For nearly two decades, Ron Paul was the US Representative for Texas’ 14th Congressional District. He navigated the massive storms of 9/11 and the war on Afghanistan, the PATRIOT Act, the Iraq War, the “Arab Spring,” the Snowden revelations, and so much more. He fought to the full extent of his power to block US government infringements on our civil liberties and to prevent US government infringement on the lives of others overseas.
He resisted the powerful pull of the herd mentality on Capitol Hill. To get along you have to go along. “If you want to be a leader you have to learn how to follow!”
He stood strong for the principles of non-intervention and peace, even when the entire ponderous blob of Congress hefted its weight against him. He was one of perhaps five Republicans who voted against waging war on an Iraq that had nothing to do with 9/11, had no WMDs, and could not harm the US if it wanted to do so.
“No one warned us that the Iraq war was based on lies,” claimed the trained seals who clapped their “aye” votes for war. But Ron Paul did. And he was right. Of course.
In short he didn’t care what the media said and he didn’t care what his colleagues thought. He stood for truth, non-intervention, and peace. He never got caught up in the mindless jingoism that has replaced critical thought on Capitol Hill.
When in 2009 the war machine was seeking to pass one of its periodic “sense of Congress” resolutions recognizing “Israel’s Right to Defend Itself Against Attacks from Gaza,” he braved the raw power of the Israel lobby and went down to the floor to school his fellow Members on the history of Hamas and to warn them about the dangers of interventionism:
Contrast the bravery of Rep. Ron Paul from TX-14 with his replacement, Randy Weber from TX-14, who went full trained seal without any guiding principles. To underscore the clownishness of his illiteracy on foreign policy, he actually donned the flag of a foreign nation to pledge his allegiance to that foreign country:
Ron Paul rightly warned us that interventionism in the Middle East would cause nothing but death and destruction not only to the many innocent non-Israelis in the region but also to Israel itself.
Ron Paul’s successor as the Representative of Texas-14 – my Congressman – will have the blood of thousands of Palestinians (many of them Christian) on his hands and also the blood of innocent Israelis caught up in the apocalyptic maelstrom that is about to be unleashed.
Had then-Rep. Ron Paul been heeded back in 2009, with the US adopting a non-interventionist foreign policy, Israel would likely have made some sort of peace with the Palestinians. US “unconditional” backing for Israel created a kind of “moral hazard” that led Israel to believe it did not need to seek a modus vivendi with Palestinians because it had a strong man behind it with an unlimited checkbook and unlimited weapons.
In the interim thousands have been killed and generations have been lost. Lost…like America’s moral compass.
Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity and co-Producer/co-Host, Ron Paul Liberty Report. Daniel served as the foreign affairs, civil liberties, and defense/intel policy advisor to U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, MD (R-Texas) from 2001 until Dr. Paul’s retirement at the end of 2012. From 1993-1999 he worked as a journalist based in Budapest, Hungary, and traveled through the former communist bloc as a human rights monitor and election observer.
