Like I keep telling Ron Paul fans, just because you hear alot about him on the internet doesn't mean he will win anything other than internet straw polls.

Cause if the internet hype meant anything, than Snakes on a Plane would be the highest grossing movie of all time.

President Beiber disagrees

From what I can gather from the pundits on twitter, if you tweet anything remotely (even correctly) negative about Ron Paul his twitter posse comes after you. And since many of them don't follow these pundits, that means they're sitting there obsessively searching twitter for mentions of "Ron Paul" so they can defend him/attack his critics.

Not surprising. For some reason, RON PAUL is the darling of the Internet. He's supposedly very big with young voters.

ultraholland: how's Parry doing?

He'll be doing fine as long as he DOESN'T STOP...BELIEVING! HOLD ON TO THAT FEEEELLIIIINGGG....

Ron Paul does great with people until they actually dig into his policy proposals and realize that his ideas are insane. His self-professed ideal world is one in which neither Medicare nor the Civil Rights Act were ever passed. Most of his casual fans don't seem to realize that.

@ronpaul is a senile old douchnozzle isn't really a vote

Headso: Wayne 985: ideal world is one in which neither Medicare nor the Civil Rights Act were ever passed.

Yep, we need mainstream republicans like those who support the Ryan plan and bigoted immigration laws instead of that nut.

I didn't say Paul Ryan was any better, but at least people don't seem to have mass delusions about him.

Headso: Romney supports the Ryan plan, along with the other mainstream idiots. It was easy to call Ron Paul crazy and bad for America back when the frontrunners were not equally if not more so.

Romney also supported "Romneycare" as governor. I don't think he has any actual beliefs. He goes with whatever wins him popularity and makes him look good.

Approves

D135: xanadian: Not surprising. For some reason, RON PAUL is the darling of the Internet.

All those crazy people on the internet love the sanity and stability that is RON PAUL.

/opposites attract

Really? I was gonna go with "birds of a feather."

Wayne 985: Ron Paul does great with people until they actually dig into his policy proposals and realize that his ideas are insane. His self-professed ideal world is one in which neither Medicare nor the Civil Rights Act were ever passed. Most of his casual fans don't seem to realize that.

There is a special valueset that Ron Paul advocates, and this valueset always seems to attract the most fearlessly individualistic: Libertarians, militia groups, Objectivists, 4channers and teenage miscreants -- in other words, people who are total shiat-bags and want to live in a system where they are permitted to be total shiat-bags to others without consequence.

They call it "freedom", of course, but truth be known there are more important things in society than freedom, which to these people has been wrapped into its own religious mythology so pure and exalted that it has stunted their personal growth as normal, able-bodied, well-adjusted people ("freedom", after all, isn't a reason to do things; it is a rationalization for doing them).

They also subscribe to the Austrian School of Economics, which is an economic system that consists entirely of ideological catchphrases, talking points and flowing rhetoric deliberately left open to interpretation, has no scientific basis, has no practical application conflicts with obvious empirical data. One of the most distinguishing characteristics of most followers of the Austrian school is that they often display a gross misunderstanding of modern economics.

The Austrian school is in opposition to empiricism. THEIR PAPERS USE NO MATH. How can you use no math in a subject that is all about math?

But probably the worst thing about Ron Paul, his followers and their socio-political ideological underpinnings is their inherent belief that everyone will behave themselves if we all just leave each other alone. This ideal -- the honor system -- has never been known to work in any open system, location or culture in the history of the world.

Any philosophy (whether its political, or moral, or economic) that doesn't start with the basic premise that people are flaming assholes is fundamentally flawed.

Mayhem of the Black Underclass: When everyone is a flaming asshole (your premise) how does giving them the ability to control others make them less of an asshole (ie put them in a position of authority over others)? If we are all good, we need no laws, if all of us are evil, we should have no laws, lest those laws be misused against us. If some of us are good and some of us are evil, won't the evil ones abuse the good?

Look at every single person in a powerful position in politics, media and business today, and then ask yourself that question again.

bobbette: In order to prevent tyranny, democracies have checks and balances, such as a judiciary that can declare laws unconstitutional. And, fundamentally, voters in a democracy have the ability to throw the bums out - to hold those in power to account.
Re: the existence of laws and a polity, I suggest you read some of the classic political philosophers on social contract theory. Hobbes famously conceived of mankind in a state of nature without laws and concluded it would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".

In fact, the cynical perspective of mankind (especially Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau) is one of the core Enlightenment philosophies that the Founding Fathers used in concocting modern Democracy.

The founding tenet of all modern Democracies is that man can not be trusted. At all. Our system is slovenly inefficient for a reason, and it's best that way. The better the system works, the more you should be afraid of it. You can't change the wolf, but you can always make him toothless.

Perfect systems are bad. You don't want a perfect system. A perfect system is absolute, ruthless, and tyrannical. All totalitarianisms are perfect systems. Or attempts to be.

Democracy is one of the slowest, stupidest, most ill-conceived and inefficient system ever devised by man. A system of paranoia, fear and mistrust, a system of checks and balances, a system of constantly looking over your shoulder, of keeping tabs on what the other guy is doing. Everything done by consensus/committee, bogging everything down in bureaucratic paperwork so that nothing gets done. And that's what makes it the safest and best system.

Because while other systems are set up to try to win, Democracy is the only one that tries not to lose.

Mayhem of the Black Underclass: but, wasn't your point that government is a necessity to prevent the strong from abusing the weak, to prevent the evil from mistreating the good? And you're asking me to see that the rich and powerful aren't abusing us?

No.

Go back and read it again.

Mayhem of the Black Underclass: I ask, in all earnestness, whether evil people will abuse good people.

There's no such thing as "good" or "evil". There's simply selfishness and opportunism.

Mayhem of the Black Underclass: Is the government selfish flaming assholes or opportunisitic flaming assholes?

I didn't say "or".

I said "and".