On this day — August 20 — in 1935, a boychild was born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania to a German family that owned and operated one of the local dairies. That boy would come to shape the affairs of the world in ways that few people are able to see. Some of that impact is so subtle that even some of his most impassioned supporters miss the extent of that impact as it takes place right in front of them.
On this, Ron Paul’s 87th birthday, I want to speak a phrase that is hard to say too often: “Ron Paul was right.”
If you will allow me the liberty of a few moments to explain why I write that, I will share with you some of the experiences of my life that have repeatedly pointed back to Ron Paul’s ability to understand the times in which we live.
The Founder Of The Tea Party Movement
There are numerous people who take credit for the founding of the Tea Party movement. One of them is Rick Santelli based on a rant he did on CNBC on February 19, 2009 from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
Sarah Pallin became the hockey mom running mate of John McCain who could draw a crowd and speak common sense in the fail of 2008. Some credit her.
Another is the guy who used to run Freedom Works — Matt Kibbe. Jeff Nesbit even wrote a book arguing it was Kibbe and others in 2009 who started The Tea Party with the funding of the Koch Brothers.
While all of these are important voices from those days, they were all late to the game in late 2008 and early 2009 to be credited with being a founder.
By December 2007, the Tea Party movement was in full swing and it was 100% due to the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul. I should know because I was one of the organizers of the first Tea Party gathering of the contemporary Tea Party movement. As such, I got to watch Ron Paul’s role in the formation of that movement from 2006 to the present. The role of Ron Paul was so pronounced in the founding of the Tea Party movement that it even cuts a path to the presidency for Donald Trump in 2016.
In 2007, a man named Trevor Lyman, in collaboration with other organizers, made a website inviting people to “bomb” the Paul campaign with money on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party — December 16, 2007. That we did. There were also hundreds of “Tea Party” events held that day with hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of total attendees. One such event was held in Strasbourg, France by a group called Americans in Europe for Ron Paul. It was, chronologically, the first Tea Party event of the contemporary Tea Party era.
Those money bombs were among the solidifying features of the Paul campaign, in a movement that has lasted among the libertarian and conservative grassroots to this day.
From that day to this very day, there has been a national activist movement that has fought against tyranny. It wasn’t the first tax protest campaign. It wasn’t the first die hard grassroots campaign, but for 15 years, in the most difficult of political situations, I have repeatedly been surprised to find a veteran of the Ron Paul 2008 campaign holding the line in virtually every single impressive stand I have witnessed.
For that one detail alone, Ron Paul would have changed America with his 2008 campaign: he trained hundreds of thousands of the most die hard conservative and libertarian volunteers and sent them on their way. Ron Paul 2008 was that kind of campaign: only the die hard came around.
By 2012 the campaign had softened up and lost some of the grit, but this also allowed it to expand to the point that conservative journalist Raheem Kassam is able to regularly joke that CPAC attendees are so die hard in their devotion to their principles that CPAC straw polls are only ever won by Ron Paul.
Philosophical Inspiration For Bitcoin
In 2019, I gave a speech at Bitcoin 2019 in San Francisco, that illustrated the Austrian School and Rothbardian roots of Bitcoin. Bitcoin emerged from Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign. Every time I read the Bitcoin White Paper, it is clear to me that Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto was watching the exact same debates and Ron Paul speeches that I was in 2007 and 2008.
Ron Paul’s campaign model has been to shake up things, add some philosophy from the greatest minds of all time, teach and encourage people, and let them loose on the world. His campaigns are not designed for the main purpose of wining. They are designed with the main purpose of putting Ron Paul in a place where he can teach and inspire the future.
In the year 2022, the CNBC and Fox Business tickers showing Bitcoin prices each morning are one of many indications of success of the Ron Paul 2008 campaign: a campaign that asked “How do we do money differently?”
Bitcoin is the first successful example of Austrian Economic monetary theory put into practice outside of the reach of government.
Speaking Of Money: The Chant Of The Ron Paul Revolution Goes Mainstream In The GOP
Steve Bannon, one of several people who have been referred to as “Trump’s brain,” has adopted one of the mantras of the Ron Paul campaign and its gritty chant.
In the 2010s, it was common to call for an audit of the Federal Reserve Bank. How milquetoast. It was a watering down of an earlier chant.
