-38 votes

Virgil Goode is the only real alternative to Ron Paul not Gary Johnson

Why all this talk about wasting time with Gary Jonson rather the constitutionalist Virgil Goode? See PR is needed even within the Liberty movement. People just won't do the research themselves. Then they run off and vote for someone like GJ without even knowing there are far better options. We do the very same thing that we criticize the MSM for doing by censoring the constitution party. Which is the real liberty party. If your not going to vote RP then you should still vote Constitution.

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I voted Constitution Party,

I voted Constitution Party, i.e Chuck Baldwin in 08. Goode creeps me out, so I voted GJ.

-Sam Adams

Vote for whichever candidate

Vote for whichever candidate you like better, or write in Ron Paul. Both are good choices. As Ron Paul said, everyone should make their own decision on this.


Plenty of alternatives

Actually there are plenty of alternatives to Romney and Obama out there.. Gary Johnson, Virgil Goode, write in Ron Paul. There is no one real alternative just vote for who you think is best.

Goode on marriage

Goode wants the federal government to define marriage, and to define it as only for one man and one woman. He supports the Federal Marriage Protection amendment.

Here's Johnson:

Does Johnson think there’s a constitutional right to same-sex marriage? “I don’t see it,” he says, “but I do support gay unions. I think the government should be out of the marriage business and leave marriage to the churches.”


Wikpedia links to a number of articles about Ron Paul's position on marriage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Ron_Paul
Ron Paul opposed the Federal Marriage Protection amendment. He said "Biblically and historically, the government was very uninvolved in marriage. I like that. I don't know why we should register our marriage to the federal government. I think it's a sacrament."

In a 2007 interview, Paul said that he supported the right of gay couples to marry, so long as they didn't "impose" their relationship on anyone else, on the grounds of supporting voluntary associations.[139] He also said, "Matter of fact, I'd like to see all governments out of the marriage question. I don't think it's a state function, I think it's a religious function." Paul has stated that in a best case scenario, governments would enforce contracts and grant divorces but otherwise have no say in marriage.[140] He has also said he doesn't want to interfere in the free association of two individuals in a social, sexual, and religious sense.[141][142] When asked if he was supportive of gay marriage, Paul responded, "I am supportive of all voluntary associations and people can call it whatever they want."[141]

(See the wikipedia article for the links)

So isn't Ron Paul's position actually closer to Gary Johnson's than to Goode's?

But I see people saying they prefer Goode because he's "pro-marriage," even though he's pro-marriage in the statist sense of having the federal government involved in it and imposing a particular view on everyone. Personally I don't see why anyone would want the government being viewed as the authority on this. It seems like a prime example of the kind of thing that is best kept as far away from governmental meddling as possible.

Didn't GJ say on DeFranco

Didn't GJ say on DeFranco that he would support federal gay marriage legislation because states are stopping gays from marrying?

He had a similar stance earlier this year:


Wikipedia says:


I'd rather government intrusion into private matters such as this didn't exist, but that's not the world we live in. Favoritism is the rule, so I suppose logically everyone should have the same level of government intrusion... right? LOL

Everyone should be treated equally, and the Johnson administration can work at stripping all of these legacy intrusions away... starting in 2016.

Johnson wants the Fed to intervene too...

Goode wants to preserve the understanding of marriage that has always existed. And yes, he will probably do that through Federal intervention.

But to say Johnston's view is closer to RP's is not true. Johnson "wants government out of marriage"? Far from it… He said in an interview this year, “Instead of insisting on equality as a U.S. Constitutional guarantee, the President has thrown this question back to the states. When the smoke clears, Gay Americans will realize the President’s words have gained them nothing today, and that millions of Americans in most states will continue to be denied true marriage equality.”
Johnston's options as President are very limited: for any action he takes will be Federal intervention in marriage. So it comes down to whether you want the Fed defining marriage in a Traditionalist manner, or redefining it?

"The Yankee is compelled to toil to make the world go around."
-Admiral Raphael Semmes, CSN

The "understanding of marriage that has always existed"

There's no such thing as "the understanding of marriage that has always existed." Polygamy has been and still is in some parts of the world part of their understanding of marriage, for example. Polygamy strikes me as a bad idea but if some people want to do it, all consenting adults, I don't see why I should ask the federal government to impose my preference on them.

Better yet would be, as Dr. Paul argued, not to have the government defining marriage at all. Where in the world did social conservatives in this country get the idea that it would be a good idea to look to the US Government as the authority on a sacrament? I find that just bizarre. Ron Paul was exactly right on that issue. Goode advocates something very different.

All of that is completely separate from anything Gary Johnson said. Take Johnson out of the picture and it's still odd that so many people who were comfortable with Ron Paul's approach on these issues are now looking for something very different (and unfortunately, in some cases [I don't mean you] misrepresenting Goode's views as being the same as Dr. Pauls).

As for GJ, maybe he's just being inconsistent on this. But a charitable interpretation is that in both places he's advocating that anything the federal government does should treat everyone equally. What Obama did was to give the Federal government's blessing (again, why do any liberty-minded people *want* that governmental blessing??) to some but not all. Gary Johnson's preferred approach is the same as Dr. Pauls, to treat everyone equally by getting government out of the business of defining marriage entirely.

I personally just find this mind boggling. Who wants the government to define something that is, to many, a sacrament? It's just totally bonkers. It would be like asking the government to define what a valid baptism is. Ron Paul is absolutely 100% right on this.

Funny you reference

Funny you reference government being able to define marriage as a Sacrament. The Catholic Church is the strongest proponent in fighting so-called homosexual "marriages" because they undermine society at large and are reprehensible. As Pope Benedict XVI recently stated, "Sexual differences cannot be dismissed as irrelevant to the definition of marriage."

-Admiral Raphael Semmes, CSN


It's a concern of the church, and different churches have taken different views over the years, with polygamy being an example of a religious difference with a lot of history behind it.

The federal government has no business being the "enforcer" for what any church defines as a sacrament, and nobody (who is liberty minded at all) should *want* that. What better example is there of something to want to keep the federal government as far away from as possible? Looking to the government for a definition of marriage makes no more sense than looking to the government to define which baptisms are valid.

A list of Virgil Goode votes that may shock you.

If you want to know more about Virgil Goode and his unlibertarian policies you should read this:

Anonymous Libertarians

problems with both

Neither is the perfect candidate for people that agree 100% with Ron Paul. Each has their minor differences with Dr. Paul. It just depends on which issues you agree with more. By doing a lot of research on both I finally decided to vote for Gov. Johnson because I feel like he represents my views a little closer. The point is DO NOT be bullied by people on here saying Gary Johnson is the ONLY choice or Gary Johnson is THE WORST how can you not see it. Just do your own research and ignore the rabble. That's what Dr. Paul has said to do and it is the only way to vote. Vote your conscience.


I think he may have some questionable positions but he is more solid that GJ.

He is closer to RP in his outlook than GJ imo.

ie. Walter Jones


I agree with the CP on Immigration

but that still isnt enough to make me switch from the LP, whom I disagree with on immigration. However, I will be going with whichever third party rises in 2014/2016, which will entirely depend on where the tea party folks go-whom I agree with 98% with- go. I think there will be a coalition built, likely between the CP and LP possibly.

But ya know, a majority here arent real libertarians either, yet pound their chest otherwise. Corporations and business are not inherently evil, idiots. And neither are those "EVUL GMOs".

Try reading Reason.com, for once...

The Constitution Party

...rejects free-trade and favors protectionism:

In no event will the U.S. tariff on any foreign import be less than the difference between the foreign item's cost of production and the cost of production of a similar item produced in these United States...Tariffs are not only a constitutional source of revenue, but, wisely administered, are an aid to preservation of the national economy. Since the adoption of the 1934 Trade Agreements Act, the United States government has engaged in a free trade policy which has destroyed or endangered important segments of our domestic agriculture and industry, undercut the wages of our working men and women, and totally destroyed or shipped abroad the jobs of hundreds of thousands of workers

...favors censorship:

We call on our local, state and federal governments to uphold our cherished First Amendment right to free speech by vigorously enforcing our laws against obscenity...While we believe in the responsibility of the individual and corporate entities to regulate themselves, we also believe that our collective representative body we call government plays a vital role in establishing and maintaining the highest level of decency in our community standards.

...favors the drug-war

The Constitution Party will uphold the right of states and localities to restrict access to drugs and to enforce such restrictions. We support legislation to stop the flow of illegal drugs into these United States from foreign sources. As a matter of self-defense, retaliatory policies including embargoes, sanctions, and tariffs, should be considered.

...wants to prohibit fractional reserve banking (this is debatable from a libertarian perspective; some libertarians view FRB as inherently fraudulent per Murray Rothbard, I and many others disagree, and feel it is a legitimate operation provided it is occurring in a free market without government support):

It is necessary that these United States...Prohibit fractional reserve banking

...and finally, they want to restrict immigration for protectionist reasons:

The mass importation of people with low standards of living threatens the wage structure of the American worker and the labor balance in our country. We oppose the abuse of the H-1B and L-1 visa provisions of the immigration act which are displacing American workers with foreign.

Now, don't get me wrong, the Constitution Party is pretty darn good, I agree with them on the majority of issues, but from a libertarian perspective, I think the Libertarian Party is clearly superior. And, as a practical matter, the Libertarian Party is a much better organization with better prospects for political success. Let me say, however, that if you don't want to vote LP, then I think voting Constitution Party is a better option than writing-in Ron Paul, because at least you know the Constitution Party vote will be counted.



Virgil Goode 2012

It amazes me how y’all think Johnson is so great.
According to a Daily Caller interview, Johnson “told TheDC that he supports America’s efforts to aid African troops in tracking down Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and that he wouldn’t rule out leaving behind American bases in Afghanistan.” On Kony, Johnson sounds like Obama, “I think if I would have signed the legislation that I would have had plans to immediately ask for a volunteer force and gone in and wipe ‘em out.”

He said in the same interview, “I would completely withdraw our military presence…Does withdrawing our military presence from Afghanistan mean that we would still have a base open in Afghanistan if they allowed us to keep a base open? Perhaps.” How does that even make sense? Yes, we go, but maybe not. On Israeli aid, “I think that we really do have a vested interest in Israel and that we shouldn’t walk away from that interest…” Again, his interventionist stance is clear: “I don’t want to close the door that if any of us were president of the United States that we would sit idly by and watch something like the Holocaust go down…I don’t want to close the door on the United States involving themselves and putting a stop to that. Can we spend money on that? Yeah, I think so.” He sounds eerily like Bill Clinton in the Bosnian War. “If there’s a clear genocide somewhere, don’t we really want to positively impact that kind of a situation?...Isn’t that what we’re all about? Isn’t that what we’ve always been about?” In the words of Arnold Rimmer, “Yeeeeeeeeeeeee-no.”

This link is particularly interesting:





-Admiral Raphael Semmes, CSN

The first link there

The market-ticker article is one I was discussing earlier with someone. Take a closer look. His first argument assumes that the CPI is an accurate measure of inflation, and it clearly is not; in fact in another article he blasts the MSM for assuming that the CPI is accurate. It understates inflation, which makes his using it as a benchmark bogus. But he also omits the context for the claim he's looking at, namely that the 5% annual budget under Johnson was down from a *ten* percent annual budget prior to that.

He then gives an argument in which he seems to be saying that the growing debt under Johnson's administration contradicts the claim that Johnson balanced the budget in his last year. But the claim is that when Johnson took office he had the existing debt *and* a deficit on the budget to deal with, and when he left the budget was balanced (zero deficit). So in spite of having a background that would make this unlikely the author seems to be confusing debt and deficit; given that there was a declining deficit that eventually reached zero, you would expect that the debt would be increasing but that the rate of increase would drop off. And this is in fact exactly what the graph in that article shows. (If he's making a different article about the deficit and the debt there, let me know, but I read it several times and the only thing that makes it coherent is a common sort of confusion about deficit vs debt.)

