The Ron Paul Legacy of Freedom: How people will govern themselves.

Future historians will debate the point. Historians being what they are there will doubtless be as many opinions as there are historians.

“ If the Ron Paul Campaign had been competent would we still have taken back America?”

They may hold conferences to consider the points, assay the individuals involved; there will be no disagreement that it was through the candidacy of Ron Paul that the world of political campaigns changed forever, moving into networking, as opposed to hierarchy; The real question will be the motives of those in charge of the official campaign. That is natural; the Ron Paul Campaign overturned that political hierarchy first.

Could the Campaign HQ in Arlington, Virginia have held politics on its previous course if it had been run competently, as the other presidential campaigns were run? What if they had possessed some modicum of experience? What if they had known that the media uses a Day Book, into which all campaigns enter their events? What if they had had a steering committee, standard for presidential campaigns? Lots of what ifs to be discussed by historians. We can be sure they will be.

Did those entrusted by Ron understand that for revolution to take place they must force activists to react against authority?

The formal campaign in Arlington, Virginia was from the first instance unable to do anything much but antagonize activists, forcing volunteers to work on their own. They refused to put up the Congressman's schedule; they refused to pay so Ron could participate in what proved to be the pivotal South Carolina debate until activists inundated them.

The historians will debate if those failures was intentional or sheer incompetence. Those details will interest only historians.

Those failures made it necessary for individual activists, moved by the words and principles of Ron Paul, to look about them and use what had been made available through the Internet to take the campaign into their own hands.

And so a new world of governance through persuasion and consensus was born.

The Internet erupted. Signs in yards, on the highways, and in the sky appeared from the pocketbooks and work of ordinary people. Graphics produced and shared online, with requests filled by volunteers became routine. Ron Paulists began monitoring ballot access; they learned how to conduct registration drives, how to do videos, how to organize; how to fund raise. They had to and they did so unburdened by anything but the need to promote their candidate.

Through its absolute failure, therefore the corporatized, official campaign made it necessary to reinvent the forms for political action to which we had become accustomed. As Jefferson said in the Declaration, “...all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

The campaign flowed past Arlington, Virginia to make history by forging new tools of human action. That, history will note. The people had had enough of regular government and those who acted like one.

When you build new tools that work those tools get used.

Those same tools, decentralized strategies for broad social cooperation that lower the cost for accomplishing rapid change, are now being applied to all human action. The CorporaState will feel the impact like a sledge hammer to the side of the head.

Not to say it is going to be easy; but now it is impossible to stop. The people know how to do it. A taste of their own, individual power was all they needed.

Forget Blackwater; Erik Prince will return to playing with toy soldiers and conducting seminars for hunters once he gets out of prison. The War in Iraq will sputter to a halt. The debates on whether we should have gone will cease. Revolution is happening.

The continued ability of corporations and government to redirect our money into their pockets always depended on their cleverness in keeping a hierarchal social, political, and business structure in place. The Ron Paul Revolution changed the rules.

The change took place first in politics but is essentially spiritual, reaching into the minds and hearts of people across the world to whisper, “you are all One.”

If that sounds much too mystical to be relevant to politics, think again. We are spiritual beings in material form no matter what our faith. Today much of the Earth is Christian, not through preaching but through demonstrating the benefits of living out that truth; Christians believe we are One in Him. But the connection between us is understood by all faiths.

In his book, “The Rise of Christianity,” Rodney Stark demonstrated this using the staid tools of sociology. The words of Jesus said, “Whatsoever you do for another you do also for Me.” Those early Christians took that literally, reaching out to nurse the victims of plague, ignoring the religious affiliation of those they struggled to save. To each they granted through the truth of their actions the inborn autonomy of self-ownership. Women were free, a freedom they would enjoy until the Christian Church became hierarchal with Constantine.

Think of that early Church-State, the one that imposed a hierarchy where there had been freedom to live in brotherhood with all. Today we reverse direction.

Individual freedom, free choice, enforced by custom and law, enriches all of us in more ways than we can possibly imagine because the world so created shatters all of our own self-framed limitations and prejudices.

Now, this moment, the flow of time and power is moving away forever from the concentration of power in the hands of a few and towards the means each of us can use to realize our own personal power.

The invisible hand, all of us together, is flexing its muscles.

So today the Ron Paul Air Force takes to the air with banners and blimps to exclaim that all who read should, “Google Ron Paul;” an invitation for connection that transcends all boundaries. People are googling and finding ideas that make sense spoken by a man who demonstrably means what he says. That truth is ripping through the long winded and carefully manicured images delivered through corporate media.

The contrast is striking.

Websites built by volunteers provide tools for action. People gather in their communities to sign the Revolution from bridges and sidewalks. The Granny Warriors take it on the road, uniting young and old in a voice that includes all ages and ethnicities.

You can see it.

You saw the disbelief on the faces of the 'other' Republican candidates while they listened to Ron say the simple truth as Ron has always done.

No one was more surprised than Ron himself at the reaction.

The Frame imposed by the 'debates' was the corporate – government - media attempt to limit our choices and so keep us on their grids; that frame is gone now, replaced by potentials that broaden and deepen every day. Breaking the framing of the CorporaState was the essential precondition for real change.

The people are now doing it themselves, demonstrating how a single, once marginalized, political campaign can change everything.

Soon they will discover that the possibilities are limitless even as they exercise their minds to make sure that they avoid the many attempts to redirect them and their resources into the pockets of those who scheme to build their own little empires. That was to be expected. Success attracts lots of hungry leeches.

Many who formerly thought of themselves as leftists or progressives are discovering that in the Ron Paul Revolution there is no left and right.

Ron Paul has committed himself to rolling back the Federal Government. The rest is up to the people. A people who govern themselves do it from their own homes, their own communities, using those too long overlooked tools of persuasion and consensus building.

All of us were on the corporate grids. In climbing off we will use the same tools, cooperation and innovation, sharing knowledge freely, those are the tools at the foundation of the Ron Paul Revolution.

Individuals are renting houses in New Hampshire to house volunteers who will work through the primary. Those volunteers, many of them professionals, will then move on to South Carolina and Florida. Individuals are putting their lives on hold; just as if there was a war going on.

That is how the Ron Paul Revolution happens. Individuals take responsibility. They ask for help where necessary and the people come, drawn together by that common vision.

Ron Paul will be president, if he lives long enough. Killing him would change nothing. The ideas that Ron speaks have sunk deep. Ron's death would simply put the Revolution into high gear.

Politics is only one of the arenas ordinary people will remake using those tools.

Soon we will climb off all the grids enforced for corporations by government. Energy will be generated at point of usage. It will be cheap. No more people will die because they cannot heat their homes in winter or cool them in summer. Those systems will soon be on the market, despite the Department of Energy that sucked trillions out of Americans.

As we do in energy, we will do in all other parts of our lives.

Big Oil, Big Farming, Big Government all used the same tool, government, to perpetuate profits.

Production will be much more local; craftsmanship and pride in work well done will return. Instead of one global village we will become a globe of villages.

Big Medicine, Big Pharma, Big Retail, Big Courts; each of these controls us for profit. Each is a problem the people will solve themselves. Healing can take unexpected forms; it must to work.

And history will look to the Ron Paul Campaign as the moment when the people discovered they did not need government.

We learn best by seeing and doing it for ourselves.