7 ms·

Is Ron Paul taken seriously in the American mainstream media? Honest/serious question.

alexeisadeski3 13y ago
Ehhh... not really. He's taken 50% seriously. He doesn't provide the offensive soundbytes that the media wants; his points tend to provoke actual thought, which is the like poison to the contemporary American voter.
- rtpg 13y ago
  "taken 50% seriously" might be the best way to describe Ron Paul, since for every thought-provoking thing he says, you have to ignore some quite silly (to most people) thing (Like completely defunding 5 cabinet departments, or his dislike of federal trampling of rights, but complete acceptance of state trampling of rights). His fanbase is among some of the strangest.I kept on hearing variants of "I voted for Obama in 2008 but would love to vote Ron Paul 2012".
  - JasonFruit 13y ago
    "Defunding", not "defending".
  - vanattab 13y ago
    He doesn't like the federal government trampling _states_ rights. And I am unsure of what you mean by acceptance of states trampling rights? Could you elaborate?
    - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
      Ron Paul's idea, I believe, is to allow states to make the mistakes. Citizens can then "vote with their feet," moving from crappy states to better states. You end up with fifty laboratories experimenting with various policies.
    - Crito 13y ago
      The idea is that he gives few shits about what states do to their residents, so long as the Federal government does not trample on states. The counterpoint is typically along the lines of "well since he is in the federal politics game, what he thinks about how states can treat people is irrelevant".
    - tzs 13y ago
      A couple of the things he considers to be the federal government trampling states rights are actually the federal government stopping the states from trampling individual rights. For instance, according to the Supreme Court, the states are bound by the part of the First Amendment that prohibits the establishment of religion or restricting the free exercise of religion. Paul thinks that establishment of religion or restricting the free exercise of religion should be a state issue. He tried two or three times to introduce federal legislation that would have stripped the federal courts (including the Supreme Court) from hearing cases in this area, which would de facto make that part of the First Amendment no longer apply to state and local government. He has a similar belief in regard to the privacy rights that the Supreme Court has found implicit in the Constitution. His bills that tried to gut the First also strip federal jurisdiction over any case involving a right of privacy. If his bill had passed, it would have actually made it legal for states to establish or restrict religions, and it would have brought back into force sodomy laws, bans on birth control, and other such laws that were found Unconstitutional due to violating privacy rights. Most states, I believe, have prohibitions against establishment of religions, or restrictions on the free exercise of religion, so the damage would be limited in that regard. The first state everyone thinks of is Utah, thinking it would establish Mormanism as the state religion, but Utah is one of the states whose Constitution has a clause similar to the First Amendment. Texas could be a problem. It has a provision in its Constitution that holders of political office must acknowledge the existence of a God, and so in theory an atheist would not be able to legally hold office in Texas if Paul had his way. Edit: here was one of his bills on this: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.958.IH http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.958.IH: Note that HN's URL recognition misses the last character, so you'll need to add it manual, or copy/paste, rather than just clicking.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      The chipping away at state sovereignty happened because states kept using that sovereignty to oppress black people. The post-Civil War amendments were a huge smack down, because they set the stage for binding the states to the Bill of Rights, which had previously only applied to the federal government. That had a big impact not because states couldn't say violate the freedom of speech anymore. States already had similar clauses in their own Constitutions. No, the real significance of that was it elevated the federal courts to a position of supervising state compliance with federal rights. From there, Supreme Court precedent told the states they couldn't keep blacks from voting, couldn't segregate them, couldn't ban interracial marriage, etc. Every time the states tried to oppress this or that group, they put their sovereignty on the line and the Supreme Court took some of it away. Consider when the governor of Alabama, George Wallace, took a stand against federal court ordered desegregation of the University of Alabama. President LBJ sent federal troops down to Alabama to enforce integration. From a state autonomy standpoint, it was a huge blow, as the federal government asserted its supremacy. The governor of Alabama was forced to step aside on the property of a state university as National Guardsmen escorted black students inside against his will and that of Alabama voters: http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/race/061263race-ra.html http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/race/061263race.... This continued through the 1960's and 1970's. The state courts were put in their place when the federal courts started aggressively supervising their procedures, to deal with their tendency to fail to give fair trials to black defendants. Federalism is dead because the states pissed away all of their political capital trying to oppress people.
