By: Trevor Loudon
New Zeal

While many conservatives admire Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul’s principled economic and constitutional views, they are often bamboozled, even appalled, by the Texan’s defense and foreign policy ideas.

Ron Paul

It seems, that when it comes to defense, Ron Paul is stuck in 1776. He seems not to realize that America’s enemies, real or potential, Russia and China, and Iran chief among them, have a very long reach. The continental US is only partially protected by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The enemy can now attack the American homeland with ICBMs, biological weapons, cyber warfare, dirty bombs smuggled across the Mexican border – any number of deadly methods of mass destruction.

Just as frontier forts had outposts to warn of Indian attack, the US needs people all over the world to protect not just her friends and allies, but the American homeland itself.

Why then does Ron Paul, a man so rational in many areas, have such a blind spot when it comes to US national security?

In my opinion, Ron Paul’s justified distrust of the growth of government power in many unconstitutional areas has irrationally succumbed to an antipathy towards federal government activity in one of its few legitimate areas – national defense.

Further, Ron Paul’s libertarian suspicion of big government defense spending, has been deliberately fostered and encouraged by the most anti-libertarian elements in the land – the US hard left.

Ron Paul and many Libertarians think they can work with Marxists to achieve libertarian ends.

The hard bitten Leninists and disciplined Marxists of the left know they can use naive Libertarians to achieve their ends – particularly to gut America’s defenses, to the benefit of their foreign masters.

In short, the US left is using Ron Paul and other Libertarians, to do what their armies and intelligence services have long dreamed of – destroy America’s military superiority and with it, US national sovereignty.

By promoting the left’s defense policies, Ron Paul, a man of patriotism beyond question, could be unknowingly betraying his own country to its enemies.

The degree to which Ron Paul buys into leftist anti-defense views was well illustrated in 2010.

That year, The Sustainable Defense Task Force was formed in response to a request from far left Massachusetts Democratic Representative Barney Frank, Ron Paul and Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, to “explore possible defense budget contributions to deficit reduction efforts that would not compromise the essential security of the United States.”

What did the much heralded report recommend?

The Task Force’s proposals included cutting nuclear deterrence, reducing the fleet by 57 ships, including two carriers, canceling the Joint Strike Fighter, “severely curtail[ing] missile defense” (a direct quote from the report), retiring four Marine battalions, reducing the military by 200,000 personnel, cutting defense research spending by 50 billion over ten years and increasing health care fees for military personnel.

Daniel Greenfield of the excellent Sultan Knish blog, points out that many of the groups contributing to the report were funded by the notorious leftist billionaire, George Soros.

But Soros was not the only sinister influence here. Several report contributors had direct ties to the Marxists of Democratic Socialists of America and indirect ties to the Communist Party USA . Members of both organizations have been convicted of spying for hostile foreign powers. Both have ties to radical regimes such as Cuba and Venezuela. Both want to overturn US capitalism and replace it with Marxist socialism.

Other contributors have ties to the ultra-leftist Institute for Policy Studies, once described by British analyst Brian Crozier, as the “perfect intellectual front for Soviet activities which would be resisted if they were to originate openly from the KGB.”

Another associated with the Council for a Livable World – America’s oldest and best funded ‘peace” Political Action Committee. The Council was founded in 1962 by Hungarian expatriate Leo Szilard, a former Manhattan Project physicist, a Marxist and a reported Soviet spy. Council for a Livable World has helped finance hundreds of pro-“peace” leftists into office, including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Sustainable Defense Task Force initiators Barney Frank and Ron Wyden.

Barack Obama in 1994, with Council for a Livable World chairman, and Democratic Socialists of America affiliate , Jerome Grossman

On February 4, 2010, the Council for a Livable World announced that David Bonior would become the next chair of PeacePAC, the organization’s arm that endorses candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives. At the time, Bonior commented:

“I am honored to be selected as the next chairman of PeacePAC. I look forward to working with the experts on the committee’s Board of Directors to endorse and help elect strong, progressive candidates in the 2010 elections.

A former Democratic Party Whip, Bonior has, since 2007, been an open member of Democratic Socialists of America.

The Project on Defense Alternatives coordinated the work of the Task Force. Carl Conetta drafted the main body of the Task Force report in ongoing consultation with Task Force members who “developed or digested proposals from the diverse sources cited in the report.” A sub-committee of the Task Force reviewed the final draft before publication. Conetta was assisted in overseeing the report by his Project on Defense Alternatives co-director and fellow Task Force member Charles Knight – a long time member of Democratic Socialists of America.

D.S.A. member, and report author Charles Knight

Knight wrote an article for Boston Democratic Socialists of America’s The Yankee Radical of October 2001, entitled “Defense Budget Blues”:

It is important to note that George Bush has now fully joined the ranks of wartime Keynesians. He has a majority coalition with Democrats to spend the country out of the recession it is now entering. In the short term the left in this country cannot hope to advance a better option. We must instead focus on deepening our analysis and story of this time in history so that when our country tires of vengeful war and its repercussions we have done the groundwork to lead the country in a different direction.

Part of that story should be that 90+% of military investments have nothing to do with countering terrorism or with defending our homeland and that if we desire not to be a target of terrorist hate in the future we need to change our country’s stance in the world.

The economic self-interest of contractors is an important fact of the political economy, but the central impetus for high military budgets comes from the utility of military power to US elites in their efforts to enhance their position of dominance across the globe. We are seeing that power in action now.

