Postcards from the Bleeding Edge
Thursday, October 25, 2007

  Researching Ron Paul

Over the last two days, my blog, which averages 74 readers a day normally, 90+/day or so when an A-list blogger bothers to link back - got over 6450 unique readers, according to google's adsense report, primarily through links from Lew Rockwell's blog, technorati searches for Ron Paul, and google searches.

I am publishing this data because they are the closest thing to an accurate poll of readership and interest that I can assemble and a hell of a lot more accurate than any other self selecting poll I can think of. I did some further analysis to see where in the US the readership came from, here.

My reaction? Wow. People are really motivated about Ron Paul. I got over 30 comments on my reluctant conversion, and some good points were made. I didn't know about how the Interstate superhighway system came to be, for example, and I got a steer to some excellent reading material.

Few stayed long enough on my blog to read anything else (roughly 1 in 4 clicked on another link). I still hope that I could get people on all sides of the issues to put away their axes and try to come up with constructive answers to my top 10 questions for America, but I'll keep plugging away at that, on my own, I guess.

Also I now have a little more sympathy for the redstaters (not a lot!) who have tired of the violent debates taking place in their living room. If this is the kind of welcome a typical new Ron Paul convert can expect, it's going to be a massive uphill climb for his supporters. Then again, several responses to my simple question about deficit spending on redstate did not make me feel particularly warm and fuzzy about that crowd either.

Probably the most comprehensive, well researched and heavily linked 4 pieces about Ron Paul's negatives that I know of was published at the Daily Kos (1, 3)

I'm still working through those articles. There are some potentially good points made, but far more research and thought is required on my part before coming to a conclusion. I'm still reading. I for sure don't think Ron Paul is doing himself a disservice by ignoring this sort of stuff.

Some notes:

The Kos author certainly wears his biases on his sleeve. As the fence sitter I am, I would be better persuaded by reading a piece with less adverbs and adjectives and more facts.

People of any political persuasion that use dialectic of "left vs right" or "far left and far right", lose me every time. I would really, really, really like to convince people that are trying to argue coherently about politics to frame their arguments in terms of the Pournelle Chart or something similar.

The Kos series depends heavily on descriptions of the content of a copy of a newsletter called the “Ron Paul Survival Report”, during 1993, which Paul claims he did not write. In particular, some racially insensitive comments about Rodney King in that newsletter offended many.

It would be good for the truth if somebody out there, on any side, would actually go and photocopy more of these newsletters and put them up on the web. According to At least one issue is preserved at the university of Wisconsin. Maybe more copies survive.

The Kos also relied heavily on an interview with Paul published in the October, 2001 issue of the Texas Monthly. It's behind a paywall. I invested 12 bucks in a subscription, and read that article on Dr No for myself. It was 12 bucks well spent. I also emailed the author of the piece and asked him to remove the paywall. The full content of Paul's statements on this matter were:



Some quotes from that article the kos author omitted are:

Labels: , , ,

 
Comments:
.
Ron Paul has some good ideas, just some that is...
.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
just blame America

for all the ills of the world
don't blame simple dictators

.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
ignore the threat of jihad

SCREAM that it's made up
an excuse for blood for oil
.

http://absurdthoughtsaboutgod.blogspot.com/

:)
.
 
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David Täht writes about politics, space, copyright, the internet, audio software, operating systems and surfing.


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