Perspective on Ron Paul in New Hampshire

Perspective on Ron Paul in New Hampshire

[disclaimer: I grew up in New England, and am a member of the Free State Project]

Forget Hannity and Huckabee. From the loaded questions to the audience microphone tricks, dismiss FOX's exquisitely obvious and ill-conceived manipulations. As the good Doctor said: these things are totally irrelevant.

Observe instead the underlying trends -- the causes, or cause.

Dr. Paul says "freedom is popular," and he is correct. It came up again the other day when I used it to explain the death of racism in America with "... and the other great unifying principle of America is that it is a Melting Pot." I am certain to write on that too, but the "other" I was speaking of is The Constitution Of The United States. The law of the land.

See, America is different. It is unlike any other country on Earth. By design, America has no other identity than a constitutional republic, a form of government that serves only by the formal consent of the sovereign people of the territory that adopt it. This government is OURS, and we are not THEIR subjects nor civilians, ever. This is not true in any other country on Earth.

Dr. Paul correctly identified this fact, stated it publicly, and is getting the massive approval he deserves. Our current government is not just a wee bit unconstitutional here'n there, it is 99% absurdly over-the-top unconstitutional, exceeding its mandate to dare I say an alarming degree. To the extent The People approve of this is the metric of how much we are missing the point of government itself, or at least THIS government. One argues that, in fact, as governments ostensively exist to solve disputes, the ultimate motive of any bureaucrat will be to perpetuate disputes, so that they may keep their job. However, and however noble the motive, The Constitution was written (by some very smart folks, I'll add) toward the end of preventing exactly that: the stifling uselessness that is an oppressive State. It clearly delimits the exact scope of what the Federal government is, and is not.

Is it any wonder how we now have a grossly oppressive government? "You will [emphasis HIS] lose your liberties," said Ashcroft. Do we wonder why The People respond to a man who points straight at the damned elephant in the living room and says "THAT elephant"?

If you do, you shouldn't. The Constitution is THE great unifying principle of this nation. Not "democracy", not "civil rights" -- The Constitution, or possibly the so-called Rights of Man that the former was written to protect. No need to split hairs, though. I'm pointing at the 900lb document in the room, and it says "We The People...".

Well, here we are, The People. If you're already a rEVOLutionary, you know that there's blood in the water, that it's different this time. I'm sure many don't know why it's different (which is why I post), but there is no doubt that the RPR™ is a political juggernaut that is going to steamroll over any opposition, as it has been doing consistently since he announced. This is not the schoolgirl starry-eyed idealism of FDR or JFK (or Obama) -- no, what most RP supporters feel is a deep burning conviction that they are being attacked and must defend themselves. That their rights are at stake. And many are beginning to see that when the rights go away, so do the bread, circuses, mortgages, gas prices, body parts, and honest political debates.

Paulites, your soundbite is: "The Constitution is the ultimate centrist position, the great unifier, the one thing we MUST all agree on".

They can't dismiss it and they can't ignore it, and if Dr. Paul's enormous popularity is any indication, they cannot suppress it either.

I think that in most folks in this nation there's some left over memory from high school civics that knows there's a reason why they're supposed to like The Constitution. Something about checks and balances, or rights maybe. I think they've been so lied to and so distracted that artificial senility has taken hold, and that many can't remember very much at all beyond last night's sports scores. But when they see this obscenely unchecked and unbalanced (in every sense of that word) government careening around like P. J. O'Rourke's teenage boy with whiskey and car keys, some flicker of intellect fires in those long dormant corners of the mind. And then you get this Democratic Congress -- doing everything in their power to evade doing what they were so clearly elected to do: end the war.

Is there any wonder that the sleeping giant is waking? The alarm clock is as loud as a jackhammer on a Saturday morning, how could we possibly miss it?

I also think that most of us see it when we look in the mirror, and that fewer are willing to suck in the paunch and pretend we "still got it". I've made my decision, in the abstract literal: I've made ALL my decisions, when it comes to politics, and I endorse Dr. Paul as the only guy who even comes close to being able to fix this clusterfuck. That he actually hits the nail on the head nigh perfectly is nigh irrelevant as well -- he's the ONLY choice.

And America is beginning to understand that, even if FOX does not, Alan Colmes excepted. Hence why Paul won the debate, the UNH students, and frankly the vast majority of residents of the Live Free Or Die state. That primary is his.

RP08!