MrZach
02-07-2008, 01:58 PM
The Problem with Ron Paul “Evangelicals”
This is not a rant about Evangelical Christians, although there are many similarities to the problems both groups face. This is about Evangelical “Paulites” and the mistakes they have made that we can all learn from.
Disclaimer: I am a Ron Paul supporter, and I write this critique as an attempt to help by correcting some mistakes that we are doing to shoot ourselves in the foot. Hopefully we can learn from these mistakes and move on to better things. If you disagree with me, that is fine, but there are certainly people out there who are hurting the cause more than they are helping it – and I think this needs to be addressed.
An evangelical is one who is marked by ardent zealous enthusiasm for a cause. This leads one to “evangelize” or try to tell others about the cause and convert them to your way of thinking.
I was raised in an Evangelical Christian home. I grew up in the buckle of the Bible belt in southwest Missouri. I’ve traveled the country, and I’ve seen and heard a lot of perspective and reaction to Christianity from those outside the face. I have drawn one simple conclusion: The greatest barrier to Christians efforts to convert others to their faith is the actions of Christians themselves.
What are some of these things I’m talking about? If you’re s fan of Stephen Colbert, the answer is obvious:
• The self-righteous, “I’m right and you’re wrong, no need to discuss it” attitude.
• The “inner-circle” talk about non-believers being everything from “poor lost souls” to “servants of Satan” which inevitably reaches the ears of those non-believers.
• The two-faced approach of railing against “sinners” and how they are going to burn in hell and how we need to outlaw their lifestyles while trying to embrace them with open arms and tell them they’re only here to help.
• The pointed attacks against other religions which to the non-religious majority simply appears mean-spirited and unattractive and to the practitioners of that religion seem even worse.
• The echo-chamber effect of group self-confirmation and circular logic and refusing to listen to or even acknowledge other ideas.
• The lack of unity and constant bickering amongst themselves about very
minor issues that don’t really matter in the big picture.
What have I noticed works for evangelizing people. Well, no matter what religion you are in, having a non-confrontational open arms approach always works well. Holding to your beliefs with confidence and piety usually is enough in itself to inspire others to want to emulate you. Attacking others only makes you appear weak and unconfident – as if your faith is not good enough on its own and is somehow only vindicated when you get to tear down someone else’s faith.
Now, allow me to switch gears and talk about the Ron Paul Evangelicals. I have seen the exact same patterns emerge among Ron Paul “Evangelicals” as I have among ineffective Christian Evangelicals. I am a Ron Paul supporter, so even though I don’t necessarily subscribe to most of these issues – I
THE ECHO CHAMBER
First, we live in a self-affirming echo-chamber that takes us all out of touch with reality. The way we have assured ourselves that YouTube video hits, Google searches, RonPaul2008.com website hits, etc. are some kind of measure for popularity has been very foolish. These “hits” on the internet have for the most part been repeat hits. Because of the internet “success” people have gotten it in their minds that using the internet to promote Ron Paul is the best way to go. Unfortunately, they continue to do it through the same old methods and all you end up doing is getting already existing Ron Paul supporters to watch your video or read your website giving you a feel-good felling by the thousands of hits you get, when in reality you’re not actually reaching a new audience.
The post-debate polls are a good example. Ron Paul’s supporters organize and rally to make sure they ALL get polled about who won a debate. This is by no means a simple-random-sample, but foolishly they point to those numbers and say, “See? Ron Paul is the most popular.” I watched the MTV/MySpace forum online and when the questions came up about how they felt Ron Paul answered a certain question – the polls were already in saying he did a marvelous job before the moderator even finished ASKING the question!
CUTTING OFF OUR LIFEBLOOD
I hate the term “sheeple”. Don’t get me wrong, it is a very clever word and I do harbor a certain amount of dismay at the way many people can tend to act like sheep. But is this word helping us by using it? The common logic among Ron Paul supporters is that if you don’t support Ron Paul, then you’re a sheeple. In other words, if you don’t support Ron Paul, you’re an idiot. This is basically what we tell people by using this word.
And we don’t just do it implicitly, we do it explicitly all the time. I read the Ron Paul Forums and I see post after post of people bashing every single “idiot” out there who doesn’t support Ron Paul. At this point, most people who have actually heard of Ron Paul and don’t agree with his positions yet are very unlikely to even TRY to wrap their head around those concepts because we have turned them so off by acting like they’re brainless idiots!