      - bmelton 13y ago
        That's an very good interpretation of the 60s, and I get behind it 100%. Regrettably though, that in enforcing segregation -- for which segregation is of course is not-discretionary, because they're government institutions -- we also got the federal government's abuse of the interstate commerce clause in applying the same standards that go for government institutions to privately owned businesses. Any thoughts on how effective Kansas' proposed "allowed discrimination of gays" for private business owners will hold up, if enacted? My thought is that, despite there being a ton of bad precedent regarding the Commerce Clause, private business owners should not be required to obey the 10th amendment, just as Facebook isn't obligated to respect my First amendment right, though I find it curious that they put the 10th up against the 1st, such that only those of a "sincerely held faith" may choose to discriminate, as I think it should be allowed for all private business owners.
  - tzs 13y ago
    > "taken 50% seriously" might be the best way to describe Ron Paul, since for every thought-provoking thing he says, you have to ignore some quite silly (to most people) thing That's his big problem. For example, on the problem of health care affordability, he had a very interesting suggestion. Change the income tax deduction for medical expenses to an income tax credit. This was a shockingly progressive/left-wing suggestion. It is essentially proposing that, at least for people with income tax, that the government pays for your health care up to the amount of your income tax. Most people would still need to buy insurance, but they could get by with a high deductible policy to cover catastrophic situations. For most of their health care, the tax credit would be enough. And in the same speech to Congress where he tossed out that idea, he blamed the high costs of health care on our focus on science-based medicine. We need, according to Paul, to make it easier for homeopaths and other quacks to practice, so the competition can drive the cost down.
yid 13y ago
His father (and him to some degree) are taken very, very seriously by a very, very small segment of the population.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  Ron is the father. Rand is the son (the son who is in politics).
  - astrodust 13y ago
    Same thing applies to both.
- orik 13y ago
  You're thinking of Rand Paul.
- code4life 13y ago
  A (maybe) small but passionate segment of the population. I doubt it's as small as you think. He won Iowa (although that wasn't made clear until after the elections). He did well in several of the caucuses. Watching Ron run for president opened my eyes to the vote corruption that takes place in our country. Especially in the caucasus. One example I recall is how Ron was clearly going to win a caucus and so the majority of the other republicans decided to group together so that votes could vote for a coalition instead of letting Ron win. That was strange. (This was in 2008, I forget the state). Then, in Nevada, where Paul won the majority of the delegates, Romney supporters formed their own state party, called “Team Nevada”. The RNC then bypassed the official state party in order to organize for Romney and send all funds to Team Nevada. In Maine, they cancelled the vote due to a snowstorm, when only 84% of the votes were counted and Romney was leading by 200 votes. Of course, they never counted Washington county, which was Paul's strongest in 2008. The point is, the corruption is never ending. For that reason, you really have no idea how many people support Ron Paul (and the ideas of the constitution) if you are guessing from votes and media reports. In fact, perhaps spending a lot of time around Paul, Romney conceeds several times that Ron Paul is actually popular. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx1JWMr5cVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx1JWMr5cVk
dnautics 13y ago
no, he's not. (this is coming for someone who has voted for him)
morganherlocker 13y ago
IME he is pretty much worshipped by the libertarian crowd, but not taken seriously in the mainstream. His son Rand Paul seems to be taken more seriously, but libertarians seem to have extremely mixed opinions of him, since he is more of a pragmatist than his father (which they interpret as compromising on core values). Note: I am not a libertarian, but I have many friends who are deeply involved with the movement, so this is my rough view from afar.
- technologue 13y ago
  As a hardcore libertarian, I approve of your layman's explanation.
- pekk 13y ago
  If by pragmatist you mean Republican. Although they have both done their duty by the Republican party for decades.
  - morganherlocker 13y ago
