“In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.” -Mark Twain
Some people look to the Donald Trump hostile GOP takeover in 2016 — or else further back to the 2009-era Tea Party movement — as the watershed moment at which the GOP transformed into something other than what it had been, which was a fully corrupt war-machine party that served whatever special interests was willing to bankroll its candidates — not meaningfully different, on the matters that matter most, from the Democrat party.
I, rather, look back further, to 2007.
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A college junior pursuing what would turn out to be a relatively worthless political science degree from a mid-tier state university, my political consciousness still nascent, an unexpected hero emerged onto the national scene.
That hero’s name was Ronald Ernest Paul.
Unimpressed with the plastic, polished veneer of Barack Obama, seeing through the façade and unmoved by an establishment charlatan posing as a revolutionary (an assessment that I would later be vindicated in holding), Ron Paul, in contrast, represented something so dramatically divergent to me — and truly independent in the greatest tradition of America — that I immediately knew I was looking at my guy.
Like clockwork, out of the woodwork came the worst actors of the GOP establishment to denigrate him, as the Galileans did with another unorthodox figure all those years ago on another continent, as befalls with anyone who challenges the status quo.
What Ron Paul was actually “dangerous” to was the ongoing, trillion-dollar grift that is the federal United States government.
Neocons accused Paul of being something called a “crypto-Nazi.” The liberal media, appalled that he had cross-party appeal, smeared young left-leaning supporters of his as “useful idiots.”
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Paradoxically, the invective hurled at him and his supporters served to increase my admiration for the man.
You can judge a man’s character largely by the enemies he earns.
And no one, perhaps, has garnered more or better enemies in occupied Washington than Ron Paul.
The honor of my professional career came when Paul tweeted and covered one of my articles via ZeroHedge on his podcast.
Godspeed, good doctor.
