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Some of my friends think I’m cynical when I say we’re never going to convince the majority to vote for individual freedom. Most people who are steeped in the current left/right divide are honestly confused by what we believe. Let me show you two brief examples from the same newspaper story.

This is an Associated Press article that ran Sunday about Ron Paul in the lead-up to today’s Iowa caucuses. I want to look at two points, one which shows the reporter’s confusion and another which shows a voter’s confusion.

The article is just one of those feature stories with colorful details about a candidate leading up to an election. The sub-text of the piece is that Paul is sort of like a crazy uncle who acts in ways that nobody can predict.

In the fourth paragraph of the story, the reporter refers to Paul as “the mercurial congressman.” When I first saw that adjective, I wondered briefly whether the reporter misunderstands what it means to be mercurial. But then it hit me that he does know what the word means. He simply doesn’t know what Paul means.

To be mercurial is to be “subject to sudden or unpredictable changes of mood or mind,” according to my dictionary. Those of us who admire Paul realize that he’s anything but that. It’s his principled consistency that makes us admire him. But for those who spend all of their time with other politicians — those who see the Republican and Democratic versions of Big Government as opposites — his views are truly confusing.

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When I was a child, I admired Richard Nixon and supported him during the dark days of Watergate. Why not? He was my president. He was the great man who had been selected to “run the country.” My civic indoctrination taught me this. I eventually grew up and learned better, but it seems that many people never outgrown this childish desire to put politicians onto pedestals.

USA Today released its annual poll last week of who Americans admire most. I shouldn’t be disgusted — because I know human nature — but I am disgusted. Topping the list of men is Barack Obama. Topping the list of women is Hillary Clinton.

I’m not making a partisan statement in saying this. My issue isn’t that they’re both Democrats. I’d have felt the same way when it was George W. Bush during his administration. My issue with it its that we deify politicians in this culture — instead of honoring the people who actually achieve things worth doing.

Take a look at the list and see all the politicians. I’ve colored all the political figures in red. (And, yes, I count Michelle Obama and Laura Bush as politicians. You’d have never heard of them if they weren’t associated with politics.) On the women’s side, 80 percent are politicians and the two remaining choices are entertainers. Why do we admire these people?

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Is this the face of a criminal? Apparently so, because the Pinellas County, Fla., Sheriff’s Office has charged 16-year-old Allie Scott with stalking after she made an innocuous Facebook post.

Allie’s slide into “stalker territory” started with a simple mistake. She parked her brother’s car in the school parking lot in another girl’s parking spot. She was told to move the car, so that’s what she did at the end of the day. When she went to the car, though, she found that someone had scratched the body with a key.

She didn’t name any person who she thought did it, but she posted this on Facebook: “Oh, so you keyed my car. Your karma is going to be a whole lot worse than that.”

The school’s crack administration sprang into action, summoning this evil young woman to the office. Her mother was called to the school, too, in order to deal with the heinous crime. Then they were sent to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, where she was charged with the crime of stalking. Allie faces a court hearing next week. She was handed a three-day suspension at school.

This isn’t the face of a stalker, but it is the face of a victim of “zero tolerance” policies run amuck. Some school administrators today are so afraid of exercising any judgement that they’ve developed draconian policies that are applied with one-size-fits-all idiocy, whether the circumstances fit the “crime” or not.

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