    Like I said, I have no bone in the fight, but your response pretty much illustrates my point. Not to get too into the weeds, but it sounds like you would fall onto the side of the spectrum where Ron Paul is also seen as an "apologist" of sorts. I know several libertarians who also fall into this camp, and would view Ron Paul as "better-than-Rand-but-no-Rothbard" type. For what it's worth I respect the libertarian point of view and find it fascinating, despite disagreeing with some of the basic premises (but that's where the fun debates are).
97s 13y ago
Sadly he is not, I think he has a lot of good and bad ideas, and that is the reason probably.
pmorici 13y ago
More seriously than he used to be. The tide changed a bit when he raised millions of dollars during the 2008 primary elections but election victories didn't quite follow.
threeseed 13y ago
No. And why should he ? He is only really liked by the libertarian base. Everyone else finds his ideas range from simply too impractical through to the downright crazy.
- alexeisadeski3 13y ago
  Because everyone else is crazy :)
ne0codex 13y ago
Nope. The Paul last name pretty much poisons the well.
gd1 13y ago
Let Jon Stewart answer you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSbkFpAA4CA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSbkFpAA4CA
jessaustin 13y ago
...taken seriously in the American mainstream media? That's not the badge of honor some might think.
- cconroy 13y ago
  ...feared or marginalized by the mainstream media should be reserved for the badge of honor. Noam Chomsky comes to mind.
  - morganherlocker 13y ago
    I don't know about that. IME Noam Chomsky is pretty much respected by anyone who knows who he is. Granted, that is a relatively small percentage of the public. The only people I have ever heard bash on Chomsky are philosophers who disagree with very specific philosophical views that he holds (innate grammatical knowledge comes to mind).
blah32497 13y ago
He isn't because he often raises issues which aren't "on the agenda". So he'll make statements for instance about returning to the gold standard, or getting rid of all overseas military bases. These are not only radical suggestions, but they're also not things being discussed in the "national debate". So he comes off as not only radical, but out of touch with what people find important. There is generally a feeling that Congress should be addressing issues that the people are concerned about. How, do you determine what concerns the people? You look through the insane prism of the media. PS: Full disclosure, I supported Ron Paul in both his runs for president.
jtbigwoo 13y ago
Three things hurt him with the mainstream media. First, he's not as savvy at manipulating the media with soundbytes as people like John McCain and Newt Gingrich. He always has a provocative answer to questions, though, so he's a regular on some news shows. Second, his supporters are extemely loyal, but he's not that influential in his own party. In Republican presidential primaries, he rarely rose above 10% of the vote. His supporters lean libertarian and haven't traditionally been able to elect their candidates like the social conservatives and business conservatives have. He's probably not in the top 20 most influential people in his own party. Just off the top of my head, he's behind Limbaugh, Hannity, McConnell, Boehner, Cantor, O'Reilly, Perry, Cruz, Rubio, Gingrich, Santorum, Jindal, Rand Paul (his son), and Cornyn. He's probably also less influential than folks most people have never heard of like John Thune, Jim Lankford, Roy Blunt, Jan Brewer, Reince Preibus, Rick Scott, Sam Brownback, and John Kasich. Third, his newsletters from the 80's and 90's are pretty racist and nasty. (The newsletters called Martin Luther King Jr. a pedophile among other things.) He has said lately that he didn't write or review those newsletters and has disavowed them. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/98883/ron-paul-incendiary-newsletters-exclusive http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/98883/ron-paul-i... Edit: I meant Roy Blunt the U.S. Senator, not Roy Blount the humorist.
- a8da6b0c91d 13y ago
  MLK was a pervert. People are going to freak when his FBI files are finally unsealed. It's pretty clear why release was delayed.
  - dreamdu5t 13y ago
    You're contradicting yourself. If the FBI files aren't unsealed, how do you know what's in them?
    - Aloha 13y ago
      Just because the files are not open, doesn't mean we don't have some idea whats in them.
rayiner 13y ago
No, but because he opposes a lot of things Americans have bipartisan consensus on. He rejects resl politik, the idea that America needs to intervene aggressively abroad to maintain its interests. Democrats will oppose particular interventions, like Iraq, but as Kosovo and Syria demonstrate, they don't really reject the basic idea of America as the world's police. He had very different ideas about the division between federal and state power than the mainstream. Americans are more or less over the idea of federalism, as demonstrated by the popularity of Social Security, Medicare, highways, etc. On both sides, they mostly just want the federal government to tell states what to do. So when Ron Paul comes along opposing things like the Department of Education, he gets viewed as wildly out of the mainstream.

