Bill Kauffman on Ron Paul

"American political discourse, defined as it is by Arthur Schlesinger’s ghost and Bill Bennett’s ghostwriter, has contracted to such a pinpoint that I half expect a Big Bang to blow it all apart, as forbidden thoughts—Peace! Liberty! Localism!—bust loose from the thought prisons and the air is filled with the glorious cacophony of patriotic debate as free men and women relearn the language and habits of vigorous citizenship,' he begins — The Republic Strikes Back. About the Good Doctor, he writes:

Ron Paul started something. Or, rather, he revealed something: liberty has a constituency. I was heartened mightily by the crowd in Minneapolis, which was overwhelmingly young. What a rousing sight: bright and enthusiastic kids afire with the spirit of liberty, of resistance to regimentation and the tyranny of standardization. Homeschoolers, homebrewers, punk rockers, evangelical Christians, radical Kansans, and reactionary New Englanders. These were American girls and boys, beautifully stained in the American grain, hip to Republican lies and numbing Democratic statism. Hell no, they won’t go. They’ll not be cannon fodder for the wars of Bush-Cheney or Obama-Biden. They demand honesty and liberty and respect for all things small and smaller; they have nothing but scorn for the liars and whores who run the empire.

(Mr. Kauffman also introduces us to the man "whom Harvard College Observatory director Harlow Shapley called 'the world’s greatest non-professional astronomer'" — Ohio’s Backyard Scientist.)