Capitalism, the Face of Space?

Topher Morrison

PurpleSerf.com

Remember when the shuttle program was axed last year?  Conservatives and scientists throughout America, short of performing harakiri in abject dishonor, lamented President Barack Obama’s decision to cut NASA’s prized program.

Conservatives were quick to use the opportunity to berate Obama over another policy failure surely responsible for ending American primacy in space and abandoning the final frontier to China and Russia.  Scientists likewise bemoaned the cut in funds for “crucial” scientific research claiming it would forestall our technological progress.

Related Article: “Goodbye NASA, Hello Space Age! To Infinity and Beyond!”

The knee jerk reaction is understandable, mankind’s fascination with space is insatiable, if not, our addiction to a constellation of artificial satellites surely is.  But that is the point, our need to maintain and grow this celestial infrastructure alone should drive markets to fill the void where cosmic bureaucrats formerly held sway.  The idea that without Big Science, and the largesse of the U.S. government, technological progress would halt in America and left to be dictated solely by others is without merit.

On Friday, after a privately owned company linked up with the International Space Station, Apollo 11’s Buzz Aldrin, the second man to step onto the moon, seemed to agree.  “Nearly 43 years after we first walked on the moon, we have taken another step in demonstrating continued American leadership in space.”

What for a moment seemed embarrassing, even abhorrent – to ask Russia for a lift into space – has given way to a realization Barack Obama’s single random act of cost cutting may have earned him a very special accolade.  Much to the chagrin of conservatives and alarmists Obama may soon be regarded as harbinger of capitalism in space.

By providing the initial thrust, namely the demand for private rockets and shuttles, for a fledgling commercial space industry to supply (not to mention a home for unemployed rocket scientists) Obama has in his absence accomplished what he never could have dreamed in all his meddlesome machinations.

On Friday a private company, Space X, headed by a real life Tony Stark a.k.a. Elon Musk officially abolished the nearly 50 year government monopoly in space.  Musk, the man who helped bring about the world’s largest Internet payment system, Pay Pal, and the unbelievably fast all electric Tesla Roadster on Friday made a quantum leap in commercializing space.

By using his own privately designed rocket, the Falcon 9, to propel the Dragon spacecraft to that DMV in the sky known as the International Space Station Musk has been passed a baton formerly reserved for a small elite band of government agencies and has taken Space X boldly where no private company has gone before.  Albeit NASA contributed $381 million in seed money – fancying themselves venture capitalists – much of the blood and sweat is due to this entrepreneurial magnate.

Elon Musk almost lost his shirt investing much of his own money while building Tesla Motors from the ground up, but he ultimately prevailed as the Tesla sedan proves electric cars are viable and don’t have to look like a bug on acid.

Speaking of magnates Richard Branson is well on his way to making low Earth orbit a hot spot for celebrities and those with cash to blow.  His Virgin Galactic enterprise has already built the world’s first Spaceport in New Mexico and his passenger manifests read like the headlines at TMZ.  He plans to have space tourists enjoying a float about very soon.

In an elite cocktail of capitalism Google’s Eric Schmidt, Ross Perot and James Cameron (no doubt bored of travelling deeper in Earth’s oceans than any other human) have teamed up for a new cosmic voyage and no its not a movie, much more blue collar – asteroid mining.  According to the company, Planetary Resources:

“…near-term goals are to dramatically reduce the cost of asteroid exploration. We will combine the best practices of commercial aerospace innovation, operational adaptability, and rapid manufacturing to create robotic explorers that cost an order of magnitude less than current systems.

We will control costs by constraining scope and creating simple designs that can be executed by a small, expert team. And although we will hold ourselves to the highest standards and practices, we will aggressively accept mission risk where appropriate.

Our philosophy will allow rapid development of private, commercial interplanetary space exploration. In light of fiscal challenges facing the spaceflight community, innovation in cost and market is as valuable as innovation in capability.”