Ehhh... not really. He's taken 50% seriously. He doesn't provide the offensive soundbytes that the media wants; his points tend to provoke actual thought, which is the like poison to the contemporary American voter.

rtpg 13y ago
"taken 50% seriously" might be the best way to describe Ron Paul, since for every thought-provoking thing he says, you have to ignore some quite silly (to most people) thing (Like completely defunding 5 cabinet departments, or his dislike of federal trampling of rights, but complete acceptance of state trampling of rights). His fanbase is among some of the strangest.I kept on hearing variants of "I voted for Obama in 2008 but would love to vote Ron Paul 2012".
- JasonFruit 13y ago
  "Defunding", not "defending".
- vanattab 13y ago
  He doesn't like the federal government trampling _states_ rights. And I am unsure of what you mean by acceptance of states trampling rights? Could you elaborate?
  - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
    Ron Paul's idea, I believe, is to allow states to make the mistakes. Citizens can then "vote with their feet," moving from crappy states to better states. You end up with fifty laboratories experimenting with various policies.
  - Crito 13y ago
    The idea is that he gives few shits about what states do to their residents, so long as the Federal government does not trample on states. The counterpoint is typically along the lines of "well since he is in the federal politics game, what he thinks about how states can treat people is irrelevant".
  - tzs 13y ago
    A couple of the things he considers to be the federal government trampling states rights are actually the federal government stopping the states from trampling individual rights. For instance, according to the Supreme Court, the states are bound by the part of the First Amendment that prohibits the establishment of religion or restricting the free exercise of religion. Paul thinks that establishment of religion or restricting the free exercise of religion should be a state issue. He tried two or three times to introduce federal legislation that would have stripped the federal courts (including the Supreme Court) from hearing cases in this area, which would de facto make that part of the First Amendment no longer apply to state and local government. He has a similar belief in regard to the privacy rights that the Supreme Court has found implicit in the Constitution. His bills that tried to gut the First also strip federal jurisdiction over any case involving a right of privacy. If his bill had passed, it would have actually made it legal for states to establish or restrict religions, and it would have brought back into force sodomy laws, bans on birth control, and other such laws that were found Unconstitutional due to violating privacy rights. Most states, I believe, have prohibitions against establishment of religions, or restrictions on the free exercise of religion, so the damage would be limited in that regard. The first state everyone thinks of is Utah, thinking it would establish Mormanism as the state religion, but Utah is one of the states whose Constitution has a clause similar to the First Amendment. Texas could be a problem. It has a provision in its Constitution that holders of political office must acknowledge the existence of a God, and so in theory an atheist would not be able to legally hold office in Texas if Paul had his way. Edit: here was one of his bills on this: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.958.IH http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.958.IH: Note that HN's URL recognition misses the last character, so you'll need to add it manual, or copy/paste, rather than just clicking.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    The chipping away at state sovereignty happened because states kept using that sovereignty to oppress black people. The post-Civil War amendments were a huge smack down, because they set the stage for binding the states to the Bill of Rights, which had previously only applied to the federal government. That had a big impact not because states couldn't say violate the freedom of speech anymore. States already had similar clauses in their own Constitutions. No, the real significance of that was it elevated the federal courts to a position of supervising state compliance with federal rights. From there, Supreme Court precedent told the states they couldn't keep blacks from voting, couldn't segregate them, couldn't ban interracial marriage, etc. Every time the states tried to oppress this or that group, they put their sovereignty on the line and the Supreme Court took some of it away. Consider when the governor of Alabama, George Wallace, took a stand against federal court ordered desegregation of the University of Alabama. President LBJ sent federal troops down to Alabama to enforce integration. From a state autonomy standpoint, it was a huge blow, as the federal government asserted its supremacy. The governor of Alabama was forced to step aside on the property of a state university as National Guardsmen escorted black students inside against his will and that of Alabama voters: http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/race/061263race-ra.html http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/race/061263race.... This continued through the 1960's and 1970's. The state courts were put in their place when the federal courts started aggressively supervising their procedures, to deal with their tendency to fail to give fair trials to black defendants. Federalism is dead because the states pissed away all of their political capital trying to oppress people.
    - bmelton 13y ago
      That's an very good interpretation of the 60s, and I get behind it 100%. Regrettably though, that in enforcing segregation -- for which segregation is of course is not-discretionary, because they're government institutions -- we also got the federal government's abuse of the interstate commerce clause in applying the same standards that go for government institutions to privately owned businesses. Any thoughts on how effective Kansas' proposed "allowed discrimination of gays" for private business owners will hold up, if enacted? My thought is that, despite there being a ton of bad precedent regarding the Commerce Clause, private business owners should not be required to obey the 10th amendment, just as Facebook isn't obligated to respect my First amendment right, though I find it curious that they put the 10th up against the 1st, such that only those of a "sincerely held faith" may choose to discriminate, as I think it should be allowed for all private business owners.
- tzs 13y ago
  > "taken 50% seriously" might be the best way to describe Ron Paul, since for every thought-provoking thing he says, you have to ignore some quite silly (to most people) thing That's his big problem. For example, on the problem of health care affordability, he had a very interesting suggestion. Change the income tax deduction for medical expenses to an income tax credit. This was a shockingly progressive/left-wing suggestion. It is essentially proposing that, at least for people with income tax, that the government pays for your health care up to the amount of your income tax. Most people would still need to buy insurance, but they could get by with a high deductible policy to cover catastrophic situations. For most of their health care, the tax credit would be enough. And in the same speech to Congress where he tossed out that idea, he blamed the high costs of health care on our focus on science-based medicine. We need, according to Paul, to make it easier for homeopaths and other quacks to practice, so the competition can drive the cost down.