Go ahead and think that everyone is a brainless idiot, a sheeple, or whatever you want to call it – but we have seriously got to stop talking like this to other people and amongst ourselves. Word gets out, and that is the number one complaint I hear about Ron Paul – his supporters are assholes. Why on earth, even if they finally did agree with Ron Paul, would anyone want to be identified with “that group of assholes”? That is what is has come down to many times… “I like Ron Paul, but… I don’t want to be identified with that crew.”
These so-called sheeple, as many of us love to call them, are our LIFEBLOOD. They represent the votes that we want and need to win. Writing them off as a loss and saying it doesn’t matter what we do to offend them is sheer lunacy.
CREATING ENEMIES, NOT CASUALTIES
This also goes for the arguing, antagonism, etc. We’re not in an armed revolution against the British here. We’re not trying to kill all the opposition and be the last man standing. We’re trying to convert the opposition. Approaching the Ron Paul “Revolution” like it was an actual revolution and creating casualties left and right isn’t going to help at all! Those casualties don’t just go away – they vote AGAINST Ron Paul. For every 1 Ron Paul supporter we may win with the offensive tactics used justified by “We’re at war here. We don’t compromise!” we turn 9 more people into, “I would never vote for Ron Paul if my life depended on it.”
In the battle for hearts and minds, you’re never going to win people’s hearts and minds if you attack their mind by calling them idiots, and you attack their hearts by accusing them of being evil. This goes for transitively attacking people by attacking the candidate they love so much as well.
There are a lot of FERVENT Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, and Mitt Romney supporters out there. These people aren’t wishy-washy, they actually LOVE their candidate just like we love Ron Paul. When we attack their candidate it pisses them off. When we call their candidate evil, they take it as us calling them evil. When we call their candidate stupid, they take it as us calling their candidate stupid. Then, we have the audacity to try and welcome them and say, “We love you, we want you!” when their candidate drops out – ESPECIALLY after their candidate endorses someone else?
Again, this is just sheer lunacy to think that you’re going to win foot soldiers of a fallen general after you got done spitting on said general who just happens to be a hero to them. Those foot soldiers are going to go elsewhere.
SUPPORT THE “RULE OF LAW” BY BREAKING THE LAW?
This really bothers me about the hypocrisy of some Ron Paul supporters. They go around vandalizing and breaking little local laws left and right in the name of “free speech” and “the greater good” yet the candidate they support is supposedly completely adamant about following the rule of law!
YOU may be able to justify it in your head and make it work out, but get real here – the rest of America isn’t doing the mental gymnastics to justify your actions with your message. All they see is a bunch of hypocrites talking about following laws and then going around breaking them.
I’m not talking about civil disobedience either. Civil disobedience only works when the law you break is the very one you’re protesting and you are explicit and clear about why you are breaking the law, what is wrong about the law, and the repealment of that particular law is part of crux of your cause. Civil disobedience requires that its practitioners be available and willing to be arrested or pay the fines to make the statement about the particular law they are protesting.
Going around breaking laws just because they are inconvenient (justified laws or not) in order to promote some OTHER ideology, and then not civil disobedience and it doesn’t have the positive effect that you might expect from civil disobedience.
I have seen so much law breaking, vandalizing, etc. from Ron Paul supporters it makes my heart sink. I have to ask, “Do these people even listen to what Ron Paul talks about?” Again, you may be able to justify it in your head – but no one else is going to. All this does is tick people off and make them think bad of the movement as a whole – and drives them into voting for someone else.
THE WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN
You’ve heard the saying before, “This is the world’s smallest violin playing the world’s saddest song just for you.” Why do people say that? They say that when people are whining and throwing themselves a pity party. I’ve noticed that a lot of Ron Paul people LOVE to whine about how the MSM doesn’t give us enough coverage, they love to point out all the injustice and unfairness in the debates, in the media coverage, in the way other candidates treat Dr. Paul or ignore him.
This may all be accurate and true, but that doesn’t mean we need to go around crying about it. When all someone does is go around talking about why they are so downtrodden, it usually doesn’t win ANY sympathy at all – it just makes people think you are pathetic.
Well, that is what people think of us now. They see us whining and they don’t “get it” and think, “Oh, wow, that is so unfair, you poor people.” No, they think, “Okay, so you got a rotten hand. Get over it, you pathetic losers.”
WE even make fun for other candidates whining about things (Romney in WV), yet this seems to be the main theme of the Ron Paul symphony: “Nobody loves us! We can’t get no respect! Woah, is us!” This isn’t going to help. This is only going to hurt.
