Ron Paul's Legacy

Miscellaneous Current Events
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Well because there’s been interest shown in it lately, let’s sit down and have a good old chat about our buddy Ron Paul. Now I’m afraid that someone’s going to tell me to look back at the RNC thread for answers about this but I don’t want to sift through all of that for the answers here. Anyway…

So now that the Ron Paul Revolution is more or less over, how does everyone feel that it went? Was the entire thing a success insofar as we could hope, or was it a brutal catastrophe? What do you feel the long term effects of his candidacy will be, and to a much lesser extent what finally took the wind out of the movement’s sails?

I still think that the Ron Paul movement is certainly among the most important developments in 2012, since it revealed that there was a pretty significant desire for the sorts of things that Ron Paul was supporting. I feel that this signifies both a large change in public opinion and voting patterns. Although some of this might disappear if general discontent with the establishment falls, I think that it does certainly bode well for a more libertarian future. Just looking around this site you saw a lot of people who were influenced from his candidacy back in 08, and I think that this time it will have an even more significant impact in how many people come over to libertarianism. While this isn’t amazing success, it’s certainly more than I think could have been expected just a year ago, and I don’t think that it’s unrealistic that in a few years we could see 5 to 10 percent of the electorate being actively libertarian to various degrees.

As for what killed the movement, I can’t say that I’d ever really considered the actual effect of Rand Paul. I lost interest in Paul’s progress after he lost the first few primaries and I was convinced that he wasn’t going to win, so I was much more interested in the movements repercussions than the movement itself and for this reason I didn’t actually pay attention to anything which was happening within the movement. I had assumed that as the movement died down it was specifically because it became increasingly obvious that Paul had no chance of become President Paul, not because Rand’s endorsement had actually changed anything.

So, input would be appreciated here, as would any abstention from arguing.

Ron Paul threads
Thomas Jefferson, Revolutionary period, and history
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Well I think a lot happened to Ron at the same time that deflated the movement. Rand, coming out and saying he was broke so he’s going to stop campaigning, and getting beat up at getting delegates. I think all these things played a major role with rand being the least of it.

As far as the libertarian movement I think we are looking at more than 10%. Literally I think in two elections from now we can have a libertarian majority in this country. The only thing I see stopping the movement is the Dems and rep move to a more libertarian platform for a couple elections. We also need a few legit libertarians to get into office! The movement doesn’t require a leader, but it certainly helps.

bottom line though I think it’s too easy for the two parties to alter their platforms enough to convince the public to vote for them. Then a few years later back to biz as usual

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I wouldnt be here if it wasnt for ron paul.

While he probably wont win (theres still minimal hope), he did inspire many to become more politically/economically aware of the things around them.

People are wanting to vote for gary johnson, but screw him. hes not an austrian. and not as big as ron paul either. I dont really like gary johnson.

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I think both the '08 and '12 Paul campaigns were, in the grand scheme of things, great successes. It popularized libertarian ideas and authors. It made questioning the two-party system and the Federal Reserve a mainstream possibility. The movement built a strong infrastructure on the internet for the libertarian message. It’s basically a “best-case realistic scenerio”. To be honest, I was always concerned about what would happen if Paul would actually win. He would have had the bully pulpit of the White House, but very little political power in the government as a whole. It would have been very easy for him to be set up as a scapegoat for any kind of economic troubles or other issues. He also had the baggage from the “Paleo-libertarian” movement and newsletter fiasco.

As it stands now he’s sort of riding off into the sunset as an effective champion of liberty that has shifted the political discourse in the US and abroad. If he would have been elected I think we would actually have seen a very different, muddled legacy.

Rand is not the future, although I imagine he might stick around in the Senate for a while. There is a new generation of libertarians thanks to Ron, and I think we’ll see new candidates and spokesmen coming up through the ranks.

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Though a vote for Gary will inspire more ppl to vote libertarian in the future, and inspire libertarians to run for office. It’s also a vote against the status quo

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Peter schiff should run for presidential election.

Ron paul endorses peter schiff.

Supporters see peter schiff as having true libertarian ideas, and is a member of austrian school.

Ron paul political capital and supporters move to peter schiff.

peter schiff’s money and connections help him improve in campaign.

peter schiff not being old like ron paul will appear better to mainstream idiots.

perhaps peter schiff may choose ron paul as vice president, gary johnson as vice president, or ran paul as vice president.