yid 13y ago

His father (and him to some degree) are taken very, very seriously by a very, very small segment of the population.

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
Ron is the father. Rand is the son (the son who is in politics).
- astrodust 13y ago
  Same thing applies to both.
orik 13y ago
You're thinking of Rand Paul.
code4life 13y ago
A (maybe) small but passionate segment of the population. I doubt it's as small as you think. He won Iowa (although that wasn't made clear until after the elections). He did well in several of the caucuses. Watching Ron run for president opened my eyes to the vote corruption that takes place in our country. Especially in the caucasus. One example I recall is how Ron was clearly going to win a caucus and so the majority of the other republicans decided to group together so that votes could vote for a coalition instead of letting Ron win. That was strange. (This was in 2008, I forget the state). Then, in Nevada, where Paul won the majority of the delegates, Romney supporters formed their own state party, called “Team Nevada”. The RNC then bypassed the official state party in order to organize for Romney and send all funds to Team Nevada. In Maine, they cancelled the vote due to a snowstorm, when only 84% of the votes were counted and Romney was leading by 200 votes. Of course, they never counted Washington county, which was Paul's strongest in 2008. The point is, the corruption is never ending. For that reason, you really have no idea how many people support Ron Paul (and the ideas of the constitution) if you are guessing from votes and media reports. In fact, perhaps spending a lot of time around Paul, Romney conceeds several times that Ron Paul is actually popular. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx1JWMr5cVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx1JWMr5cVk

dnautics 13y ago

no, he's not. (this is coming for someone who has voted for him)

morganherlocker 13y ago

IME he is pretty much worshipped by the libertarian crowd, but not taken seriously in the mainstream. His son Rand Paul seems to be taken more seriously, but libertarians seem to have extremely mixed opinions of him, since he is more of a pragmatist than his father (which they interpret as compromising on core values). Note: I am not a libertarian, but I have many friends who are deeply involved with the movement, so this is my rough view from afar.

technologue 13y ago
As a hardcore libertarian, I approve of your layman's explanation.
pekk 13y ago
If by pragmatist you mean Republican. Although they have both done their duty by the Republican party for decades.
- morganherlocker 13y ago
  Like I said, I have no bone in the fight, but your response pretty much illustrates my point. Not to get too into the weeds, but it sounds like you would fall onto the side of the spectrum where Ron Paul is also seen as an "apologist" of sorts. I know several libertarians who also fall into this camp, and would view Ron Paul as "better-than-Rand-but-no-Rothbard" type. For what it's worth I respect the libertarian point of view and find it fascinating, despite disagreeing with some of the basic premises (but that's where the fun debates are).

