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One
of the most thrilling memories of the 2012 campaign was the sight of those huge crowds
who came out to see Ron. His competitors, meanwhile, couldn’t fill half a Starbucks.
When I worked as Ron’s chief of staff in
the late 1970s and early
1980s, I could only dream of such a day.
Now what was it that
attracted all these
people to Ron Paul? He didn’t offer his followers
a spot on the federal gravy
train. He didn’t pass
some phony bill. In fact, he didn’t
do any of the things we associate with politicians. What his supporters love about him has nothing to do with politics at all.
Ron
is the anti-politician.
He tells unfashionable truths,
educates rather than flatters the public, and
stands up for principle even
when the whole world is arrayed against
him.
Some people say,
"I love Ron Paul, except for his foreign policy."
But that foreign policy reflects the best and most heroic part of who Ron Paul is. Peace is the linchpin of the Paulian
program, not an extraneous or dispensable adjunct to it. He would never and could never abandon it.
Here was the
issue Ron could have avoided
had he cared only for personal advancement.
But
he refused. No matter how many times he’s been urged to keep his mouth
shut about war and
empire, these have remained
the centerpieces of his
speeches and interviews.
Of
course, Ron Paul deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. In a just world, he would also win
the Medal of Freedom, and
all the honors for which
a man in his position is eligible.
But
history is littered with forgotten politicians who earned piles of awards handed out by other politicians. What matters to Ron more than all the honors and ceremonies in the world is all
of you, and your commitment to the immortal ideas he has championed all his life.
It’s Ron’s
truth-telling and his
urge to educate the public that
should inspire us as we
carry on into the future.
It
isn’t a coincidence
that governments everywhere want to educate children. Government education, in turn, is supposed
to be evidence of the state’s goodness and its concern for our well-being. The real explanation is less flattering. If the government’s propaganda can take root
as children grow up, those kids will be no threat to the state apparatus. They’ll fasten the chains to their own ankles.
H.L.
Mencken once said that
the state doesn’t just
want to make you obey. It tries to make you want
to obey. And that’s
one thing the government schools do very well.
A
long-forgotten political thinker, Etienne de la Boetie, wondered why people would ever tolerate
an oppressive regime. After
all, the people who are governed
vastly outnumber the small minority doing the governing. So the
people governed could put
a stop to it all if only they had
the will to do so. And yet they rarely
do.
De
la Boetie concluded that the only way any regime
could survive was if the
public consented to it.
That consent could range all the way from enthusiastic
support to stoic resignation.
But if that consent were ever to vanish, a regime’s days would be numbered.
And
that’s why education – real education
– is such a threat to any regime. If the state loses its grip over your mind, it loses
the key to its very survival.
The
state is beginning to lose that grip. Traditional media, which have carried water for the government
since time began, it seems, are threatened by independent voices on the Internet. I don’t
think anyone under 25 even reads a newspaper.
The
media and the political class joined
forces to try to make
sure you never found out about Ron Paul. When that proved impossible, they smeared him, and told you no one could want to go hear Ron when they could
hear Tim Pawlenty or Mitt Romney instead.
All
this backfired. The more they panicked about Ron, the
more drawn to him people were. They wanted
to know what it was that the Establishment was so eager
to keep them from hearing.
Ours
is the most radical
challenge to the state ever posed.
We aren’t trying to make the state more
efficient, or show how it can
take in more revenue, or change its
pattern of wealth redistribution. We’re not saying that this subsidy
is better than that one, or that this kind
of tax would make the system run more smoothly than that one. We reject the existing system root and branch.
And
we don’t oppose the
state’s wars because they’ll be counterproductive or overextend the state’s
forces. We oppose them because mass murder based on lies can never be
morally acceptable.
So
we don’t beg for scraps from the imperial table, and we don’t seek a seat at
that table. We want to knock the table over.
We have much
work to do. Countless Americans have been persuaded that it’s in their interest to be looted and ordered around by a ruling elite that in fact cares nothing for their welfare and seeks only to increase its power and wealth at their expense.
The
most lethal and anti-social institution in history
has gotten away with describing itself as the very source of civilization. From the moment they set foot in the government’s
schools, Americans learn that the state is there to rescue
them from poverty, unsafe medicines, and rainy days, to provide economic stimulus when the economy is poor,
and to keep them secure against shadowy figures everywhere.
This view is reinforced, in turn, by the broadcast and print media.
If
the public has been bamboozled, as Murray Rothbard would say, it is
up to us to do the de-bamboozling. We need to tear
the benign mask off the
state.
That
is the task before you, before
all of us, here today.
Begin
with yourself. Learn everything you can about a free society.
Read the greats, like Frederic Bastiat, Ludwig von
Mises, and Murray Rothbard. As you
delve into the literature of liberty, share what you’re reading and learning. Start a
blog. Create a YouTube channel. Organize a reading group. But whatever you do, learn, spread what you’re
learning, and never stop.
If
it is through
propaganda that people thoughtlessly accept the claims
of the state, then it is through education
that people must be brought to their senses.
With its kept media on the wane, it is going
to be more and more difficult
for the state to make its
claims stick, to persuade people to keep accepting its lies and propaganda.
You’ve heard it said that
the pen is mightier than the sword. Think of the sword as the state. Think of
the pen as all of you, each in your own way, spreading
the ideas of liberty.
Remember that
insight of Etienne de la Boetie: all government rests on public
consent, and as soon as the public withdraws that consent, any regime is
doomed.
This
is why they fear Ron, it’s why they fear you,
and it’s why, despite the horrors we read about every day, we
may dare to look to the
future with hope.
This
article is based on remarks delivered at the Paul Festival in Tampa, FL, August 25, 2012.
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