The other problem is that David's ideas are not really "his ideas". He simply recycled XP and Agile concepts from the 90s. I for one prefer to read the originals (Kent Beck, Martin Fowler, Ron Jeffries, etc...)
Yes, Rails is the instantiation of a bunch of XP and Agile concepts. But here's the thing: concepts don't serve Web pages. Code serves Web pages. And even Martin Fowler doesn't take the time to write all his own code from scratch.
I don't respect DHH because his ideas are original. I respect him because he can convince thousands of programmers around the world to work together. That is not an easy trick - there's a reason why it has been compared to herding cats.
But anyway, a Railsite told me the other day that what he loves about Rails is that it's not especially new, conceptually. It's a series of mdthodologies that work great.