97s 13y ago

Sadly he is not, I think he has a lot of good and bad ideas, and that is the reason probably.

pmorici 13y ago

More seriously than he used to be. The tide changed a bit when he raised millions of dollars during the 2008 primary elections but election victories didn't quite follow.

threeseed 13y ago

No. And why should he ? He is only really liked by the libertarian base. Everyone else finds his ideas range from simply too impractical through to the downright crazy.

alexeisadeski3 13y ago
Because everyone else is crazy :)

ne0codex 13y ago

Nope. The Paul last name pretty much poisons the well.

gd1 13y ago

Let Jon Stewart answer you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSbkFpAA4CA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSbkFpAA4CA

jessaustin 13y ago

...taken seriously in the American mainstream media? That's not the badge of honor some might think.

cconroy 13y ago
...feared or marginalized by the mainstream media should be reserved for the badge of honor. Noam Chomsky comes to mind.
- morganherlocker 13y ago
  I don't know about that. IME Noam Chomsky is pretty much respected by anyone who knows who he is. Granted, that is a relatively small percentage of the public. The only people I have ever heard bash on Chomsky are philosophers who disagree with very specific philosophical views that he holds (innate grammatical knowledge comes to mind).

blah32497 13y ago

He isn't because he often raises issues which aren't "on the agenda". So he'll make statements for instance about returning to the gold standard, or getting rid of all overseas military bases. These are not only radical suggestions, but they're also not things being discussed in the "national debate". So he comes off as not only radical, but out of touch with what people find important. There is generally a feeling that Congress should be addressing issues that the people are concerned about. How, do you determine what concerns the people? You look through the insane prism of the media. PS: Full disclosure, I supported Ron Paul in both his runs for president.

jtbigwoo 13y ago

Three things hurt him with the mainstream media. First, he's not as savvy at manipulating the media with soundbytes as people like John McCain and Newt Gingrich. He always has a provocative answer to questions, though, so he's a regular on some news shows. Second, his supporters are extemely loyal, but he's not that influential in his own party. In Republican presidential primaries, he rarely rose above 10% of the vote. His supporters lean libertarian and haven't traditionally been able to elect their candidates like the social conservatives and business conservatives have. He's probably not in the top 20 most influential people in his own party. Just off the top of my head, he's behind Limbaugh, Hannity, McConnell, Boehner, Cantor, O'Reilly, Perry, Cruz, Rubio, Gingrich, Santorum, Jindal, Rand Paul (his son), and Cornyn. He's probably also less influential than folks most people have never heard of like John Thune, Jim Lankford, Roy Blunt, Jan Brewer, Reince Preibus, Rick Scott, Sam Brownback, and John Kasich. Third, his newsletters from the 80's and 90's are pretty racist and nasty. (The newsletters called Martin Luther King Jr. a pedophile among other things.) He has said lately that he didn't write or review those newsletters and has disavowed them. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/98883/ron-paul-incendiary-newsletters-exclusive http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/98883/ron-paul-i... Edit: I meant Roy Blunt the U.S. Senator, not Roy Blount the humorist.

a8da6b0c91d 13y ago
MLK was a pervert. People are going to freak when his FBI files are finally unsealed. It's pretty clear why release was delayed.
- dreamdu5t 13y ago
  You're contradicting yourself. If the FBI files aren't unsealed, how do you know what's in them?
  - Aloha 13y ago
    Just because the files are not open, doesn't mean we don't have some idea whats in them.

rayiner 13y ago

No, but because he opposes a lot of things Americans have bipartisan consensus on. He rejects resl politik, the idea that America needs to intervene aggressively abroad to maintain its interests. Democrats will oppose particular interventions, like Iraq, but as Kosovo and Syria demonstrate, they don't really reject the basic idea of America as the world's police. He had very different ideas about the division between federal and state power than the mainstream. Americans are more or less over the idea of federalism, as demonstrated by the popularity of Social Security, Medicare, highways, etc. On both sides, they mostly just want the federal government to tell states what to do. So when Ron Paul comes along opposing things like the Department of Education, he gets viewed as wildly out of the mainstream.