Steve Bannon is not saying “Audit the Fed,” he’s taking the Ron Paul tag line and saying “End the Fed,”’as he did at CPAC Dallas several weeks ago: “We don’t need to audit the Fed, we need to end the Federal Reserve. . . The central bank [must be owned] by the American people, not a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.”
These are words of a Wall Street alumnus. And he clearly is not looking to play it safe. He is looking to be gritty and to take chances. Steve Bannon wants to wear the mantle of Ron Paul.
Alex Jones Interviewing With Steve Bannon — An Example Of How Far The Ron Paul Revolution Has Come
Alex Jones has long been part of the soul of the anti-establishment political right. Part entertainer, part intellectual, his work dovetails to a degree with the part politician, part intellectual efforts on Ron Paul’s political carrier since the early 1970s. Though I know of no formal relationship between the two, they are fighting very similar battles.
Bannon has undergone a change of heart over the past two years in which a lingering part of him shifted from a bootlicking administrative state supporter, to full-bore radical. He seeks to dig out the deep state from the roots and with 3-4 hours of hosting shows six days a week, he might just have developed the type of activist audience that can make that happen.
And yes, Jones and Bannon come with baggage and flaws, but these two are examples of thought leaders who are likely to lead the battalions of soldiers that will deal a death blow to the administrative state in the months and years ahead. Without even saying his name, it is clear that both of them are keen observers of the work of Ron Paul. Without the activist army of his own, Paul’s voice still has reach into the hearts of the men and women who will free this country from tyranny.
Alex Jones and Steve Bannon give them the vital pep talks. And it is Ron Paul and a few others following that lead who soberly deliver the principles.
Ron Paul’s Version Of “America First,” Is Rapidly Becoming America’s Version
Ron Paul’s 1987 resignation letter from the GOP reads like an excerpt from an America First Donald Trump speech.
“Instead of cutting some of the immeasurable waste in the Department of Defense, it has gotten worse, with the inevitable result that we are less secure today . . . Foreign intervention has exploded. . . Only an end to military welfare for foreign governments plus a curtailment of our unconstitutional commitments abroad will enable us really to defend ourselves and solve our financial problems.”
This isn’t written in 2016, though. It was written in 1987 when Ronald Reagan was still President. Paul was excoriating Reagan for abandoning American values and Republican principles, letting his White House fall into the hands of deep state actors like George H. W. Bush and the big government, anti-conservative movement that would come to be falsely named neo-conservatism. Ron Paul’s 1987 resignation letter sounds like a Donald Trump America first speech and it warns of exactly the catastrophe that Trump’s own White House encountered.
That being the case, if America again sees a Trump White House, the Trump White House would be well-served to make Ron Paul the advisory board chairman of the transition team, responsible for signing off on every single appointment. Paul is someone who has been observing this and thinking this topic through since 1976, when very few Republican congressmen supported the 1976 candidacy of Ronald Reagan, a candidacy that Ron Paul supported bigly.
The Mises Institute — The Most Important Economic Think Tank In Support Of The Work Ahead
Ron Paul 2008 and Ron Paul 2012 were more seminars than campaigns. They had purposes that went far beyond winning an election. They were focussed on rebuilding a culture of freedom, a culture from which politics is downstream.
You were expected to read. You were expected to be in a constant state of study. Every Ron Paul stump speech was not really a stump speech, it was him reacting to the news of the day by quoting any of the thousands of books he had read over the past 70 years.
I know of no organization that has received more benefit from the campaign that the Mises Institute, and appropriately so. Misesian Economic thought is central to Paul’s approach to the world and the Mises Institute was the most well-positioned and prepared facility for engaging with the most die hard, would-be students of Misesian economic theory.
This last week, Lew Rockwell, founder of the Mises Institute announced in a letter entitled, “Murray’s Dream Fulfilled,” that one of the founding dream of the Mises Institute had come true, with the graduating of two students from the Mises Institute with master’s degrees.
To help support the important work of the Mises Institute, tap here.
In The Presence Of My Enemies . . . My Cup Runneth Over
In spring of 2008, I knew nothing of any contention between the Rothnardians in Auburn, Alabama and the effete Beltway libertarians. I heard David Boaz, though, that spring badmouth Ron Paul behind closed doors at a small gathering in Chicago. (*It was at a small event held upstairs in the Chicago Tribune’s building — a building from which men used to espouse exactly the views that Ron Paul espoused and which generations of Republican politics before him espoused. )
Mr. Boaz thought he was among friends. When he could have spoken a few positive things about Ron Paul, he instead had ugly things to say. I didn’t know this guy from Eye Patch McCain and had no reason to either doubt or believe him. And if he would have conducted himself differently, I could have walked out of that room that night respecting him just as much as I respected Ron Paul. David Boaz just did not seem to be a man of sufficient character to deserve that, however.
