From Glenn Greenwald’s Salon site: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/08/16/elections/index.html

There are many reasons why the media is eager to disappear Ron Paul despite his being a viable candidate by every objective metric. Unlike the charismatic Perry and telegenic Bachmann, Paul bores the media with his earnest focus on substantive discussions. There’s also the notion that he’s too heterodox for the purist GOP primary base.

But what makes the media most eager to disappear Paul is that he destroys the easy, conventional narrative — for slothful media figures and for Democratic loyalists alike. Aside from the truly disappeared former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson (more on him in a moment), Ron Paul is far and away the most anti-war, anti-Surveillance-State, anti-crony-capitalism, and anti-drug-war presidential candidate in either party.

How can the conventional narrative of extremist/nationalistic/corporatist/racist/warmongering GOP v. the progressive/peaceful/anti-corporate/poor-and-minority-defending Democratic Party (?) be reconciled with the fact that a candidate with those positions just virtually tied for first place among GOP base voters in Iowa?

Not easily, and Paul is thus disappeared from existence. That the similarly anti-war, pro-civil-liberties, anti-drug-war Gary Johnson is not even allowed in media debates — despite being a twice-elected popular governor — highlights the same dynamic.

However much progressives find Paul’s pro-Life views to be disqualifying (even if the same standard is not applied to Good Democrats Harry Reid or Bob Casey), and even as much as Paul’s domestic policies are anathema to liberals (the way numerous positions of Barack Obama ostensibly are: war escalation, due-process-free assassinations, entitlement cuts, and whistleblower wars anyone?), shouldn’t progressives be eager to have included in the discourse many of the views Paul uniquely advocates?

After all, these are critical, not ancillary, positions, such as: genuine opposition to imperialism and wars; warnings about the excesses of the Surveillance State, executive power encroachments, and civil liberties assaults; and attacks on the one policy that is most responsible for the unjustifiable imprisonment of huge numbers of minorities and poor and the destruction of their families and communities: Drug Prohibition and the accompanying War to enforce it.

[The irony is that ] GOP primary voters are supporting a committed anti-war, anti-surveillance candidate who wants to stop imprisoning people (dispropriationately minorities) for drug usage; Democrats [DailyKos, etc. ], by contrast, are cheering for a war-escalating, drone-attacking, surveillance-and-secrecy-obsessed drug warrior.

The steadfast ignoring of Ron Paul — and the truly bizarre un-personhood of Gary Johnson — has ensured that, yet again, those views will be excluded and the blurring of partisan lines among ordinary citizens on crucial issues will be papered over.

That’s precisely the opposite effect that a healthy democratic election would produce.

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We need to help out and support Ron Paul in the GOP Primaries, because he is the only person today on the political stage that is willing to put these very serious issues (anti-War, anti-Empire, anti-NAFTA, anti-Corporatism, anti-Central-Bank-Monopoly, anti-Drug-War, anti-Torture, anti-Police-State, etc.) out on the table for public discourse.

If Barack Obama is to be challanged from “the Left” on all these serious issues, it will come only from a Ron Paul GOP Nomination (whereas a Mitt Romney, Perry, or Bachmann nomination will only push Obama further to the right).

I want to see that public debate.
I want to see the Empire (and Obama) squirm as the truth is told.

This Country will never grow-up without such a public debate.

Vote in the GOP primaries for Ron Paul!