How did you "discover" Ron Paul?

[Sullivan*]

I voted for him on November 4th, 2008... He was on the ballot here in Montana, and then in 2009 or so I really started paying too much attention to politics, and I sort of gravitated towards Ron Paul vids on YouTube... And things sort of grew from there.

 

[Mises_to_Paul]

Was a super Friedmanite and came across Rothard's famous critique of Friedman.

I forget what happened at that point, but eventually I came across some association of Rothbard with Paul and took it from there.

I think this was in early 2007. So my path was basically (starting as a high school senior of age)...

Founders/Locke/Classical Liberalism-->Friedman/Chicago Crowd--> Rothbard/Austrian/Anarchist crowd---> Ron Paul

 

[WhistlinDave]

I first heard of him in the 2008 election cycle. Discussing politics one day, my wife's cousin said, "Hey, there's this guy running, and he wants to legalize weed. Actually he wants to end the entire war on drugs. His name is Ron Paul." I asked, "What else does he stand for?" And he said, "I don't really know, but that sounds good enough for me." I didn't really do anything with this information at the time though, I was duped into change that I believed in (and regretted later).

Since then I've done a lot of reading online about the war on drugs, marijuana, etc., and this subject has always been very interesting to me, and I guess Ron Paul's name has come up here and there in reference to the failures of the war on drugs and how we need to end it. Then when the Republican debates started up, somebody mentioned to me Ron Paul was running again, so I started watching the debates from the very first one, and I was instantly hooked on RP. Everything he says makes so much sense, and I couldn't believe there was really a politician like this! And then of course, those debates were like a gateway drug, and I moved on to a YouTube addiction that consumed me. And now here I am, registered Republican after voting for a Dem president for the last 20 years....

I hope no one minds that I resurrected this thread. You can let it die again if nobody else has anything to add...

 

[andrer]

Through internet comments. The libertarians where the only people actually knewing anything about economics, so I googled him in sep 2011 after have heard about him being an libertarian, and have been a fan since then.

 

[Weston White]

I learned about Ron Paul at the same time I started watching Alex Jones and researching the surrounding events of 9/11 and other such false-flags, and political, economical issues that we are being entirely mislead about. Which I had discovered purely by accident in early 2007, while installing a Google/YouTube video database script for a phpBB online gaming forum; as I was working on (learning how to script) modifying the forum and finding videos to populate the database, I (namely out of boredom) began watching the videos that I came across, one led to another, and so on, until I became totally hooked.

 

[Dogsoldier]

Well I would say Michael Badnarick was the first person that opened my eyes.

Later found out about Paul.

 

[JohnM]

Round about August 2007. Decided to research the folks who were running for president. I had this vague recollection that there was this Republican guy who had opposed the Iraq war. [I take a pretty dim view of the Democratic party because most of them support abortion, and I took a very dim view of the Iraq war because it was (IMHO) unjustifiable, pointless, and just plain dumb.]

Looked on Wikipedia. Discovered that it was Ron Paul. And that he was strongly anti-abortion. Check. Discovered he had always spoken out against the invasion of Iraq. Check.

Also discovered that he was a man of integrity (never voted for a pay rise, never voted for an unbalanced budget, believed in sticking to the constitution). Definite plus. Discovered he strongly supported freedom of speech and freedom of association. Another big plus. Watched him on Youtube at the South Carolina debate explaining blowback. Here was a man who actually understood the Middle Eastern mindset, and was honest enough to tell people truth that they didn't want to hear.

I was hooked.

So hooked that I even ended up changing my long held views on the legalization of drugs.

 

[Working Poor]

I found him by doing a search to find out who was standing against the BS in government

 

[dancjm]

Came across a video on Youtube in about 2006. In it there was this dude giving a speech in congress and telling the truth.

I was like, wtf is this?

 

[EBounding]

I heard about him from time to time before 2008 as being the "anti-war Republican kook" a few times on Limbaugh. I heard more about in him '08 but just wrote him off as a Republican Kucinich. I started paying attention to him more in 2010 when Rand won, but I still didn't agree with his foreign policy. I decided to support him in 2011 during the debt ceiling situation (no one else was serious about addressing it).

