Allegory of the Cave and American Politics, part 5

By Zach Foster

Continued from Part 4

The remaining Republican hopeful is Ron Paul.  Congressman Paul is one of the select few members of Congress who can boast an untarnished record.  In his private life he has served the community and the country, and his entire career as a public servant has been dedicated to restoring Constitutional law and fighting against government corruption and the stripping away of the rights of the citizenry.

He received his medical degree from Duke University in 1961 and served as a U.S. Air Force flight surgeon from 1963 to 1965.  He continued to serve the country with his medical skills in the Air National Guard from 1965 to 1968.  He opened a private practice after his military service and, rather than bow down to the authoritative whims of insurance companies, he ran a much more philanthropic private practice by giving reduced-cost services or pro-bono services to the poor.  In chapter four of his book The Revolution, Ron Paul explains how this system was much better for the poor and uninsured than the jokes today known as PMOs and HMOs.

Having been a former airman, he knows how the military works better than the non-veterans who love to shout about their patriotism while campaigning.  Machiavelli disdainfully describes the downfall of the latter in The Prince (chapter 9).  As a long time successful doctor, Ron Paul also has a firm grasp on how the health insurance and health care market, unlike the incumbent President and most
(if not all) Republican nomination hopefuls.

Having been a leading member of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute for twenty-nine years, Ron Paul can easily call himself one of the leading economists in America—a title and personality cult currently being held by professional inflationists like Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke.  For many decades, Congressman Paul has studied the economic theories of the leading thinkers in the Austrian School mof economics—Luwdig Von Mises, Frederick Hayek, Murray Rothbard, etc.—whose theories are based on monetary solidity, free trade, and the [proven] idea that individual freedom and economic prosperity go hand in hand.  To give a brief example of the accurate theories of the Austrian School, Ludwig Von Mises accurately predicted (to the detail) the fall of the Soviet Union in his book Socialism, written in 1919 (less than two years after the USSR was formed).  Ron Paul knows sound economics and, unlike most members of Congress, he offers concrete solutions to restoring the value of the dollar and restoring the economy in his books The Case For Gold (1982) and End the Fed (2009).

Under Ron Paul’s Presidency, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would be drawn to a close, establishing peace with honor (without abandoning our allies) and this country would no longer be the “world police” (and certainly wouldn’t be involved in the Libyan Civil War, whose marginal-at-best U.S. involvement grows ever less popular).  The list of Ron Paul’s qualifications to be an excellent President goes on—the author doesn’t need to write them since they have already been written by other Ron Paul supporters who, rather than take a politician at his word, investigated his record and his writings and proposed solutions, and found overwhelming evidence testifying of his qualifications.

While Democrats blindly follow the shadows that cheer for Barack Obama and Republicans chain themselves down with Fox News propaganda, following Donald Trump’s shadow puppets on the cavern wall, there will be a minority of Americans who have awakened to the growing nightmare of their loss of more and more liberty, the Monopoly play money that is the U.S. dollar, a spiraling national debt, and the stretching thin of the American Empire.  They will not be fooled by shadows, for they have been freed and have grown accustomed to sunlight and fresh air; they know the truth and they seek to awaken their peers who still dwell in the cave.

And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he 's forced into the presence of the sun himself, is he not likely to be pained and irritated? When he approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities.

He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day?

Last of all he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of him in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not in another; and he will contemplate him as he is. And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den and his fellow-prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity them?

Certainly, he would.

—Plato

END.