He made me rethink my political views

I have long supported the government doing good works for its citizens. I do not want to be a member of a society that lets some of its people starve, or that denies education to some of its children. Sure, some programs I disagreed with, but I believed the correct course of action was to oppose the "bad" programs and support the "good" ones. Paul was the first person I came across who brought together the stories across the spectrum of government programs and explained how government interventions always, on balance, have negative effects. His supporters in forums I read pulled together wide-ranging examples of how private organizations had solved difficult problems in society - it can be done.

Health care is a big issue in this election. Our government has set up a system where it pays for some health care, and has led many people to believe it should pay for health care. With the result that neither the government nor any private organization helps the millions of Americans who need health care but cannot afford it. This is absolutely unacceptable in a nation as wealthy as ours, and I oppose the other Republican candidates who essentially want to maintain this status quo. I think the government ensuring access to medical care for everyone would be good. I now believe, thanks to Paul's writings and speeches, that the government completely getting out of the health care business would be even better. (Paul envisions a transition period of several decades would be necessary.) Somewhat ironically, Bill Clinton's promotion of his book Giving helped solidify my view on this. Clinton described how exciting it was to help an NGO that helped as many people as specific government programs, gave them a higher level of help, and at one-third the cost.

The extent to which the federal government has damaged the powers of the States had not been clear to me before. The federal government is less accountable to its electorate, has more entrenched programs resistant to improvement, has more wasteful bureaucracy, prevents comparisons of competing programs (as is possible when States try alternative ideas), and in general has a lot of negatives that go with, and in most cases outweigh, the positives of uniform program rules and wealth distribution across the nation.

I have a strong personal aversion to being in debt (I even own my house free and clear) and have long had a "feeling" that the national debt was a bad thing. Paul's explanation of how the national debt is driving inflation up and the value of the dollar down finally helped me understand in concrete terms the very real and very serious consequences of spending money on popular programs and opposing unpopular tax increases: what every politician does to get elected and re-elected. Except, apparently, for Paul, who has been elected ten times on a platform of opposing spending, and has never voted for an unbalanced budget. I have seen some news reports of others running as "Ron Paul Republicans" and I hope I will be able to offer my votes to this wing of politics for many election cycles to come.