Democracy Direct: At the Village Pourhouse in NYC Last Night with Ron Paul Supporters

I spoke to Ron Paul supporters at the Village Pourhouse in New York City last night. The NYC Ron Paul Meet-Up group had invited me to talk about the mainstream media's misreporting of Ron Paul's burgeoning campaign for the Presidency - to elaborate on what I've been writing about here in this blog and talking about on the radio, and what could be done about it.

I was impressed. It's always good meeting people with whom you have conversed online - in this case, Ryan Cowles and Avery Knapp and Kevin Leslie. But there was something else.

Here was a group of people, assembled in the back room of a noisy bar on a warm summer evening. Men and women, different ages, different accents.

They could have been doing many other things on an August evening - dining, movies, enjoying the city streets, relaxing at home.

But they were brought together by a desire to get this country back on track by electing a candidate with an old-fashioned idea: follow the Constitution of the United States. Don't go to war without a Declaration. Don't muzzle the media in contradiction of the First Amendment. Clear, straightforward points, really, that almost every other politician and public official seem to have forgotten these days. Actually, for decades.

I was impressed. The questions I received were perceptive. I got enthusiastic nods when I mentioned Thomas Jefferson.

There was something in the air, and it was more than the fine spirits wafting in from the other room.

It was a different spirit. Democracy. Yeah, I know that sounds like something from a speech, but it was there. I've seen it a few times in my life, first hand like this. I saw it in Eugene McCarthy challenging Lyndon Johnson to stop the Vietnam War in 1968. I worked in his campaign on the streets of New York. I saw it when I worked for John Lindsay, running for a second term as Mayor in New York, a year later.

It's rare to see democracy so directly. It was there in the Village Pourhouse last night. Not like on the television screen. Right there in the room.

It was good to see again.

Stay tuned.

complete YouTube video of my talk