Yikes!  “Aggressively accept mission risk” and “innovation in cost and market” utterances we rarely ever heard from NASA.  These intergalactic miners aren’t the only ones seeking new energy stores in space.  Companies like Shackelton Energy are chomping at the bit for an opportunity to scoop up helium-3 and plutonium-238 which should be able to power everything from space stations to lunar rovers.

Don’t feel like hauling space luggage, floating in low Earth orbit, mining the moon or asteroids?  Robert Bigelow, founder of BudgetSuites, has a six-diamond idea that will make the Burge Dubai blush – space hotels.  He has already tested and launched experimental modules that currently remain in orbit and Elon Musk has agreed to partner with Bigelow Aerospace in order to kick off an international marketing effort for private-sector space stations.

Needless to say if we can extricate NASA and the U.S. government successfully from these processes we’ll have full fledged capitalism in space.  Until then it is unfortunately more of the same we suffer from here on Earth – crony capitalism.  Many of these cosmos bound start ups are funded by Congress through NASA and until companies like Space X, Blue Origin, Planetary Resources, Sierra Nevada Corp, etc. are able to cut the proverbial multi-million dollar umbilical cord it remains to be seen whether the market in space is ultimately worth it – at least right now.

As MSNBC’s Cosmic Log reported earlier this month:

It is highly questionable whether NASA will get as much money for commercial crew development as it has requested. The request for fiscal year 2013 was almost $830 million, but a Senate subcommittee cut that figure to $525 million. Today the House passed a bill specifying an even lower funding level, $500 million. The White House has threatened a presidential veto of that bill, in part because of its concerns about the cutback in commercial crew support.

Pegging space exploration and development to the political fate of the U.S. government is not a sustainable business model.  Our financial and real estate markets can attest to that fact.  While Newt Gingrich was right, its time to shoot the Moon we don’t want the government involved again, politicians all too often will use it as a political football.  If Space X and Elon Musk want to dine on Mars in their very own Martian Space colony they’re going to have to figure out how to do it on their own.

Until then, we’ll still be rooting for the private space race to begin:

NATO Summit in the Rearview: The Big and Expensive Non-Event

Topher Morrison

PurpleSerf.com

The NATO summit held in Chicago, Illinois has been hailed as a success by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and President Barack Obama.  But has America’s police state erased its 1968 “police riot” or did administration media shills merely apply white out?

The lack of incidence was a testament to, among many things, the continued abdication by the American left of their traditional anti-war stance, having since 2008, been demonstrably inoculated by the Obama presidency.  Those who did make it to the protest, an estimated 3,000 souls marching last Friday, were reported to be representing over 100 groups of international origin or part of the Occupy movement at large.

The relative peace enjoyed by the City of Chicago during the protests was also likely due to the last minute decision to move the G8 conference to Camp David.  Had the G8 simultaneously occupied Chicago beside its military arm – NATO – the affair may have been more, well – lively.

In order to secure the City of Chicago the summit was declared a “National Special Security Event” by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and according to reports it sure felt special.  Pepe Escobar of Asia Times opined:

"It’s lockdown time – complete with Iraq-style concrete barriers; battalions sporting upgraded riot gear; “extraction teams” to snatch and grab pinpointed protesters in a “low intensity conflict” environment; and an Orwellian guest star, the LRAD (long-range acoustic device) – a sound cannon bound to “ensure a consistent message is delivered to large crowds”, according to the Chicago Police Department."

Not only was there extensive drilling, planning and canvassing prior to the event NATO appropriately established its patented no-fly zone over Chicago lest an Occupy ultra-light plane a la Mad Max or some crazed anarchist decided to drop any airborne presents.

The scene once again reminded the nation that any U.S. city can transform instantly into highly controlled environment where safety is subordinated to any and all other concerns.  As Bernard Harcourt of the London Guardian reports, “The NATO summit will come and go, but Mayor Emanuel has authorized a ‘new normal’ of militarized social control in Chicago.”

