Miles is a 24-year-old from San Francisco, and grew up with what he describes as a “liberal background.” He spent the summer after his freshman year interning in then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office in Washington. But somewhere between his Capitol Hill internship and graduation, Miles had a political awakening.
“I didn't know what the word liberty meant—I just thought it meant generic freedom,” Miles told me. “At the time, I was making phone calls for Obama, and after he won and I saw the continuation of many Bush policies, I realized that the person at the top can change, but that they're just going to keep signing the same bills.”
Miles believes that the system is broken. He opposes what he sees as an excess of government spending, thinks the US should stop getting involved in foreign conflicts—“neocons are among the worst things to ever happen to this country”—and is particularly concerned with the Obama administration’s infringement on civil liberties.
“This type of stuff is what gets under my skin,” he said. “I wish more people would wake up to the fact that it is both parties carrying out authoritarian action like this.”
Miles said that while he doesn’t agree with Paul on everything, the Kentucky Senator “has done a good job of addressing the issues that I care about.” Libertarianism, he added, “is really the only position you can take without tacitly endorsing the system.”
As Paul’s fundraiser was winding down, I met another potential Paul convert, Frank, a teacher from Oakland, California. Frank told me that he used to teach at Oakland’s Fremont High School, but left after 12 years when one of his students was shot and killed and the funeral service was subsequently shot up by gang members.
“That was really just the last straw,” said Frank, who now teaches at a private high school in Hayward, a tony Oakland suburb.
“The difference between the education that kids are getting at Fremont and kids are getting at this private school, it’s just hurtful,” he said. “The government is just pouring money into fixing these schools, but it’s not working.”
Frank, who described himself as a liberal, said that he was curious to meet Paul, and ended up getting into an extended conversation with the senator and his wife, Kelley Paul, about education policy.
“He’s not like a normal politician,” Frank said. “He was genuinely interested in what I had to say. And it sounds like he actually wants to do something to fix education.”
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