On Ron Paul.

I like his attitude on the WikiLeaks. (With the 4th Estate in America choosing these days to render itself impotent -- easier to cover fluff and rewrite either this party or that's talking points; to go for the funnybone rather than the brain -- I'm glad the hackers are stepping up to report what's really going on out there...)

And his economic stance makes an awful lot of sense to me, given the reality of what is happening out there, and continues to happen when we fail to let the game-players fail, when the results are in and they've essentially... failed:

If there is vindication here, Mr. Paul says, it is for Austrian economic theory — an anti-Keynesian model that many mainstream economists consider radical and dismiss as magical thinking.

The theory argues that markets operate properly only when they are unfettered by government regulation and intervention. It holds that the government should not have a central bank or dictate economic or monetary policy. Once the government begins any economic planning, such thinking goes, it ends up making all the economic decisions for its citizens, essentially enslaving them.

ADDED:
While others were beating their chests and acting big, Ron Paul was demonstrating the kind of political courage that seems to have disappeared in America as quickly as the media drive to ferret out the truth.

During his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, he was best remembered for declaring in a debate that the 9/11 attacks were the Muslim world’s response to American military intervention around the globe. A fellow candidate, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, interrupted and demanded that he take back the words — a request that Mr. Paul refused.
...
Mr. Paul now views his exchange with Mr. Giuliani in 2008 as a crucial moment in his drive for more supporters. “A lot of them said, ‘I’d never heard of you, and I liked what you said and I went and checked your voting record and you’d actually voted that way,’ ” he said. “They’d see that the thing that everybody on the House floor considered a liability for 20 years, my single ‘no’ votes, they’d say, ‘He did that himself; he really must believe this.’ ”

To use the "driving" metaphor so popular in political circles, any seasoned driver knows you keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel. Once you delegate personal authority, thinking others must necessarily know better; once you stop pushing on the gas to move forward -- even slowly! -- in what you believe the right direction, handing over the wheel to others in a compromise move, you're essentially putting your future, your final destination, into other hands.

Once you quit on a cause, it becomes easier and easier and easier to justify your compromising, to blame others, and to promise, ever so eloquently, that things WILL be different in the future. Except it's too late then, you've essentially compromised away credibility.

But the guy, like Ron Paul, who knew where he ultimately was heading and refused to be detoured, delayed or discouraged from his goal of getting there?

The long-distance race doesn't always go to the swiftest afterall, but to those who simply refuse to quit running* while others around them drop**.

*And I don't mean in the election years only.
** I use "drop" expansively here, including those who deliberately abandon the original destination and choose another route midway through the drive: perhaps thinking more prosperity and personal power lies right around the corner...