Further thoughts on Dr. Paul: Unity @ Ales Rarus

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don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’ Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot - I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’ — Howard Beale in Network

Further thoughts on Dr. Paul: Unity

November 28th, 2007 by Jerry

I've thought about the presidential rhetoric promising to unify and heal our divided country. I tend to find it tiresome, but the ultra-parochial, no-compromises culture that often permeated the Bush White House does give one pause! Obama in particular loves to emphasize unity. All fine and good, but when a man supports partial birth abortion, I'm not sure how much unity there is to be had once you get past all the high-flying rhetoric.

As an example of real unification, consider this: the founder of the Obama meetup in Los Angeles became a Ron Paul supporter, and in the SF Chronicle, we see a wide array of people who are attracted to a principled statesman. Check out getonid on Youtube as well for another perspective. Heck, the the New Republic even took a critical look at the Federal Reserve, which is a sign that the rhetoric has been changed by Dr. Paul. A diverse group of Americans, many of whom were not politically active before, have rallied together.

I don't pretend to agree with Dr. Paul on everything, but he has good ideas that he explains intelligently, and he is calling people back to their roots and their identity as free citizens, not as consumers and taxpayers. A republic needs that above everything else, and people are responding to that, and it crosses the usual barriers and talking-points that Balkanize American politics. This seems to be real unity in action.

Of course, Paul can't just elect himself: I joined the Pittsburgh meetup for Ron Paul; please join your local meetup or volunteer through the campaign's website. And check out the Tea Party!

(HT to Lew Rockwell, who religiously follows coverage of the Paul campaign, from whom I got many of the above links.)

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Jerry

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Jerry wrote:

I should point out that Lew Rockwell is handy for Ron Paul links, but some of the original content is…um, less useful. Like one contributor's inability to decide whether Huckabee's support for the war was creepier than his support for "socialist NASA". Good grief! Get out of the house a little more! If one cannot distinguish between a bumbling organization that has nonetheless done *some* cool things and an (unjust) war, stop blogging and get your equilibrium back.

It was such lunacy that made me leery of Paul, but fortunately he's proven much more stable than some of his followers (who are for the most part, mercifully normal, and who in many cases avoided politics till Dr. Paul's candidacy).
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Posted 29 Nov 2007 at 7:22 pm ¶

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From Adam’s Blog on 02 Dec 2007 at 8:57 am ¶ d best be advised to come up with an answer that other people aren’t going to accuse him of misleading folks on, because that could hurt him worse than anything else. — Finally, I found a guest blogger on my blog rollhad joinedPaul’s ranks, the reason: Unity. I don’t pretend to agree with Dr. Paul on everything, but he has good ideas that he explains intelligently, and he is calling people back to their roots and their identity as free citizens, not as consumers and

Ales Rarus