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I’ve realized any prior amount of respect I had for most journalists and the national broadcast media has been totally obliterated.

I’ve seen how thorough and reactionary mainstream media can become in the ways they distorted literally everything the man believed in. In such a systematic, coordinated fashion, no less.

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Politically the RP movement was spectacular. He actually called out the Fed and other central banks for what they really are: A bunch of government sponsored thieves. He was also by far the most articulate proponent of peace that I have ever seen in my lifetime spanning the end of the Vietnam War to today.

As for its political accomplishments, getting Rand into the Senate has been HUGE. Rand has more accomplishments in his first Senate term than RP for his career. Being a Senator and being able to affect foreign policy, Rand is in a better position to accomplish RP’s vision of a USA that has friendly trade relationships with rest of the world instead of this endless war foolishness. Rand PERSONALLY stopped the Senate from approving a treaty admitting the Republic of Georgia into NATO and thus stopped a direct confrontation with Russia. And in this one the USA would lose when Russia turns the Natural Gas Pipelines down a notch and stops lending money to large French and German banks leveraged on debt from Spain, Italy and Greece.

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Am i the only one noticing the massive forum spam?

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He did what he could and I respect him for that.

The incredibly corrupt media, the newsletters, and being a frankly bad speaker made it so he didn’t really have a chance at being President sadly.

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  • Peter schiff should run for presidential election.

I’m not so sure about that. His senate run sputtered a bit, and I think on the national stage we could do better. Peter can be smarmy and cynical sometimes, and often talks quickly and get agitated. All fine for a commentator and financial analyst, but not great material for Presidential debates.

I think the next person we need is someone who will combine Paul’s message of fiscal freedom and peace with a strong message of civil libertires. Primarily:

  • Gay rights and marriage equality
  • Respect for and awareness of feminism
  • Destruction of corporate privilege
  • Making ending the drug war a priority
  • Practical solution for moving forward towards a free society

In general, a principled message for the “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” crowd. Paul touched on this, and it seems that the hard core of his supporters were passionate about these issues, although at times Paul would only pay lip service to some of them (like marriage equality).

Furthermore, (and I know some people will disagree with me here) we don’t want a Rothbardian “red button pusher” who will advocate tearing the state down and calling it a day. There are huge and unjust distortions in our society, and I’d prefer someone who would “take away the shackles before the crutches”. Someone promoting economic freedome while also supporting a simpified welfare state (ie. a Negative Income tax or Universal Basic Income) would result in a much more libertarian society and work to undo some of the grevious harm the State has done to the middle and lower classes.

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First, it’s really gay that you would look at one thread, then make another about the same subject and say “I don’t wanna look through the orignial thread about this topic.” … You are essentially saying that mine, JJ, and Minarchist’s conversation didn’t have enough to offer, even though all three of us wrote extensively about our opinions.

Rand’s endorsement destroyed the integrity that Ron had built. Rand knew that he was setup to inheret the following, but thought he could “broaden” the interest by “selling out.” Simple as that.

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  1. This thread also asks about different, but related topics

  2. That thread wasn’t really about this, it was about the “Republican National Convention” and whether Paul would be able to speak.

  3. To understand many of the posts that you put up one would have to read every single one of the posts to understand what was being replied to in the previous response.

  4. From what I saw none of you succinctly put out your point in an explanation format and were instead arguing more point by point and a lot of what was being talked about was stuff which differed from the topic which we are talking about now.

  5. I think you overestimate how easy it would be for observers to get something valuable with the discussion.

  6. Thank you for your input on the topic. Can you explain to me how exactly that killed the movement? Why didn’t everyone pretty much just spit at Rand and move on? That’s what I saw happen around here.

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Because it divided people into the ‘purist’ and ‘pragmatist’ camps. The pragmatists have no limits set on ‘how statist they will state’. The purists now have NO icon in the system or even in the public eye that measures anywhere close to the respect that Ronald demanded. So, far, Schiff and Kokesh are the only two and, honestly, Schiff would shift as quickly as Rand, I suspect. Kokesh is too intense for the mainstream (not in behavior or manners, but image and message).

We have been divided and conquered.

It seems to me that there are more pragmatists than there are purists, which would be expected. Also, “around here” is roughly 30 people (regularly), from what I can tell.

I don’t know how that is different than any other thread…

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So now that the Ron Paul Revolution is more or less over, how does everyone feel that it went? Was the entire thing a success insofar as we could hope, or was it a brutal catastrophe? What do you feel the long term effects of his candidacy will be, and to a much lesser extent what finally took the wind out of the movement’s sails?

