March 24, 2008

The House That Ron Built
by Brady Wright

Like many Americans who believe in limited-government, low taxes, personal freedom, and the Constitution, I’ve become increasingly disenchanted with the Republican Party. Why does the party continue to pay lip service to these ideals, while utterly abandoning them in practice? Were these not the ideals espoused by Ronald Reagan? More to the point, are these not the ideals espoused by another Ron – Ron Paul – who has been shunned by his own party?

So like many of the disenchanted, I considered changing my voter registration to another party out of disgust. I stopped short when I learned that Ron Paul was running for President, however, and chose to remain a Republican at least until after the Presidential race.

As I became more and more involved in the Ron Paul campaign, I began to see ways that a small number of people could effect change within the GOP. I began to realize that the Party wasn’t something unchangeable, and that my alternatives were not limited to following the party or leaving entirely. There was another alternative: change the party from within. It is now clear to me that this is a preferable alternative to sinking my efforts in attempting to grow a third party from the ground up.
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Right now, many are debating whether the efforts of those dedicated to the cause of liberty and the restoration of the Constitution should focus their efforts on the GOP or in a third party. To help answer this, consider: political parties are like houses – they are filled with people. The house itself isn’t nearly as important as the people who live in it. Some houses are big, some are very small. The Republican Party, for example, is a huge gated mansion that is beginning to fall into disrepair due to the neglect of its occupants.

By comparison, despite the valiant efforts of its members, the Libertarian Party has been under construction for decades now, and so far they are still at the cardboard shack phase of construction.

But let’s look again at the Republican mansion. Our name is written on the gate! Read the Party’s platform and you will find that it is 99.9% in agreement with Ron Paul. Between the various national and state party platforms, you will find planks calling for the abolition of the Federal Reserve, a humble foreign policy, abolition of the IRS, withdrawal from the UN and other globalist organizations, and many more. Whose party is this again? By all indications, this party is rightfully ours!

So why do we allow a bunch of squatters to occupy our house, tearing it apart in the process? Meanwhile many of us toil away trying to add a wing onto a fledgling party’s shack in a back alley. Instead, we should be spending our energy kicking out the squatters and reclaiming the house that rightfully belongs to us. Let the squatters worry about shambling together their own shack – the mansion belongs to us. After all, it is the house that Ron built, and we are his heirs.

Thanks to Ryan Underwood for the “squatters” moniker.