Rand Paul Quotes John Kerry's Famous Anti-War Statement… to John Kerry

In 1971, a young John Kerry, representing Vietnam Veterans Against the War, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Vietnam War was a tragic mistake. 

"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" Kerry famously asked. 

It was one of the most memorable moments in the movement to end the Vietnam War. 

Last week Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, used those same words of the young anti-war John Kerry to challenge… today's John Kerry, now Secretary of State and beating the drums for U.S. military intervention in another foreign country that has not attacked or threatened America. 

Speaking on "Meet the Press" September 1, Sen. Paul said he disagreed with Secretary of State Kerry's call for bombing Syria. 

"I think it's a mistake to get involved in the Syrian civil war. …You know, [Kerry] is famous for saying, 'How can you ask a man to be the last one to die for a mistake?' 

"I would ask John Kerry: How can you ask a man to be the first one to die for a mistake?"


Libertarian Party: No Intervention in Syria

While the two older parties dither and dicker about whether the U.S. should intervene in Syria, the nation's third-largest political party has made its position on the issue crystal clear. 

On August 29, 2013, Libertarian Party Chair Geoffrey J. Neale issued a statement strongly opposing any U.S. military intervention in the civil war in Syria.

"There is no Constitutional justification for America to unilaterally use force in Syria," Neale said.

"Syria is not threatening our country. We have no national interest in intervening there. There are no reasons for the U.S. to support either the Assad dictatorship or the opposition warlords."

Neale reaffirmed the party's longstanding foreign policy of nonintervention, quoting part of the National Defense plank of the party platform: "The United States should both avoid entangling alliances and abandon its attempts to act as policeman for the world."

Neale also quoted from the platform's International Affairs plank: "American foreign policy should seek an America at peace with the world. Our foreign policy should emphasize defense against attack from abroad and enhance the likelihood of peace by avoiding foreign entanglements. We would end the current U.S. government policy of foreign intervention, including military and economic aid."

VIDEO: The Minimum Wage Is a Weapon of Mass Job Destruction  
 
With Syria grabbing the headlines, we shouldn’t neglect another destructive action being proposed in Washington: a massive increase in the minimum wage. 
 
President Obama has called for increasing the minimum wage by 25%, with future automatic rises tied to the cost of living. Congress is expected to debate the issue this fall. 
 
While on the surface it might sound compassionate, increasing the minimum wage is a terrible idea. It’s an economic Tomahawk missile lobbed at the poorest, least-skilled workers in America. It will destroy jobs -- especially desperately-needed entry level jobs -- create yet more unemployment, and trap more people in poverty. 
 
The Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner has just published a brief summary of the negative effects of the minimum wage. Observes Tanner: “a study by Joseph Sabia and Richard Burkhauser for the Employment Policy Institute concluded that an increase in the federal minimum wage to $9.50 would result in the loss of 1.3 million jobs, primarily low-skilled jobs. 
 
“Moreover, Sabia and Burkhauser concluded that there would be very little gain in exchange for this pain. According to their research, state and federal minimum wage increases between 2003 and 2007 had no effect on state poverty rates.”
 
Tanner further notes: “A comprehensive review of more than 100 studies on the minimum wage by David Neumark and William Wascher for the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 85 percent of the studies they reviewed found negative employment effects.” 
 
And it’s the least-skilled, most disadvantaged workers that suffer, according to Newmark and Wascher: “the preponderance of the evidence points to disemployment effects… [and] studies that focus on the least-skilled groups provide relatively overwhelming evidence of stronger disemployment effects for these groups.”
 
Tanner notes that evidence of employment losses due to minimum wage laws goes all the way back to first federally imposed minimum wage in 1938 -- which, the U.S. Department of Labor concluded, eliminated 30,000 to 50,000 jobs, or an astonishing 10 to 13 percent of the jobs of the 300,000 workers affected by the increase.
 
More from Tanner: “More recently, Michael Hicks of Ball State University looked at the impact of the July 2008 minimum wage increase on unemployment rates in the United States and concluded that a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage results in a roughly 0.19 percent increase in unemployment, meaning the loss of about 160,000 jobs.”
 
“The Truth About the Minimum Wage,” a 3-minute video from the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), shows why the minimum wage is so misguided. At the video site, FEE has links to nearly a dozen short articles that further explore the issue.

 

As FEE summarizes: “If you take off the bottom two rungs of the income ladder, many will never climb it. That’s the effect of the minimum wage.”
 
A short, highly readable summary of the negative effects of the minimum wage is the 2004 booklet Minimum Wage, Maximum Damage: How the Minimum Wage Law Destroys Jobs, Perpetuates Poverty, and Erodes Freedom by Jim Cox, published by the Advocates and available at our online Liberty Store for just $5.00. 

Joe Biden: Impeach the President if He Attacks

Bold words from Joe Biden on the Chris Matthews show:

"The president has… no… Constitutional… authority to take this nation to war against a country of 70 million people unless we're attacked, or unless there is proof that we are about to be attacked," Biden declared unequivocally.  "And if he does, I would move to impeach him... I would lead an effort to impeach him." 

Oh, we forgot to mention, that was… 2007. When Joe Biden was just a U.S. senator, not vice president of the U.S. And when the president was Republican George W. Bush, not Democrat Barack Obama. 

Biden was talking about impeaching George Bush... to stop him from attacking Iran to halt its nuclear program.

As for Syria, today... now that's a totally different situation, of course. Isn't it?

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Intellectual Ammunition is written by Liberator Online editor James W. Harris. His articles have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, and he has been a Finalist for the Mencken Awards, given by the Free Press Association for "Outstanding Journalism in Support of Liberty."