Ron Paul: The Right Choice?

We are living in an historic time. There is talk of the dissolution of the European Union, protestors are demonstrating in major US cities, our economy is in shambles; some cannot secure employment, and the stock market is eratic. If the current state of affairs is a source of concern for you and your family, you are not alone. I lose sleep every night about our future. I'm sure you do too. We know inherently we need change, and we all want to see our nation thrive, but how best to affect that change? A natural response to hardship is to look for help from our political leadership, perhaps even party leadership, but both parties, it seems, tend to lead us down the same path of fear, broken promises and to the bottom of an abyss too black and too deep to contemplate.

And though it may seem hopeless at times, it is helpful to remember that we are the people who do the living and dying in this country, the sovereigns, the citizens who comprise our Republic. We have the awesome power of deciding our country's leadership. Our collective consciousness defines and shapes the world around us; we receive the government we demand, and we, the citizenry, determine the proper role of government. This is our country and, collectively, we are the masters, not the servants. We do not worship our government or bow down to a monarch. We live in a Constitutional Republic, and we would do well to remember our opinions not only matter, but even sometimes supercede the democratic majority. Thomas Jefferson reminds us that we should 'bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.' Majority opinion rules, but individual opinions matter. It is our right, even our obligation, to swim against the stream when the situation warrants. Taken together, our choices, determine what America is now and will be in the future, and one of the more profound ways we affect change is the time-honored political election.

The most recent GOP Presidential debate featured Bachmann, Gingrich, Perry, Romney, Cain, Santorum, and Paul. As a Paul supporter, I was initially put off by what I interpreted as lackluster coverage of Dr. Paul and his positions. I understood that his message of smaller government and his vastly different foreign policy ideas would need to be thorougly explained before resonating with most Americans. Eventually, though, my resentment faded as a wave of realization crashed over me. I was able to come to terms with the media's lack of interest and coverage, even understand it. What had seemed unfair, seemed reasonable, what had seemed mean-spirited, seemed inevitable. Allow me to explain.

Picture two islands, one red, one white. The red island represents the world we live in, the current system, the establishment, the status quo. The red island is where we live and work, where we are comfortable, and where we feel safe. The red island represents what we understand and our world-view, our institutions and government, the financial system, and our values. Bachmann, Gingrich, Perry, Romney, Cain, Santorum and President Obama live on the red island. The red island's citizens agree the current system should remain intact, but they sometimes disagree on the best strategy to tweak the system to best reflect their individual values. The red island group called the Democrats believe government should play an active role in their lives and therefore should be entrusted with more tax dollars to administer entitlements and social programs. The Republicans on the red island advocate a more modest role for government and believe in gun ownership, and lower taxes, especially for corporations and the top wage earners. Neither group, however, believes the system is so broken it should be scrapped. They are both irrevocably pro red island.

Now picture a white island. The white island represents a different system, not necessarily a better one, just different. The white island is ruled by the red island, and the citizens who reside here, struggle to understand the policies under which they are forced to live. They are frustrated by what they perceive as wasteful spending and too much taxation, too many wars fought with their tax dollars and a central banking system which creates booms and busts by inflating and contracting the money supply. Over time the denizens of the red and white islands learn to tolerate each other, but they are so ideologically removed from one another they fail to communicate. They even develop their own languages. The islands maintain the uneasy peace for years until one day a resident of the white island decides to run for the Presidency of the red island. Uh oh.

The red island media immediately ignores, marginalizes, laughs at, ostricizes and attacks what it perceives as a foreign invader, not because the media and citizenry of the red island are fundamentally flawed or because the red islanders are bad people, but because they perceive a threat to their way of life, system of government and general well-being. The white islander, after all, does not even speak the red island's language. The red island is incapable of understanding anything the white islander is proposing. The feeling of threat, fear and confusion only grow as groups of white islanders make the voyage to the red island to support their champion. A few red island residents start to understand the white islander's message and lend their support to his campiagn, further angering the media and residents of the red island. When an outside group threatens to supplant our values and institutions with its own, how would we react?