Eight-foot tall, anti-scale security fencing went up all over that perimeter and downtown, including Grant Park; and the Chicago police – as well as myriad other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI and the US secret service – were out in force on riot-geared horses, bikes, and patrols – batons at the ready. Philadelphia Police Department is sending over reinforcements to help out; Chicago has also asked for recruits from police departments in Milwaukee and Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC. Meanwhile, F-16 warplanes “screamed through the skies as part of a pre-summit defense exercise” and helicopters hovered incessantly.

Orchestrating the massive symphony of security from an “undisclosed location” were over 40 federal agencies.

On the ground tactics were also utilized, namely herding protestors in order to “tire them out” and utilizing layered maneuvers with bike or foot patrols passively monitoring protests while heavily armored contingents awaited out of sight.

The most startling of all the strategies used to diminish the possibility of making an international scene was classic gumshoe investigative work – no, not really.

Chicago Police didn’t mob down protestors like they did in 1968 they just pre-emptively raided and arrested “selected protesters considered dangerous.”  It later turned out that the “NATO 3” who were officially charged with terrorism were in fact patsies set up once again by informants under the employ of the U.S. Government’s Terror Factory.  The evidence purportedly discovered has since been claimed to have been “planted” by law enforcement.

In the final analysis the NATO summit was a microcosm.  The U.S. government displayed an overwhelming force posture replete with bells and whistles, its respective agencies and the city spent more than was needed, it trumped up terrorism to malign forces it perceived as a threat, the entire affair received little media coverage and an anemic anti-war movement since the rise of Barack Obama failed to attract any meaningful attention.  Don’t they get it?  Nobody finds “eat the rich” or Robin Hood tax programs newsworthy.  It was a non-event just as the state had hopped it would be.

Perhaps the summit was a non-event precisely because it wasn’t important.  Not one person in Chicago and relatively few in the media drew attention to the fact this “international event” was in fact quite parochial.  NATO is a powerful minority in the world.  The grand military alliance, which represents a crumbling western economic bloc, based on the G8, and comprising 28 other countries is being challenged.

Notice that Vladamir Putin, an ostensible member of the G8 didn’t attend Camp David.  Many of the G8 members have in fact been outpaced economically by the BRICS.  China is obviously bigger than everyone save the U.S.  Brazil is bigger than Canada, Italy and the U.K., according to the IMF.  India is larger than Brazil…

Under this lens is it not understandable that creating a missile ring in defense of Europe might be viewed as just another expensive entitlement program as we have discussed before?  Vladamir Putin seems to understand what it’s meant to delineate and where the missiles are pointing - so do the Chinese.  With the rise of new nations and severe debt crisis riddling western democracies the world is in the throws of an obvious re balancing act, what will emerge is unknown, perhaps a tripolar world?

Where and when do Russia and China have their say?
When and where will a tripolar world assert itself?

The global military industrial entitlement complex is merely another type welfare program similar to domestic liabilities crippling Greece and other nations.  The wildly expensive missile defense shield around Europe furthers the analogy of the microcosm mentioned above.  According to Harcourt:

"...this police state serves, in reality, as our new welfare state. The security mania represents our truly unique way of stimulating the economy, of employing piece labor, of creating government jobs and subsidized contracts. Just think of the amount of overtime pay that we are disbursing with all this policing. Instead of investing in schools and education, in job training, or in re-entry programs, this is how we invest in our future. And we never think of it as government welfare because it falls in that sacred space of security…"

Banes of Our Existence, a Political Cartoon

Topher Morrison

PurpleSerf.com

Original political cartoon by Michael Ramirez as seen on Real Clear Politics.

"FALSE PARADIGM" is added by Topher Morrison.

You ever wish political cartoons would be a little more balanced?  Wish they would stop browbeating a false paradigm while feigning comedy?  Above is an original cartoon by Michael Ramirez. Below is my enhanced version.

