Ron Paul's glaring downfall

[ConstantineX]

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Ron Paul's only downfall is idiot sheeple who can't understand what he's saying. I don't know if it's because they're really stupid or because they're so used to politicians with no principles saying whatever people want to hear in the most dumbed down way possible.

For example:

RP: I want to abolish the IRS

sheeple: ZOMG the govt can't function without the IRS!

RP: I want to abolish the Dept of Education

sheeple: ZOMG RP wants to abolish public schools! How are the poor kids supposed to go to school?????

RP: Religious institutions should be more important than government

sheeple: ZOMG Christian supremecist!


Ron Paul's campaign slogan is "Hope for America." I don't see how anyone could have hope for America when so many of us can't comprehend simple statements.

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Most Democrats and Republicans at least peripherally connected to actual politics, as well as most intelligent people in general, have one thing in common with their counterparts across the globe - they don't think of the other side as sheep, stupid, actively evil, and so on, and sometimes even *gasp* agree with them on some of their platform. For example, I think the Republicans are by far the worse of the two parties to lead the US in the near future, but I agree with them on affirmative action, would be willing to listen re: gun control and school vouchers and think the estate tax is a bad thing, among others. Similarly, aside from true shills like Coulter, you won't find many secular GOP members who don't understand the Democrats at all; that's for the religious right, which, as a whole, has a moral superiority complex because they get everything out of their (to them, infallible) interpretation of a single book.

Speaking of the FOF, every (religious, political, you name it) zealot whose cause turned out terrible throughout history has shared one thing in common, too; they refer to their opponents as sheep, oppressors, blind, misguided, etc. You won't find this in mainstream political discourse, but it's funny how if you change around the facts in the post I quoted, it could just as well have come from LaRouche, Stormfront, the Russian Communist message boards, or even Fred Phelps. It's all about "people are too dumb to get my savior's message that would fix their lives if they'd just listened. Instead, they misinterpret it to say some other terrible thing will happen, which isn't true at all because ".

This is despite the fact that 99.99% of the world, which surely has some intelligent people in it, seemingly disagrees after all.

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Adanthar, I agree with most of this...except the fact that you want to paint all of "ideology" in the same corner. I would agree with you fully if you added the caveat that ideologues that expect people to "change their character" are doomed to failure. The persistent problems that nearly ideologues seek to fix are all problems of human nature - people are always going to be "sheeple", selfish, short-sighted, etc. But most leading intellectuals have already realized this - it sure makes convenient slogans for their followers, though.

I do think it's people for an honest ideologue to design "a system" that implements his ideas outside of the people's will. Economists and political scientists would be more likely to say "institutions matter". I want to say, for example, to alot of ordinary liberal thinkers that I appreciate their attentions, but the fact governments have repeatedly failed at these same ancient goals suggests that the design problems are alot harder than they think. I think that's the TRUE trap that most intelligent commentary falls into, not the former, more base approach.