So what do you think of Ron Paul? The more I hear and read about each of the candidates the more I find myself saying, “this guy has got it figured out and he knows what needs to be done!” He’s talking about “real problems” and offering logical solutions. So many people I’ve talked to feel the same way but then they chuckle and say, it’s too bad he can’t win. And, I find myself drawing the same conclusion but not understanding why.
I have given it a lot of thought. Is it his age? Are his ideas too far “outside the box?” Is it the fact that you cannot label him as a liberal or conservative? Is it a lack of money or a media bias? None of these explanations were good enough.
But I believe I have finally found the answer. When he talks about our foreign policy over the past 50 years we feel ashamed that we have started wars based on lies, and have killed or maimed millions who were no threat to this country. We also don’t want to acknowledge that we shed the blood of our own in these wars. It is unacceptable to our sense of who we are as a nation and our basic sense of morality.
When he talks about personal freedom, we fear we do not have the collective discipline to avoid what we know is wrong, and therefore, we need to pass legislation to keep us pure or at least to tell us where the boundaries are. We like it when the law tells us what is right or wrong because then we can ignore our own conscience. Personal freedom requires us to accept personal responsibility and that would require us all to examine our behavior.
Our government is supposed to be “by the people” and “for the people.” Ron Paul’s message is that we need to take back the responsibilities granted to us by the Founding Fathers. But we have become apathetic and unwilling to assume those responsibilities. Our country is not ready for Ron Paul. He is forcing us to look at ourselves in the mirror and we don’t like what we see.
The other candidates, including our president, tell us what we want to hear—and we don’t want to hear that it is our fault. They place the blame on their opponents rather than us, the voters and non-voters, who are not paying attention to the real problems facing our nation.
But just like the overweight person who waits to have their first stroke before changing their lifestyle, I fear we will wait until we are on the brink of self-destruction before we get off the couch of life and use our vote to regain control of our nation’s destiny.
Wheeler Writes 
Dan,
I think you’re “almost” 100% right. I believe you ARE 100% right when you assert that we just don’t want to take personal responsibility. There seems to be this desire to always find someone to blame for what is wrong. If we don’t accept that “we” are a big part of the problem, then we will be stuck in this denial that leans on the government to be our conscious. Look at all the court battles waged over the “letter of the law”, not what is really right or wrong. It’s a waste of time and money but more importantly, it sends the message that courts are the place for moral decisions. They aren’t. We are. I think President Obama and most politicians like it that way. If you don’t accept personal responsibility, you hand those choices over to them and that gives them the power. Ron Paul makes too much sense! I disagree with your overall assessment of our foreign policy and that is where Ron is weak. It’s naive to think you can ignore the rest of the world and everything will just “work out”. It won’t.
You hit the nail on the head with this analysis. You figured it out – we keep pulling the shades over our eyes. Even in the comments; there we go again. Very good.
Hi Dan,
Great one, on target and timely.
The last question is how do we as voters and people willing to accept responsibility for the current situation make a difference other than through our votes?
Doug
Dan
The USA today is nothing like the USA of the past. The media and the banks run the show. It’s so pathic it make me sick! Obama is nothing but a slick oils salesman for the banks.
Dan you still don’t get it, you are one of the majority that continue to write crap like this that puts in people’s minds that he cannot win.
John Adam’s once said – remember , democracy never lasts long. It soon exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
Samuel Adams once said – it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.
Ron Paul is the irate minority!! He is stirring up the minority and doing a great job.
Peter – Australia
I personally believe that America’s resistance to change is the reason for Ron Paul’s overall lack of traction. Americans fear change and the unknown, and Ron Paul represents a potentially significant change not only politically, but socially and economically as well. I realize some people would say that Obama was elected on a campaign of hope and change. I would argue his campaign, while advertised as change, was more of a return to pre-Bush agendas and policies than any profound change in ideas. So yes, while it was a change from the status quo, it wasn’t a philosophical shift to something Americans hadn’t seen before. Realistically, what Paul is campaigning on isn’t new. In fact it dates back to around 1786. But most Americans don’t recognize that, and since they haven’t seen anything like his ideas in their lifetime they write them off as unwelcome change.