Ron Paul Does Reddit AMA, Talks Tea Party And Marijuana

Popular third party candidate Ron Paul did a Reddit AMA today, a specific sort of thread on the site in which the title “AMA” stands for “Ask Me Anything.”

Ron Paul’s Reddit AMA was destined to be hugely popular, given the heavy presence on the social aggregator of Libertarians in general, and the active subreddit they inhabit.

Paul fielded questions on a number of subjects, from the Tea Party to marijuana and the NDAA, snagging more than 33,000 “karma” points in his go around on the site.

One question Paul was asked involved the Tea Party, and their relevance in relation to the party’s prominence in 2010. Paul answered in part:

“Well I don’t deal with the Tea Party (or the Republican party or any of that) per se, we must deal with the idealogy of the concept of liberty. The Tea Party was actually started during the Ron Paul presidential campaign in 2007 when there was a spontaneous moneybomb that was done on the anniversary of the original tea party. And it was strictly related to the issues and ideas I have just finished talking about. What happened after that was that a lot of people came onboard – including Republicans – who watered down some of the beliefs, and certainly changed the opinion of some on foreign policy so that the original Tea Party movement was taken over by the Republican Party, which I think was part of the problem.”

On Texas’ ban on the sale of Tesla vehicles, Paul commented:

“It’s un-American and it’s unpatriotic and it’s bad economic policy, and it should not be any business of the government what car you can buy.”

On the subject of Chelsea Manning, known commonly until yesterday as Bradley Manning, Paul posted:

“He should have been punished because he confessed to breaking the law and he did practice Civil Disobedience. So he deserves some punishment, but he has already received (in my estimation) excessive amounts of punishment. He has been in prison for over 3 years as well as tortured, and most military personnel who are caught committing war crimes never receive any penalties. I think he should be released now, that he has done us a great service by letting the people know the truth, he’s a whistleblower in my estimation (even the courts did not charge him with aiding the enemy), and I believe his goal was to inform the American people of the truth about what was happening in the Iraq / Afghanistan Wars.”

You can read Ron Paul’s entire Reddit AMA over on Reddit.