Booing the Golden Rule

By David Swanson
http://warisacrime.org/content/booing-golden-rule
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. An important rule to live by. So is this corollary: Friends don't let friends watch presidential primary debates.
I think the clip at this link is a safe dose bit.ly/xVAIF6 and I have survived it myself or I would not urge it on others.
I recommend it to you only because I believe it is important for us to stop and ask what it means for a group of people who tend to promote both Christianity and the combination of Christianity with politics to have just booed the golden rule.
In this video Congressman Ron Paul describes Pakistan as a sovereign nation and suggests that the United States should not be bombing it. Paul also proposes that there should have been some attempt to capture Osama bin Laden rather than murdering him. Paul promotes the rule of law and goes so far as to advocate that the United States only fight wars that have been declared by Congress (a standard that would eliminate the past 70 years' worth of wars). To that the response is cheering from at least some section of the audience.
Then Newt Gingrich says that the proper thing to do with enemies is "Kill them." That, of course, receives ecstatic applause.
What could Paul say in response? He could have quoted almost anything Jesus Christ or Ronald Reagan or Ayn Rand had ever said and been booed for it. He chose a response that further guaranteed booing: he opposed U.S. exceptionalism. He suggested that other nations might merit the same respect as our own. If another nation were doing to ours what we do to others, we wouldn't like it, Paul pointed out. Perhaps we should follow the golden rule, he said. And he was booed for that.
And yet Paul goes on to speak against launching a war on Iran, and in support of ending our current wars; and some group of people — not necessarily, but possibly, some of the same individuals who had just been booing — start cheering instead.