Ron Paul Addressed His Countrymen, Adult to Adult

Productivity and creativity are the true source of personal satisfaction

By Maura Pennington

Say what you will about Ron Paul as a political operator or orator, he offered more uplifting words on the House floor yesterday than many of our current statesmen can muster.  They weren’t sweeping remarks, at least not the kind that sweep people off their feet and into a swirling, senseless mob.  Unlike President Obama’s victory speech last week, Paul didn’t refer to the masses as “an American family” in need of a parent.  Instead, he addressed his countrymen as peers capable of understanding the role of government.  To that end, he rebuked his colleagues in Washington:

“Politicians deceive themselves as to how wealth is produced.  Excessive confidence is placed in the judgment of politicians and bureaucrats.  This replaces the confidence in a free society.”

This election season was an exhausting time to be a television viewer in Virginia precisely because the “excessive confidence” placed in politicians gave them the arrogance to presume that anyone wants to see their faces or hear their voices while trying to be distracted and entertained in the evenings.  (Little did they know, this particular citizen only ended up with a maddening curiosity on election night for the result of Question 7 in Maryland, the intensely lobbied gambling issue.)

We were implored over and over to perform our civic duty and take part in their hysterical circus, though the candidates never seemed to appreciate in their cherry-picked “typical American” anecdotes that individual behavior is uncontrollable and unpredictable, which is what makes it so powerful.

They can single people out as a political strategy, citing some random person in some random town, featuring ambiguous approximations of generic humans in their ads, but it’s not very convincing.  A woman watching a video on an iPad in her kitchen, whining “What about me, Mr. President?” is far less compelling than Paul’s meek words in support of each individual using his or her own talents to achieve something.

To our elected leaders, we are utterly nameless.  To everyone else employed by the state, we are less than that.  We have no personal relationship with “Mr. President.”  So why are he and his hirelings so personally involved in our affairs?

Paul suggested in his address that the tide is turning with young people.  They may finally be coming to terms with the endlessly intrusive regulation of our daily interactions.  I hope he is right.  I hope that the spontaneity of youth allows my peers to embrace the seemingly chaotic, yet prosperous nature of a free market.  Some have incredibly open minds about what it means to conduct our private lives.  We are willing to trust other people’s capacity to choose for themselves, but only up to a point.  That limit can be pushed.

I’m not the only person relieved to be freed finally from the maniacal interruptions of politicians into my life this past year.  Imagine how free we’d feel if we stopped giving them the incentive to interrupt.  If we stopped asking them to save us from ourselves, we could do much more than watch TV in peace.