Ths is why we go to Washington. We cannot let this great individual be marginalised. He fought for all of us..every last one of us.. whether we knew we needed him to do it or not. He deserves the recognition and will use the platform to further spread the message. No ego trip there. Posters like humanic are wrong.
Best
Randy
Dear Randy,
I find it unbelievable that you are still going around making disingenuous attacks on me on this subject, and feel compelled to reassert my position on this important matter and clear my name.
Yesterday, I started a thread explaining my sincere opinion on the subject of "the theme of the march; what the march will be all about." I named this thread "The March Should Be About The Message, Not The Man."
Because friendly, respectful, thoughtful, rational people-- people completely unlike you apparently-- engauged me in civilized discourse (as I requested in the original post of that thread), I came to realize why the title of my thread was not a good representation of the ideas being expressed within, and revised the original post to acknowledge this.
When you began posting on the thread, you seemed to have either not read or not comprehended the original post itself, which explained what I meant by the title. You seemed to be acting as though I simply made the statement "The march must be about the message, not the man" without elaborating on what I meant and why, and attacked accordingly.
You even went as far as to start your own thread entitled "This March Is About The Man Who Delivered The Message", which you said was a "counter thread to all the thunder stealing gambit runners" like me. In this thread you implied that making the march about the message, as I suggest, instead of the man, as you suggest, would be failing to give him the respect and the honor that he deserved* (see note below). In response I asked you the following sincere questions:
What could be a better testament to Ron Paul's ability to lead and unite this country, and to his viability as a candidate, than for thousands and thousands of people take to the streets to promote the very things he stands for? What could be a better testament to the legitimacy of the movement of which Ron Paul is the central figure than for us to come out and practice what we preach instead of acting like collectivists, and therefore hypocrites? What could be a better way to promote his presidency than by showing that, unlike many supporters of other candidates, the supporters of Ron Paul are not a cult of personality, but rather a group of like-minded individuals supporting a candidate who shares their beliefs and values?
In your response, you "snipped" all of my questions and avoided responding to them. Instead, you dismissed them as "BS", called me a name, and made the claim that I was "ego tripping", a claim that is not only baseless, but ironic and hypocritical. I went on to say:
You are acting like an arrogant bully, and it is you who is "ego tripping" when you think your point of view is inherently correct and fail to justify it to someone who disagrees. I have no desire to be at odds with you (or anyone on this board), especially because I have enjoyed many of your posts in the past, but I sincerely feel that you are being childish, disrespectful, and, as I said, hypocritical.
You did not respond to this, but instead decided to continue to evoke my name and skew my views in other threads, something that you are apparently still doing. You claim that I am "suspect" and you tell people that I want to "make a disconnect" between the man and the message to "back us [
sic]" my "agenda of marginalisation [
sic]".
Readers (and you for that matter) can decide for themselves if your statements are accurate or fair. My post from yesterday is pasted below as it appeared yesterday after I edited it to reflect the clarifications I made to Randy and a few other (nicer) people.
I started this thread, entitled "The March Must Be About The Message, Not The Man", earlier today. This title may be a bit misleading, and I have had time to edit and better nail down the point I was trying to make. I want to share it with you now, because I think it is important. Here it is in a nutshell:
This march should be, in essence, The March For Freedom, Liberty, and the Constitution, Led By Ron Paul, as opposed to The March For Ron Paul
The following was posted on Daily Paul a short while ago. It was met with the exact kind of passionate division that you would expect, and it illustrates why I feel the way that I do:
How are we going to get the message out to the 9/11 truthers (who mistakenly believe that Paul agrees that 9/11 was inside job), not to carry "9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB" signs at the March? If they carry signs like this, this will be shown on the news and it's what the public will focus us on if this happens. The public will generalize that we all believe that and are lunatics. This could be a nightmare for the Paul campaign.
Paul said at the debate that 9/11 truthers should stay quiet about it and that they hurt the campaign. So, far it doesn't look like they respect that advice.
(This is not a free speech issue. I'm aware that they have a RIGHT to carry such signs. I'm talking about PURSUADING them not to carry the signs, for the best interest of the campaign.)
It is an unavoidable reality that there will be individuals who show up at this march and express controversial points of view. Even if you were able to get every single Ron Paul supporter to agree on which views should and should not be expressed (which will never happen), there will be people who show up who are not even supporters of Ron Paul. Some will even be our enemies seeking to undermine and divide us.
If it is
The March For Ron Paul, there will inevitably be some Ron Paul supporters who will try to silence those who express views that they find too controversial (with the good intentions of "protecting" Ron Paul and his campaign). There will division amongst the marchers and a widespread collectivist mentality that is contrary to what Ron Paul stands for.
If it is
The March For Freedom, Liberty and The Constitution, Led By Ron Paul, we will not be prone to such division and collectivism. We won't encourage this collectivist mindset where everyone argues about what hurts Ron Paul and what doesn't and who needs to be censored by the majority. Though most of the people there will be loudly supporting Ron Paul (as they should), there will not be a need for one group of people to try to silence another. There won't be a discussion about whether or not "we" should "let" people exercise their first amendment rights. Instead, we can all embrace the fact that people are exercising their God-given right to speak freely, which is a big part of what we are fighting to preserve.
Furthermore, we will show the country and the world that, unlike the supporters of other candidates, we support Ron Paul not because of a cult of personality, but because we share his core values and beliefs. We will demonstrate that we don't just talk the talk of freedom, we walk the walk and practice what we preach.
Thank you for reading, and please keep the discussion on this thread calm, friendly, and civilized.
"The freedom message brings us together; it doesn't divide us"
- Ron Paul
Please keep this thread bumped until Randy reads it, especially if you agree with my views on the march or agree that such attacks are unfair and counter-productive. I would have simply sent it to him privately, but he continues to evoke my name and mischaracterize my views publicly, so I wanted to respond publicly.
As a side note, a poll was posted while this discussion was raging asking "The Man or The Message?", clearly pertaining to the subject we were discussing. The final results were 100 to 22 in favor of "The Message."
* Note: You claimed that my statement that you wanted to make the march about "the man" was "a canard." I responded by pointing out that just because you qualify "this march is about the man" with "who delivered the message" it does not change the fact that you are advocating that we make it about the man instead of the message. You did not respond to this.
