The Spiritual r3VOLution, Part II (Michael Nystrom)

Michael Nystrom compares most Republicans to Ron Paul supporters and finds a fundamental difference:

Last week I wrote about the common destiny that all of us here on earth share: No one gets out of here alive. Related to this is another strange phenomenon that we rarely ever discussed. Come back a hundred years from now and guess what? All new people. None of us will be around.

What will remain are the institutions and the society that we will leave behind for our children and grandchildren. Each moment of each day we make choices that will affect the kind of world that future generations will inhabit, not only in America, but all over the world.

On my way home from the RNC last week, I struck up a conversation with a fellow Republican (I was still a Republican at the time) in a bar at the Atlanta airport. He told me that he loved Ronald Reagan. He loved Reagan because back in the early 1980's, when this country was down and out and depressed, it was Reagan who restored confidence. The most important thing to this guy was that Reagan cut taxes. "He put money back into my pocket!" this guy said.

But wait, I said. Not so fast. "Where did that money come from that went back into your pocket?" I asked. Reagan may have cut taxes, but he didn't cut spending. As a result, our national debt exploded, and we're still in hock to this very day because of Reagan, and it is only getting worse. "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter," says Cheney as a convenient excuse for pushing the national debt up to 10 trillion. "So maybe Reagan cut taxes, put money back in your pocket, but at what cost?" I said. He did it, with help from the Fed, simply by shifting the burden from the past into the future. America is already suffering lower living standards, but it is really our children and grandchildren that will do the serious suffering. "Reagan only put money back into your pocket by picking the pockets of your children and grandchildren," I told the guy.

What he said in response floored me. "Well, you know what? Too bad. We picked their pockets, and now it is up to them to find someone else's pocket to pick," he said. "And that's that."

At that moment, I realized that this was the fundamental difference between Ron Paul supporters and the rest of the Republicans. Ron Paul supporters want to do the right thing. We don't believe in picking anyone's pockets to get ahead (and certainly not our childrens'). And we don't want to leave that kind of legacy behind for our offspring when we are gone from this earth. McCain Republicans apparently don't care.

Read the rest