I can not imagine myself walking into a room of influencers like that in 2008 and considering one of the most important things to do in that room being to say such awful things about a public figure who I had so much in common with. I knew nothing of libertarian politics before that night, and David Boaz, with his behavior that night, helped showed me that there wasn’t much in it for me.
While Dr. Paul cured my apathy and the apathy of so many others. David Boaz that night, guaranteed that I would see one side of that divide as effete, petty, unserious, and career-focussed (the Beltway folks), while the other were a bunch of rough around the edges folks trying to know the truth and speak the truth (the Auburn folks and a lot of other folks). It is funny that some claim there is competition between these two camps. As far as this neophyte outsider was able to tell, they were not even playing the same game.
I was ashamed to see a grown man behave such a way, even if it was a small room.
While both are libertarians, the Beltway libertarians really might be left out of the next stage in American history. They appear far more in line with the administrative state and petty internecine battles than they are in line with actual freedom.
In minutes of conversation, it is clear who is a lover of liberty and who is looking to nurse a career. Ron Paul has made a life of sticking his neck out there and doing the right thing, an impossible behavior for anyone seeking to nurse a career.
Paul has been so ardent about doing the right thing, that his DC-insider, fellow Republican Party members even once ran a Democrat against him. That’s how much some of them hated him. Ron Paul remains, and is trending, while so many of those who saw him as an opponent are gone and never even knew relevance.
Ron Paul Battled Both Pro-Life & Pro-Choice Activists On Abortion & His Principled Stance This Summer Became The Law Of The Land
One day, in the spring of 2008, Ron Paul did me a serious favor. He made time to talk on the phone and he sent me a copy of a book he had written. I was a candidate for US House of Representatives at the time and I was running largely on his platform. I took issue with his pro-life stance however.
In August 2022, George W. Bush — who would not attend the March for Life rally his 8 years as President — is politically irrelevant. His father’s political dynasty has been decimated by an adjective appended to his brother’s name: “low energy Jeb.” The neo-cons are politically irrelevant. The Rockefeller Republicans and Romney Republicans, unwilling to talk about any cultural topic that matters, are losing relevancy. And pro-life views are ascendant.
The battle for abortion has been returned to the state legislatures where it belongs.
Ron Paul has long walked a very specific pro-life opinion that has gotten him in so much hot water over the years, for neither pro-life nor pro-choice people care for the answer. They each tended to call for him to step outside of the limits offered to him by the US Constitution.
Consequently, Paul did not advocate for the further federalization of abortion, since abortion is not a topic allowed to Congress by the US Constitution.
He has instead long advocated for abortion to be entirely taken out of the purview of the federal courts and sent back to the state legislatures, where criminal matters in every state are already handled.
That decades long solution that Ron Paul offered has, in the last two months, become reality.
Do you know how hard that principled pro-life view must have been to have held firm on for 40 years? Yet he held firm and that become the reality. He was not the only one with that view, but there were relatively few. What might have happened if there were not voices like Paul’s calling out to America to take this path?
I know exactly what would have happened — the overturning of Roe v. Wade might never have occurred, because the focus of the most principled voices would have gone elsewhere.
That role is called leadership.
Ron Paul has authored a very powerful book on this topic, which I believe has appeared under two titles, both of which seem to be out of print: Challenge to Liberty and Abortion and Liberty. Perhaps the Ron Paul Institute has a few copies available for sale to those who contact them or perhaps it will return it to print if there is sufficient demand for such a title.
I can tell you, as a congressional candidate in 2008, this book shocked me, gave me a new view of the abortion topic, and came from a perspective I had never encountered: that of a veteran congressman and obstetrician who practiced both before Roe v. Wade and after. The powerful book and the conversation with Dr. Paul made it impossible for me to ever call myself pro-choice again. If you find yourself uncertain on this topic, I strongly recommend that book.
