the gospel of the Constitution leads you to…" there is no need to insert "gospel" here. in fact, that sentence reads perfectly fine without it. when a term like "gospel" is used in a discussion that does not imply or reference religious or biblical nature, its only purpose is to be condescending or sarcastic.
. if a writer is going to write a piece and use terms like "you find", "you believe", and "you think" against the subject of their article… then i would suggest they would counter argue their claim with research that they found, believed, and thought to be true. he presents an argument (a loose one at that) and fails to back it up with any facts or reason.
. a term like "maddening"… that’s pretty colorful.
. you guys really didnt take notice of this gem? "So, when you’re not out on the stump running for president but back at your day job in Washington, D.C., a job you plan to keep should you fail in your quest for the White House, it’s a good thing for you, as congressman Ron Paul, to sit on the Joint Economic Committee, which from time to time hears testimony from Ben Bernanke, chairman of your hated Federal Reserve." i italicized the diarrhea.
ok, ill stop there.
like bile, i have ron paul on RSS. the last 2 pages of this article continues in the tradition of modern-day political journalism: crap. for both of you to be blind to the negativity and sarcasm of the article makes me wonder if you either of you actually took the 10 min to read the entire piece… because it certainly seems you didnt fully make it past page 1. i feel like how my English teachers must have felt when they asked for a show of hands from people who actually read the article. skimming isnt reading.
November 9th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
Baaaaziiinnng! I think you nailed that one. That seems like a pretty good summary of why you found it to be a "hit piece". I guess now I should reflect on why I read stuff like that and don’t have the same "feel" for it. Maybe the mass media is messing with my subconscious.
Oh, also I did read the whole "assignment" I guess I just didn’t get it. Reminds me of the time in high school when I read "Mending Wall" and literally thought it was just about a guy fixing a wall.
November 9th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
…now, theres a very simple explanation as to why when you read stuff like that and dont have the same "feel" for it:
liberal arts v. engineering
BA v. BS
every once in a while, my people come out on top.
(dont be so hard on yourself)
November 9th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
After rereading the article*, I’ll go as far as retracting the word ‘overtly’ and suggest ‘completely’ instead. I maintain that the middle part of the article, the summarized question and answer section, was not a hit on Ron Paul, but rather a swipe at Bernanke’s inability to handle Paul’s "gotcha" question. All of those negative connotations are certainly present in the piece, but I keep coming back to what the subject of the article (at least until the last paragraph) felt like: "Despite the fact that I hate this guy, he asked Bernanke a good question and Ben had no answer." Then he throws this realization away by returning to criticizing Ron Paul. So I’ll admit, it’s 90% hit piece, 10% Bernanke criticism. I’m not expecting The Sixth Sense here, but many movies/stories/books consist of a character with a flaw (ie, writing Ron Paul hit pieces) who has some realization (Ron Paul poses an interesting question) that moves them past this (despite hating Ron Paul, we need an answer to his question). I don’t see why a political essay would be forbidden from using this device. It would have worked if he cut the second to last paragraph and finished the piece with, "But while Wall Street attempts to read the mind of the Fed chairman, Mr. Paul and the rest of America await the answer to the question: what is long term effect of printing money during times of economic crises?"
Apologies for focusing on the factual news part of this essay (page 2&3, which I did indeed read) and skimming the poorly expressed opinionated bookends.
November 9th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
the lead, which was one page long in this case, was a fluff piece–it lacked real analysis and thought. its unfortunate that these "poorly expressed opinionated bookends" paint an un-researched, biased and skewed portrait of ron paul to someone ignorant of him. remember, the intention of the lead paragraph(s) is/are to "give the reader the main idea of the story preceding the main body of the article and the final conclusion". so whether he writes about ron paul, hillary clinton, or mitt romney, as long as he continues to write in the same style and employ the same inexperienced technique, his articles will fail.
i never said forbidden, but there are clear differences in technique employed in creative writing fiction and non-fiction–just as there are effective and noneffective devices in journalism writing. in this case, these "characters" are real people–there is no tragic hero and likewise, no villain. non-fiction does not play into dramatic structure unless we chose to manipulate the facts/data ourselves into portraying life as a novel. but when we do this, we do not have fact anymore–we have "adaptations" and "based on real events".
November 10th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Um, Wikipedia called. They want their links back.
November 10th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
now bosco, if you and beetlbumlj analyzed the article correctly the first time, i wouldnt have had to go into a short lesson on literary theory and the fundamentals of creative writing fiction, non-fiction, and journalism composition.
by providing those links, my aim was to help bridge the gap between the mind of the artist and the engineer.
+1 for: want = capitalism (nice job)
touché
November 11th, 2007 at 9:43 am
xyz, was this article a news article, opinion piece, or essay? If an essay, exactly which kind and more importantly, what was the point of his writing? To portray Ron Paul in a bad light, he didn’t need Q&A. Was the middle part simply a long drawn out setup to tell him/reader that whatever he does doesn’t matter anyway?
I don’t know what it’s called, but doesn’t the author of a persuasive essay sometimes speak from the reader’s point of view. In that case, the author may repeat inaccuracies in an effort to sort of retrace the reader’s own prejudice and build up that POV. In a news article I agree, it would be most inappropriate. But I guess what I’m hung up on, is exactly what was it that this guy wrote.
November 11th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
the Q&A is the point of the essay (i use the term "essay" very loosely here). his one page condescending attack on ron paul was not necessary.
it seems to me that the video clip, which gave birth to the article, gives wolf no choice but to acknowledge that ron paul did in fact, put burnake in a corner. put the video on mute and watch. the result is still apparent in the uncomfortable gestures of burnake.
but instead of just writing about what happened, which would have been a solid, opinion-less presentation, byron felt it necessary to assure the reader that even though he is giving credit to paul, he does so almost reluctantly, and still finds him to be irrelevant and off-center. and this is why i sad byron is "[painting] an un-researched, biased and skewed portrait of ron paul to someone ignorant of him." byron is more concerned with how the reader perceives him instead of how the reader should perceive the facts.
i wouldnt say you are speaking from their POV as much as youre attempting to get people to agree with yours. already speaking from your reader’s POV, you would be writing for a target audience–a group of people that will most likely agree with you anyway, so theres no reason to persuade anybody–there is no need for a debate. but to be successful, you want to reach out to more than just that singular audience–thats the point of a persuasive essay.
now, when you repeat inaccuracies you are actively deceiving your audience. at that point, its up to you to decide if you have a personal and/or moral obligation to be honest to them. deception can be a useful tool, if your audience are gullible, mindless drones with no desire to counter research your claims.
is this an essay or an article or something else? we are throwing around these terms without any solid, agreed upon definition of them. many will argue that the definition of essay is almost undefinable as it can blur the lines between article, short story, or narrative.
i believe wolf’s assignment was to write an article reporting the events of the discussion between paul and burnake. the blur occurs when wolf puts his personal slant on it.
this might have been an angry livejournal entry that got leaked out to the public. id gladly agree to that.