Over the holiday break I decided to become politically active for the first time in my life. Who do I support? Ron Paul. Let me explain why.
First, he is the only candidate I trust. He has as much integrity as Jed Bartlet. John McCain has called Ron Paul "the most honest man in Congress". Ron says what he believes rather than what people want to hear. He doesn't treat voters like children. He says and does what he thinks is best for the country, not for himself. He supported his children during their undergraduate and medical school years, preventing their participation in federal student loans because the program was taxpayer-subsidized. He rejected a Congressional pension for the same reason, and even proposed a pay cut for Congressmen (i.e. himself). He declined to attend junkets or register for a Congressional pension. His medical practice refused Medicare and Medicaid payments; he worked pro bono, arranged discounted or custom-payment plans for needy patients, or otherwise "just took care of them".
Second, I like most of his platform and voting record. He voted against the Iraq War resolution. He has never voted to approve a deficit budget. He wants to abolish individual income tax. (Absurd, you say? Actually, it would only require scaling back the federal budget to its 2000 spending levels.) He favors allowing workers to opt out of Social Security. He opposes the "Patriot" Act. He understands that the reason the U.S. has more enemies and fewer friends than ever before is not that everyone else is jealous of our freedom.
Third (and most importantly), he is the only candidate who could really change the system. He understands that the federal government is a bloated, ravenous monster that devours everything in its domain, causes problems rather than solving them, and gets bigger, less efficient, and more destructive with every passing decade. Personally I would estimate that the value the government provides me is about 5% of what I involuntarily pay it for those services. (If you haven't done this type of calculation yourself, I encourage you to. Be sure to include everything you pay: income tax, payroll tax, sales tax, capital gains tax, property tax, gas tax, the hidden tax of inflation, etc etc.) It's time to starve the beast, and Ron Paul is the only candidate willing to do it. All candidates talk about change, but once they're elected we just get more of the same. As I watched the presidential debates, the other candidates reminded me of a debate in one episode of Futurama:
John Jackson: "It's time someone had the courage to stand up and say: I'm against those things that everybody hates."
Jack Johnson: "Now, I respect my opponent. I think he's a good man. But quite frankly, I agree with everything he just said."
John Jackson: "I say your three cent titanium tax goes too far."
Jack Johnson: "And I say your three cent titanium tax doesn't go too far enough."
A vote for anyone else is a vote for The System. The two parties appear to have very different platforms, but the perceived differences are exaggerated by the fact that they only discuss the 10% they disagree on; the other 90% doesn't get discussed until a candidate like Ron Paul questions the hidden assumptions and puts everything back on the table. This country is going in the wrong direction, and if all we do is hire new people for the same old positions, things will keep getting worse.
Having said all that, I'm not going to pull a Trevor Lyman or Vijay Boyapati and quit my job to join his campaign. Ron Paul is not my ideal candidate. There are certain parts of his platform I don't agree with; for example, I think his strict non-interventionism is overly simplistic in a world with genocide and increasingly loose nukes. More troubling (at least for me), he has said that he doesn't "accept" evolution. (I think his word choice is interesting, essentially implying a desire to not think about something one knows is true rather than genuinely believing that it's false.) He also said he doesn't think that (dis)belief in evolution is an important consideration in one's choice of president, and that it's a "theological debate". Given the extent to which religion affects policy in this country, I disagree. We have seen that a president who is willing to ignore overwhelming evidence because it doesn't match his current belief system can get our country into serious trouble. I am a lover of truth, which is why I like the rest of his platform so much, but also why find this particular (dis)belief so troubling.
I don't think Ron Paul has a realistic chance of winning the Republican nomination, or winning the presidency as a third-party candidate (although I hope I'm wrong). But if enough people support Ron Paul and his movement, we can send a message to future politicians: our lives and our wallets belong to ourselves, not to the government, and if you agree, we'll elect you. My hope is that passion of the hundreds of thousands of fervent Ron Paul supporters will outlive this election and will enable the libertarian party to be a real force in the coming years. Hopefully some of the people carrying "Ron Paul Cured My Apathy" signs at his rallies will decide to seek public office themselves. I'm fairly certain I'll never be a politician (I would find it exceedingly frustrating), but I do intend to contribute to the cause in other ways.
Learn more about Ron Paul:
PBS NewsHour interview
John Stossel interview
monetary policy
quotes
his official site
his writing
videos