In an essay written in July of 2007 I posed the question "Can Ron Paul Cure America's Apathy?" A little more than three years later I have to say the answer is no, but I do believe he helped quite a bit. I think he helped open a lot of eyes and educate many. You see, before then I had nearly given up hope. I imagine that was true for many others who think like I do. I had thought that almost everyone in the world had fallen victim to the collectivist, statist disease that has infected our planet. I felt that too many people were counting on government to provide answers to all societal problems. It was as if everyone was worshipping government and praying to it to cure all of mankind's ills. Too few were looking inward and trying to exercise their own initiative to help become the answers.

Ron Paul's campaign excited me. Here was a presidential candidate discussing issues as they should be discussed. Here was a man getting on national television and distilling issues to their basics. Instead of arguing from a left versus right paradigm, he would argue from a freedom versus tyranny stance. Instead of pandering to an audience, telling lies and making promises that would be impossible to keep in order to garner as many votes as possible, he voiced his principles and explained how they worked in order to educate the electorate so they could make an informed decision. He was an honest man in a field where cheats and liars excel.

But there was a problem with this approach. The corporate media wasn't behind him. He was a threat to their masters' interests. They minimized his efforts by calling him things like "radical" and "unelectable" despite his popularity and the active nature of his supporters. Whenever possible they would ignore him. Most of all, they tried to make his ideas sound like unobtainable pipe dreams, like he didn't know what he was talking about and like they couldn't possibly work in the real world. But Dr. Ron Paul stuck to his guns and kept delivering the message of freedom, confining government to its constitutional limits and maintaining a non interventionist foreign policy. In the end, after they felt he was no longer a political threat to the establishment, the media actually sought him out and welcomed his appearances and his opinions, particularly about the economy.

Suddenly, after he was no longer running for president, Dr. Ron Paul seemed like a pretty smart guy. He is no longer a lovable kook spouting idealistic rhetoric, but someone whose opinions should be listened to and respected. He has written two best selling books, "The Revolution, a Manifesto" and "End the Fed" and has shown he has a better grasp on how an economy runs than most politicians. He has shown that he has a better grasp on morality than most other politicians. He has pointed us in a better direction than most other politicians in this country. He is now speaking out in more corporate media venues than ever before and helping to expose more people than ever to the message of liberty. These ideas are becoming more popular with each day.

It would be interesting to see how the corporate media would reconcile these facts. It would be interesting to see if the talking heads and political pundits would once again try to tell us Dr. Paul was unelectable and his libertarian ideas were unacceptable to the public if he once again ran for president. If that was the case, why have they been asking him to appear on their programs for so long now? With all the exposure he's been getting since his presidential run, if they decide to pull their old tricks and attempt to minimize his campaign, perhaps that would help more people understand the true nature of the corporate media and how they manipulate and falsely frame political discourse. Perhaps that would help show how corporate media is no longer acting as a public watchdog to keep politicians honest and principled, but works instead to politically weed out those individuals who exemplify such traits.