The Ron Paul Meetup debacle

Tonight I went to a Bay Area Ron Paul Meetup, and what I found really struck me.

Having become a loyal Ron Paul supporter only a few weeks ago, most of what I know about him I've learned from the dozen or so youtube videos of him that I've come across this month. Tonight's Meetup sounded like a great opportunity to meet like-minded believers in "Paulitics" and learn more about the politician (a word I am ashamed to use to describe Ron Paul).

I went into the Meetup with little in the way of expectations. What I encountered, however, I would never have predicted. The organizer of the Meetup was a fellow with his heart in the right place who had an ardent desire to 'organize' the Meetup. After everyone went around and introduced themselves, we dove into his printed agenda. Several minutes into his agenda, he actually used Robert's Rules of Order to move to elect a steering committee of "probably 4 people, because 3 seems like too few and 5 seems like about as many as you'd want". This was before anyone had more than 10 seconds of knowledge about the potential candidates in the election.

The host then yielded the floor to someone who took us through the different types of incorporated entities we could become, depending on which activities we took part in. We had an expert on 527 orgs and 501(c)(3)s explain several of the pros and cons of each type. Which ones make opening bank accounts easier, which ones are tax deductible, etc.

Next, prepared signup sheets for a set of 8 committees were passed around. Since the discussion about the steering committee election was met with some degree of hostility, these 8 committees were not called committees; rather they were given the Newspeakish title 'focus areas' by the host.

By this time, my mind was wandering. I had come to hear about and talk about Ron Paul. I realized that my expectation was not to hear Robert's Rules or be asked to elect other strangers to committees within the Meetup, but rather to hear what brought the others who were present out on a Monday night at 7 PM to talk about Ron Paul.

Then the irony hit me -- the bureaucracy we had generated (or more precisely, that the Meetup host had generated and the large majority of the room had passively gone along with) within the space of an hour was a symptom of exactly the same 'organization' disease that currently plagues the American government and that Ron Paul has been an opponent of since the 70s. One of Paul's core values is in the superiority of limited government and free enterprise.

If even a group of supporters of Ron Paul can come together and within an hour create a stifling bureaucracy, then imagine the potential for over-organization with a similarly sized group with pro-big-government ideals.

Early in the Meetup, one of the more free-spirited attendees (named Starchild) pointed out that this Meetup should be run in a more democratic fashion. I host's response stuck with me: "For now, we'll run it as a dictatorship in order to be more efficient and get more done. We can be a democracy later".

I've heard that before!