As seen through the patented objectivity lens of Topher Morrison

NDAA Provisions Struck Down in Federal Court

 

Michelle Obama said she was for once in her adult life proud of her country when support for her husband as President of the United States reached a crescendo.  Hope was returning to America.  That idea has been significantly called into question over the intervening years.  However, what occurred yesterday should make all Americans proud.  Our system, seemingly broken in countless ways – still works.

The controversial National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA) signed by Barack Obama, whose provisions (SEC. 1031 & 1032) give the National Security Council and the U.S. government the power to detain anyone deemed to be a “terrorist” indefinitely without charge or trial anywhere in the world including U.S. citizens was struck down in federal court on Wednesday by Judge Katherine Forest.

The ruling was due to a lawsuit brought about by titans in the civil rights community.  The plaintiffs in the case include scholars, journalists and activists namely Noam Chomskey, Daniel Elseberg, Chris Hedges, Naomi Wolf, and Cornel West.

NDAA was borne out of bipartisan effort with rabid support from Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Carl Levin (D-MI) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT).  Sen. Graham is probably the most vociferous proponent literally screaming at his colleagues in the senate, “When [terrorists] ask for their lawyer, you tell them ‘shut up’!”

Here Sen. Graham reiterates that National Security interests supersede those rights and liberties ensconced in the bill of rights and Constitution he is sworn to protect.  “You are not to be given a lawyer if our national security interests [a.k.a. National Security Council an unelected body] dictate you are not to be given a lawyer.”

Judge Kathrine Forest of the southern district of New York evidently disagrees with the senator.  She struck down provisions 1031 & 1032 precisely because she feels they infringe on 1st and 5th Amendment rights.  Those Amendments guarantee freedom of speech and due process.  Why the law wasn’t also struck down on 6th Amendemnt grounds, right to speedy trial and concepts of habeaus corpus, is unclear.

Sen. Lindsey Graham may see the entire world as a battlefield, including the internet, but his legislation puts in jepordy nearly 800 years of common law respecting the individual rights against aggressive encroachment by the state, whatever the excuse.  The Magna Carta from which our Constitution and bill of rights owes so much, signed in 1215, says as much:

In clause 39 of the Magna Carta, John of England promised as follows:

“No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.”

What if a Dictator is Boring? Can We Laugh at Ourselves?

Topher Morrison

www.PurpleSerf.com

The Dictator starring Sasha Baron Cohen

In what was anticipated to be Sasha Baron Cohen’s magnum opus, “The Dictator”, has unfortunately suffered a critics coup prior to its U.S. release.  But, we shall see how the peasants react at the box office this week.

According to co writers of “The Dictator”, Jeff Schafer and David Mandel, Mr. Cohen is essentially playing the amalgamated personification of Kim Jong-il, Idi Amin, Serdar Turkmenbashi and of course what we all suspected since we first saw the baby blue uniform – the late Muammar Ghaddafi of Libya.

After all, this particular dictator, His Excellency Admiral General Shabazz Aladeen (nod to 1001 Arabian Nights) of the Republic of Wadiya (nod to common middle eastern geographical features), is a fascistic, misogynistic, anti-Zionist from North Africa.  He’s also an ophthalmologist (probably a last ditch effort to wrap Bashar al-Assad of Syria into the mix).

Alas, critics across the globe have offered their long knives rather than the typical enthusiastic appraisal of Mr. Cohen’s comedic command.  The Boston Globe asked if Mr. Cohen’s act was “getting old” and even after the Los Angeles Times gave “The Dictator” a polite golf clap Betsy Sharkey left her readers with something to think about:

"Still, by the end [of the movie] it’s hard not to think that this particular joke has gone on too long. Perhaps it is time for Baron Cohen to have a go at pushing other acting boundaries harder, and give the Borats, the Brunos, the Aladeens of the world, and us, a rest."

Rene Rodriguez of the Kansas City Star went a bit further, anticipating Mr. Cohen may have even jumped the shark and turned around to give it a high five:

“The Dictator” does for “Sacha Baron Cohen” what “The Love Guru” did for Mike Myers: Reveal that this sharp, revered comedian with an uncanny ear for absurdist humor is a mere mortal capable of great folly.

In your humble author’s opinion, the proper analogy would be Baron Cohen and Tom Green.  After everyone eventually came to recognize who they were the precious candid camera comedy was no more.  The real magic was seeing how unwitting clerks would react to Tom Green using tens of thousands of pennies to buy groceries or unsuspecting patrons of a country and western bar in Tucson, Arizona joining Baron Cohen in a sing-along version of “Throw the Jew Down the Well.”

Whether Sasha Baron Cohen is going downhill as all other comics seem to be tragically destined to do is not our concern.

It is easy to make fun of cartoonish characters like Col. Ghaddafi, his guilded wardrobe of flowing dessert robes, colorful military ensemble and praetorian of virgin women. Ghaddafi has been the poster dictator for this type of comic cruelty since he co-starred with Fidel Castro, Yassar Arafat, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ayatolla Khomeini in 1988’s “The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!”

The creators of South Park and Team America, showed us it was ok to be racist when satirizing a despot (that is its own article), but didn’t his HD glasses, throwback tunic and cognac on tap deserve some barbs?

What about Serdar Turkmenbashi who turned the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan into his own private Disney World replete with golden statues of himself in every public space?  Sure, gas is only cents on the dollar, but isn’t a man who renamed the days of the week after himself a prime candidate for public humiliation, even posthumously?

Initially I’d have to agree with Aristotle that the right genre for dramatizing bad men is indeed comedy.  If we can’t remind those who refuse follow history or current events that these men still linger how else are we to reach them other than through Hollywood?

Then again, is it good to depict for the masses these buffoonish characters in caricature?  Is this robbing us from learning about some dark part of humanity we instinctually admire, gravitate to and are suckered in by?  In this case I would have to agree with Confucius; dead leaders need to be respected even when you hate them – they’re us.

What about when dictators, despots, tyrants – whatever you want to call them – aren’t funny?  What happens when they are banal, quiet or aplenty?  Who’s making fun of oligarchies?  It will doubtfully reoccur, while photos still circulate, that evil will once again feel like dawning black leather, jack boots, red arm bands and skulls.  If so they’d be easy to spot, wouldn’t that be nice?  Likewise, they won’t always resemble a human rainbow.

The Human Rainbow

While not originally comedic 2004’s film “Downfall” turned Hitler’s rants into a viral meme allowing anyone to subtitle the footage.  “The downfall of arguably the most evil man in history was thus transmuted through satire into everyday yip-yap” writes Stuart Jeffries of the Guardian.

Imagine trying to satirize the concept of “tyranny of the majority,” universal healthcare, repealing the 2^nd Amendment, states rights or the U.S.’s growing drone army.  Political cartoons accomplish this in small does, providing an almost ethereal comic relief, but nothing for a broad audience like “The Dictator” and other blockbuster movies.

Besides handily sating those who understand green fascism with Zoey’s (played by Anna Faris) zany eco-terrorizing rants “The Dictator” seems to come close to sacrificing a politically sacred cow.  Baron Cohen’s characters may be loosing steam, but his jabs at “democratic” systems of government as dictatorships couldn’t be a more prudent critique (if it is in fact a critique) of the West’s longstanding fetish with democracy.

In our “Responsibility to Protect” and the century long quest “to make the world safe for democracy” Baron Cohen may have opened some eyes to the idea that maybe democracy isn’t the summom bonum we’ve been sold for so long.  Since after World War II America has overthrown dictators left and right and in the last decade alone our foreign adventurism has cost America trillions of dollars and arguably millions of lives in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.  Our actions have solidified Russian and Chinese opposition effectively raising the prospect of renewed global tensions similar to the Cold War.

Seeking peace through democracy couldn’t be any more absurd.  Democratizing states are some of the most violent on Earth.  Democracies may not fight each other, but internally they’re a demonstrable mess.  In fact it is pure democracies which often yield the dictators we loath the most.

From F.A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, commentary on the rise of Nazi Germany:

“The inability of democratic assemblies to carry out what seems to be a clear mandate of the people will enevitably cause dissatisfaction democratic institutions.  Parliaments become regarded as ineffective talking shops unable or incompotent to carry out the taks for which they have been chosen.  The conviction grows that if efficient planning is to be done the direction must be taken out of politics and placed into the hands of experts – permanent officials or independent autonomous bodies.”

Just look at the popularity of Congress, can anyone make fun of that?  Is there any doubt left that the executive branch over the last decades has accumulated more and more power?  F.A. Hayek’s observation was based upon the German’s desire for “efficient planning” not liberty.  Under liberty individuals do the planning and democracy is subordinated to merely checks and balances not the ethos of a nation.

If we continue down this road of alienating other nations, what Barack Obama promised he would reverse, the real question becomes – will we be able to make fun of ourselves.

Hell on Earth: Mexican Drug War Yields 49 Headless Bodies

Topher Morrison

www.PurpleSerf.com

In what is widely believed to be the latest clash between two of Mexico’s main crime syndicates, the Zetas gang and the Sinaloa Cartel, officials struggle to identify 49 bodies.   The Associated Press (AP) reports that although the bodies were found without gunshot wounds some were heavily decomposed, decapitated and totally dismembered.

Victims of the latest carnage, the “Cadereyta 49” as they are coming to be referred, highlights the alarming notion that Mexico is teetering on the brink of narco-genocide, a type of national bloodletting of a wholly different order than previous eras. Rather than a government carrying out a policy of ethnic cleansing or oppression the devastation being experienced in Mexico is due almost entirely to a black market in the violent throws of realignment after the 2008 financial crisis blew a hole in the U.S. economy.

“Drug violence has killed more than 47,500 people since President Felipe
Calderon launched a stepped-up offensive when he took office in
December 2006. The campaign has seen the two cartels emerge as
 Mexico’s two most powerful. At least one of the two cartels
is present in nearly all of Mexico’s 32 states.”
 – Associated Press

Astonishingly, it was been reported the people of northern Mexico sometimes have no one protecting them as some municipalities, including Cadereyta, have been without law enforcement for years allowing cartels to move in to fill the void.  When police are there, however, they are often corrupt to the point were an entire police force was fired and disbanned.  According to BorderLandBeat.com:

Though hard to imagine the cruelty of cartels to gather large groups of innocents for shock and attention thereby highlighting messages or a perception of power, another perspective is it is far easier, and efficient in their viewpoint.

By targeting a bus load of migrants, or giving corrupt police the task to collect innocent victims off the streets.  Compliant and respectful of authorities, they are easy prey, no bullets, no fighting, no bloodshed sustained on the part of the criminals.

Effectively, like lambs to the slaughter.

The recent slayings are only the last of four massacres in the last month.  The most horrific detail is these victims are not believed to be rival gangsters or meddling journalists, but innocent bystanders.  According to the AP:

Some victims in earlier body dumps have turned out to be bakers, brick layers, even students – anyone who could be snatched off the streets in mass killings that one captured gang member said were designed to ‘cause terror.’

The mass murder of 35 last year in Boca del Rio, Veracruz is a testament to this gruesome tactic.  The very same city whose police officers were purportedly rounding up children for the massacre.

The Cadereyta municipality has seen homicides of this nature increase 10-fold over the past three years.  Another example of why Mexico’s border region was the most violent place on the planet last year, more so than even war torn Afghanistan.  More from the AP story:

"[In Cadereyta] there have been 74 killings in the first four months of this year in, compared to 27 over the same period in 2011 and seven in 2010, according to figures from Nuevo Leon state prosecutors.

