Adam Livingston@AdamBLiv
I love the Paul family. Ron + Rand are awesome.
I read End the Fed by Ron Paul as a young high school student and it blew my mind.
His 2012 presidential campaign was really when I first got interested in politics and the libertarian faction of the right wing was very appealing to me at the time.
I caucused for Rand Paul in 2015. I was a 19 year old kid in rural Iowa and I will never forget what that experience was like. It was me in a section of the public library with about 70 boomers. I was the youngest person there, by far.
Grinnell, Iowa is very interesting because of Grinnell College... it is a farm town in the middle of nowhere with an uppity, prestigious private university with a bunch of hippie communist college students.
When Bernie Sanders came to town hundreds of young people flocked to the public park to hear him speak, and yet here I was wanting to champion small government in a room full of boomers and there wasn't anybody there even remotely close to my age.
I spotted one man who was young, at least on a relative basis. Probably in his late 30's.
We were all given time to go up and speak the case for our candidate of choice. That gentleman proceeded to go up in front of the room and give an extremely eloquent plea for a peaceful foreign policy and major economic reform. He was a military veteran who served multiple tours in the middle east.
The only other person to say a word out loud in front of everyone was me. Two people spoke up about their desire for who the GOP nominee should be.
Plenty of people chatted casually from their seats, but only two of us were willing to stand up and make a case.
Libertarian idealism versus mass populist gravity.
College town leftism outside, aging conservative energy inside.
I'll never forget what happened next. The votes were read back to everyone in the room. I don't remember the exact numbers, but around 75 votes were cast, and Trump received about 70.
Rand Paul received 2. From the only 2 people who spoke up.
Nobody's minds were changed.
That night stuck with me because it taught me something I didn’t want to learn at 19.
Principle alone does not win.
Eloquence alone does not win.
The people with the most coherent philosophy are often just spectators while the crowd moves toward power, force, and whoever seems capable of imposing their will.
That was probably the night I started to understand that politics is much less about truth than about organized power.
