The Republican Nomination For President: The Race For The Race For The White House

I do not see him as honest, being he has some old Ron Paul news letters that were racist and he said that he knew nothing about them until after the fact. I find that hard to believe. He may be embarrassed now that he is older but if that is the case he should say that he sees things very different now.

I know that no one is perfect.

If Ron Paul really didn't know what was in those newsletters (published and distributed in his name) as he claims, then he is surely not competent to manage anything as important as the office of the presidency.

If he did know what was in them and let them go on anyway, he has views that should be vile to any decent person, and is not fit to serve in the capacity of president.

The greater hazard, though, for Pythagoras and Ron Paul alike, is the fusion of persona and policy which have accompanied mass movements then and now.

Even after his death, followers of Pythagoras were told to attribute any of their own ideas to the man himself. As a result, the real contributions of this school have become inseparable from gobbledygook legends about friends reincarnated as dogs and devices which scribble letters on the moon: “It’s as Pythagoras taught.”

Similarly, many Iowa voters were surprised to read about the solemn-faced advice in an early-1990’s edition of the Ron Paul Political Report to buy illegal weapons in advance of a racial uprising, “inspired by,” but probably completely without the knowledge of, the man whose name was on the newsletter.

In fact, the fatal weakness of a mass movement is almost always found in this grey area between the charismatic leader and the revolutionary idea. Leaders like Napoleon or Fidel Castro declare themselves to be the idea personified, and become tyrants; humbler protagonists in Tahrir Square or Zuccotti Park struggle without a clear leader to crystallize the cause.

Thus, the paradox for leaders who straddle politics and philosophy: too controlling, and ideas suffocate; too laissez-faire, and dubious things get done in your name. In modern politics, the winning calibration of volunteer empowerment and top-down coordination is a rare and fine achievement—witness the campaign that took Barack Hussein Obama to the White House—and the more challenging the ideas, the trickier the dance.

You really don't see that there's a difference between attributing only your own posts to you and attributing the posts of H20man and Omsigdavid to you?

I am definitely going to have some fun if you can't see that difference.

Yeah, I see that now. The bigger difference aside from president is the length of the election process as well. It seems to never stop, it's endless.