The Weinstein article is also an odd one for liberty-minded individuals to use, since Weinstein is clearly upset by Johnson not being neocon-friendly. He expresses concern that the deep military cuts that Johnson proposes would make it hard to launch large scale military operations. He also seems to think he's got Johnson in a trap when he gets him to admit that Iran isn't our enemy and there's no reason we should be trying to impose sanctions on them. He ends with a slam on Ron Paul, which isn't surprising since he's got a history of smear attacks against Ron Paul, newsletters and all. This is nothing but a neocon upset by someone advocating foreign policies that make neocons look foolish and dangerous.

I'm just saying that if there's a case to be made against Johnson, why can't it be made without smear tactics and bogus arguments like those?

While there is some

While there is some disagreement on the validity of the market-ticker article, Johnson came out pretty clearly on his foreign policy stance. He himself sounded like a Neocon, specifically in reference to "wiping out" Joseph Kony.

-Admiral Raphael Semmes, CSN

Johnson and Kony

First, I assume you know what Johnson actually said about Kony (although the details often get left out).

He said that first, he said he would not want to "sit idly by and watch something like the Holocaust go down." That's clearly not a non-interventionist position in an absolute way. If someone is a non-interventionist even to the point that they would advocate non-intervention in the face of something like the Holocaust, then I guess they get points for consistency.

But it's very unfair to equate this to the neocon view on interventionism. Neocons want to intervene even in cases where the only real motivation is regime change, based on theories that have no contact with reality and with strategies guaranteed to have the opposite effect of what they say they want (but do make sense if what they really want is a state of perpetual war).

Second, on the example of Kony, Johnson said that if he were going to do it he would do it with forces who volunteer for that mission. That, too, is not something you'd hear from neocons.

I agree that he's not a pure non-interventionist. But saying that the kind of intervention he advocates sounds like a neocon is ridiculous. Look at that article again, and you'll see how much neocons hate his ideas about foreign policy. Johnson says that Iran isn't our enemy, so why should we have trade sanctions against them? The neocons hate that. And look at when the interviewer, a neocon with a history of smearing Ron Paul (a big pusher of the newsletter smear in particular), is aghast at the idea that Johnson would cut the military so deeply that it would be difficult to launch a major war effort. Imagine it not being easy to launch big wars. The neocons *hate* that idea.

The most revealing thing here is that the anti-Johnson forces find themselves making common cause with a neocon who hates Johnson's foreign policy, who hated Ron Paul's foreign policy (he even gets in a jab at Ron Paul at the end of that article), and who has a long history of promoting dishonest smears against Ron Paul. That pretty much says it all.

I did notice that. The

I did notice that. The trouble with the "stop the holocaust" argument is that it's always subjective. For instance, that was the argument used to intervene in the Bosnian War. As President Clinton said of the alleged conditions the Serbs were forcing upon the Bosnians, "Skeletal prisoners caged behind barbed-wire fences, women and girls raped as a tool of war, defenseless men and boys shot down into mass graves, evoking visions of World War II concentration camps and endless lines of refugees marching toward a future of despair." The U.S. Information Agency stated that as many as 400,000 Bosnians were killed by the Serbians. Surgeon Emilio Perez Pujol, of Spain, stated something in great contrast, “we did not find one-not one- mass grave. The final figure in Kosovo will be 2,500 at most. This includes a lot of strange deaths that can’t be blamed on anyone in particular.” Dr. Pujol was supposed to verify the audacious claims of the “holocaust-criers,” but his on-hand research proved it to be a bad excuse for war. Not to mention that Clinton imported Jihadists into the area to combat the Serbs. All that was due to “stopping the new holocaust.”
As for Kony, Johnson said, “I would have had plans to immediately ask for a volunteer force and gone in and wipe ‘em out.” Okay. That’s nice. Are we funding these freedom fighters? Are we to take no responsibility for arming them and training them? Are we so short-sited from the ordeals of Soviet Afghanistan and, more recently, Libya, that we believe ourselves to be able to insert and arm terrorists for the alleged mission of “stopping a holocaust” ? That Gary Johnson thinks Kony is the worst man on the face of the earth speaks numbers. In most probability he was swayed by the “Invisible Children” documentary, as was Obama. Did Gary Johnson ever stop to ask if the enemies of Kony- men he would be aiding by the guerilla’s removals- are just as bad as Kony himself? Does he not think that the utterly corrupt Ugandan government would seize upon the opportunity of the removal of its greatest rival? To assert the naïve “Kony is bad, he must go,” is very similar to Bush’s argument of Saddam Hussein, or Obama’s arguments on Ghaddafi.

