Is Ron Paul the Gandhi of our time ??

Gary North : I was watching Gandhi recently, as I do every year or two. It is inspirational to me. It tells the story of a man who could not possibly win the battles he chose to fight, but did anyway. There is no doubt that it is a propaganda film, funded in part by the Indian government. It scrambles his chronology. But, on the whole, it got the story right. Mohandas K. Gandhi, a lawyer, was able to transform Indian politics. He did this through force of moral character and shrewd tactics that made every official response either "Damned if we do; damned if we don’t." I read "The Gandhi Nobody Knows" when it was published in 1983, a year after the movie was released. I know the strange side of the man. But he mobilized a huge nation without recourse to violence. That was his great legacy. I also like the movie because it is the story of a failed empire. By 1945, the British Empire had spent itself into near bankruptcy because of two wars. It was a pale shadow of itself. It would soon grow much paler. There are many scenes in the movie that have long grabbed my imagination, but none so much as the one in which Gandhi is seated at a table with a British military official. The official asks rhetorically, "You don’t really expect us just to march out of India, do you?" Gandhi replies, "Yes, that is exactly what I expect you to do." In 1947, they did. What has this to do with Ron Paul, who is running for President? At least this much: he also opposes violence, he also opposes empire, and he also believes in the long run that justice will prevail. So, he does what Gandhi did. He keeps telling the story of how a better society can be built, must be built, and will eventually be built when men reduce their commitment to violence as a way of shaping the world. This includes violence committed by the civil government. They called Gandhi the mahatma: the great self. Ron Paul is the mahatma of self-government. He gains applause from the anti-war Left, small as it is. He gains applause from free market advocates, who are weary of government interference in their lives. And he drives the muddled middle crazy. What was going on? After the second debate, on May 15, broadcast by Fox News, the Fox News website allowed viewers to vote for the nominee. These presumably were hard-core Fox News viewers. Over 40,000 voted. Romney got 29%. Paul got 25%. Giuliani got 19%. . COMMITMENT It is clear to all sides that Ron Paul is the most ideologically committed politician in the country. There has been nothing like him since Howard Buffett retired in the early 1950’s. Nobody remembers Howard Buffett today except hard-core libertarians and his son, Warren. It is Ron Paul’s uniquely consistent voting record that gets him on liberal-left television talk shows like the Daily Show and Bill Maher’s show. The hosts are willing to give him time on camera because he opposed the Iraq war when nobody else did. He has also voted to shrink the state ever since he was elected in 1976. While they don’t share his view of domestic policy, they are respectful to find any politician who just will not toe the Party line. For years, he had a narrow but highly committed audience. Now, after three decades, he is beginning to expand that audience. He speaks his mind, and his mind is informed by a consistent philosophy of limited government, meaning Constitutional government as understood in 1788. The kinds of voters who sit through an evening of bloviating politicos and then go to a web page to vote are the kinds of people he is attracting. These mailing lists, if used to educate people to the principles of limited civil government and expanded self-government, will begin to affect the next generation of voters. It does not take postage to mail e-letters. It does not take printers, ink, and paper. He has been committed to a worldview. No other politician is to the same degree. By being committed at the cost of risking electoral defeat, Ron Paul can now attract people who are looking for their own areas of commitment. If he gets this message to his subscribers, he can help them become active in a movement to shrink the strangling hand of tax-funded bureaucracy. CONCLUSION Ron Paul is convinced that self-government is the wave of the future. Empire isn’t. That was Gandhi’s message in 1915. It did not seem plausible back then. By 1947, it did. It has taken until quite recently for India to move economically more toward self-government and away from Nehru’s Fabian socialism. Sadly, the U.S. economy seems to be moving back toward Nehru. The state keeps getting bigger in the visible affairs of this world. But a great decentralization is taking place: in education, on the Internet, and with technology generally. The wave of the future is not toward Fabianism and its legacy. Ron Paul’s campaign is proof of this

