City Eyes Blog

I’ve been following this Ron Paul phenomena for a while. One one side of the issue it’s amazing to see someone so radically for the upholding of the constitution command such an army of followers, on the other, it’s a bit weird to see a majority of people who are so for some of the things that Ron Paul is against, I’m trying to figure out if they’re ignoring the negatives of Paul for the greater good or if they’re just not sure what he stands for as a whole.

Using http://www.2decide.com/table.htm as a general guideline for the candidates (specifically Ron Paul), I noticed a few things. One was that Kucinich seemed to agree far more with the Digg majority when it comes to his stances on important (and somewhat unimportant) issues. On the other hand, Digg favorite Ron Paul had a surprising amount of incongruent ideas when compared with the majority of what I’ve seen on Digg.

Here are some examples:

• Environment
  • For Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Drilling
  • Against the Kyoto Protocol
• Immigration
  • Against Citizenship path for Illegals
  • For a nationwide border fence
• Money/Government Programs
  • Against Minimum wage increase
  • Against Universal Healthcare
• Moral/Religious issues
  • Against embryonic Stem Cell research
  • Against same sex marriage
  • Not sure on position with same sex civil union
• Internet/Technology
  • Against Net Neutrality.

Some of these are more or less unimportant to the Digg community, but many of them I’ve seen brought up time and time again on the front page on Digg and in political arguments. I can say that Digg is pretty much steadfastly for Net Neutrality. I can also say with confidence that Digg users have almost unanimously bashed any candidate without the environment in mind, but Paul’s stance on the Kyoto Protocol and drilling in Alaska flies in the face of that majority opinion. What gives?

Now I’m not sure if this chart is really the most trustworthy resource. Maybe it’s not updated. Maybe I should do more research - but what is going to happen if these are completely true? Does one man have the power to completely change the Digg community, or will the members of Digg ignore these small discrepancies and support Paul based on his more sweeping ideas?