Former congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul recently spoke about the controversy surrounding Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. He suggested that expelling people from Congress for believing in conspiracy theories sets a dangerous precedent and represents a threat to free speech.
He also makes an excellent point about who gets to define what is and is not a conspiracy theory.
After all, we just spent four years listening to Democrats and their media allies pushing Russia collusion. Does that not qualify as a conspiracy theory?
Real Clear Politics provides a partial transcript:
Paul discusses these questions: Should Members who endorse conspiracy theories be kicked out? What is a conspiracy theory and how many Members have endorsed such theories in the past? How many times have conspiracy theories been used to drag the US into wars?”How are we going to deal with this young Republican woman who is not conventional. I don’t know the details of all her beliefs… But evidently, she has stirred up a controversy,” Paul explained. “It has been decided, the Democrats have really piled on, and if it is difficult to defend her, the Republicans have to join in too and go after and criticize her for these beliefs.””This whole idea that there is a ‘conspiracy’ … I work from the assumption that everyone is a conspirator. Are you defending A issue or B issue, in a way, we are conspirators for liberty. We don’t want to do it in secret, we want our stuff broadcast,” Paul said. “How the Federal Reserve is run is a secret — I think that’s a big conspiracy… Everything that the establishment has done is a conspiracy too. Our job is to figure out if it is good or bad… You could use the lockdown as an example.
The topic is covered over the first ten minutes or so of this video:
I have to say, it’s fun watching Democrats clutch their pearls over conspiracy theories. Now seems like a good time to remind people that not too long ago, many Democrats believed that Bush was complicit in the 9/11 attacks.
Politico reported in 2011:
More than half of Democrats believed Bush knewI’ve been looking for a good analogue to the willingness of Republicans to believe, or say they believe, that Obama was born abroad, and one relevant number is the share of Democrats willing to believe, as they say, that “Bush knew.”There aren’t a lot of great public numbers on the partisan breakdown of adherents to that conspiracy theory, but the University of Ohio yesterday shared with us the crosstabs of a 2006 poll they did with Scripps Howard that’s useful in that regard.”How likely is it that people in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East?” the poll asked.A full 22.6% of Democrats said it was “very likely.” Another 28.2% called it “somewhat likely.”
Somehow that was never described as a dangerous threat to our democracy.
Featured image via YouTube.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY