We just returned from Ron Paul’s Rally for the Republic at the Target Center in Minneapolis, where FFF’s program director, Bart Frazier, and I manned a booth for FFF. What an exciting event! Great speeches interspersed with great music! And best of all, a fantastic audience of 10,000 freedom-loving people! There was nothing but positive energy in that arena.
Here’s an article about the rally.
What a contrast between Ron Paul’s rally and the Republican National Convention. At the Rally for the Republic, the spirit was one of freedom and, therefore, opposition to such things as the Patriot Act, torture, spying on Americans, enemy-combatant doctrine, Iraq, war on terrorism, cancellation of habeas corpus, the Federal Reserve, and ever-growing assaults on civil liberties.
Of course, those are things that people at the Republican National Convention are most proud of and pleased with. In their minds, anything goes to keep Americans “safe,” even if it involves government officials’ breaking the law. What passes for freedom among that crowd is the “freedom” of government officials do whatever they want no matter what the Constitution says, so long as it’s part of the “war on terrorism.”
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the people over at the RNC exacted petty revenge on Ron Paul by denying his staffers the customary access to the convention floor. It’s not just that Ron has refused to endorse John McCain and it’s not just that Ron had the temerity to hold a pro-freedom rally across town after the Republicans refused to permit him a speaking slot at the convention.
What these people are most concerned about is that the Ron Paul phenomenon is causing more and more people to discover libertarian principles. Republican politicians and their ilk (along with their Democratic counterparts) are not dumb: They know that if a critical mass of people who want a free society is reached, that would spell the end of the federal welfare-warfare empire and the vicious war for control over such empire waged every four years between the Republicans and Democrats.