Lately I’ve been having trouble sleeping. I sit here in my living room in Karnei Shomron, Israel, on the 8th night of Chanukah, wondering what other miracles lay in store on January 3rd and in the months ahead. The name Ron Paul is constantly at my fingertips. I’ve typed it in so many times the past month it’s insane. I’m experiencing an excitement I’ve rarely ever felt, and I don’t even live in America anymore. During the last Republican debate I woke myself up at 3am Israel time to watch an 8pm EST live stream on YouTube, with no fatigue whatsoever. I’m on overdrive, and I can’t calm myself.
I’ve only recently figured out what this excitement actually is.
I first got interested in the whole freedom movement when I heard that Ron Paul wanted to end all foreign aid, including to my country, Israel. This seemed like a spectacular idea to me. I hate the idea of taking American tax payer money I don’t need. The only reason we take it, by the way, is not because we need it. It’s that we don’t want to feel alone, and Jews always feel a deep existential isolation and loneliness. “As I see them from the mountain tops, gaze on them from the heights, this is a people that dwells alone, not counted among the Nations,” says Balaam of the People of Israel in Numbers 23:9. We still feel that loneliness. So we take the money. It’s shameful, it’s theft, it’s destructive, it’s morally wrong, and it makes people hate us for tying them into a conflict they have no business trying to solve. I wanted it to end and didn’t trust any Israeli leader to give it up on his own, so I looked up more about Ron Paul.
What I found was fascinating. On the forums, I learned of people who, back in ’08, literally gave their lives short of death to this man. Some poured money into his campaign they could not afford to give, and some even lost their marriages because of their single-minded insane dedication. This shocked me. I couldn’t yet understand it, but after a few days of listening to him, it began to click.
What is it about Ron Paul that inspires such extremes? Such maddening support on the one hand, and such fear and loathing on the other? I can give the answer in one word: Soul.
The essential soul of a human being is by definition free. The idea that men are free as determined by God is a concept that is foreign to most men. This is because most men want to control others, to take away their freedom. This is usually referred to as the drive for power. The drive for power is antithetical to freedom because power means the ability to control others. There is only one legitimate thing that power can and should be used for, whether it be military, legislative, or executive power. That is, to legalize freedom.
Ron Paul doesn’t want to be President to “give” me freedom. He doesn’t own my freedom and he didn’t give it to me. The only reason Ron Paul wants to be President is to stop punishing people for using their freedom that is rightfully theirs. He wants no power. This is clear to anyone who listens to him speak.
There are two kinds of human beings. Those who want power, and those who want freedom. You can tell which one’s which very easily. Those who want freedom are straight-edged. They are consistent, principled, and you can feel their human soul when they speak to you. There’s a continuum out there of human souls somewhere in spiritual cyberspace, and when you come into contact with one of these souls, you know immediately, because souls are by definition free. You sense sincerity, realness, consistency, a free human being. If you’re a man who seeks freedom and you come into contact with a real human soul, you become instantly addicted and you swallow up anything you can get your hands on. You want to unite immediately, no matter what you disagree on. There are people in the freedom movement that don’t exactly like Israel, especially me being a “settler” and I don’t care. If they want freedom, I sense it and my human drive for individualism suddenly turns into an intense desire to unite into a collective – but a collective of free individuals. It’s a beautiful dialectic, and it doesn’t matter what we agree or disagree on, as long as we agree on freedom.
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You get hooked on Ron Paul and you desperately seek more and more, any video you can find from the past, any speeches you missed, anything he said that you haven’t heard yet, even though you’ve heard it a thousand times already in different words. You can’t help yourself. The voracious hunger to be able to use your God-given freedom takes you over entirely. It’s like you suddenly realize you’re human and the Divine Image with which God created you comes alive and catches fire.
But something else happens to you. Once you get hooked on Ron Paul, you can no longer bear to listen to a man who wants power, and you become instantly disgusted when they start saying words. Before, they were just boring. Now they’re revolting. Listening to Romney or Gingrich or Bush or Obama makes you sick and you don’t know how Ron Paul gets through those debates without getting nauseous. You see a political veneer in these politicians that’s so transparent it’s like a ghost flapping its ethereal tongue at you. You can’t bear it.
What’s so maddening about hearing Romney or Gingrich talk is that there’s someone standing there saying things, but there’s no soul in it. These are not free men. These are power men. Not that Romney or Gingrich don’t have souls. They do. They are men just like you and I. But they have practically forfeited their souls to try and attain power, to control others with spin and talking points and contradictory statements like “I want to cut the budget and expand the military!” and they’ll say it with a polished tone and a straight face, just like a soulless recording. Their humanity is so buried under the mountain of lies they have told themselves, that neither they themselves nor you can even sense their souls in the human continuum. The scene of a human body speaking but no soul communicating can drive a free man mad.
The reason that Ron Paul never goes down in the polls is that he’s not “convincing” people in the everyday sense that he’s right on whatever issue. He’s activating human souls, lighting spiritual fires one by one speaking about freedom. Once a soul gets activated, and the man realizes that he IS free no matter what people do to him or tell him, there is no turning back. The other candidates are trying to turn heads with snappy one-liners that sound cool. Slaves follow these one-liners like mobs, and follow each other from candidate to candidate. Slowly but surely, Ron Paul activates a few of the individual souls in the mob as they bob from snappy comeback to snappy comeback and he goes up in the polls.
Yet, we cannot expect every man woman and child to understand or get excited about the message of liberty. In fact, most just can’t handle it. Being truly free is as terrifying as it is electrifying. The Bible tells us this very clearly in the story of the Exodus from Egypt. When Moses finally accepts the role of deliverer from God, he was assigned to say the following to my great-grandparents the Israelites:
“Therefore say to the Israelites: I am God. I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with amazing signs. And I will take you to be My people and I will be your God, and you will know that I am the Lord who freed you from the labors of the Egyptians.” (Ex. 6:6-7)
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And what was my grandparents’ response?
“And Moses told this to the people, but they didn’t listen due to lack of spirit and cruel bondage.” (6:9)
Not everyone can handle the message of freedom. It’s too frightening for some people, and some are just too enslaved. Those are the people that despise Ron Paul, the same types who rebelled against Moses in the desert and attempted to go back to Egypt. Freedom is too much for them and they can’t handle the Divine gift. They want and need someone to control them. Their souls have been too battered by slavery, taxation, and wars.
But nonetheless, God forced my stiff-necked great grandparents to leave Egypt, and as a result I’m here today, preaching freedom once again, fighting not only for America’s freedom, but for my own from America’s influence in my own region.
Vote Ron Paul and let my people go once again! Stop meddling here and stop trying to buy influence by giving me money. Stop trying to be the all powerful Peace Maker and let us work out the problems here on our own! If we think Iran is a threat, we can handle it and we’ll take the consequences. It’s not America’s problem and you can’t afford another war.
Now I understand why people will give everything to this man. Whenever he’s asked the question, “Would you legalize heroin?” Ron Paul answers, “I want to legalize freedom!” Little do these people understand that freedom is a thousand times more addictive than heroin.
American Jews! Wake up! Set your brothers in Israel free! We were the first nation ever to be set free by God, and we brought the concept of liberty to the world when we left Egypt over 3000 years ago. It’s about time we set the example we were chosen to set.
December 31, 2011
Rafi Farber [send him mail] is a member of Jews for Ron Paul and manages the website World of Judaica.
