How should political donations be handled? Should any American have the inalienable right to donate money to his or her candidate of choice? Or should a litmus test be done in regards to each person’s belief system, such that they have to qualify in order donate? How’s this supposed to work in a free society?

Donating money to a political campaign is a free expression. It is a fundamental right we should all have. No one should ever seek to remove that right from a person.

Is America the type of country where such a right could be lost? Where a person’s freedom to express their opinion through political donations can be curtailed? Unfortunately yes. Returned donations are all too common, in fact. An accusation is launched in the media that such-and-such a person represents such-and-such an idea and that he or she donated to so-and-so’s campaign. Candidates react so fast in kowtowing to the media, that one gets whiplash just watching them. Candidates react this way, despite the fact that it is unethical to do so.

Political donations, so long as they are lawful, should never be returned. It’s a fundamental right that people have. We don’t allow people the freedom to express their opinion, only when we agree with that opinion. That’s nonsensical and dangerous. In this campaign only one man has actually followed this principle, and the media is making a big deal about it, but sending out the wrong message.

On December 16, 2008 Ron Paul set a record for one day political donations. He brought in over $6,000,000 from over 58,000 individual donors. Despite how big this news was, I didn’t get a CNN news bulletin in my email box. (For comparison, I’m pretty sure I got one when Paris Hilton was arrested.) The media did note the story, but it was hardly front page news. That Romney criticized Huckabee for criticizing Bush, now that was a top story.

Now one month ago, an idiot racist, who runs a idiot white supremacist site called Stormfront, donated $500 to Ron Paul’s campaign. Now, suddenly that’s news. Huh? Who cares whether this guy donated to Ron Paul’s campaign or not? That’s his right. Maybe he likes Ron Paul’s views on eliminating the IRS. Whatever. Who cares. Clearly, he doesn’t represent Ron Paul’s views.

To give you an idea here of how the media is treating this, if I go to Google news and search, “Tea Party” and “Ron Paul” I get a little over 350 hits. If I type in “Stormfront” and “Ron Paul” I get over 200 hits.

So Ron Paul having the biggest political contribution day in the history of the world is only marginally more important than Ron Paul getting $500 from a white supremacists one month ago?

One is huge news, the other isn’t even newsworthy.

Ironically, the effect here is that not only do the mainstream media have a stranglehold on traditional media, they are also (perhaps unintentionally) attempting to restrict how free individuals express their opinion through their political donations. It doesn’t matter whether the man is an idiot with evil views or not, that’s his money and he should be free to donate it as he sees fit.

The real problem, as I see it, is that so many candidates really are bought and paid for. They stand for nothing. They pander to a bunch of special interest groups. They take money from those groups, then through the main stream media push a phantasmagoria of sugar coated special interest views on the people. The views go from the special interests to the candidate to the people. So, when we learn that this or that special interest group funded a candidate, it does cause one to get disconcerted.

However, in Paul’s case he isn’t serving up some kind of Frankenstein-ish platform forced together willy-nilly, so that he can appeal to a bunch of interest groups. Instead, Paul actually has a platform based on — gasp — principles. He has placed his platform out there, and people can support it or not support, as they see fit.

To simplify. The so called “mainstream” candidates have a platform crafted together to get money. The money comes first, the platform is only secondary.

In Paul case, the platform comes first, the money is only a secondary concern. Therefore there’s no influence from the money.

Ron Paul is running a campaign the way it is supposed to be run, so there’s no sense that he needs to be returning money to anybody. There’s no need to be curbing anyone’s individual and inalienable right to express their opinion through a political donation to a candidate.

When you stop and think about it, Ron Paul is running his campaign the way a campaign ought to be run. Principles first.

Why is it that the mainstream media is telling us otherwise?