I sent him my first political donation even though I didn't even agree with his foreign policy. But after you literally invest in someone, you want to learn more about them. I found that I was wrong and being fooled this whole time with the wars. It was a relief because I was never entirely comfortable with the fact that we never declared war, so I had no reason to defend them anymore.

 

[Origanalist]

On a neocon web site I had been at for years. I was reading an exchange between a poster who insisted he was right about everything when he clearly wasn't and another who was making sense. Long story short, here I am.

 

[Carlybee]

Similar to Origanlist except it was a Progressive board that was originally the official John Kerry forum in 2004. I spent way too many years there arguing with fools ultimately getting banned for talking about Ron Paul and spreading the concepts of liberty. I have never dealt with a more vile contentious group which was made up of mostly Obamabots and communists. Good news is I came away with a few other RP friends and even have a few dems that post at the new forum we made who voted for RP in their primaries this year.

 

[Root]

Ron Paul Appreciation Thread on another message board.

 

[SilenceDewgooder]

I was taking a class (forget which one) for my degree and in the section we were reading, they were attempting to explain the monetary structure of the US. The book had roughly 3 short paragraphs about the Fed, which I knew little about, but apparently more than what the book was willing to talk about. So when I get curious, I search until I find similiar answers from dissimilar sources (the source is as important as what you read, if not more). Try doing a search on google about the Fed without having Dr. Paul's name pop up on just about every link. I did try to avoid the links that contained Dr. Paul's name to leave the political side out of the equation. Finally, having read the history of how the Fed came about, I watched a video (I believe from 2002) from the Von Mises institute in which Dr. Paul was speaking. And it seemed like everything he had predicted had come true. So, that lead me to listen more and the more I listened, the more logical Dr. Paul's views were becoming compared to the "reasons" that were being plastered all over the tv.

Until this, I despised politics (to a great extent I still do) but now I feel compelled to be active in the process, not for myself, but for the future world that my daughter will know. How could I ever describe myself as a good parent if I do not act to change the despairing future, that I see, is being prepared for my daughter?

 

[Origanalist]

Similar to Origanlist except it was a Progressive board that was originally the official John Kerry forum in 2004. I spent way too many years there arguing with fools ultimately getting banned for talking about Ron Paul and spreading the concepts of liberty. I have never dealt with a more vile contentious group which was made up of mostly Obamabots and communists. Good news is I came away with a few other RP friends and even have a few dems that post at the new forum we made who voted for RP in their primaries this year.

Carlybee, I have to ask. How does one go from a progressive to supporting liberty? Not trying to be an ass, but genuinely curious.

 

[seyferjm]

I found out who he was through Myspace in 2008. Various bands had Ron Paul 2008 as a "top friend" (Gosh, that sounds old-school now lol) and I checked him out but dismissed him as a liberal, since I ASSumed that bands would not support a conservative. I ended up looking into him again in late 2009 and was hooked after that. Since then, I have donated and worked in Iowa after Christmas.

 

[trey4sports]

i saw him on O'Reilly and though he was a nut.

Turns out truth is nutty in a time of universal deceit.

 

[paulbot24]

Zeitgeist. After watching that movie I started scouring the internet. I don't even remember exactly "what" I was looking for. Next thing I know, I'm on youtube and found his "What if..." speech. Then I saw his "electability" speech in the 2008 primaries. DONE!

P.S. I am still angry at my history teachers for lying to me and especially the media for hiding and attempting to marginalize this man that would turn out to be my hero. However, I would like to thank MSM (especially FOX) for encouraging me to turn off my television as a source of real information.

 

[Karsten]

I looked him up years ago when Rush Limbaugh said this Doctor from Texas keeps voting no on just about everything. I was intrigued. It had to be after 96?

Rush touted Ron Paul ever????

 

[outfoxed1]

After years of hearing how he was a "kook", I finally took some time and researched the man for myself. I think part of that was due to how I finally realized that Wall St funds BOTH presidential candidates. That was when I sort of woke up.

I was amazed to find out that Ron Paul has been preaching a consistent message the last 30 or so years, and has been RIGHT about a myriad of issues(and predicted most of what we now see). The man gets no respect, which is a disgrace.