Ron Paul will not get his party\u2019s presidential nomination.\u00a0 This much is now for certain.\u00a0 The prize will go to that candidate\u2014Massachusettsliberal Mitt Romney\u2014for whom the GOP leadership and its surrogates in the so-called \u201cconservative\u201d media have been rooting the entire time.<\/p>\n
Yet it is doubtful that it is primarily the presidency on which Congressman Paul has had his sights.\u00a0 Unlike his rivals, from the outset Paul has been interested first and foremost in gaining an ever broader hearing for his ideas.\u00a0 While his supporters are doubtless disappointed that their man will not be President, they would be well served to consider that from Paul\u2019s campaign, liberty lovers have reaped\u2014and continue to reap\u2014much fruit.<\/p>\n
There is no shortage of politicians who do not <\/em>pay lip service to the United States Constitution.\u00a0 In fact, there are very few Americans, whether politicians or otherwise, who do not allude to the Constitution when it serves their purposes to do so.\u00a0 But it is not at all difficult to recognize this rhetorical grandstanding for what it is.<\/p>\n In the case of Ron Paul, things are otherwise.\u00a0 He is a rare find among contemporary national figures in that, whether one agrees with his reading of the Constitution or not, it is obvious to all that Paul has actually read <\/em>this hallowed document.\u00a0 Moreover, it is just as obvious that he actually believes <\/em>in it.\u00a0<\/p>\n And this is what makes all of the difference.<\/p>\n The Constitution, with its innumerable \u201cchecks and balances\u201d was intended to safeguard our <\/em>liberty.\u00a0 The Constitution codifies into law the decentralization of power and authority to which Americans had grown accustomed before America achieved its independence.<\/p>\n Of all of the presidential contestants, no one was more eligible to remind the American voter that the key to the liberty that we enjoy is the Constitution.\u00a0 And no one was better positioned to call to their attention the state of neglect to which this hallowed document has been relegated by both <\/em>major political parties.<\/p>\n This is one enormous benefit that we have gained from Paul\u2019s campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet there are others.<\/p>\n The Texas Congressman is the incarnation of the Republican Party plank of \u201climited government,\u201d \u201cindividual liberty,\u201d \u201cfiscal restraint,\u201d \u201cnational security,\u201d and all of the rest of the GOP boilerplate.\u00a0 There is no one among his colleagues in this race who comes remotely as close as Paul to embodying these ideas.\u00a0 In glaring contrast to his fellow Republicans, Paul talks the talk and <\/em>walks the walk, and he does so even when he is not running for an election<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n In short, Paul\u2019s very presence effortlessly exposes the inconsistencies and outright hypocrisies of his own party.<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t just his fellow politicians, though, upon whom he sheds light.\u00a0<\/p>\n Self-styled \u201cconservatives\u201d in the so-called \u201calternative media\u201d have labored long and hard crafting a particular image of themselves.\u00a0 Paul\u2019s candidacy has revealed that image for the house of straw that it is.<\/p>\n In other words, given their unconscionable treatment of Paul, talk radio hosts and Fox News personalities who have depicted themselves as \u201cindependent minded \u2018conservatives\u2019\u201d and the like have betrayed their role as Republican Party chatter boxes.\u00a0 The \u201cconservative values\u201d that they routinely espouse are a smokescreen under the cover of which they advance the GOP in its struggle to either regain or preserve its power.<\/p>\n This is quite an achievement in its own right.\u00a0<\/p>\n Faux conservatives are perhaps as large, if not larger, a threat to American liberty as are their leftist counterparts.\u00a0 The reason for this is simple: the leftist has put us on notice as to who he is and what he plans to do.\u00a0 The faux conservative, on the other hand, is no friend to Constitutional liberty, but he would have us believe that he is.\u00a0<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t necessarily that the faux conservative sets out to deceive the rest of us as to his true intentions; chances are better than not that if he deceives anyone, it is himself.\u00a0 Yet his true intentions aside, the fact of the matter remains that in effect, the faux conservative imperils liberty to at least as great an extent as does the leftist.<\/p>\n Paul\u2019s campaign has heightened awareness of the dubious character of \u201cthe conservative media.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n There is a third benefit to Paul\u2019s campaign. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Paul has made it clear that \u201cthe conservative movement\u201d or the Republican Party or whatever name we choose to give it is not nearly as monolithic as its most visible and vocal champions would have us think.\u00a0 Furthermore, Paul exposes the fissures with which it is riddled, for he gives expression to a \u201clibertarian\u201d strain that it has not yet succeeded in extracting from itself.<\/p>\n Fourthly, Paul has done something that no Republican since Reagan, if then, has managed to do: he has not only reached large numbers of American youth; he has energized<\/em> them.\u00a0 Few people, including Paul supporters, have grasped the significance of this.<\/p>\n The proponents of Big Government have to do very little to appeal to people\u2014especially when those people are young people.\u00a0 After all, the bigger the government, the more power its custodians possess to distribute goodies.\u00a0 People of all ages find the promise of something for nothing difficult to resist.\u00a0 Yet when those people are barely beyond adolescence, it becomes virtually impossible not to embrace it.\u00a0 The old truism, \u201cNothing is free,\u201d is a truism because it is, well, true.\u00a0 But this is readily ignored. It is ignored because while present goodies do indeed come at a cost, when that cost is the gradual <\/em>loss of something as intangible as freedom, the desire for immediate gratification is likely to prevail.\u00a0 And considering that the time horizons of the young are far narrower than those of any other age set, it is almost a foregone conclusion that the young will not only welcome Big Government; they will assume that any political-moral philosophy that denies Big Government is impoverished.<\/p>\n It is almost <\/em>a foregone conclusion that the young will embrace Big Government.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ron Paul\u2019s campaign has shown what can happen when someone who truly believes in and understands liberty takes the time to explain it to the young.\u00a0 This is no mean feat.\u00a0 Paul does not draw youthful voters to his campaign by promising to pay for their medical insurance or their college tuition.\u00a0 He does not pledge to extend their unemployment benefits, and the assertions of his critics to the contrary notwithstanding, nor does he attract them by promising to legalize drugs.\u00a0<\/p>\n Through a style all his own, Paul wins over young adults by doing nothing more or less than treat them as adults.\u00a0<\/p>\n And this means simply and solely that he commits to allowing them to live as free <\/em>men and women.\u00a0<\/p>\n The verdict is clear: Ron Paul has executed what may perhaps be among the most successful campaigns of all time.<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n originally published at The New American\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ron Paul will not get his party\u2019s presidential nomination.\u00a0 This much is now for certain.\u00a0 The prize will go to that candidate\u2014Massachusettsliberal Mitt Romney\u2014for whom the GOP leadership and its surrogates in the so-called \u201cconservative\u201d media have been rooting the entire time. Yet it is doubtful that it is primarily the presidency on which Congressman…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n