Jun 22, 2007

My Ron Paul Testimonial

At the Daily Paul, manystrom asks: "Please Help: Why is Ron Paul THE Internet Candidate??"

If you want some more evidence as to why Ron Paul is going to win in a lanslide, read the comments there.

Here's my story:

I first found out about Ron Paul before Tim Berners Lee (not Al Gore) created the internet. Back then, the "internet" was usenet. Ron Paul's speeches and columns were often posted to talk.politics.guns. Living in California as I did, this was a big issue for me. That was 17 years ago.

In 1998 or so, I discovered free republic. I had changed my party affiliation to Libertarian and found lots of Ron Paul articles posted there. At the time the Free Republic community was very activist and libertarian leaning and Paul's articles got mixed reviews. The libertarians loved him and the country club republicans despised him.

Well, in 2000 I moved into Ron Paul's district. By then, Jim Robinson had purged most of the libertarians and packed the site with establishment republican supporters.

Shortly after 9.11, those of us left on FR with libertarian leanings saw that we were going to be demagogued into war. One of my friends on FR was friends with Kent Snyder of the Liberty Committee and believed that a military action was not the way to go in this case. Telegraphing your intent and then actually acting 3 months later (it takes along time to mobilize the army of an empire) made no sense.

Since I was in Paul's district, I was nominated to approach Ron Paul with a proposal that we re-institute a constitutional approach - Letters of Marque and Reprisal.

That was on September 14th. The smoke was still rising when 'Uriel' proposed the idea. The thread is still there:

CAPITALISM AT ITS FINEST... A Modest Proposal for Citizen's War

I called Ron Paul's office as his constituent and let them know that the Liberty Committeewould be forwarding a proposal and would he please consider the proposal because it was currently the only sane thing I had heard in the days following the attacks.

On October the 10th, Ron introduced two bills the details of which I posted on Free republic here:

Breaking: Ron Paul introduces Marque and Reprisal Bills in House

Another post from that time is here: Freepers! Mount UP! Letters of Marque and Reprisal: How YOU can help stop terrorism!

Name me any other politician who would have responded with seriousness to what was being proposed.

"That's nice, here's a form letter."

This is why I will forever be grateful and loyal to Ron Paul. He's the one guy there in Washington who gets it.

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