Ron Paul’s 90th birthday and the ‘tyranny of the majority’

Texas

Ron Paul celebrated his 90th birthday on Saturday at a freshly-built college events center in Southeast Texas. More accurately, hundreds of beaming Ron Paul fans and various libertarian podcast influencers celebrated Ron Paul’s birthday, and Ron Paul showed up to give a speech at the end. But everyone, Cockburn included, had a delightful time, full of amiable conversations, mostly modest self-promotion, and, of course, endless discussions about smashing the US financial system.

“I’m so enraged by the corruption I see around me, I would have dropped dead of a heart attack by now without the influence of Ron Paul,” Clint Russell of the Liberty Lockdown podcast was saying during an afternoon of speeches and Ron Paul testimonials. Russell then had to rush off to a VIP podcasting area to record an episode with antiwar podcaster Scott Horton and anti-Zionist podcaster Dave Smith. “If you want to take on what I’m saying, then take on what I’m saying,” Dave Smith said, with his usual self-aggrandizing volume.

Celebrity wattage was fairly low at the Ron Paul 90th Birthday Celebration. In the VIP area, we fell into conversation with a young man from Dallas who was holding, he informed Cockburn, a fifth edition copy of John Locke’s Treatise on Government. He’d gotten Thomas Massie and Justin Amash to sign it, and hoped to gain more signatures. Then he showed Cockburn a video on his cell phone – a private video, never shared to social media – of a grinning Massie slicing a plastic water bottle in half with a 400-year-old Japanese sword. “I bought the sword,” the man said, “and I like to break it out for special occasions.”

Back in the auditorium, Fox commentator Kennedy made an onstage appearance, wearing a pink caftan with glittery pineapples and tropical birds on it, “from the Helen Roper collection,” she said. “Part of embracing freedom is the freedom to dress like an 80-year-old woman in Palm Springs.” Cockburn admires the sentiment.

“We’re not only fighting for the right for us to party, we’re fighting for the right of anyone to party,” Kennedy said, adding, “we are the fun ones.” Then she introduced another one of the fun ones, black-leather-jacket wearing Reason editor-at-large and friend of Cockburn’s Nick Gillespie, who she called “the vampire of liberty.”

Gillespie said, of Ron Paul, “we celebrate his first 90 years and look forward to his second 90 years.” A bit later, he escorted Cockburn around the events center, introducing him to various characters, including Thomas Walls, the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Liberland, “the world’s freest country,” a microstate that has taken up shop in a formerly disputed area along the Danube between Serbia and Croatia. Walls, who also has a Florida address for “conducting business,” introduced Cockburn to a fellow Liberlander who technically lives in Singapore but has a Liberland “e-citizenship card.” Cockburn isn’t entirely sure how all this Liberland stuff works, but intends to do some more research.

Above-average BBQ was served, and while Cockburn gorged himself on pulled pork and smoked chicken, he heard Dave Smith say “objectivism is the wrong fucking word,” and immediately moved to a different area so he didn’t have to listen to the rest of the conversation.

The evening program began and soon Tulsi Gabbard, the US Director of National Intelligence appeared, looking fine as always. She didn’t release any files, though Cockburn and everyone else in the ballroom would have liked her to. She said that Ron Paul “carries with him what we call in Hawaii the Aloha Spirit wherever he goes.”

About five minutes before she went on, Gabbard said, Ron Paul came up to her and said “People keep saying, Dr. Paul, you have inspired me, you have moved me, you have changed my life. But I’m just talking about monetary policy. How can I have changed your life?”

Because, Gabbard told Paul, “you give people hope.”

After a video message from Senator Rand Paul, who’d be coming to Texas in a few weeks, he said, for a “family celebration,” Ron Paul himself took the stage.

The crowd rose as one and began chanting “END THE FED! END THE FED!”

“So it’s over and done with?” Ron Paul said. “We can retire? Where did all these people come from?”

He then proceeded to give a somewhat rambling but not atypical for Ron Paul speech about the dangers of US monetary policy and of foreign military adventuring. He spoke for 15 minutes, without notes. “I happen to be annoyed by the word democracy,” he said. “That’s nothing more than the tyranny of the majority.”

This line, as did many others, got a roaring, standing ovation. The crowd, young and old, hung on every word. No one was yawning or using their phone to do anything other than take video.

“When you get together with like-minded people, you’re supposed to have fun,” Ron Paul said. “So let me ask you one thing: have you been having fun at this meeting?”

The crowd whooped.

“Freedom is POPULAR!” Ron Paul said.

Everyone stood and applauded, and began chanting Ron Paul’s name.

“RON PAUL! RON PAUL! RON PAUL!”

“Oh,” said Ron Paul. “OK.”

They all sang “Happy Birthday.” Ron Paul waved and thanked his supporters. And then everyone poured into the lobby, buoyed by good vibes and a modest amount of beer, and went home to their families, happy and free.