I disagree that it’s over, or even winding down. What’s happening now is much like what happened towards the end of the 2008 campaign. The frenzy of interest in the campaign reached a climax and receded. It didn’t mean the movement had ended. The 2008 campaign built the base for the much more successful campaign of 2012, and this campaign will increase that base for future efforts. Yes, those efforts will not include another political campaign for Ron Paul himself, and the movement will have to do some soul-searching in the next few months to decide which direction to take, but I have no doubt that it will continue to grow.

Just looking around this site you saw a lot of people who were influenced from his candidacy back in 08, and I think that this time it will have an even more significant impact in how many people come over to libertarianism.

Bingo, and this is what Ron has been trying to do all along. I think he is realistic enough to have known that his chances of winning were slim to none. The second battle of this revolution is almost over, the war is just beginning.

I had assumed that as the movement died down it was specifically because it became increasingly obvious that Paul had no chance of become President Paul, not because Rand’s endorsement had actually changed anything.

What disillusionment there is within the movement mostly comes from disappointed expectations about Ron’s victory. I think Rand, along with Jesse Benton, Doug Wead, et al are just scapegoats. This is a good example of a tendency that seems to be pretty universal in human beings. If there’s a group of people following a leader of some kind, and the enterprise they’re all engaged in doesn’t meet their expectations, they tend not to blame the leader himself, but rather the coterie of individuals around the leader who they imagine are responsible for the failure. Look at the French Revolution or Tsarist Russia, it was never the King or the Tsar’s fault, it was always those evil ministers, the Austrian bitch, etc, etc. This is not to say that the leader is actually to blame, it may be that no one is to blame. I think that’s the case with the Ron Paul revolution. We did our best, played the game pretty well, but we lost. At least, we didn’t win the whole pot. But as I said above, huge strides have been made and I think we can look forward to a lot more success in the future.

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I dont think his campaign was slowed down by Rand. If anything, Rand’s endorsement of romney only stirred the crowd more.

The reason why his campaign slowed down so dramatically (it was off to a really good start), is because his announcement of not participating in primary

"Our campaign will continue to work in the state convention process. We will continue to take leadership positions, win delegates, and carry a strong message to the Republican National Convention that Liberty is the way of the future.

Moving forward, however, we will no longer spend resources campaigning in primaries in states that have not yet voted."

Paul just wasnt fierce enough.

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The reason why his campaign slowed down so dramatically (it was off to a really good start), is because his announcement of not participating in primary

"Our campaign will continue to work in the state convention process. We will continue to take leadership positions, win delegates, and carry a strong message to the Republican National Convention that Liberty is the way of the future.

Moving forward, however, we will no longer spend resources campaigning in primaries in states that have not yet voted."

Paul just wasnt fierce enough.

That did discourage some people, I remember that news hitting the DP like a thunderbolt. Everybody freaked, most of them under the erroneous impression that Ron PAul had dropped out of the race. But I thought it was a good call then and still do now. Campaign resources are scarce, why spend millions getting 5% of the vote and no delegates in CA or another primary State when you can spend those resources winning delegates in caucus States?

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What killed the movement? A simple question with a simple question. Ron Paul supporters did. I do not mean all the fighting and power grabs. I do not mean the conspiraces. There were some really outrageous ones but those are just minor. What killed the Ron Paul movement is the idea that you can change the system that has been running for nearly 300 years. It’s frankly amazing the blinders that these individuals put on themselves. They know the system is working against them. They openly say that it is. They have conspiracies of shadowy groups or men of power actively twarting their moves. They make the RNC into this monolothic institute and they believe they can topple it by playing by that institution’s rules. It is just mind blogging that people can delude themselves into such a behavior. The State will grow. It cannot be controlled. All these ideas of Jeffersionian democracy and Constitutionalism. What do these people know of history? Spin them a good tale about liberty and they will believe it. Give them a document that created a centralized government with greater power and they will venerate it while they scream about small government. Such a dismal fate we have. My only hope is that we move into an area where we are beyond control of other’s predilections. I think it might be space. Seems silly but space is so vast that it cannot be controlled. It is a limitless frontier.

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Seems silly but space is so vast that it cannot be controlled. It is a limitless frontier.

Until teleportation, and then we can have our cops come right into our bathrooms while we pee!

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Then we will all be safer.