MUD SLINGING AMONGST OURSELVES ONLY MAKES US DIRTY
Finally, I just want to point out that this essay will probably start a lot of fights – many will disagree with what I have to say and many will agree. There is a civilized and respectable way to discuss these things, but I am afraid that many people will not take that approach and digress into petty bickering, name calling, etc.
This is the ultimate nail in your coffin if you are a movement whose life depends on attracting outsiders. Again, I remind you, we cannot eliminate the competition by slaying them all on the battlefield – we have to RECRUIT them to our side.
The last thing anyone is going to want to be a part of is a battle-royal cage match. Maybe this is fun for the die-hard Ron Paul libertarian minded supporters who initially came into the movement, but I have to give you guys a reality check – this is NOT fun the other 90% of Americans out there. They do not enjoy being a part of anything like this. They are seeking unity. They are seeking peace. If we cannot demonstrate peace and unity among our own ranks, then we are dead in the water and might as well quit trying.
IN CONCLUSION
1) We’re not trying to kill the 90-95% of Americans who aren’t part of the Ron Paul Revolution – we’re trying to convert and recruit them – anything that is done aggressively against them doesn’t eliminate them from the playing field – it turns them against us.
2) Polling amongst ourselves and getting an over-confidence in our numbers because we only look within our own circles isn’t going to help anyone.
3) Talking bad about the other 90-95% of Americans who aren’t on board with Ron Paul isn’t going to win them over, it is going to drive away.
4) Attacking other candidates, unfortunately, has the surrogate effect of offending their supporters – and it will always gets back to us.
5) Not emulating the principles of your own movement and going around breaking laws to support a candidate who’s platform is about the rule of law – doesn’t make any sense to those observing us and isn’t going to win any sympathy.
6) Begging for sympathy isn’t going to get sympathy either. It is going to make people either laugh at us or think we’re plan pathetic losers.
7) Bickering among ourselves is going to be the ultimate turn off to people who may be 100% onboard with our ideology but want to belong to a group that has unity and peace among its ranks.
I’ve had many more thoughts on this… many more “developed” ideas about this, but this post is long enough for now. I invite you to read, analyze and seriously think about these criticisms. Maybe this isn’t you. It IS someone you know though. Do something about. Hold each other accountable. The time is has come where one rotten apple really CAN spoil the bunch. At this point we need to solidify our good supporters and castigate our bad supporters. If they are going to continue hurting the movement, we need to rally together and move away from them. It is the only way for the movement to survive.
This is not a rant about Evangelical Christians, although there are many similarities to the problems both groups face. This is about Evangelical “Paulites” and the mistakes they have made that we can all learn from.
Disclaimer: I am a Ron Paul supporter, and I write this critique as an attempt to help by correcting some mistakes that we are doing to shoot ourselves in the foot. Hopefully we can learn from these mistakes and move on to better things. If you disagree with me, that is fine, but there are certainly people out there who are hurting the cause more than they are helping it – and I think this needs to be addressed.
An evangelical is one who is marked by ardent zealous enthusiasm for a cause. This leads one to “evangelize” or try to tell others about the cause and convert them to your way of thinking.
I was raised in an Evangelical Christian home. I grew up in the buckle of the Bible belt in southwest Missouri. I’ve traveled the country, and I’ve seen and heard a lot of perspective and reaction to Christianity from those outside the face. I have drawn one simple conclusion: The greatest barrier to Christians efforts to convert others to their faith is the actions of Christians themselves.
What are some of these things I’m talking about? If you’re s fan of Stephen Colbert, the answer is obvious:
• The self-righteous, “I’m right and you’re wrong, no need to discuss it” attitude.
• The “inner-circle” talk about non-believers being everything from “poor lost souls” to “servants of Satan” which inevitably reaches the ears of those non-believers.
• The two-faced approach of railing against “sinners” and how they are going to burn in hell and how we need to outlaw their lifestyles while trying to embrace them with open arms and tell them they’re only here to help.
• The pointed attacks against other religions which to the non-religious majority simply appears mean-spirited and unattractive and to the practitioners of that religion seem even worse.
• The echo-chamber effect of group self-confirmation and circular logic and refusing to listen to or even acknowledge other ideas.
• The lack of unity and constant bickering amongst themselves about very
minor issues that don’t really matter in the big picture.
What have I noticed works for evangelizing people. Well, no matter what religion you are in, having a non-confrontational open arms approach always works well. Holding to your beliefs with confidence and piety usually is enough in itself to inspire others to want to emulate you. Attacking others only makes you appear weak and unconfident – as if your faith is not good enough on its own and is somehow only vindicated when you get to tear down someone else’s faith.