-Admiral Raphael Semmes, CSN

The only point I want to make

is that what Johnson is advocating isn't purist non-interventionism, but it's *very* unfair to compare it to neocons. And you can see it in the neocon attack on Johnson from the same guy who pushed the newsletter attacks on Ron Paul. All the criticisms he makes are neocon criticisms, i.e., Johnson doesn't want to treat Iran as an enemy, wants to cut the military so deeply that the neocons wouldn't be able to fight all the wars they want, etc.

Johnson isn't taking the same position as Ron Paul -- and if someone feels they can only vote for someone who is a purist about non-interventionism, then that settles that.

But on the spectrum from Ron Paul to Neocons, Johnson is *much* closer to Ron Paul. Johnson isn't proposing a single thing that the neocons would endorse.

I'm not defending his position, just suggesting that Ron Paul supporters who don't like Johnson could do better than to spread smear articles from a neocon who has a long track record of dishonest smears against Ron Paul, and a very anti-liberty agenda. It's also a bit strange to take a neocon attack on Johnson and somehow conclude that Johnson is anything like the neocons. The guy plays "concern troll" at the beginning of that article, but read it with his track record of deception in mind, especially starting from the place where he's alarmed that Johnson might cut military spending so much that it would no longer be easy to launch a major war effort. Only a neocon could find that alarming.

I want to see the Republican ticket lose...

by the exact margin or less that the Liberty Movement would've brought to the Republicans.

The GOP needs to be smacked in the balls by us and made to see why they lost.

Make your best vote for anyone but Romney/Obama.


You wonder why

people like you make Ron Paul look bad.

30 years a Republican, 12 terms as a Republican.

now you want Republicans to lose.

Ron's message would not have made it to a national level as a "Liberty" Party, much less the failed Libertarian or Green Parties.


"30 years a Republican, 12

"30 years a Republican, 12 terms as a Republican."
And a lifetime member of the Libertarian Party.

There's nothing wrong with a three pronged approach of supporting the Libertarian, Constitution and Republican parties, as Ron Paul has done.


all you have to do is ask

all you have to do is ask yourself... did Ron Paul endorse Romney? Is Ron Paul himself voting for Romney? Who did Ron Paul endorse in 2008? HINT... it wasn't McCain. You are the guy who makes Republicans what they are and how bad they are because you do not think before you vote.



This post is STUPID!

This post is STUPID! Research doesn't matter because neither of these will even come close to winning! It is ONLY about having a NOT Obama/Romney vote tally, and most of us plan on registering our protest vote in the Libertarian party column. Your only contribution is to divide and split that vote so its impact is blunted. If Obama and Mitt drop out and are not replaced, then it will be worth it to research which of these two would make the better candidate, until that happens support the party that is in 3rd place.

"Your only contribution is to

"Your only contribution is to divide and split that vote so its impact is blunted."
Who cares? As long as people are voting against the two party system, it's all good.


Goode still supports the drug

Goode still supports the drug war in its entirety. That alone is enough to turn me off from him. His votes in favor of the Iraq War is suspect as well because unlike the Patriot Act, he hasn't fully recanted his past support for that war.

I like Goode, but I like Johnson more. Besides, Goode isn't on the ballot here in California, so its a moot point.

liberty lover in Nor Cal!


the drug war is not the issue of THE day. It is certainly one of them, but still doesnt hold a candle to the economy and foreign policy. I like Virgil, but hes too much of a political opportunist for me-way too much changing of the parties.