$30 million dollars and countless volunteer hours later, and
what has it achieved? Ron Paul is
done with the election, with barely a mention from the media.
As I wrote earlier, virtually all of the resources and
efforts of a losing campaign are quickly forgotten. To the extent that the
campaign will motivate young people about politics, it will teach them exactly
the wrong lesson, for political campaigns have never been a primary means of intellectual
change. Imagine what all that money and
enthusiasm could have done under the auspices of an organization dedicated to
intellectual activism, such as the Ludwig von Mises or the Ayn Rand Institute. Of course, few people get as excited about the
work of a bunch of economics and philosophy nerds as they do about a political
campaign. But that is exactly the
problem with our anti-intellectual, concrete-bound culture.