Tuesday, August 16, 2022 — The Ron Paul Revolution & Its Cohorts Finally Vanquished The Last Carrier Of The Neo-Con Battleflag
In 2008 these candidates rose up in the two parties to challenge, each to some degree, the post-9/11 status quo: Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter, Alan Keyes, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, Barack Obama. Of them, only Ron Paul remains 1.) Politically relevant and 2.) unabsorbed by the status quo.
Barack Obama was, of course, elected as a hero of the day and a change agent sent by the American public, but was quick to prove himself to be more of the same.
Ron Paul’s continued voice in the wilderness post-9/11 and ultimate political relevance put into motion the events of Tuesday night August 16, 2022, a night that will live in infamy. Liz Cheney had become so obsessive with Donald Trump and so dismissive of her voters that she preposterously lost by 40 points a seat as an incumbent. This is one of the worst losses every for a Congressional incumbent in American history.
Tuesday was a victory of the Ron Paul movement over the Bush neo-cons that Ron Paul has been warning about since 9/11/2001. But he was also warning about it before the 2000 election when George W. Bush, Ron Paul’s Governor was elected to the presidency. Ron Paul has been warning about neo-con Republicans since pre-W, when the head of the CIA ran for the presidency, George H W Bush. Ron Paul cared so much about this topic that he ran for President against his party and as a Libertarian.
Yes, it is fair to say that Tuesday’s defeat of Liz Cheney in Wyoming has a victory for Ron Paul Republicanism. The tides have turned. A Virginia resident is no longer welcome in the Wyoming GOP, not even if she’s a Cheney. McCain, Bush, and Cheney legacies are in ruins.
Meanwhile, waking right next to the army of Ron Paul Republicans, is none other than America’s mayor, Rudy Giuliani, once a sweetheart of political insiders and neo-conservatives.
Even Rudy Giuliani Has Become A Ron Paul Republican
Somewhere, and I do not know where, Rudy Giuliani went off the rails. He was a darling of the globalists. His name is now dirt with his friends.
And of all people, Rudy Giuliani sounds like he is finally taking lessons from the great Kurt Hyde and his disciples. Hyde has been an ardent and lasting opposition voice on machine counting for over two decades.
When Kurt Hyde was writing and giving speeches on Diebold in the early 2000s, Giuliani did not appear to know a thing about the topic. In fact, Hyde has put nearly 40 years of work into this topic, going back to at least 1985, before Giuliani had even run for mayor.
Hyde, former military, likely appreciated an encounter between Giuliani and Paul on May 15, 2007 in which Paul said there were penalties to America’s foreign adventurism — 9/11 being an example. Giuliani took umbrage with that and vociferously defended the right of the deep state to do anything it wants. The dividing line between the two campaigns became so clear that he came to regard all Ron Paul supporters as kooks for not worshiping the deep state.
For speaking ill of the spread of machine voting and the evil of voting companies such as Diebold, Rudy Giuliani would have then also called Ron Paul supporters kooks for such claims. Today he would not.
Giuliani played a most important role in late 2020 and early 2021 as he travelled the country lighting brush fires in the name of election integrity and counseled legislatures on how to procedurally make that happen. So much of the soil that Giuliani worked in those days had been worked for decades by veterans of the Ron Paul 2008 campaign.
Giuliani even seems to have come around to the idea that perpetual war is not in America’s interest. On numerous fronts he has become a Ron Paul Republican, as the party finds its way back to the party Ron Paul once new.
What Ron Paul Was Doing On The Eve Of America’s Plunge Into Corona Communism
When the Ides of March 2020 came, it became evident that my city would become one of the first to lockdown. It arguably remains locked down, more than 2 years later. That night, March 17, 2020, as the world worried, and all manner of excuses were used to usher communism into the United States, that very night, as Ron Paul’s weekly column came out. It was titled with the truest title I have ever read about Covid then or now: “The Coronavirus Hoax.”
Do you know how hard it was to simply know such a thing on March 17, 2020? Do you know how virtually impossible it was to accurately put your neck on the line with a bold title like that?
Except that is what Ron Paul did and has been able to do for decades. Ergo the title: All Roads Lead To “Ron Paul Was Right”
As a counter example, Mike Adams, a revered health freedom commentator, and clearly a Ron Paul fan, wrote the most embarrassing response to Ron Paul’s piece that week I have yet seen.
Adams was wrong on virtually every single point. And why was he wrong? Because he believed the narrative. Case count, parabolic rise, 5.7% death rate, he bought THE WHOLE narrative and wrote this: “Flatly stated, Ron Paul is horribly, dangerously wrong about the coronavirus. His article is so misguided, my first reaction was that someone must have hacked his website.”