Nevertheless, I believe that the majority of Americans do not share that interest in dominance with conservative elites. We must learn to provide a viable security option for this majority of Americans.

Connetta and Knight’s organization is the lead project of the Boston based Commonwealth Institute.

Interestingly, four of the Institute’s seven board members have been identified members of Democratic Socialists of America – Charles Knight, Richard Healey, Guy Molyneux and Cynthia Ward. A fifth, S. M. Miller, has at least been a long time D.S.A. affiliate. Richard Healey is the son of the famous, late California communist Dorothy Healey and is a former staffer with the Institute for Policy Studies. Healey also serves on the board of the Rosenberg Fund for Children, which is run by the sons of executed Soviet “atom bomb spies,” Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

One notable former board member of the Project on Defense Alternatives was Dr. Philip Morrison, Professor, Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who died in April 2005. Morrison had been a Communist Party member, a Manhattan Project scientist and was suspected of being a Soviet spy – code names: “Relay” or “Serb.”

Other Taskforce members also had known radical associations:

William D. Hartung: Director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation, a leftist “think tank” headed by Steve Coll, a former Occidental College contemporary of Barack Obama’s. Hartung also serves on the Advisory Committee ^, of Foreign Policy in Focus, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies.

Christopher Hellman: National Priorities Project, which is a partner organization of the Institute for Policy Studies. The N.P.P. “analyzes and clarifies federal data” so that people can understand and influence how their tax dollars are spent. Board members include Jen Kern, of the D.S.A. front American Rights at Work, who previously worked in the ACORN national office, “providing research support for local ACORN organizers nationwide on issues from insurance and banking discrimination to jobs, education and minimum wage,” two Task Force members – Paul Kawika Martin and Miriam Pemberton, an Albany New York academic Lawrence Wittner, a member of Democratic Socialists of America and Connecticut academic Vijay Prashad, a long time affiliate of the Communist Party USA.

Heather Hulburt: National Security Network and a senior adviser with leftist New York “think tank” Demos, also a partner organization of the Institute for Policy Studies. Incidentally, both Barack Obama and his former communist “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones, are former Demos Trustees, while Demos CEO Miles Rapoport has a long history with D.S.A.

Judith LeBlanc with Palestinian terrorist leader Yasser Arafat, 2002

Paul Kawika Martin: Political & Communications Director with Peace Action, the US’ largest “peace” umbrella group. Peace Action was formerly known as the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, a well documented communist front. Mr. Martin “uses his expertise on nuclear weapons, international relations and US foreign policy to mobilize Peace Action’s 100,000 members and lobby Congress for social change.” His recent travels include trips to Cuba and Iran. Martin also works very closely with Judith LeBlanc, who is Peace Action’s national field organizer. LeBlanc is a vice-chair of the Communist Party USA and chairs it’s Peace and Solidarity Commission, the body charged with directing the US “peace movement” and liaising with foreign communist and terrorist organizations. Most recently, LeBlanc was organizing Peace Action activist to lobby the Senate “Committee of 12” to institute massive defense spending cuts.

Laicie Olson: Senior policy analyst Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and board member of Council for a Livable World.

Miriam Pemberton: Institute for Policy Studies and the peace and security editor for Foreign Policy in Focus. Pemberton leads a group that produces the annual “Unified Security Budget for the United States.” Other recent publications include, “The Budgets Compared: Military vs. Climate Security.” She has authored two reports comparing the budgets for military and climate security in FY2009 and FY2010 and with William Hartung published “Lessons From Iraq: Avoiding the Next War.”

Prasannan Parathasarathi: Founder of the 25% Solution, which is “building a citizen movement for cuts in the Pentagon budget.” Parathasarathi is married to fellow Boston College academic and long time Democratic Socialists of America member, Juliet Schor. Incidentally Schor was one of several D.S.A. and Institute for Policy Studies leaders who set up the radical New Party in the early 1990s. One of their most well known and successful members was Barack Obama. The Coalition for Peace Action‘s 32nd Annual Conference for Peace was held on November 13, 2011 at Princeton University. The Conference was entitled “Smart Security: Reducing Military Spending to Fund Urgent Needs at Home.” The event featured talks from Dr. Prasannan Parthasarathi and Judith LeBlanc of the Communist Party, who “encouraged the audience to be hopeful about our political progress and to be involved with the current Occupy movements around the country.”

Prasannan Parthasarathi , left, Judith Leblanc, center

Clearly Ron Paul and Barney Frank’s Sustainable Defense Task Force was totally dominated by the hard left – people with an interest in transforming America through socialist revolution.

How did Ron Paul get sucked into this leftist scam? Did he not care who wrote his country’s defense policies? Did he not do “due diligence” on the people he entrusted with such a huge responsibility?

Either Ron Paul was extremely negligent in checking the bona fides of those he entrusted with such a vital responsibility or he just didn’t care that anti-American Marxists were involved.

I think Ron Paul was probably negligent. He was so blinded by his own prejudices, that he was willing to do a deal with the devil to get publicity for his cause.

That a serious contender for the presidency of the United States could be so careless over such a vital issue speaks volumes about his judgment.

Ron Paul may have been blinded by the left, but he is guilty of at least partially closing his eyes of his own accord. Candidate Paul should publicly admit his error and vow never to repeat it, or he should leave the presidential race and return to Congress.

Ron Paul is the best there is on financial and economic matters. That is the field where he can best serve his country and the cause of liberty.

Unfortunately, he clearly doesn’t have the understanding of defense issues required of a man who aspires to the highest office in the free world.