As a voter, we are permitted to choose a candidate who is either Democrat or Republican, but the not-so-well-kept secret is that there is no difference between the major political parties, at least none that matter. They are two sides of the same coin. The whole paradigm is window dressing to keep us fighting each other, to divide and conquer, to cause us to miss the truth right in front us, to convince us that there is more than one name on the ballot. There is not, and that omni-present name is 'status quo'. Why would we believe that doing the same thing again and again would produce a different outcome? Whatever name we select, the result is more debt, more undeclared, wasteful wars, more taxes, more regulations, more bailouts, more measures to keep us 'safe' which restrict our freedoms, and more paranoia and fear.

This year we have a real choice, for a few more months anyway. The red island media and citizenry recognize this fact and are frantically trying to distract us until it is too late, at least until a red islander can win the Republican primary and the white islander fades from view forever. The banking cartel, who runs the red island behind the scenese by indebting its citizens, institutions and governments, has the most to lose. Panicked, the cartel issues credit cards to both the citizenry and governement who invariably mistake their newly-acquired credit for wealth. Interest rates drop, cheap money and credit are pumped into the economy and, for awhile, prosperity abounds. With interest rates artificially low, citizens and government alike embark on a borrowing and buying orgy. Jobs are shipped overseas to cheap labor markets and goods pour in to feed our seemingly insatiable, credit-driven demand, but the first dose of hard drugs is always free.

Eventually, for individuals and for governments the credit lines dry up and even the minimum payments are too much to handle. Default, collapse and disaster ensue. Governments stave off disaster for awhile by raising our taxes to re-pay the interest owed to the bankers and secure even more loans, but we lose our jobs, miss our credit card payments and lose our homes. Everything purchased with credit is an illusion and is used to make us think we are prosperous; credit is a cruel trap that leads to default, impoverishment and misery. We think we own what we buy on credit, but if we discontinue our mortgage payments we will be reminded who the real owners are. Credit is not wealth.

What has fundamentally changed in the last forty years? Nothing. We still cling to the same failed debt money system, we still act like credit and wealth are synonymous, and we allow our hopes and, yes, fears to lull us into believing, time and again, political promises we should know better than to believe. We watch with a zombie-like sense of forboding as our hopes are dashed as one elected official after the next carries on the failed policies of the last. We still have a representative government, but who is being represented? We have no one on the ballot who will represent us, the people. To discover to whom a candidate is beholden, who she will represent once in office, we have to look no further than those who financed her campaign. Political debt must be repaid. If I represent the logging industry, for example, and I contribute a million dollars to candidate X's campaign, do we not expect candidate X to owe me once she takes office?

When it becomes obvious our candidate is representing special, moneyed interests, and not us, we resolve to vote the bum out of office! The next election cycle comes, and we dutifully shuffle down to cast our vote. A renewed sense of confidence and short-lived joy fills us as we triumphantly check our new and improved candidate's name. Later, however, the disillusionment sets in as nothing changes, and the four year clock begins anew. 'Next time!', we say, pumping our fist in the air! Next time we won't be duped!

We are nothing if not persistent, as we keep voting, but little else besides the names change. No matter who we elect, the government grows and our buying power contracts. The debt continues to climb, the wars go on, our thirst for resources seems unquenchable, and our ability to take care of ourselves and our family seems impeded as jobs are outsourced, taxes rise, and our manufacturing base is eroded. Some of us call for more regulation, some for less, but whatever the case, the status quo marches on. The lobbyists were never run out of town on a rail, and as it turns out there were no WMD's in Iraq. We kick the dirt and mumble a self-deprecating admonishment about next time not being so gullible, and we trudge to the sofa and drool slightly on our sweatshirt as yet another CNN expert explains why Cain's lack of foreign policy experience should matter to us, how Mitt Romney is not a 'real' Republican.

So maybe it is time to do our own research and develop our own opinoinos, regardless what we are told to think and no matter how we are told we should feel. What kind of world do we want to live in? Are Ron Paul's ideas to follow the Constitution really as far-fetched as the red island media would have us believe? Paraphrasing JFK's famous 'secrecy' speech, when informed, people's judgement is quite good. Unless we do our own research, how can we become informed and make an enlightened decision? Whoever gets your vote, Ron Paul or another candidate, remember, according to the Constitution, all power is derived from us, laws originate with us, all political leaders, including Presidents, are selected by us. We alone have the power to shape our lives, our government and our world. A vote for Ron Paul or Mitt Romney or Michelle Bachmann is not so much a vote for the individual as for a philosphy. Which island will you choose - red...or white?