Now, allow me to switch gears and talk about the Ron Paul Evangelicals. I have seen the exact same patterns emerge among Ron Paul “Evangelicals” as I have among ineffective Christian Evangelicals. I am a Ron Paul supporter, so even though I don’t necessarily subscribe to most of these issues – I
THE ECHO CHAMBER
First, we live in a self-affirming echo-chamber that takes us all out of touch with reality. The way we have assured ourselves that YouTube video hits, Google searches, RonPaul2008.com website hits, etc. are some kind of measure for popularity has been very foolish. These “hits” on the internet have for the most part been repeat hits. Because of the internet “success” people have gotten it in their minds that using the internet to promote Ron Paul is the best way to go. Unfortunately, they continue to do it through the same old methods and all you end up doing is getting already existing Ron Paul supporters to watch your video or read your website giving you a feel-good felling by the thousands of hits you get, when in reality you’re not actually reaching a new audience.
The post-debate polls are a good example. Ron Paul’s supporters organize and rally to make sure they ALL get polled about who won a debate. This is by no means a simple-random-sample, but foolishly they point to those numbers and say, “See? Ron Paul is the most popular.” I watched the MTV/MySpace forum online and when the questions came up about how they felt Ron Paul answered a certain question – the polls were already in saying he did a marvelous job before the moderator even finished ASKING the question!
CUTTING OFF OUR LIFEBLOOD
I hate the term “sheeple”. Don’t get me wrong, it is a very clever word and I do harbor a certain amount of dismay at the way many people can tend to act like sheep. But is this word helping us by using it? The common logic among Ron Paul supporters is that if you don’t support Ron Paul, then you’re a sheeple. In other words, if you don’t support Ron Paul, you’re an idiot. This is basically what we tell people by using this word.
And we don’t just do it implicitly, we do it explicitly all the time. I read the Ron Paul Forums and I see post after post of people bashing every single “idiot” out there who doesn’t support Ron Paul. At this point, most people who have actually heard of Ron Paul and don’t agree with his positions yet are very unlikely to even TRY to wrap their head around those concepts because we have turned them so off by acting like they’re brainless idiots!
Go ahead and think that everyone is a brainless idiot, a sheeple, or whatever you want to call it – but we have seriously got to stop talking like this to other people and amongst ourselves. Word gets out, and that is the number one complaint I hear about Ron Paul – his supporters are assholes. Why on earth, even if they finally did agree with Ron Paul, would anyone want to be identified with “that group of assholes”? That is what is has come down to many times… “I like Ron Paul, but… I don’t want to be identified with that crew.”
These so-called sheeple, as many of us love to call them, are our LIFEBLOOD. They represent the votes that we want and need to win. Writing them off as a loss and saying it doesn’t matter what we do to offend them is sheer lunacy.
CREATING ENEMIES, NOT CASUALTIES
This also goes for the arguing, antagonism, etc. We’re not in an armed revolution against the British here. We’re not trying to kill all the opposition and be the last man standing. We’re trying to convert the opposition. Approaching the Ron Paul “Revolution” like it was an actual revolution and creating casualties left and right isn’t going to help at all! Those casualties don’t just go away – they vote AGAINST Ron Paul. For every 1 Ron Paul supporter we may win with the offensive tactics used justified by “We’re at war here. We don’t compromise!” we turn 9 more people into, “I would never vote for Ron Paul if my life depended on it.”
In the battle for hearts and minds, you’re never going to win people’s hearts and minds if you attack their mind by calling them idiots, and you attack their hearts by accusing them of being evil. This goes for transitively attacking people by attacking the candidate they love so much as well.
There are a lot of FERVENT Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, and Mitt Romney supporters out there. These people aren’t wishy-washy, they actually LOVE their candidate just like we love Ron Paul. When we attack their candidate it pisses them off. When we call their candidate evil, they take it as us calling them evil. When we call their candidate stupid, they take it as us calling their candidate stupid. Then, we have the audacity to try and welcome them and say, “We love you, we want you!” when their candidate drops out – ESPECIALLY after their candidate endorses someone else?
Again, this is just sheer lunacy to think that you’re going to win foot soldiers of a fallen general after you got done spitting on said general who just happens to be a hero to them. Those foot soldiers are going to go elsewhere.
SUPPORT THE “RULE OF LAW” BY BREAKING THE LAW?
This really bothers me about the hypocrisy of some Ron Paul supporters. They go around vandalizing and breaking little local laws left and right in the name of “free speech” and “the greater good” yet the candidate they support is supposedly completely adamant about following the rule of law!
