Ron Paul Detractors Still Don't Get It

This article was originally published in americanchronicle.com on Octorber 3rd, 2007


So, I’m a Ronbot. According to certain denizens of the web lurking in their shadowy corners of the blogosphere, there are many of us Ronbots out there, but not too many. No, if there were too many if us, if we were more than say one or two percent of the population, then that would shatter the world view of some of these Internet denizens. We are a small Ronbot army, somehow controlled by this mystical deity and granted the magical ability to be able to hijack Internet, phone and other polls meant to give viewers of debates a voice of who won said debate. Come to think of it, according to some pundits, there are only a few of us who are very smart and know how to spam these polls. Ok, ok, I admit it, I’m the only real Ron Paul supporter and I’ve been creating all this hubbub and spam on my old turbo charged Atari 800 computer.
But seriously, think about this term Ronbot for a minute. It’s a term some clever blogomatic coined in an attempt to minimize the power of Ron Paul’s message. It’s a term that intimates that Ron Paul supporters aren’t real people, that they are some form of mindless zombie sent into the cyber world to disrupt and distract from the normal operations of the Internet. It’s meant to suggest that Ron Paul supporters have been programmed by his campaign to infiltrate the Internet encampments of the establishment and shake them up a little. What strikes me as ironic is that Ron Paul detractors will accuse his supporters of blindly following without thought, when it seems to me it is they who have blindly followed the establishment for years without question. It is they who continue to follow the leader down the road paved with corporate dollars as they support one candidate or another who get the majority of their contributions from special interests. They are the ones supporting candidates that have been bought and paid for by the corporate elite. They are the ones supporting the candidacies of the very rich who know nothing of what it’s like to struggle to earn a living.
There is something else that seems to be happening. On the streets, real people with real lives are showing their support for Ron Paul. These are not keyboard pundits sitting behind their monitors hurtling insults into cyber space at those who disagree with them, these are men and women with real jobs and real families making real decisions about their future. They don’t want the government in it. They want to make their own choices. They want real freedom. I’ve talked to people. I’ve talked to the mechanic at the oil change place. I’ve talked to the farmer in the waiting room there. I’ve talked to the clerk behind the counter at the drugstore. I’ve talked to my coworkers. These are common folk, but they still have their dreams. They have silently pledged their support for Ron. They understand his message and realize it is a message of hope and of positive change. They realize that the best thing for the common good, the best way to protect our children and their progeny, is to respect the individual’s rights and the God given freedoms spelled out for us in the constitution. They understand that it is best for all concerned for the United States of America stop trying to be an empire, to stop building nations, to end the wars, and to bring its soldiers home. These are not Ronbots, but they are the politically dispossessed that the system and the pundits have left out of the equation. They are the people the talking heads on TV are forgetting about when they spew out their artificially low numbers in their poll results. How else is it that Ron Paul could win or place in so many straw polls if not for such people? How else is it he could raise so much money so quickly without corporate backing? That’s what Ron Paul detractors don’t get, that he is more than just some Internet phenomenon due to fade. He is the real choice of the real common man, not the choice thrust upon on by the elite, self appointed guardians of the American body politic. Real people with real brains who are able to make real choices like his message of a limited, less intrusive federal government that follows the mandates set forth by our founding fathers in the Bill of Rights instead of dictating to us what to think and do. Now that they finally have a candidate that espouses these views instead of pandering to try to be everything to everyone, they are going to support him.
The people using the term Ronbot will in the same breath use the same tired old axioms that have gone unquestioned for far too long to support a policy of war, or of taxes, or of any number of socialistic policies meant to tie down the common man and keep his face pressed to the teat of mommy government. These people have been arguing conservative v liberal in meaningless blogs and now that a candidate shows up with a substantive message of restoring individual liberty, individual responsibility and governmental non-interference in both the markets and personal lives, a message that tears apart both liberal and conservative paradigms, a message that the common man can truly back, they call foul. They cry, “Get out of our face. Don’t come around here screaming about individual liberty and responsibility. We don’t want to hear it. We want the government to take our money and spend it on the war. We want the government to take care of us. We want the government to tax us to the max so we can have free health care. We want to be told what to do. We want to give up our freedom so the terrorist boogie-men don’t get us. We want to be shaken down in the airport by TSA agents. We want dissenters corralled into free speech zones where we don’t have to hear them. Please keep the status quo. We don’t want the government to change. We want the government to decide for us. We’re scared of freedom.” Well now you are going to hear it. The message is being shouted from the rooftops now that a viable candidate is touting that message. It is reverberating across the country and as more people hear and understand it, more people add their voices to the chorus until soon the song will come to a crescendo and we will bring a true measure of freedom back to this country. That, my friends, is not the clamoring of a few mindless followers known as Ronbots, that is the roar of an oncoming tidal wave crashing upon the shores of 21st century America carrying an ideal that was born over two hundred and thirty years ago, an ideal that was thought lost in the socialistic propaganda of the last century but is quickly re-emerging with a force to be reckoned with. The concept of freedom is not easily held back, and given time it will swell and wash away the sands of fascism and socialism that seek to contain it.
I am not a bot of any kind. I have been a believer in freedom and liberty since I can remember. I have been writing about freedom oriented themes since before I even heard of Ron Paul. My writings are archived and available for all to see. I don’t write about Ron Paul because he’s running for president, I write about him because he embodies the ideas I believe in, ideas that made this nation great. I have no delusions that he will obtain office and everything will magically change. He is just one man trying to achieve a position of power that is supposed to be held in check by many other men. He would need the support of many more in congress before smaller government and the repeal of oppressive laws could be accomplished. His supporters would not only have to vote for him as president in 2008, but would also have to vote in other freedom oriented candidates as their representatives and senators. If nothing else, Ron Paul’s candidacy has given us the opportunity to once again discuss the issues of freedom and liberty both in the marketplace and in our personal lives. It would be a wonderful thing to see America once again become a beacon of freedom, a place where one can live by one’s own will without the oppressive yolk of government dragging one down. A Ron Paul presidency would at least be a good start.