Ron Paul, America´s Best Hope, Not the Last

This article was originally published at americanchronicle.com and uncoverthenews.com on June 23rd, 2008

As most Ron Paul supporters know, he has suspended his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. This has upset many people I know, a couple of my coworkers specifically. Valentine seemed especially upset with this and came in Tuesday morning with his head hung low and in poor spirits because he felt Ron Paul had let him down. He told me he now had no one to vote for and that he felt the country was doomed, as did his daughter. This led to a long and convoluted discussion about politics American style and prodded me into sitting down to write another article though I thought I´d be taking the summer off to complete a couple of books I´ve been working on and to find a better paying job. I hope my words can be of some comfort to at least a couple of people.

I think perhaps Valentine´s attitude may have sprung somewhat from some Ron Paul supporters themselves. I´ve seen quite a number of websites and blogs supporting Ron Paul who refer to him as "America´s last hope." I doubt this is the case. I think Ron Paul is America´s best hope if freedom is to be achieved at a national level, but he is certainly not the last hope. To say so would be a defeatist attitude. And yet this is what many people seem to believe. Perhaps the powers that be would prefer those who support liberty in our lifetimes to think that way. Perhaps there are those in this world who seek power over others, who seek to control even the minutia in people´s lives, who wish people to believe that the defeat of one man means the end of a movement. I believe that if such people exist then they are sorely mistaken. Ron Paul and his revolution are not a means to an end, but a vehicle which has started a movement that will continue even though that vehicle may have stopped short of the final destination.

Oh sure, having a liberty minded president would be a great thing. We would quickly be out of all wars and foreign entanglements and would be able to use the resources saved to defend our borders and prop up some of the federal government welfare programs – which are quickly becoming insolvent – that people have come to depend on until such a time as they can be phased out and market solutions implemented. We could look forward to a national debate on the nature of money and the harm a central bank can do to an economy. The people of the nation could finally come to understand the fraudulence inherent in the Federal Reserve System and see how it fleeces the middle class and the poor through the inflation tax. Many secrets would likely be exposed and shown as the illegal scams they are rather than as necessary for national security. Unconstitutional laws that have pervaded our society over the past decade would be debated in the open and would likely be shown to the public as a means to subdue rather than protect the common man. The media would more or less have to cover Ron Paul honestly if he was president, after all, it would be hard to ignore the president. And, hopefully, if they were to continue to try to minimize him and his message of freedom, they would ultimately be ignored by a people who once again care about the principles of freedom and liberty above all else. That is, after all, the foundation of the America that is supposed to be.

And so Valentine was worried he had no one to vote for. He so wanted to vote for Ron Paul for president and now it would impossible. He´d have to vote for one of the authoritarian statists, one of the collectivists that the two major parties decided to run. He would have to vote for an evil he did not wish to vote for. I asked him why and he explained that he felt like voting for a third party was a waste of a vote. I´ve addressed this argument in other articles and I´m not going to get into that here, nor did I get into that with Valentine either. I simply asked him why he wouldn´t just write in Ron Paul, if that´s who he wanted to vote for. He explained that he had heard that Illinois is going to take the option for write-in votes off the ballot. I don´t know if that´s true and I hope it´s not, but even if it is I asked Valentine, "So?" This rather flustered the old guy and I´m afraid I´m not as good at explaining things using the spoken word as I am with the written. I went on and on about freedom and how we as individuals have to exercise our personal responsibility and I think I may have been more confusing than helpful.

Who are they to limit my choices when voting for president? Who are they to say I can´t vote for this person or that person? If I want to vote for Ron Paul for president because I feel he represents my point of view, my beliefs, and because he believes in the concepts of our founding fathers and defends the constitution and its principles, than by God that´s what I´m going to do. If they decide not to leave a space for a write-in vote, than I´ll just write Ron Paul´s name across the damn ballot and give it to them that way. If they want to call that a spoiled ballot, so what? How can I be sure they´re even going to count my vote when we have to use their damned electronic machines that any teen-aged computer geek worth his salt could hack? If they can´t look at that ballot and figure out who I voted for what good are they anyway? They know who I voted for, and what I voted for, whether they want to admit it or not. I vote for an end to the evil of empire. I vote for a return to the principles of our founding fathers. I vote for adherence to the constitution by those who abuse their powers and ignore its tenets. I vote for a return to a republican form of government. I vote for the freedom that at one time was America and the liberty its citizenry once enjoyed.

A Ron Paul presidency was (and as far as I´m concerned still is) our nation´s best hope to once again regain the freedom, prosperity and world envy it once had, but it certainly is not our last hope. If there´s anything Ron Paul´s candidacy taught us, it should have taught us that we can only depend upon ourselves. We, the people of this nation, are America´s last hope. It is up to those of us who understand freedom and its implications to keep explaining to those who believe in the holiness of the state that government is the problem, not the solution. It is up to us to explain to them that government is force, insidious and brutal, exercised against the populace. I´ve taken the time to read Ron Paul´s book and it is a good primer for those who are uninitiated as to the true nature of freedom. For those of us who have been aware for some time as to the real nature of America´s political elite, it is a refresher course, well worth the read to remind us of what we are striving to regain.

There are plenty of other movements that are occurring in which the seeker of freedom can take part in. There is the Free State Project which strives to bring liberty lovers together in one state, New Hampshire. There is DownsizeDC.org which strives to pass common sense laws that will help reduce the mammoth sized federal government. There is the Ron Paul meetup groups which continue to exist despite their candidate´s announcement that he will suspend his campaign. Latest of all, there is Ron Paul´s Campaign for Liberty which was launched on the same night he announced his withdrawal and which seeks to find and elect liberty loving candidates into congress, where the real power of the state should reside. I´m sure there are many other organizations promoting liberty springing up across our nation and that this list is in no way exhaustive. All these movements seek to restore adherence to the constitution, smaller central government and the freedoms we once enjoyed. They are all worthy of our attention and hopefully they will continue to grow and prosper as more and more people find and begin to understand the message of freedom.

Ron Paul is not America´s last hope, but he remains her best hope. Still, there are many, many hopeful voices across the country that are ready to do whatever it takes to regain freedom and are willing to show that individual leadership and responsibility spring from respecting the liberties God endowed in all men. More and more people in our nation are beginning to understand this and are starting to shun the establishment. More and more people are joining the revolution and expressing their displeasure with the status quo. We are winning this battle peacefully. Each person that learns the truth of freedom is like a raindrop added to the storm. It is becoming more and more difficult for the established powers to maintain the levies of ignorance that hold back the floodwaters of liberty. When those levies burst, only those on the high ground will be safe, and from my point of view it seems that the establishment has chosen some very low ground to stand upon.