Dr. Ron Paul
It's 2008 and in the midst of a housing crisis, Barack Obama and GOP frontrunner, John McCain, are sparring it out. Me...I'm stumbling around, cocktail in hand, at a party consisting of good ol' country boys and ritzy girls. Standing in the kitchen, I'm partially supported by a counter as I lean and sip on my Jim Beam on the rocks. I take notice of an ongoing debate between the Democrat and GOP frontrunners. From what I'm hearing, it's pretty negative. But, of the two, Obama seems to be more headstrong and speaking to the people. As I make another cocktail, I like what I'm hearing from Obama. He's in it for the middle-class and lower-income citizens. He's touting healthcare reforms and not touting war rhetoric. As a matter of fact, he puts McCain in his place, expounding on the failures of Bush's mismanagement of middle east interventionism. I listen. I drink. I blackout.
Election day comes around and I do not vote. From the time that Obama was elected, until mid-2011, I had no further interests in politics. It's now June 13th, 2011. A group of friends and I decide to hang out and have some drinks. Out of boredom, we flip on a GOP debate. The debate is on CNN and being broadcast from New Hampshire. There's about 8-10 of us drinking and carrying on loudly, in a small 10x12 room. The subject of the debate is war. As each candidate pleads their case, we begin to listen closely, as a couple of us in the room are prior military. An older gentleman running for President is next to speak. We all chuckle as he looks pretty frail. My buddy cracks a joke, "this guy wouldn't make it as President, without dying before the end of his first four". As the older gentleman begins, there's immediately something different about this guy. You can feel a deep conviction, as he speaks. He's not falling in line with the others, who were pounding on their chests, adamant about US involvement in the middle east. He finishes his speech up and the room is silent. "Who the hell was that guy", we asked. Dr. Ron Paul was that guy.
My friends and I, for the first time in our lives, found an interest in politics. Over the next few months, we put in the work researching this libertarian-ish Ron Paul character. We watched multiple videos, dating back nearly 40 years ago. We read Paul's House transcripts and dug into his voting record. In doing so, we find that his fellow congressmen call him 'Dr. No', for voting against nearly all tax increases, war intervention (with exception of a regretful, 2001 AUMF vote) and multiple pieces of legislation, that would infringe upon an individual's rights. He was as clean as they come. I can support this man.
I joined the GOP. I began campaigning for Ron Paul. Attending grassroots meet-ups, sign rallies and participating in social media campaigns, to extend support for Paul. As dedicated as Paul supporters were, it would not be enough to garner the support needed to win a Presidency. In August of 2012, RNC would marginalize Paul supporters and his delegates, enacting a rule to strip enough of Paul's delegates, so that he couldn't be nominated from the convention floor. He would also be snubbed from giving a speech because it would not include throwing his support behind the GOP nominee, Mitt Romney. After being a witness to this and the maliciousness of mainstream media, I cut my ties with the GOP. Ron Paul would soon say farewell to Congress.
Dr. Ron Paul's goal wasn't to win. What was the goal? It was to promote a message. The message was that of liberty and the importance of the protection of individual rights, above all else. Following his departure from the GOP and House of Representatives, Nov 2012, the seed he had sowed was evident, as Libertarian support in the 2016 Presidential race, increased three-fold from 2012.
Ron Paul was not just some politician but one of the greatest statesmen of our lifetime. The seed of liberty that Ron Paul had sown, along with actions of media and the corruption shown at the Florida RNC, was the beginning of my transition from the support of the collective, to that of the individual. I had finally discovered the essence of liberty and sought more understanding, which would change my life forever.