Public Comments

1. Wow. I read this and vomited a little bit in my mouth.
2. The length of the question is an indicator of the amount of Bull Sh*t.
3. I don't know----Ron Paul looks a little on the overweight side.
4. How come Ron Paul Supporters Illegally put up signs on a local freeway last week. You guys know that cost money for the state to go out there and pull them down. Thanks for waisting my tax money.
5. propoganda bores me.
6. What a load of crap. No, he wouldn't make a pimple on Gandhi's behind. I'm starting to realize something that all Ron Paul supporters seem to have in common - being annoying.
7. To compare Ron Paul to Gandhi is a major insult to Gandhi.
8. Ron Paul is a greater man than Gandhi. You Ron Paul haters..Lei, Henry the ATE, and the Cat lady... are really getting on my nerves. You have no positions of your own, no ideas, no factual basis to attack Ron Paul's statements, so you make ad hominem attacks ad nauseum. You're so completely ridiculous. You block all email and messages because you're afraid. You're scared of confrontation, even confrontation of any view, any opinion that doesn't jibe with your own. You are the very definition of intellectual cowards. By the Way, there are as of this moment 33,353 of us who are friends of Dr. Paul on MySpace. Why don't you look up how many people your candidate has added since May 15. Ron Paul will be the 44th President of the United States, because ideas matter. IDEAS. The very same power which propelled Moses, Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. from obscurity to widespread admiration and fame is now at work in Ronald Earnest Paul. Finally, a man who is honest. Finally, a politician who is not afraid to stand for the Constitution, even when he's the only one still standing. Those of you who run from debate and hide are sniveling, cowering, whimpering boot lickers, and you deserve the likes of Hillary "support Iraq War" Clinton, John "torture sometimes" McCain, Fred "Bought by GE" Thompson.
9. This is actually and interesting comparison. Many Americans don't appreciate what a bad mess our country is in, and that we're headed for disaster if some serious changes aren't made. Ron Paul faces a situation that is more difficult than Gandhi's. The people of India fully understood and appreciated what Gandhi was standing up to. Sadly, many Americans are clueless, or disinterested in regards to what Ron Paul is standing up to. It's much harder to help a people who don't understand or care that they need to be helped.
10. I thought it was a great article. Thanks for posting. I think there are indeed some valid comparisons between the 2 people. Here's the URL in case someone is interested in other articles by Gary North. http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north538.html
11. I thought your article was great. I do think that Ron Paul could continue to change the way American's think even if he is not elected. But, I also think that Bush and his men, along with higher players(world bankers) don't want Ron Paul around. I believe he will be safe as long as the country is stable. But, if our economy goes under, or acts of terrorism are created to force society into chaos, then I think these people who don't want our constitution around will try to kill Ron Paul and others who are fighting the cause. Ron Paul has a bodyguard and there are good reasons for that. I hope he survives the evil that is trying to keep him hidden. I am doing what I can to help him.
12. As defined, the fool is the person lacking judgment or prudence. Prudence is the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason. By this definition, it is safe to conclude that Ron Paul's vision of self-government is reasonable. Resistance to this idea is foolish. Period. We would be wise to step out from behind the political divides that separate and recall that which unites, lest we dare risk our survival and our freedom. The time has long passed for our leaders to step out from behind these divides and be held accountable to we, the people. Grant it, there is no absolute truth in human thinking and there is no judgment which is absolutely correct in the human world. However, if we set "to follow Universal way" as correct, we can judge correctly always. "The ability to judge" is to judge correctly by oneself. When we apply this concept to our Constitution, agreeing that it is notably for all Americans and is the blueprint for our freedom, it is fair to say that the idea of self-government is the correct approach for the American people, ensuring the protection of our foundation. Active and informed citizens are vital to the effective functioning of our constitutional system. We each have the obligation to both study and apply the Constitution, participating actively in the system of self-government that it establishes. This is an obligation we owe, not only to ourselves but to our children and their children. Anything less is foolish. Let us never forget how rare and precious freedom is and how we are indebted to do what we must in order to maintain it. May freedom ring...always.
13. I think he is influenced by Ghandi but there will never be another Ghandi. You said your favorite scene in the movie was Ghandi declaring his expectation of the British. You may have missed this but there was a Ghandi moment like that on MSNBC. This very arrogant reporter asked Ron. "Do you really belive that you can win?" "Why yes!" He exclaimed.