The Ron Paul Revolution rages on after a shot in the arm from the good Dr. in Minnesota. by Wulfgang
(libertarian)
Saturday, September 6, 2008
What a rally in Minneapolis! From the book-signing at Borders, where they instituted a wristband policy to deal with around 1,500 people lined up halfway through Rosedale Mall, to the Target Center where around 12,000 of us shouted as one for a return of personal liberty, a constitutional-sized government, the death of the neoconservative Pax Americana philosophy and all of the misery that was wrought, and sound money.
There was an incredible amount of networking everywhere you looked and I have no doubt that our numbers will continue to grow in no small part because of this. The message and the movement are now very much "taking it back, one congressman at a time" and this is the smartest and most logical course we can take if we wish to succeed. We must stick to this as our central plan and do all that can be done to further it. Whether through political action, friends and family, active participation in campaigns or simply through contributions, our mission now is to unseat the establishment and install our candidates.
Discussion forums and message boards are another avenue to spread the message but care must be taken in this. I heard far more conspiracy talk - some of it embarrassingly preposterous - in Minnesota than is good for the movement.
On this we have to be wise people. You will never appeal to mainstream America by launching right into CFR, Tri-Lateral Commission, and insisting that 9/11 was an inside job. People believe far more strongly in the truth they find for themselves. Rather than beating people over the head with it, we must instead try to lead people to the truth. We must plant seeds, not drop trees on people.
Let's take the conspiracy theory that does the greatest harm to our cause: the idea that 9/11 was an inside job. I've seen far too many people who were interested in our movement turn away and write us off as a bunch of "conspiracy nuts" because of this.
I'll try to be as succinct as possible:
1) When Larry Silverstein said "pull it" on Building 7 he was using the term the FDNY uses when they have given up on a fire and decide to evacuate all personnel. "Pull it" means to pull everyone out. Watch Silverstein's statement that "we decided to pull it and the fire department gave the order".
2) American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon - period. The idea that it was a missile is preposterous. There were 64 people on board who all had friends and family - so far none of them have surfaced still alive! Watch the following video - it's time to bury the ridiculous assertion that anything other than AA flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. [link edited for length]
3) The collapse of the Twin Towers was not necessary. If the buildings had withstood the impact and burning fuel we would still have had reason enough to do exactly what we have done since. The idea that the vast amount of planning, explosives, wiring and detonation necessary to bring the towers down could have been done unnoticed is next to impossible. Wouldn't it be a whole lot easier and simpler to just hire Bin Laden to do the job and have a few key people look the other way as it unfolded? There's no evidence, as far as I know, that this happened but at least it's a workable conspiracy. We have to be in the business of bringing people into our movement - not turning them off to it. To do otherwise is to undermine our very efforts and to bring disrepute and scorn on our great movement.
When you hold a great truth there's a tremendous personal tendency to want to share it with others - to enlighten them - but at what cost? We must never lose sight of what we are doing, why we are doing it, and what the ultimate goal of all of our efforts is.
Ayn Rand said in a speech once that there are three questions every man and woman must ask themselves:
1) Where am I?
2) How do I know it?
3) What should I do?
Questions 1 and 2 are objective and we Ron Paul supporters have already answered them which is why we call for a revolution. Question 3 is now the only one of importance to us.
What should I do? The answer is anything which furthers the movement, draws more people to our cause and advances our agenda. Conspiratorial talk will almost never do any of these things.
"Being right" is no guarantee of getting what you want as any married person can tell you. We must be politically wise, tactful, respectful of differing views, but unwavering in our core principles.
To put it as bluntly and succinctly as I can, we must treat those who live in ignorance as we would a first date: try not to say anything stupid, know that brutal honesty is not always the best policy, feign interest where no genuine interest exists, and sometimes even nod in the affirmative to things we completely disagree with - for a time.
Remember my fellow patriots and revolutionaries, the goal isn't so much to wow our date with the breadth and depth of our understanding as it is to be waking up next to them in the America we are fighting for!
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Let me add to your list one thing: we need to wipe the word neocon from our vocabulary. Most people have absolutely no idea what a neocon is and assume we are talking about con artists or something else entirely.
Neoconservative perks people's ears, especially conservatives. Same word, no contraction. We can't assume everybody knows what we mean on everything.
Excellent article. I agree completely. Many of the supporters need to realize that it took them time to understand the freedom message fully. We need to present the ideas to people so they can find the conclusions themselves. It is almost impossible to find an avid supporter of something, when people are forced to do something. If you give the time for the ideas to blossom in their mind and allow them to find their own reasons why freedom works, you have a life long supporter of the movement.
I agree completely. I've used 'neocon' in discussions only to have the person immediately respond with "neocon? I guess it's all the jews fault too?" or something similar. It's become a buzzword that all to often throws the conversation off the tracks.
I use 'neoconservative' exclusively now in mixed company.
"If you give the time for the ideas to blossom in their mind and allow them to find their own reasons why freedom works, you have a life long supporter of the movement."
Precisely. For instance, when people say to me that sound money or the gold standard is anachronistic and unworkable in today's world, I remind them that if we were still on the gold standard a gallon of gas would be around $1.70/gallon and provide a graphic such as This One to prove the point:
It one of those issues that really hits home with people.
Alan Greenspan's "Gold and Economic Freedom" is a great source in this argument as well because everyone knows Alan Greenspan and when he says:
"This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard."
People tend to sit up and take notice in my experience.
Fine, it all happened exactly the way they said it happened. So why not have a real investigation? What is there to lose? Why bury all the evidence and refuse to release tapes and photos? The planes may have brought down the towers, etc., but they are still hiding something, or they wouldn't have handled it the way they did.
There are unanswered questions about 9/11 and there will no doubt always be but absent compelling evidence, insisting that it was an inside job - a kind of NWO "Operation Northwoods" of the 21st century - strikes most Americans as a preposterous assertion and only serves to bring ridicule on our movement.
Whether that ridicule is fair or unfair is beside the point.
The point is: what impact does this have on our movement? Is it a net positive or a net negative?
In my experience, "9/11 truthers" are a liability to the movement. It usually generates a "you're one of those" response from the masses and anything after, no matter how logical or factual, falls on deaf ears.
What I'm saying here is that we need to be politically wise and right now that means putting some of the conspiratorial memes on the backburner for the greater good of the movement.
"Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances,... and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, lest the unbeliever see only ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn." - St. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim (The Literal Meaning of Genesis)
The NAU, in my opinion, is an exception here - there is compelling evidence to support the claim and it's 'accessible' to those who live in ignorance.
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