I don’t want to quote the article anymore, it is so awful. The difference between Mike Adams on March 17, 2020 and Ron Paul is this 1.) a solid, seemingly stoic sense of faith, 2.) a solid understanding of free markets, and 3.) the man has delivered 5,000 babies. It is hard to shake a man with those three superpowers. Adams and most of the rest world turned to Chicken Little while Ron Paul turned into an even more stable Rock of Gibraltar.
Biology Is The Least Of What Makes One A Father
Ron Paul and his wife Carol raised a family, which is several generations deep at this point. Who would have guessed at the birth of Randal Howard Paul in 1963, that a US Senator would be among that family and that he would have been one of the most important freedom fighters in Washington DC during the Obama presidency, Trump presidency, the illegitimate presidency, and during corona communism.
Growing up in the home of Ron and Carol Paul probably sets that stage quite well. That family daily and in mass quantities reverberating amazing things into the world around it. Though all the other things I write about are wonderful, that family might have been his greatest gift to the world.
The Culture Is Becoming More Like Ron Paul
There is clear indication that American culture has moved so badly in a wrong direction. More culturally conservative times are ahead. That change is very much in the air.
Tucker Carlson’s recent advice to young viewers during an interview with Daniel Schmidt was practically a synopsis of the life of Ron Paul: seeking adventure and taking risks in the context of achievement, commitment, responsibility, marriage, children, and family.
Carlson’s advice:
“Where you find satisfaction is through achievement and achievement comes through commitment and responsibility…College is ridiculous unless you are moving toward some very specialized degree… get married, choose wisely but don’t overthink it …have more children than you can afford, take a job you’re not qualified for … have some adventure in your life, do something crazy.”
This is a very different definition of “adventure” than the frivolous definition most of the world uses. This is a Ron Paul definition of adventure.
Ron Paul knows it and everyone who watches his life knows it: the man knows how to do things that the rest of the world would call crazy. The application of that adjective does not stop him.
And on this celebration of his 87th year, how blessed we are to be firsthand witnesses of the outcome of that 87 years of doing that which the delusional world calls crazy.
There is something contagious about courage like that, courage that says: go out and do what’s right, disregard the insults of the world.
Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery
Donald Trump is in many ways the media savvy version of Ron Paul, with some Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan thrown in. Ron Paul is the intellectual leader of the Republican Party. He has been that for at least a decade, though he is seldom quoted relative to how widely he is read. He is the most important voice on the political right to contend with. His voice is what principled Republicans have long stood for and what Americans have long been about.
Is Trump as intellectually consistent as Paul? Certainly not. It can be painful to listen to Trump think sometimes. Ron Paul is precise. Trump is grandiose. Ron Paul is studied in the most important concepts of government, society, and economics. Trump has some command of grand theory but his strengths are that he is so very skilled at gamesmanship. Ron Paul is the back bench legislature that no one bothered to hide their true colors from. Trump was the party donor who everyone wanted money from.
These are two very different men, who really seek out to accomplish some very similar goals: to save the dream that was America and to save the beacon of liberty that the world has always needed and so badly needs today.
As time progresses, the dire need of that becomes more evident. As that becomes more evident, the following are all happening: 1.) America is increasingly trending toward the Republicans, 2.) Republicans are increasingly trending toward Trump, 3.) Trump is increasingly trending toward his most principled, gritty advisors, and 4.) those advisors are increasingly trending toward Ron Paul.
Ron Paul 2008 and Ron Paul 2012 gave rise to Trump 2016, and helped pave the way to the current battles America faces.
In this man’s 87th year, America finally looks ready for the Ron Paul revolution. America finally looks ready for what the Contract with American should have been. America finally looks ready for what the Tea Party started out as.
In his 87th year, all roads point to Ron Paul was right. May he have 87 more years of speaking not the words that America wants to hear, but the words America needs to hear.
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I remember putting up Ron pAul signs in my neighborhood. Also thanks to yoU Stevo and many others I had the courage to take that damn facial diaper off my face in my medical office at the end of last year. I got into so many argumments. I even got banned from airlines but totalitarianism must be resisted , thank you
Dr, Paul and I are the same age, I hav followed the good Dr. sence I was 25 years young , just a child
He has alwase made sence to me. I agree with this article