YOU may be able to justify it in your head and make it work out, but get real here – the rest of America isn’t doing the mental gymnastics to justify your actions with your message. All they see is a bunch of hypocrites talking about following laws and then going around breaking them.
I’m not talking about civil disobedience either. Civil disobedience only works when the law you break is the very one you’re protesting and you are explicit and clear about why you are breaking the law, what is wrong about the law, and the repealment of that particular law is part of crux of your cause. Civil disobedience requires that its practitioners be available and willing to be arrested or pay the fines to make the statement about the particular law they are protesting.
Going around breaking laws just because they are inconvenient (justified laws or not) in order to promote some OTHER ideology, and then not civil disobedience and it doesn’t have the positive effect that you might expect from civil disobedience.
I have seen so much law breaking, vandalizing, etc. from Ron Paul supporters it makes my heart sink. I have to ask, “Do these people even listen to what Ron Paul talks about?” Again, you may be able to justify it in your head – but no one else is going to. All this does is tick people off and make them think bad of the movement as a whole – and drives them into voting for someone else.
THE WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN
You’ve heard the saying before, “This is the world’s smallest violin playing the world’s saddest song just for you.” Why do people say that? They say that when people are whining and throwing themselves a pity party. I’ve noticed that a lot of Ron Paul people LOVE to whine about how the MSM doesn’t give us enough coverage, they love to point out all the injustice and unfairness in the debates, in the media coverage, in the way other candidates treat Dr. Paul or ignore him.
This may all be accurate and true, but that doesn’t mean we need to go around crying about it. When all someone does is go around talking about why they are so downtrodden, it usually doesn’t win ANY sympathy at all – it just makes people think you are pathetic.
Well, that is what people think of us now. They see us whining and they don’t “get it” and think, “Oh, wow, that is so unfair, you poor people.” No, they think, “Okay, so you got a rotten hand. Get over it, you pathetic losers.”
WE even make fun for other candidates whining about things (Romney in WV), yet this seems to be the main theme of the Ron Paul symphony: “Nobody loves us! We can’t get no respect! Woah, is us!” This isn’t going to help. This is only going to hurt.
MUD SLINGING AMONGST OURSELVES ONLY MAKES US DIRTY
Finally, I just want to point out that this essay will probably start a lot of fights – many will disagree with what I have to say and many will agree. There is a civilized and respectable way to discuss these things, but I am afraid that many people will not take that approach and digress into petty bickering, name calling, etc.
This is the ultimate nail in your coffin if you are a movement whose life depends on attracting outsiders. Again, I remind you, we cannot eliminate the competition by slaying them all on the battlefield – we have to RECRUIT them to our side.
The last thing anyone is going to want to be a part of is a battle-royal cage match. Maybe this is fun for the die-hard Ron Paul libertarian minded supporters who initially came into the movement, but I have to give you guys a reality check – this is NOT fun the other 90% of Americans out there. They do not enjoy being a part of anything like this. They are seeking unity. They are seeking peace. If we cannot demonstrate peace and unity among our own ranks, then we are dead in the water and might as well quit trying.
IN CONCLUSION
1) We’re not trying to kill the 90-95% of Americans who aren’t part of the Ron Paul Revolution – we’re trying to convert and recruit them – anything that is done aggressively against them doesn’t eliminate them from the playing field – it turns them against us.
2) Polling amongst ourselves and getting an over-confidence in our numbers because we only look within our own circles isn’t going to help anyone.
3) Talking bad about the other 90-95% of Americans who aren’t on board with Ron Paul isn’t going to win them over, it is going to drive away.
4) Attacking other candidates, unfortunately, has the surrogate effect of offending their supporters – and it will always gets back to us.
5) Not emulating the principles of your own movement and going around breaking laws to support a candidate who’s platform is about the rule of law – doesn’t make any sense to those observing us and isn’t going to win any sympathy.
6) Begging for sympathy isn’t going to get sympathy either. It is going to make people either laugh at us or think we’re plan pathetic losers.
7) Bickering among ourselves is going to be the ultimate turn off to people who may be 100% onboard with our ideology but want to belong to a group that has unity and peace among its ranks.
I’ve had many more thoughts on this… many more “developed” ideas about this, but this post is long enough for now. I invite you to read, analyze and seriously think about these criticisms. Maybe this isn’t you. It IS someone you know though. Do something about. Hold each other accountable. The time is has come where one rotten apple really CAN spoil the bunch. At this point we need to solidify our good supporters and castigate our bad supporters. If they are going to continue hurting the movement, we need to rally together and move away from them. It is the only way for the movement to survive.