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Like everyone else in the political/ media/ fundraising world —or at least everyone not totally bamboozled by Beltway bigshots—I am fascinated by the internet phenomenon of Congressman Ron Paul's apparently open-source wiki-campaign for the Republican Party's presidential nomination.

You'll be hearing a lot more about the remarkable Paul campaign as you read this. That's because on Sunday, December 16, the 234^th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, Paul's volunteers threw another "moneybomb". They hoped to raise $10 million in one day, from more than 100,000 individual donors.

On November 5, Guy Fawkes Day, they raised a record $4.3 million from 18,000 donors. This time, they raised $6.026 million, beating John Kerry's one-day take of 5,7 million in 2004.

I hasten to say that, for legal reasons, VDARE.COM cannot take a position on electoral politics. And it cannot endorse candidates.

(However, in September, we did publish an illuminating interview with Dr. Paul on the relationship between libertarianism and immigration, which we published under the headline Ron Paul: "I Believe In National Sovereignty". You can read it here. We hope also to interview other candidates on the intellectual issues raised by America's immigration disaster in the next few weeks).

Nevertheless, I still can't help brooding about the Paul phenomenon.

One thought, rather wistful, that occurs to me: how much easier it is to raise money for political candidates than for the development of ideas.

It's understandable. People are naturally drawn to the horse-race, to the focus on personalities, to the thrill of participating in a hot current event.

Yet, ultimately, the development of ideas matters much more. I am not particularly a fan of the British economist John Maynard Keynes, but I still don't think it's possible to put it better than he did in the conclusion of his major work, The General Theory:

"[T]he ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."

It is ideas, developed over many years, that draw Paul's disparate coalition together and inspire its many volunteers.

For example, two of Paul's ideas that especially delighted us at VDARE.COM:

the importance of ending the current interpretation of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, whereby the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens are technically U.S. citizens;

the necessity and utility of the nation-state—unlike the late Wall Street Journal editor Bob Bartley, who once told me he believed the nation-state was finished and the U.S. would eventually merge with its regional neighbors (although he never dared say this in print.)

Both these ideas have preoccupied VDARE.COM since it began, on Christmas Eve 1999.

I'm not saying that Paul was influenced by us. He's utterly his own man.

But when I read that another presidential candidate tried to brush off a voter by telling him that birthright citizenship is "in the Constitution", only to have him reply that it's just an amendable interpretation, not the original intent at all—well, I think that voter might well have read the definitive article by Howard Sutherland that we posted back in 2001.

Of course, Howard's article is still available, free like all our articles, in our archives. It gets constant traffic and readers constantly email it out. You can read it here.

What this means is that investing in think-tanks like VDARE.COM and its parent VDARE Foundation is a bargain! We can operate for a whole year on a fraction of one of Paul's "moneybombs".

But we do need at least something. Call it a "moneybullet".

A second thought that occurs to me, contemplating the Paul phenomenon: what a gift from God this internet is.

Of course, Paul's campaign would be impossible without it. But casting around to avoid the unpleasant work of writing this appeal, I came across this passage that I wrote during our Christmas appeal last year, when Washington was still reverberating from the Democrats' seizing control of the U.S. House and Senate the previous month:

"The Washington Times reported Monday morning that amnesty for the 12-20 million illegal aliens is likely the only thing that the Bush White House and the Democratic-controlled Congress will be able to agree on next year. But it may not work out the way Beltway insiders think—because now the internet provides ways for patriotic Americans to organize. VDARE.COM is proud to be part of this grass-roots American resistance—but we can only do it if we have money to pay our hard-working writers."

My underlining! I was delighted to see this prediction, which I'd actually forgotten making.

That the internet was critical to the astonishing defeat of the Kennedy-Bush Amnesty this past summer is, of course, now widely acknowledged.

And the defeat of the Kennedy-Bush Amnesty is the key reason all the Republican presidential candidate are now at least paying lip-service to stopping illegal immigration—and why Hillary Clinton fumbled, possibly fatally, a question in the recent Democratic debate on drivers licenses for illegals.

It may well lead to the immigration issue becoming a major issue (finally!) in the Presidential election this fall.

In fact, the defeat of Kennedy-Bush may well be seen as the point at which patriotic immigration reform became inevitable.

But it couldn't happen without the internet. The miracle of the internet has made it possible for a tiny operation like VDARE.COM to break through the opinion oligopoly and reach a large and growing audience purely by word of mouth. Or, strictly speaking, click of mouse—our articles are Googled into and forwarded by readers to friends all over the world.

All we have to do is come up with facts and arguments that don't appear anywhere else.

If they are posted, readers will come.

Of course, in the area of immigration and related National Question topics, it's very easy to find new facts and arguments. A particularly vicious form of Political Correctness has paralyzed debate, not just in liberal but also in the purportedly "conservative" media.

But we have to work—hard. We post every day. Our articles are of the highest professional quality. I didn't spend thirty years in the Mainstream Media for nothing. (Well, for almost nothing. But that's another story). The last seven years have been an enormous effort for everyone at VDARE.COM. I came by that airbrush honestly!

And—we need money.

Not a lot of money—we don't have to pay printers and postage, like even the smallest treezine. ("Treezine" = paper, as opposed to electronic "e-zines." Geddit?) We don't have expensive offices. In fact, we don't have any offices—we work entirely virtually.

But we do need money. Here's why.

One of the really impressive things about the internet, to me as a long-time professional journalist, is that it demonstrates the sheer amount of real talent there is out there. It turns out there is no magic to journalism. There are vast numbers of able, serious, people out there who can beat professional journalists at their own game—if they have the outlet. The internet has provided that outlet.

But if you study the blogosphere, you also realize that even the most brilliant bloggers have a relatively short half-life. They burn out.

Writing on a sustained basis is harder work than it looks, especially if you have to back it up with the sort of research we insist upon at VDARE.COM. It cannot be kept up on air.

Paying writers modest sums has been VDARE.COM's secret weapon.

It gets their attention. Cheers them up. Inspires them.

There are only 15 days left to give tax-deductibly to VDARE.COM in 2007.

Please hit us with a moneybullet now!

Many thanks,

 

Peter Brimelow 

Readers report that PayPal is now making TWO confusing efforts to get you to sign up for its proprietary system option when you just want to make a one-time credit card payment to VDARE.com.

When you click on the "credit card" link below (HINT!), you go to our donation page. If you click on "make a donation" in the credit card section, you see the PayPal login stuff on the right - and the Don't Have PayPal account?/credit card option in very small print on the bottom left.

If you click on "continue" there, basically the same page comes up EXCEPT THAT you can enter a payment amount, top right.

If you do that and then again click on "continue", bottom left, it gives up trying to get you to sign up for PayPal and takes you to a page where you can enter your credit card information.  

PayPal is a great system, but its marketing people are aggressive - like those annoying ads on newspaper websites, something I really want to avoid on VDARE.COM. (HINT! HINT)

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