It's a question of the homogenizing intrusiveness of regulation -- of laws that lump us all together when we are clearly, magnificently different -- and it's about the skirting of the Constitution.

That's the Ron Paul argument, anyway.


On the second day of the Republican National Convention here in the Twin Cities, instead of spending time at the Xcel Center in St. Paul to watch the resurrected GOP reclaim their convention schedule from Hurricane Gustav, I went into downtown Minneapolis to the Target Center to observe the Ron Paul "Rally for the Republic."

For those of you who, like me before yesterday, don't know much about Congressman (R-TX) Paul's "Campaign for Liberty's" message, here are the bullet points:

#1, "Stick to the Constitution." It was written carefully for a reason, and we need to go back to it. In fact, we need to follow it to the letter, and that means...

#2, "Leave me alone." If something isn't specified in the Constitution the federal government can't swoop in and make you do it anyway. This is spelled out very clearly in the 10th Amendment:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

So, if you want your thing to become law you have to try at the state level or go ahead and attempt to get the Constitution amended. This leads us to...

#3, "Smaller government" -- although this argument would be a lot easier to understand if it were described as "Smaller FEDERAL Government," cuz the business of law-making can still become a Jarndyce & Jarndyce-like trainwreck at the state level.

But those are just the bullet points. In order to get a deeper understanding of these issues let's hear from two of the campaign's top insiders: former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, and Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform.