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Ron Paul and Gandhi by Walter Block Recently by Walter Block: Reply to a Doubting Infantry Veteran
According to Gandhi "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." How does this apply to Ron Paul? Well, it is a bit more complicated than that in this case. Here, the "ignoring" certainly fits. The mainstream media talks about everyone else under the sun except for You Know Who. And who can forget the "laughing": he is a crazy old uncle, his suits don’t fit, his eyebrows aren’t "presidential" enough, etc. The "fighting" is clear: he has been smeared with everything in the book they could throw at him, and with lots of stuff that isn’t in the book too. But in the Gandhi case, each of these things occurred pretty much one at a time. First¸ they did this, then they did that. The implication is that after they finished the first thing, they stopped it, and then went on to the second; ditto for the third and fourth. Not so in the case of the Congressman from Texas. Even now, amidst all the laughing and the sneering, they are still ignoring Dr. Paul. How many stories about the presidential campaigns of Romney, Gingrich and Santorum (notice who is missing?) must we read from the New York Times and the Washington Post? How many times must we be reminded that Dr. Paul has not yet won any state election outright? (Maine doesn’t count. Vote fraud is yet another issue that did not beset Gandhi.) Why is it that the major media almost entirely ignored that magnificent and unprecedented march of his supporters in the military on Washington D.C. on February 20, 2012? Don’t ask me how these people can at one and the same time ignore Ron, smear him and laugh at him. To the uninitiated, this sounds like a logical contradiction. But, it would appear, our Powers That Be are even capable of ignoring the laws of logic. But there are at present two more altogether different deviations from the Gandhi scenario now in play.
The first is that Ron Paul has "elevated" to the status of "power broker." Nonsense. No, nonsense on stilts. This is just another attempt on the part of the ruling class in our society to deflect Mr. Paul from his goal. First, to win the Republican nomination for President, then to gain a landslide victory over Mr. Obama in the fall, and finally to turn the U.S. and the world too into a free, peaceful, prosperous place where there is liberty for all. And, he will do it too. Yes, the Texas Congressman will have a difficult time attaining the first of these goals. But when and if he does, it will be all downhill after that, as he cashes in on his additional support of first Independents, and second, disaffected Democrats too. The status of "power broker" implies that the next president of the U.S. will take Paul’s calls; that he will have some input into the party platform (which is almost totally ignored in any case); that, perhaps, there will indeed be some sort of luke-warm oversight placed on the Fed; that there will be yet another blue-ribbon commission instituted to study whether marijuana shall be legalized (which will also be ignored). No. "Power broker" is a mere booby prize. Ron is in this for the long haul. For him it is "President or bust." "Power broker," along with ignoring, laughing at, smearing, are just attempts to deflect him from his magnificent goal. The second non-Gandhian scenario being experienced by Ron Paul is that he is now in cahoots with Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney? Bost and tosh. Yes, there is a lack of personal antipathy between the two men; indeed, there is some sort of grudging respect between them. Their wives are friendly. Yes, Ron sees in Mitt a person who is less of a loose cannon in many ways than either Scam or Noot. So what? When it comes to matters of substance, in terms of foreign policy, economic principles, personal liberties as Ron never tires of telling anyone who will listen, there is as much of a unbridgeable a gap between Ron and Mitt as there is between Ron and either of the two others (notice, I’m not mentioning their names? Hah! Take that). This collusion scenario too is an attempt to deflect the Congressman from his goal of bringing liberty to the world. For surely Dr. Paul would be the junior partner in any such amalgamation, at least in the eyes of the mainstream media and the real power brokers in the Republican Party. Maybe, possibly, he or his son Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky will be offered the Vice Presidential spot on the ticket. Well, maybe, who knows, the future is uncertain. But at this point in time, there is no doubt about it. Ron Paul is in this game for all the marbles. And power broker, along with junior partner, are only obstacles in his path, along with ignoring, laughing at, smearing, and other such impediments.
February 27, 2012 Dr. Block [send him mail] is a professor of economics at Loyola University New Orleans, and a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He is the author of Defending the Undefendable and Labor Economics From A Free Market Perspective. His latest book is The Privatization of Roads and Highways. Copyright © 2012 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.
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