November 15, 2007

Ron Paul
The sleeper
By Brian Early bearly@hippopress.com

Texas U.S. Rep. Dr. Ron Paul is a physician and a Republican presidential hopeful. He is known for his libertarian views and is the only Republican candidate who opposes the war in Iraq. He’s served the 14th District since 1997 and served the 22nd in the 1970s. He ran in the 1988 presidential election as a Libertarian. Last week, Ron Paul announced that he raised $4.2 million in one day, $4 million of that online.

Q:You started as an unknown candidate and now you have a following. How has this changed your outlook of the campaign?
Having been a very reluctant candidate, it’s transformed me into a very optimistic candidate, at least a lot more so than before, because in many ways it’s very surprising and very exciting about the number of people that have joined us, which has been translated into our ability to raise funds. And that of course is what’s gotten the attention of a lot of people. All of sudden we have as much money as the top three or four, and of course we went right by [Sen. John] McCain. We have every reason to be optimistic about what’s happing.

So you’re surprised as well?
Yeah, I am. I never had any doubt about the message, the whole point about defending personal liberties, free markets, sound money and the foreign policy that I’m talking about in the Constitution; I just knew that would be a winner. It was whether or not we could get the message out and whether or not the people were ready for it. What surprised me is that even without spending tens of millions of dollars, the message got out spontaneously and then the campaign started developing spontaneously. People heard it, read about it, looked at the videos and then joined by the tens of thousands of people. And those numbers keep growing every single day.

What is it about your message that you think people are responding to?
They see the failure of big government. They’re tired of it. They want something different, and they respond to the message of personal liberty and responsibility, to be left alone on their personal choices, and they like the idea of personal choices on how they get to spend all of their money. If you endorse the income tax, you endorse the ownership of your life to the state. The dollar is going down, the cost of living is going up, the war is going badly, the young people know they’re inheriting a mess and these programs are not viable. Public education, because the government runs it, is failing. And all of a sudden this message is really exciting because it’s a way out of the mess.

Do you see a country without taxes at all?
Of course that would be idealistic. It’s theoretically conceivable, but I don’t argue the case for it. I don’t think I’m going to see that; I don’t think anybody is going to see that. There can be a case to argue for such limited taxation that you never transfer wealth from one group to another. That it’s very limited to just provide justice in the justice system and provide for a defense so that no one comes in to attack us. So it would be limited, and that’s basically what we had until 1913, when we introduced this notion of the income tax and the Federal Reserve and perpetual war and perpetual inflation and the devaluation of the currency.

If as president you say it happens and it happens, what’s the one thing you would do?
If you could wave a wand and get rid of the personal income tax, it would curtail everything because there wouldn’t be any money to spend and this would be so beneficial. A president couldn’t do that. But the one thing a president could do that would change our position around the world ... is to change the foreign policy. Say that we are not on the verge of bombing Iran and we’re going to move away from there and we’re going to start bringing troops home. The world would change overnight for the better. I think we’d have more friends, oil prices would go down. There still would be plenty of problems, but it would no longer be seen that we owned the world.

What do you think of the term “Islamofacists”?
It’s just a term to stir up fear so that people get so frightened and say they’re around every single corner. It’s a fake term. There are militant members of Islam. But Islamofascism, they want you to think about Hitler and that they have tanks ready to roll and nuclear weapons ready to strike and that they’re around every corner and that you’re fearful so that you pass more Patriot Acts and you’re willing to give up your privacy and that you don’t care about cameras. It’s just to stir up unnecessary fear in the hearts of the people, and unfortunately they tend to be pretty successful in that. But it’s a false term.

What does victory mean to you in New Hampshire?
I think it’s different than some others. I don’t say if I don’t win New Hampshire, the whole thing is over. But having a good showing and being in the top tier of candidates where we are now with our finances, it wouldn’t discourage our workers. They’re not going to be easily discouraged, and they’re more or less the movers and the shakers. They determine the enthusiasm and I just sort of try to hold them together and encourage them. Ours is a spontaneous, philosophic movement.

What do you think about what people think of your supporters — some might even call them crazy?
There’s a lot of crazy people are running the country too. People think you can just print money. People think that a $500 billion deficit a year is something that you can sustain, and there are people that think you can borrow your way to prosperity. Those are the ones [who] have the bizarre idea. You can put that same question in words that is a lot less antagonistic. You might say that we bring a lot of people together. We don’t tell people what they should think and do and how to run their lives. In the personal sense, religious sense, philosophical sense, just leave people alone. Economically it’s the same thing. People get to spend the money how they want. It’s non-confrontational.

What made you think that you should be president?
It’s probably the other way around. I yielded to those who think I should. I run for a completely different reason than most of the others. They run because they think they know what’s best for you, and what you should do and what rights you should have and how much freedom you have to yield for me to take care of you. I run for the presidency because I don’t want to run anybody’s life. I don’t want to run the economy, because I don’t know how to run the economy — nobody does. Anybody who claims they can are lying to themselves or are deliberately lying to the people. And I don’t want to run the world. I want to be president for the things I don’t want to do. It takes a bit of wisdom in the sense that you know you can’t do certain things. I think it’s more important that you know what you can’t do than bragging about doing things you’re not supposed to do.

—Brian Early