The "Liberty Movement" and Ron Paul: What to learn from Election 2012 … Many of my friends and co-workers are the perfect embodiment of what one would disparagingly call "Paulbots." Since Sen. Rand Paul officially endorsed Mitt Romney for President, I have seen my friends reduced to walking around all day with thousand yard stares, posting on Facebook awkward photographs of Ron Paul with flummoxed facial expressions (usually the one that shows him bewildered and mouth gaping open) with captions reading "Dear Dr. Paul, I will not stop fighting for you" and exhibiting textbook symptoms of the Depression … I have two words that will save your life: stop it. What the "Liberty Movement" needs most right now is to be real with themselves and conduct a lessons learned on what just happened to them and how to avoid it in the future. – Washington Times

Dominant Social Theme: Ron Paul supporters should start to become realistic now and realize that the world is much different than they think it is.

Free-Market Analysis: In this snide little article, a Washington Times columnist who apparently might be characterized as a Neocon takes it on himself to instruct Ron Paul supporters as to how they ought to react emotionally and intellectually to the "end" of the Ron Paul campaign for president.

At the Daily Bell – as a matter of editorial policy – we've always supported Ron Paul as a candidate, but we never took his campaign all that seriously. (Some of our columnists may have, but that's a different matter.)

We always saw his candidacy as both a protest and an educational endeavor. As a result, we've not been so upset by his son's endorsement of Mitt Romney as some in the liberty community have been.

And we've run a number of articles by now explaining that we believe Rand Paul may have gone down the wrong track by focusing on political activism rather than economic education. Just search the Internet using the terms "Rand Paul" and "Daily Bell" to read them.

The author of the article we're examining actually comes to this same conclusion. He ends his article by writing, "At the end of the day, let God be true and every man a liar – all politicians are still only human."

This is true. We've pointed out that real freedom will return to the West as people take human action to recreate it within their communities and with their families and friends. It's probably not going to come from the US federal government suddenly being converted to the cause of freedom.

This whole idea of government being a protector of freedom is a kind of cognitive dissonance, a contradiction in terms. It's actually what we call a dominant social theme – fear based propaganda delivered by the power elite.

But the idea is that government protects us from chaos and provides us with a bulwark that helps creates civil society has been evidently and obviously debunked in the 21st century.

If the Internet has shown us anything, it is that when those in charge of government – the power elite itself – are forcefully challenged, they react by trying to institute wars, economic depression and authoritarianism.

This is evident to anyone who really wants to look at what's gone on just in the past decade, never mind the whole of the 20th century. The elites create chaos in order to generate the phony order of the world government that is apparently their goal.

The phony wars, the directed depressions, the nonsensical fascism of government legislation … every sociopathic element of the greater Western bureaucracy has been exacerbated by the challenge of what we call the Internet Reformation.

Like the Gutenberg Press before it, the Internet has shown increasing millions of people the Way the World Really Works. Ron Paul – a free-market economist by avocation – has been a great help in providing Internet content along these lines.

The stakes are high – life and death – and the opportunity is extensive. The 20th century was a kind of Dark Ages. The 21st century may be far better.

That's why it's kind of irritating to read articles such as this one.

People in the freedom movement – Ron Paul supporters especially – don't need to be talked down to. Young people who believe in freedom are on the right track not the wrong one.

There has been a spate of these kinds of condescending articles since Rand Paul decided to endorse Mitt Romney. Just because a political campaign is winding down doesn't mean that the larger forces that the Internet has unleashed are in any way vitiated. They are not.

The fight for freedom has never been more important. The larger empire continues to become more corrupt, more bloated and more tyrannical.

The US in particular – the "muscle" of the crime family that controls central banking and wants to run the world – is involved in more and more illegal wars. These wars have killed or injured millions via depleted uranium that has contributed to an extraordinary rise in cancer and birth defects in the Middle East. It is not too strong to call it a kind of genocide.

Meanwhile, the elites are busy destabilizing economies around the world. It seems they are determined to cause an economic depression. The US is verging on one, as is Europe. Once the BRICs fall there will be no strong economic power left.

Meanwhile, as a complement to the wars and black ops being foisted on the world, Western governments are continually passing more and more authoritarian laws that further deprive people of freedom to congregate, speak out or create businesses to feed themselves and their families.

These are grave trends. Genocide, depression and fascism are hallmarks of the 20th century and trends that an increasing number of people are fighting against in the 21st.

To mock or make light of those who are risking their own safety and security by speaking out against Leviathan is a kind of facile, even contemptuous exercise.

The author of this article makes a few mistakes, besides, when he speaks of Austrian economics and Ron Paul's espousal generally of free-market thinking. Austrian economics in its purest, free-market, "Misesian" formulation is NOT mathematical.

Nor did Ron Paul make a mistake by running as a Republican. He reached millions by using the bully pulpit of the Republican presidential primary system. That was his intention all along.

The author also makes much of the Republican orientation toward the "warfare" state, explaining that Ron Paul's message was destined to fail because of this sympathy.

But this misses the point. The GOP always sold itself as the party of freedom, no matter its roots in Lincoln's almost pathological use of military power.

Even Ronald Reagan's messaging was far more oriented toward free markets than the military-industrial complex that lies at the heart of the GOP's power politics.

By relentlessly exposing the GOP for what it REALLY is, Ron Paul did US citizens a service, especially the so-called independent voters. He made it a great deal harder for people to believe in either party – simply by exposing the GOP and its military backers.

The author does make a good point regarding the Republican Party platform. It is true that it means very little. But so what? … Ron Paul's impact has been an educational one and that education extends far beyond the upcoming GOP platform.

Finally, the author explains that Ron Paul supporters should "learn how to use statistics and be willing to use them in campaigns." As a corollary to this, he explains that leaders are needed – leaders who "will lead by example."

If you desire change, then be the change you desire but don't expect someone else to implement it for you. Don't succumb to cult-of-personality ideology and remember that some things in life are completely beyond your control.

This is true and almost makes up for the snide tone of the rest of the article. Human action at a local level is what is needed now. Each person who believes in the Ron Paul "revolution" – which is really a symptom of a larger trend that we call the Internet Reformation – should seek to extend what he or she believes in on a local level.

Change is coming, in our view. The change is far larger than any political campaign. It is momentous change – a clash of ideas and civilizations.

The hammer is the technology; the anvil is the New World Order that the elites have planned for so long. People are going to be trapped in between. This is the mechanism now being developed. It probably cannot be stopped or even ameliorated. Many will likely be killed or crippled.

It is easy to advance surface-y advice about political campaigns generally and Ron Paul in particular. But the stakes are far higher than that.