Sometimes Dad Needs To Pull You Aside
Why Donald Trump & Ron Paul Are The Two Most Unlikely, Yet The Two Most Important Collaborators Of This Era
It has been ages since you’ve skinned your knee on a bike. It might even be ages since your kid has skinned a knee on a bike. But that does not stop an important relationship in your life from bringing needed correction. Sometimes Dad needs to pull you aside and to say that you can do better.
No matter your age, you will always be his child. And while he doesn’t interfere much because you are grown now, once in a while he sees his child going down a path that he’s seen too many others blindly wander down and get hurt. You know no better. He knows you know no better. And he wants you to know what he knows. No matter the age, we each need that once in a while.
And it is not just biological fathers. It is elders around us invested in our lives. It is people who care enough to deliver a firm word, who care enough to put their neck out their by speaking a word for your benefit, a word that you might take the wrong way. They are not trying to be right. They are trying to be on your team. That is called love. And sometimes there are consequences for acting out of love.
In 2005, I got to reading some writing about gold by US Congressman Ron Paul. That moved me into other writing of his. I came for the money, I stayed for the liberty. By 2007, my lifelong political addiction (which I’ve tried to kick numerous times with no success) had me organizing a group with others that put me on the front lines of the grassroots of Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign and then his 2012 campaign.
I watched a direct path from a defining moment in 2007 — a Ron Paul event that was the first Tea Party event of the contemporary Tea Party movement. I watch the path from that event to the wider recognition of that movement a few years later under the moniker “The Tea Party.” I watched that movement turn into the Trump candidacy, and into the Maga movement, which has become an awakening that goes far beyond Donald Trump, and even goes far beyond American shores in a greater movement for liberty.
And beyond the political, that movement has both cultural and spiritual significance. A California woman, as one example, formerly atheist and a radical, far-left, almost militant progressive, revealed something so important and unexpected to me. She said, “In 2020, I came to Trump. In 2021, I came to Jesus.”
Did Ron Paul start the liberty movement? God given rights are as old as man. And tyrants who would abrogate them are just as old. But Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign has had such a formative influence on contemporary politics, that the Tea Party is impossible to have happened in his absence.
Part of that movement is so threatening and impactful, that great strides were taken to stop it.
For example, in 2008, Fox News personality Sean Hannity was chased by a group of freedom fighters wanting to talk about his network’s treatment of Ron Paul and also about Sean Hannity’s personal treatment of Ron Paul. With a seemingly guilty conscience, flanked by two bodyguards, Hannity chose to not stop and talk about his behavior for a few minutes, but to instead run away from those who wanted to talk. He actually ran away. Sean Hannity ran. I watched it happen, not on camera, but with my eyes. Sometimes when a known bully does the shocking thing and turns and runs like a coward, sometimes you just feel compelled to pick up a snowball and pelt the fleeing coward for being such a weenie. Ron Paul, had been deplatformed by Fox that week. They changed their debate rules to make sure Ron Paul specifically could not appear on stage, but at least one candidate polling far lower would be able to appear on stage.
On January 8, 2021, a sitting US President was disconnected from his main means of communicating with the public in an act that took place on private property (the Twitter platform), but which was almost certainly an act of treason.
He correspondingly made his own social network. On November 14, that President messaged on that network about November 15, 2022:
“Hopefully, tomorrow will turn out to be one of the most important days in the history of our Country!”
As of the writing of this piece (on the morning of November 15), I do not know what November 15, 2022, will bring, but on the day several projects of my own will launch. It is certainly a monumental day in my own life, but that is not why I write this piece. I write because I see something important has already happened.
On November 15, I saw one of the most formative men in our nation’s current political milieu take a different tone. An almost intimate tone.
He is spoken of by some as the wild-eyed uncle, because doing so makes it easier for him to be dismissed when he speaks the hard-hitting truth. But to those who know his work and who see the role his has played, he is no wild-eyed uncle. He is the calm, reasoned father of the resistance in this present era.
He is Ron Paul.
On November 15, 2022, he called his son his son. In doing so, he refused the moniker of wild-eyed uncle. I do not mean his biological son. I mean the movements that have sprung from his decision to run for election in 2007 and 2008, to run a dogged race all the way through to the convention, to focus on delegates, to focus on the workings of the party, and to focus on spreading the message of liberty.
He ran to reshape the Republican Party. And so often, when I see the people doing that same work still today, I see the imprint of Ron Paul’s campaign on them.
And when you speak to your son and call him your son, you leave an impact on him that the wild-eyed uncle cannot. You claim him as yours.
He did so in the calm, reasoned way that Ron Paul speaks (https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/11/ron-paul/a-tale-of-two-midterms/) “The liberty movement was advanced by grassroots supporters of my 2008 presidential campaign.” That’s probably the closest you will get the humble Dr. Paul to claim influence over this moment. Except something changed in the tone of his writing.
And as a father, he spoke like a father. He spoke to his 2008 people, his 2012 people, his Tea Party people, his Maga people. As hard as it might be for some to call the Maga people Ron Paul’s people, at the intellectual heart of the Maga movement are the ideas of Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign.
Yes, it is Trump’s dynamism that coalesced that movement and gave the American kitchen table a seat at the negotiating table, but it is Ron Paul’s philosophy that nurtured it.
This man who shaped national and international politics by understanding local politics, who ran hard races in his Texas district against the grandest of foes, deplatformed before it was a thing, building his own platform before it was a thing. He was speaking to his people.
He was speaking as a father.
My son, pay attention closely, “The 2010 midterm election showed that people will respond to candidates offering serious pro-liberty ideas and policies.”
To paraphrase from the philosopher at the roots of the Maga movement:
Do you see why there was no red wave? Do you see how you didn’t talk about reigning government in? You didn’t seriously talk about spending and bailouts. You couldn’t be bothered to bring up the pernicious evil done by the Federal Reserve Bank, let alone to bring up the need to end the Fed. You talked about CRT, but wouldn’t touch the need to dismantle the US Department of Education. Where was your alternative to the warfare-welfare state. You hardly even talked about the masks and the mandates. You didn’t talk about things that really change people’s lives. You could have done better. I expected more of you. Now you need to go back and do better.
But once you do that first thing, watch out for the next trap, my son:
“…the Tea Party’s rise and fall also shows the danger facing ideological movements that become too close with one political party. These movements will start pulling their punches when one of ‘our team’ begins casting bad votes. The argument goes that we must support big government Republicans or we get REALLY big government Democrats.”
The father of this grassroots movement is pulling us aside and asking us to pay attention. He’s asking us to stay focussed on principles.
Yes, Trump can handle the media. He can bum rush the Washington establishment. He is an astute political strategist. He knows the game inside and out. He plays the media like no other. He is a communicator. He stands in the breach. He takes the fire so we don’t have to. There are many, many wonderful things about Donald Trump.
And Trump is not the philosopher. The guy who spoke up today is. The guy who in a very reserved way stepped up and pulled his son to the side is. We have Trump who does so much. And we have Ron Paul who keeps pulling us back to what matters most, because the political victories matter little if they are not the victories we need to win.
Today, I heard the loudest claim I ever have over the Tea Party and the Maga movement from this humble man. Today, I heard him commit to encouraging that energetic movement to stay focused on core values.
Today in his words of correction, I heard him take an erstwhile son aside and to say “You are my son. You know what liberty looks like. You know what a just fight looks like. That was not the fight you could have given. Now I expect better from you.”
This moment needs better from you. It needs the cussed, realistic, hard nose fight of Donald Trump and it needs the principled, age old, reliably victorious wisdom of Ron Paul.
On November 15, 2022, perhaps we will see a historic day in which the Maga movement goes to war, and in which Ron Paul has stood up as the intellectual father of what takes place.
Not a wiser mind exists for a role such as that.
That fight is not won online. It is not won in books. It is won both in the mind and how the mind is applied to the external terrain.
You may find flaws in each man here mentioned, for not a man exists without them. And seldom does a great man exist without the greatest of flaws. Focus on the flaws and the flaws will win the day. Your obsession will make them an obstacle to victory. Flaws are had by all and one’s focus on them causes one to see that which is great for nothing more than common. It is in their strengths that great men shape the trajectory of history.
Two great men have here been mentioned. For all I know they may never have spoken a word to each other. Such communication is unneeded and perhaps even harmful. It is in our recognition of the necessity of these two men and the unique and important roles they can play at a moment such as this that those roles can be brought together into an amazing victory.
Ron Paul is the philosopher who helped birth the grassroots movement around us. His wisdom in that area is gold. Trump is the tactician who walked that movement into the front door of the White House and who is one step at a time taking over the Republican Party for the grassroots. In recognizing both of them for their mastery and their roles in the present, we embolden this fight for liberty.
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Lets not forget Trump and his role in Operation Warp Speed. He's still beating the drums for the Quackzines in spite of the way that travesty is turning out.
I profoundly distrust politicians. I thought I would give him the benefit of the doubt and took a wait and see approach, but I have seen all I need to see from Him. Being that someone is considered "THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS" is never a reason to blindly follow that person.
I voted for Ron Paul when it was him and Russell Means against the world.
I never did care for Libertarianism. They stand for everything and for nothing. Less than useless. Prove me wrong