Finding a Hero

I guess I’m something of an oddity. In my entire life I’ve never looked up to anyone as a hero, or set anyone up as my role model.

I could look at someone and admire things about them but that never disguised their flaws. Even my parents, and grandparents; i loved them, but I still saw things they could be better at. So many people get these obsessions while growing up; wanting to be their dad, looking up to batman, grandfather, soccer coach. I never had anyone like that, I wanted to be better myself, but I wasn’t emulating anyone.

Which is why, as I’m preparing to start my last year of college, I find it so odd that I’ve developed such a strong admiration for Congressman Ron Paul (This isn’t a bump for his presidential campaign since it’s quite clear that he’s ended it.) There has never been another person that I’ve developed such a deep respect for, the kind that if he said something that contradicted one of my beliefs, that I would carefully re-evaluate it. The type of political ideology he preaches is one self governance, returning to the constitution, reigning in government to the limits it once held; holding true to the idea that government’s role is to protect the liberty of it’s citizenry and that alone.

More than is ideology, however, is the type of man that he is. A faithful husband (sad how that has become a virtue through a lack in common practice,) a dedicated ten term congressman, and still small voice in the void of our countries atrophy; our cradle to grave mindset. Who can fault a man who practices what he preaches. To be ridiculed, looked down on, and openly laughed at; anyone in Ron Paul’s place would have lashed out but people watching the debates couldn’t help but feel admiration for the only man on stage who never threw dirt on his opponents, endured the majority of the onslaughts and when allowed to respond, acted in the manner of a true statesman; a true representative of the people. How sad that a man so humble, so unwavering in principle, would endure twenty years in congress , not fighting for himself but for the people of this country with a lone vote no against an onslaught of tyranny and that hardly anyone would notice and when notice was taken; call him crazy.

How much better our country would be if we were all a little more like Ron Paul; the old man in the corner, on his knees, hands folded, head bowed in prayer. Not telling people how to live, but proclaiming and defending their right to live how they want. The type of argument you’d more often hear from a social deginerate whose breaking societies norms not the type of argument you’d expect from a 72 year-old Republican, fundamentalist christian. No surprise that he was the first person to ever herd cats, except he didn’t find the cats, the cats found him.

Many have dubbed Ron Paul Thomas Jefferson and I see the similarities but there is another Founding Father I see much more clearly in Ron Paul; George Washington. Because few people have the unwavering principles that Washington possessed working along with a stalwart humbleness that allows them to be given enormous power and not only not abuse it but to go one step further and to state; “This power is not mine, it is the people’s”

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