The Democrats in Congress and the leading Democratic candidates for president (accompanied by the self-imposed muzzling of party chair Howard Dean) have ceded the Constitutional ground to Ron Paul. They have no one but themselves to blame - they spent the last year as the Congressional majority cultivating the ground for the emergence of someone like Ron Paul, and/or a presentable independent candidate for president able to buy his or her way onto television, and thus onto the ballot and into office.

This opening and opportunity for a ground-swell of affirmative public support (as opposed to simply anti-Republican 'blockading' support) - to reclaim and trumpet the tenets of our Constitution while denouncing our descent into debt-laden Empire from our former Constitutional Republic - has been slapping the Democrats in the face for more than a year. In response, they purposely and deliberately turned their backs, except for a few lonely voices here and there.

A year ago, I might have cared that it was a Republican, rather than a Democrat, who spied that opening and sped through it first. But in fact, because of the way the Congressional Democrats like Harry Reid have put Republicans (and the presidency in general) on a pedestal to be worshipped when it comes to whole subject areas of national policy, it may be that only a Republican could have taken such full advantage of the opportunity as has Ron Paul, when it comes to matters of war and peace, for example. Regardless, I'm past caring whether the Democrats get burned for dropping the ball on so many fronts for so long. If Ron Paul can reacquaint this nation with its Constitution, against all odds, more power to him.

If Paul were to become president, I think we'd suddenly see a reawakened, oppositional and truly independent Legislative Branch of government, unlike anything we've seen in the last seven years. That would represent vital Constitutional progress, a desperately-needed move toward sanity and democracy in federal affairs, and it's something that an establishment Democratic president seems unlikely to trigger in today's corruptly-led Democratic Congress.

Ron Paul, unlike almost everyone else in a position to raise public awareness, is someone who may read and publicize the following, stunning account of last week's U.N. betrayal of the elected Iraqi parliament's majority will. A betrayal of democracy done at the behest of our Executive Branch with the silent complicity of our Congress [excepting, in particular, Rep. Bill Delahunt, who deserves the gratitude of everyone who cherishes democracy for his efforts here], that demands an accounting and a public airing. The ongoing subversion of democracy both here at home and in Iraq is beyond belief:

On Tuesday [12/18], the Bush administration and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pushed a resolution through the U.N. Security Council extending the mandate that provides legal cover for foreign troops to operate in Iraq for another year.

The move violated both the Iraqi constitution and a law passed earlier this year by the Iraqi parliament -- the only body directly elected by all those purple-finger-waving Iraqis in 2005 -- and it defied the will of around 80 percent of the Iraqi population.

[snip]

At the end of November, Foreign Affairs Minister Zebari was again called to testify before the Iraqi parliament. He promised, unequivocally, that any request to extend the mandate "will not be presented to the U.N. Security Council prior to its submission to the Iraqi parliament for deliberation."

But that wasn't to be. In the letter sent this week, Iraqi lawmakers' demand was unambiguous: "We ask the Security Council not to accept any letter requesting renewal that is not ratified by the parliament. Such a letter would be deemed illegal and unconstitutional according to the laws of Iraq," it read.

No debate was held in the Iraqi legislature, and on Tuesday the Security Council voted unanimously to renew the mandate.

[snip]

One can only wonder, now that the United States has "liberated" Iraq from Saddam Hussein, just who will liberate Iraq from the United States?

http://alternet.org/module/printversion/71144

Does Mitt Romney, does today's Republican Party, really want us to believe that the federal government gives us life and liberty, or "keeps" us alive and free?!! Talk about authoritarianism, talk about a communist-like worship of The State, talk about tyranny.

What a sick perversion not only of the core belief of so many faiths, but of our nation's founding insights into human nature that resulted in the organization of government so as to protect us from government incursion upon our inalienable birthrights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. An American system of government designed with the idea that, unless tightly controlled and overseen by its people, the powers of government are nothing but a threat to our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

But Mitt Romney and his ilk apparently prefer the King's Way - where our rights instead issue from one human being and his whims, and where the people don't know their own minds, and can't be allowed to decide for themselves how they want to live and be governed and to arrange themselves for the protection of their persons and their nation from the (often but not always) unpredictable, intermittent, but never-vanquished risk of violent attack.

Mitt Romney's condescending paternalism is the antithesis of democracy, self-government and free will, and - vacuous poseur though he is, never mind how he may personally tremble at the idea of liberty for all - he deserves to be treated with the contempt and disgust he's so thoroughly earned by peddling this twisted, undemocratic, and anti-Constitutional cant.