Zeal For Truth

With a headline like this, it must be first mentioned that this is not a paranoid conspiratorial piece on how delegates were STOLEN (all caps), votes weren’t counted or the major media somehow sabotaged the Ron Paul campaign. Rather, it is important to take a realistic look at the goals that Ron Paul’s campaign set out to accomplish, and examine how he fared.

First of all, did Ron Paul actually enter this election to win? Before we start getting our competitive juices flowing, just think about what Ron Paul stands for and what a realistic assessment of this kind of “victory” would have meant. He would have gone to the Oval Office with a congress that absolutely hated and loathed him, departments that feared him and would fight him as though their jobs were at stake (which they would be) and a public (after fickle popular support had waned) which was bewildered with the kind of radical policies and actions that were coming from the president. A Ron Paul presidency may have destroyed the best fruits of his candidacy.

Ron Paul’s campaign has always been a bottom-up phenomenon. Secondly, it is a more purely philosophical and ideological agenda - rather than a pragmatic political one. While many have criticized that this is a bad thing - is it not more beneficial in the long-term to sacrifice an election in order to generate hundreds of thousands of individual awakenings to liberty?

Rather than being humble, Paul was being very honest when he said countless times that the campaign wasn’t about him, but about the people who supported him. Paul’s campaign jarred the intellectually lazy and cynical over a few months (which may have been all they needed), and made them take a moment to consider what freedom, consitutionalism and liberty really mean. He showed us what a free society should look like.

This is key, because rather than end up in a politically neutered position of central power, Ron Paul has lit the spark of changed hearts and minds. And for those that have not changed, especially many conservatives, they have had to reconsider what kind of GOP they now support. Paul’s campaign was in the spotlight for enough time to act as a mirror against the new GOP - and show conservatives just how long it’s been since they took a good look at themselves - many of them no longer recognizing their own faces.

Ron Paul’s expectations have been wildly exceeded by his campaign. For the first time in decades, there is an active block of people who are learning about the evils of central banking, empire-building and welfarism. These aren’t the crazies and kooks who were in the cracks of society, burying guns in Idaho - these are regular folks, who work regular jobs and have become evangelical about the message of freedom.

This movement, which has been scattered and divided across the spectrum: libertarians, constitutionalists, republicans, democrats, independents, anarchists and even some former socialists have been united under Paul’s big tent platform. And while it may be easy to ridicule the conspiracy theorists, it is a testimony to the movement that they now join with college professors, intellectuals and businessmen. Or the atheists, homosexual activists and objectivists now aligning with radical Christians and New Agers. These people now realize that they have more in common than they once thought - and while disagreements remain, there is now more than a undefined dissatisfaction with what has happened in America, but a visible way out.

John McCain or Barack Obama will go to the White House in 2008. But their policies, which favour a continuation of America’s slow decline into the also-rans of history, will prove Ron Paul right again. People like BJ Lawson, Murray Sabrin and Carl Bunce are setting themselves up as future advocates. Many of these would have never thought to seek political office, but have been inspired by the optimism and hope that Ron Paul exampled.

Ron Paul won in 2008, by taking the exact opposite approach of most politicians. Instead of coalition building, compromising, pandering and standing for nothing and everything at the same time, Paul explicitly denounced the problems we have created and boldly proclaimed the solutions found in freedom and liberty. Ron Paul has mobilized many in the coming generation to build a better future. This long-term investment may not have resulted in an immediate gratification, but over time, compounded with interest, this movement may very well pay off.