Dr. Ron Paul defies all conventional wisdom.  Conventional Wisdom says that the Ron Paul boom would have blown over after the campaign; he’s just a fly in the ointment, a flash in the pan, a wisp in the election wind. But in this case, Conventional Wisdom has been proved wrong.

 WASHINGTON, D.C. — Dr. Ron Paul defies all conventional wisdom.  Conventional Wisdom says that the Ron Paul boom would have blown over after the campaign; he’s just a fly in the ointment, a flash in the pan, a wisp in the election wind. But in this case, Conventional Wisdom has been proved wrong.

So how did this  obscure 11th term congressman from Texas  defy the predictable batch of Washington play-by-the-rules candidates and raise more than $34 million seemingly out of nowhere?  In the long run, Dr. Paul  triumphed because he was the exception to the rulers. 

He is the last of the breed. As a small-government tight-money Republican this gynecologist-obstetrician (4,000 babies claimed as a career total) regularly votes “No” on pork barrel projects that would put money into his own district, came into the campaign with a conservative platform: a return to the gold standard, abolition of the I.R.S., a literal view of the Constitution. His campaign was bare bones. Then he started appearing in debates. His emphatic grandfatherly presence and fierce opposition to the war in Iraq set him apart from his fellow Republicans. Setting him even farther apart were ideas like blaming American foreign policy for the attacks of 9/11 and abolishing the Federal Reserve.

If his campaign had taken place in the pre-Internet era, it might have gone the way of his 1988 Libertarian campaign for president, as a footnote to history. But because of the Internet’s low-cost ability to connect grass-roots supporters with one another — Dr. Paul’s once-solo quest had taken on a life of its own. It evolved from a figment of cyberspace into a traditional campaign, with yard signs, meet-ups, direct mail, old-fashioned rallies and good old American chutzpah. Their goal was to agitate like in a washing machine, until all the dirt came out.

While the ditto heads cheered Giuliani and Romney even though their speeches often veered into rhetorical culs-de-sac, the audience roared their support for torture and rule by emergency decree, Paul told the crowd and the TV cameras that no, torture is wrong and the Constitution is paramount.

Paul was asked if 9-11 changed anything. U.S. foreign policy, he answered, was a “major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attacked us because we’ve been over there; we’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We’ve been in the Middle East. So right now we’re building an embassy in Iraq that’s bigger than the Vatican. We’re building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting.”

But even as Fox’s pundits tossed Paul on their devilled horns, the instant poll totted up the numbers. Of the 40,000 viewers expressing an opinion, 29 per cent wrote in  that Massachusetts governor  Mitt Romney had done best. Second was Ron Paul, with 25 per cent, barreling ahead of Giuliani with 19 per cent. The most pro-war of the lot, McCain, got 5 per cent.

So now just when you thought it’s all been said about Ron Paul, along comes a crack team of Wisconsin-based cybernauts Chris Rye and Corey Kealiher, two  deeply informed grassroots documentary filmmakers who produced the strikingly honest  Inaugural DVD “For Liberty, How the Ron Paul Revolution Watered the Withered Tree of Liberty”  to show why Dr. Paul inspired such a strong grassroots movement, unmatched in American history.

By filming the dedicated millions of Paul followers who made the Ron Paul Election Phenomenon, Rye and Kealiher  produced  a hard-knuckled, knockout DVD that lays bare Paul’s fervent philosophy of sound money, stern non-interventionist foreign policy born of pragmatics not idealism, and individual liberty as defined by that holiest of  American grails, the Constitution.

As with almost every cinema-verite subject, people in everyday action — politics in particular — reveal themselves with such absorbing originality, a script was not needed. “For Liberty” characters were operating by the seat of the pants.

 “For Liberty” serves as a tour guide along the deeply flawed 2008 election trail, blowing the lid off of  decades of secretive world class cronyism and high finance fraud.

Confident and secure with his ideas, Paul maneuvesr, spins, and speechifies with the best and worst of them, always a quiet eye in the political storm. By contrast with the snake oil salesmen of the political establishment who sold  their recycled wares to Middle America, Paul came off as the safe port in the political storm. 

His platform blew everyone away: a return to the gold standard, abolition of the I.R.S., a literal view of the Constitution. His campaign was bare bones. Then he started appearing in debates. His emphatic presence and fierce opposition to the war in Iraq immediately set him apart from his fellow Republicans. Setting him even farther apart were ideas like blaming American foreign policy for the attacks of 9/11 and abolishing the Federal Reserve.

Paul sowed his dedicated and mushrooming base largely because of the Iraq war. He alone among the Republican  club of warhawk  presidential candidates called a war is a war early on — that the war was an anti-constitutional betrayal of America’s interests — and thereby stood out from the snarling pack. Hence Paul was able to draw visceral antiwar support from both sides of the blurred ideological divide. He inspired millions regardless of party affiliation, who believe in conditionally supporting their country all the time and their government only when it deserves it.

When Paul’s campaign coffers swelled above and beyond his debate mates, the knives started to come out. This is how politics in the U.S. currently works.

Despite their snarling glances, Paul blew the lid off  the WMD deception, the 911 blame game and the danger America faces as a result of the “greatest military blunder in American history,” the true character of  his opponents and the absolute lie of their war on terror were laid bare for all to see.

“For Liberty” is not about tired, old, right-versus-left political bickering and backstabbing.  It is about right vs. wrong, according to time-honored American values and the fundamental principals that 99% of Americans chose to live and abide by. Paul sees government as a clenched fist protecting corporate interests, maintaining economic hegemony through military might abroad while greasing the wheels for privileged elites to make money off the working majority at home.