| | Steve,
One reason there seems to be so much insulting of Ron Paul is because there's so much blind worship of him on this site that it comes up frequently.
When people find out that the newsletter he published for decades was overtly racist, they claimed it was a witch hunt. The validity of it didn't matter. Ron Paul is our last best hope so we can't let anyone say anything bad about him! Damn the truth!
In this thread, Erica makes a very intelligent and well thought out post. She shows that he ran as a Republican when it benefited him, but he endorses anyone else over the party he was happy to be a part of when he raked in millions in donations. This isn't about party loyalty, and ignoring evils that the party does. If someone was Republican and quit out of disgust, good for him. But Ron Paul used that party for his own benefit and stabbed them in the back at the first opportunity.
I have a serious problem with lack of objectivity. I can't stand it when people want to ignore the truth, for whatever reason. If a Republican defends his party, even when they're acting horribly, then he irrational. But the same is true for those who ignore Ron Paul's flaws out of their own sense of loyalty. Evasion is not ever a virtue, even when you are evading the facts about someone you otherwise think is great.
You can vote for Ron Paul. You can give him money. You can put signs up on the street. But as soon as you start lying for him, or evading facts because they aren't convenient, I've got a problem.
Your own argument is that because he's fought big government for all these years, he shouldn't be trashed by us. But facts are facts. It doesn't matter how great of a legacy he has. Either his acts are hypocritical, or they aren't. And whether you're willing to judge the value he contributed as more important than the hypocrisy he's just shown is your own value judgment. But let's not pretend he's flawless because we want him to be. Put his flaws into context and decide how important they really are, but don't feel a need to ignore reality to keep a positive view of him.
This attitude is why the topic comes up. So many people here are willing to dismiss every fact so they can continue to worship him. The same thing happens with Ayn Rand, where people must rationalize every fault. They do the same thing by attacking anyone who mentions the facts, and accusing them of disloyalty or being on a witch hunt.
On a side note, when this site was merged with SOLO years ago and I was running it, we had some people join the staff who did it for their own personal benefit, but who attacked the organization and attempted to undermine it while they held key positions. Instead of trying to correct flaws, they would encourage all the participants to leave and having nothing to do with the site anymore. Instead of constructive change, they used their position to be destructive. I kicked them out immediately. Not because I didn't want to fix problems or acknowledge them. But because these people were trying to take advantage of the organization. They were trying to take value from it, while trying to undermine it at the same time. I thought it was revolting behavior. It wasn't an issue of loyalty. I didn't care if they quit and tried to undermine it afterward. But this was much worse. It was a kind of theft, and a kind of treason. It was an attempt to steal value while not only not providing value in return, but giving disvalue. It was giving false expectations (like Ron Paul running as a Republican) for the sake of personal benefit (like millions in donations and who knows what else...like book sales), and never intending to do anything but hurt those that helped you.
If anyone wasn't blinded by admiration for the guy, they'd see how bad it was. But instead, we have the usual excuses, reverse accusations (you only bring it up because of your ideology!), and attempts to give the benefit of the doubt that maybe there's some secret motivation or facts that translate this into a moral act.
As long as people are religiously devoted to Ron Paul (or Ayn Rand), you're going to see people pointing out the counter-evidence. Yes, it won't do much good, because it is religious and it is based on feelings over facts, but on a site dedicated to objectivity and reason, people aren't going to sit idly by while his devotees gives us all a bad name.
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