Paul's prospects in the Republican primaries may be dwindling quickly, but there is a lot we can learn from his campaign that can help the liberty movement go forward. by Walt Thiessen
(libertarian)
Monday, February 4, 2008
As Super Tuesday approaches, it is becoming increasingly clear that the McCain juggernaut probably can't be stopped. This is a terrible result for liberty, but even as I despair in the likely outcome, I think there is also good news and unpleasant-but-useful news to be garnered from what has transpired over the past year.
I think it's terrific that Ron Paul has been able to gather as much attention as he has successfully received, but I think it's also clear that the powers-that-be are doing and will do everything they can to prevent liberty from regaining a foothold in this country. Compared to the levels of support Paul has had in this campaign, the relative level of coverage by the media has been disproportionately low. Even candidates with less popular appeal in the polls have gotten more attention (and respect) than Paul has received from the major media.
It's also clear that rank-and-file Republicans are not as receptive to the liberty message as many people previously thought. This should be a wakeup message to all concerned. It is now clear that the Republican rank-and-file are as pro-big-government as the Democrat rank-and-file are. Our challenge as a movement is to continue to reach out to independent voters and, even more importantly, to people who are apathetic and have dropped out of the political process because of their disgust with the status quo. That's where Ron Paul made the biggest gains, and his success is instructive to the ongoing revolution. We should follow his example and continue to find ways to reach the silenced majority. We should help them acquire a voice they have not previously had.
I call them the "silenced majority" because roughly 40% of all voters are independent and roughly 35% of the entire population does not vote at all. Since 40% of the voters translates to roughly 26% of the overall population, this means that approximately 35% + 26% = 61% of the population are our target market for liberty. Not all of them will be receptive to our message, but I believe that the Paul campaign has shown us that they are where our greatest hopes and opportunities lie.
Make no mistake; progress has been made, but more progress will have to be made outside of the traditional major media. WE must become the media: libertarians, Paul supporters, and everyone else who supports liberty. We also have a much clearer idea how much in the minority we currently are, as well as how much of the overall population knows little or nothing about what we advocate. That must change.
The Nolan Chart website hopes to play a big role in us becoming the media. Last month, over 200,000 unique individuals found and visited our website, reading our articles a total of 600,000 times. To a large extent we have already succeeded, but we also have a lot more growth to achieve.
We are already contemplating some changes toward that end. In order to attract a wider range of political views to the site, we're working on a home page restructuring. The idea is to make it easier for people to find what most interests them. With the popularity of Ron Paul on this site, it became quite difficult at times for non-Paul supporters to find other articles. In order to become the media, we must reach a wider audience. The main aim of the new home page design is to facilitate reaching that wider audience, thereby increasing the level of debate among all camps, including the liberty camp.
We are also planning to add an RSS feed, so that people with RSS readers can learn about our newest columns and articles as soon as they become published.
We are becoming the media so that we can engage those with whom we disagree, as well as reach out to those who don't know us yet but who would be receptive to our ideas if they did know us. With your support, that can happen.
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I think one suggestion you might wish to consider is having a "select" pool of articles. Let anyone become a columnist and to write for the site, but have a team of volunteers (or site staff, or whatever) pick the best articles from each of the five perspectives and list them all out on the front page.
Going to a particular "section" of the site, such as the Conservative or Liberal sections, would reveal all the articles, but the front page would have an even selection from each type.
I've been thinking about this myself for a couple of days. It seems the logical step forward is to offer an alternative that has true journalistic integrity.
It would be a dream to find an independent television station, newspaper, and an online new source (possibly an evolved Nolan Chart) and form a "Freedom of Information LLC." Put out a stock option to fund it, and use a preferred stock to control it. Thereby preventing outside bias from subverting it.
Create a journalistically unbiased and honest platform for information, and then try to take it national. Many people would like to find an unbiased and reliable new source that tells more than one side of a story. That's one of the reason that NPR does so well on the radio, unfortunately they too are biased(CFR)...they just hide it better than most.
The new front page and RSS feed are good steps, thank you for continually looking at ways to improve upon the foundation you've begun. Having a target market identified is important in any endeavor. Those wanting a return to liberty and personal responsibility need to remember we did not slide this far away overnight, its been well over a century now. We won't get it back overnight, its the slow process of relentless education and involvement. Becoming a sound media outlet is a lofty yet worthy goal.Â
Well, Dr. Ron Paul has the mailing list and it will require a sustained high level organizational effort whichever way you go. BTW, GWB proposed a $3-trillion budget today. If my numbers are right that works out to be $10-thousand for every man, woman, and child in the USA. Wonder where they are going to get the money, as if I didn't know?
I fear and rejoice at the notion of the eventual outcome. Civil War. Knowing that the eventuality would be UN "peace keepers" coming into quell it and then the invoking of Martial Law, that's what scares me. I want to be wrong and I'm sure I am but is there really a realistic option. I'd like to see the national truth media but even that would be silenced in some way or another. it seems to me that people love ignorance because they can feel safe and have a bit of plausible deniability about where we've let our country go. But above all else and regardless of what happens next with Dr. Paul, we have a strong and focused movement and God will let us all know who's right.
Posted By: Dee Ann Patterson
Date: 2008-02-04 13:16:16
From comment above: "Many people would like to find an unbiased and reliable new source that tells more than one side of a story."
Actually as a consumer of news, I would appreciate an attempt to drop the fiction of unbiased news. No news is unbiased, because no human is unbiased. It is simply dishonest for journalists to pretend at being unbiased. What I would prefer is for a journalist to wear their bias on their sleeve. At least then we know the direction from which the article or broadcast is coming from. How a person reacts to a story has everything to do with how they report that story. This is why I appreciate the atmosphere at Nolan Chart. Everybody knows where everybody stands.
I personally feel that the main reason why Ron Paul’s message has reached a limit is because of the lack of education surrounding issues of monetary, fiscal and constitutional policy. The American public is sadly lazy to do the needed research. I think His campaign would do great strides to make his commercials into infomercials with vote Ron Paul tag line at the end. With this strategy, even if he does not become president at least his ideas will have been pollinated by the airwaves and his campaign will continue.
I personally feel that the main reason why Ron Paul’s message has reached a limit is because of the lack of education surrounding issues of monetary, fiscal and constitutional policy. The American public is sadly lazy to do the needed research. I think His campaign would do great strides to make his commercials into infomercials with vote Ron Paul tag line at the end. With this strategy, even if he does not become president at least his ideas will have been pollinated by the airwaves and his campaign will continue.
I don't feel Ron paul's message has reached it's limit even though the campaign may be struggling. The campaign is finite, with definite time limits, the message is not. Since the beginning of human history the dream of fair and just relations between the people and their leadership has existed. It is immortal and cannot die. What Ron paul has done is remind us of this ancient dream and express it in terms that apply to our current circumstances. As our sick and corrupt system continues to weaken, the dream will grow in proportion to the dissatisfaction of the masses. Desperation and starvation are great educators and have recruited more revolutionaries than all the leaders in history. Long live Ron Paul. Long live the revolution.
We must take heart -- the deafness of the Republican rank-and-file electorate to what they believed 10 years ago proves that, at the very core of their being, they can be led about. We simply need to become the ones leading them about, surrounding them with the ideas of freedom, and making statism the distateful and scandelous philosophy it is.
We can take over the Republican party -- it is far easier to do this than it is to build up a new party and fortify it with our own sheeple. The Iraq war WILL end, and when it does, the rank and file Republicans will be looking around and trying to figure out what they heck they stood for. We should be standing there, waiting to pounce.
"We must take heart -- the deafness of the Republican rank-and-file electorate to what they believed 10 years ago proves that, at the very core of their being, they can be led about. We simply need to become the ones leading them about, surrounding them with the ideas of freedom, and making statism the distateful and scandelous philosophy it is.
We can take over the Republican party -- it is far easier to do this than it is to build up a new party and fortify it with our own sheeple. The Iraq war WILL end, and when it does, the rank and file Republicans will be looking around and trying to figure out what they heck they stood for. We should be standing there, waiting to pounce."
Astounding. You , sir or ma'am, have just identified yourself as a complete and total hypocrite.
In other words, instead of laying all of the possible options on the table, and trying to do the thing a Jefferson or a Patrick Henry would do -- lay out the facts and let the people decide -- you want to "lead the people about", make them into "sheeple", and , of course, state that anything different than what you believe is "distasteful and scandalous".
I'm fully aware not a single one of the libertarians who read this will understand why your sanctamonous , sneeringly superior attitude turns people against you. I can only take immense pleasure in knowing that, of course, when your canidate loses and is searingly mocked across the Internet, you will claim it was MSM bias, or ignorant Americans, or a conspiracy, or voter fraud -- ANYTHING but that your ideas and the presentation of them are revoltingly elitst in the bad way and self-contradicting.
Posted By: Walt Thiessen
Date: 2008-02-04 18:11:23
Actually, Logical Premise, Bo Zimmeman doesn't speak for me, and I doubt very much that he speaks for most libertarians. He may or may not consider himself a libertarian, but there is little doubt that he denies reality. Even if he somehow got into enough of a power position where he could try to implement what he preaches, he would fail. You simply can't make someone be (or believe) what you want just because you want it.
Ron Paul's campaign was a missed opportunity for those who care about the future of America. The lack of attention from the media is the direct result of the inept way in which he allowed his campaign to be conducted. The purpose of a campaign is to win votes, not educate voters. The campaign would have garnered more delegates by sending voters $100 bills than they did with the millions wasted on homemade TV ads and hokey blimps. Don't for a minute think that no one with talent was available to the campaign. Many were. And were turned away by a staff afraid of being exposed as the lightweights that they are and always will be.
To follow up on Dee Ann's comment, the idea of the "unbiased" media is a pretty recent invention. It used to be all newspapers were explicitly aligned with a party or position. For example, the New York Herald-Tribune was the voice of the East Coast Republican Establishment, the Chicago Tribune was the voice of the isolationist wing of the Republican Party, etc.
 Then beginning in about the 1950s, 1960s, the publishers got the brilliant idea about playing things in the middle of the road. Hey, why not? Instead of limiting your circulation to the people that agree with you, now you can expand your pool of readers and, possibly, drive your competitors out of business (which has been pretty successful, when you see how many 1-newspaper cities there are now).
 I think the Internet will move things back in that direction (after all, people usually read the blogs they agree with, unless they're trolling). A few months ago, the Chicago Sun-Times announced that it was switching its editorial philosophy away from the Republican conservatism it espoused under Murdoch and Conrad Black, and going back to its historical liberal Democrat philosophy.
 I don't know if we'll go to a situation like the UK (where everyone knows the Daily Mail and the Telegraph are on the Right, and everyone knows the Guardian is on the Left) or other European media (such as in France with Le Figaro on the Right and Le Monde in the center-left), but with the media audience continuing to splinter and fragment you might see explicit ideology creep a bit more onto the news pages.
