Ron Paul has produced thousands of books, articles, speeches, debates, and smackdowns of truth reverberating through often empty Congressional chambers—the list goes on and on. Millions of people agree that Dr. Paul cured our apathy, taught us economics, inspired us to learn more and do more, to be more curious, and to be more persistent.
The dictionary tells us apathy is “behavior that shows no interest or energy; behavior that someone is unwilling to take action, especially over something important.” I didn’t realize that in curing our apathy, Ron Paul was also creating, one by one, new and formidable enemies of that criminal gang called the state. No wonder that parasite and its neoconservative stagers and war party beneficiaries always sought to sideline and ignore him—he is and remains a threat to their unwarranted and unconstitutional influence.
Truth, boldly and persistently spoken, cannot really be sidelined or ignored. There are few politicians and thinkers who have been so right, for so long, about how truly evil and unnecessary the wars in the past seventy years have been, as Dr. Paul.
Dr. Paul invited me to his congressional office in 2003 to talk about what the neocons had wrought in the Pentagon when I was there, lying their way into an unwarranted war where we would be greeted with flowers and cheers from a grateful Iraqi population. I was so nervous I remember very little of that meeting, except how nice he was. Later, I had a few telephone conversations with Dr. Paul’s colleague, the late Congressmen Walter Jones (R-NC), a man who had learned from his friend Ron what was really happening in Iraq and how the neocon and Deep State forces had manipulated Congress. Not much longer after that, I found myself on the receiving end of what would be decades of public abuse by the neocons, the Deep State, and even some senatorial shills for war, like Jon Kyl (R-AZ). By that time, thanks to Ron Paul and his friends, I wasn’t nervous any more.
Ron Paul not only cured my apathy, and fine tuned my libertarian and Austrian economic education, he—by his personal actions, his support, and his example—made me fear less, and at times, be fearless. I had been taught in my twenty military years, and the twenty years before that of growing up, to be very respectful of things like rank and position. I assumed way too much about the capabilities, philosophies, and intentions of authority figures, and while I never had to compromise my ethics, I was increasingly worried that I would be made to. Ron Paul boldly explained right and wrong to not only Congress, but the world, especially in terms of war and peace, and his fearless yet kind way of doing that, day in and day out, was critical in my own evolution of speaking up and speaking out.
One of his former chiefs of staff, Lew Rockwell, must have been similarly inspired, and through LewRockwell.com I was able to find all the people and ideas that I had been missing for a good part of my adult life. It provided me a way to share what I knew, and what I was learning with others somewhere on that learning continuum. When I completed my PhD coursework at Catholic University, I was privileged to have Dr. Claes Ryn as a professor—who would later serve on the academic board of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity! The Ron Paul community of liberty advocates, thinkers, activists, and economists and millions of others is massive, and it keeps growing.
A few days ago, I attended the latest Ron Paul Institute conference, “Blueprint for Peace.” It was crowded with people and everyone there—speakers and audience alike—were happily working on things they love and care about, all aimed at making the world more honest, more prosperous, more peaceful, more informed, more wise, and more free. Fueled by truth, confidence and curiosity, they are fearless.
Ron Paul built all this, because he opened our eyes to what real freedom looks like, and red-pilled us on the U.S. empire. He has liberated so many of us from our past statism, our unwarranted respect for authority, our ignorance of the philosophy of liberty and sound money, our belief in wars for fun and profit. When Dr. Paul spoke at the conference, he noted that any of us can share the liberty message with a thousand people, and each of those people can reach another thousand, and so on. This isn’t theory—liberty language, sound economic ideas, and prioritizing peace have infiltrated and influenced every part of society, and even the state cannot ignore it today. Thank you, Ron Paul!
I hear from increasingly from people—around my age and older—who say they see dark clouds on the horizon. They see the problem of our unconstitutional behemoth as a collapsing empire, and they say they just don’t want to be here to deal with it. There is a remedy for this fearfulness; this unwillingness to take action, this defeatist apathy. It’s not complicated. Millions of people around the world who have been touched and shaped in some way by the Ron Paul’s revolution already have the Ron Paul remedy. Learn more, do more, be curious, and be persistent. I think Ron Paul would tell us there is a still lot of work to do, but we are winning.
Happy Birthday, Dr Paul!