The massacre follows the discovery of 14 men left in a van in downtown Nuevo Laredo on April 17 and 23 people found hanged or decapitated in the same border city May 4.

Eighteen dismembered bodies were left near Mexico’s second-largest city, Guadalajara, last week. Among the nine people identified in that attack were bricklayers, waiters and at least one student. None had criminal records."

This is all part of a sadistic strategy of “heating up the plaza” a way of luring local law enforcement, state police and Mexican military to crack down on a rival cartel’s activities.  A black market false flag so to speak.

The cartels are of course known for their barborous gambits.  Last year it was reported that Mexican drug lords are forcing innocent civilians into gladiatorial death matches.  Once a victor emerges they are “rewarded” by being forced to run a veritable kamakazi mission into a rival cartel’s territory.  According to Paul Thompson of the Daily Mail:

"Almost 200 bodies were found near the Mexican city of San Fernando with most having died from blunt force trauma.

Many are thought to be victims of the blood sport where cartel chiefs re-enact the gladiator contests."

In a country were citizens are defenseless, where the black market makes up a sizable portion of the economy, according to Havoscope $126.08 billion, and the state controls much of the rest it is hard to see a way forward.  There have been serious talks of legalizing illicit drugs throughout Central and South America, but without the major consumer, the United States, following suit all these efforts accomplish is open season for Cartels.

Some wonder why we don’t use our growing arsenal of drones to expidite justice.  The only question would be: when do the cartels get their own?  After all, they already have planes, trains, tanks and submarines.

Paul is Out, Liberty Coalition is In

Topher Morrison 

www.PurpleSerf.com

Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)

Paul has thrown in the towel, kind of.  He will not be competing in any of the states that have yet to vote, namely his home state of Texas and the other delegate mammoth, California.  Needless to say, Mitt Romney is the nominee, but this won’t be the last time we hear from Ron Paul.

From the Washington Times:

"Mr. Paul said he will continue to work to win delegates in states that have already voted and where the process of delegate-selection is playing out. He said that’s a way to make his voice heard at the Republican nominating convention in Tampa, Fla., in August."

For the coalition of conservatives, libertarians, constitutionalists, paleo conservatives, gold bugs, etc. who fell in line behind Dr. Paul this has always been more about the elevation of ideas than it has been a reaction against Mitt Romney or a “cult of personality” as some would have it.  Ron Paul is an admirable man, but as far as personality goes there are other more exciting libertarians – as we shall see.

This last drive was about building a home for sound money, constitutional government and a responsible foreign policy within the GOP.  That goal has been achieved.  You may be a Reagan Republican or a New Deal Democrat, but there is a new club to choose.  As I have mentioned before, 2012 bears witness to the rise of the Ron Paul Republican.

After the convention Ron Paul will most likely focus on his Campaign for Liberty and spreading the message he has for decades.  The 74-year-old Representative of Texas will conclude his official political life and will no doubt offer his support and endorsement to a new generation of libertarians.

Watch for politicians in the Liberty Caucus, the libertarian wing of the Republican Party to swell in the coming years.  Its members will undoubtedly be the next place to look for another Ron Paul.  Others to keep an eye on are:

Wayne Allen Root, vice presidential
candidate for the Libertarian Party
 and media personality

Sen. Rand Paul (R-TN)
Son of Ron Paul

Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI)
Endorsed Ron Paul for President (2012)
and one of the youngest federal office holders.

There is a growing awareness of what libertarianism, just check out the Top 100 Libertarian Blogs, the message is expanding.  The most amazing thing about the liberty perspective, however, is the lack of recidivism to the old left/right paradigm.  Unlike all of the ex-conservative and ex-liberal stories out there – once a libertarian always a libertarian.