I was looking around for a quote I once stumbled across because I thought it was appropriate for a rant I was writing over on the super secret underground forum were all six of us Ron Paul supporters craft our l33t text message bots to confound the Fox post-debate polls. It is one of my favorites.

"[A] government under the U.S. Constitution, to paraphrase columnist Joseph Sobran, would be a radical improvement over the one we have today." ~Vin Suprynowicz

Anyway, I found the quote, obviously, and found myself reenjoying the essay it came from. A tasty excerpt follows:

Thanks to a 2004 law authored by U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., every American school and college that receives federal money must teach about the Constitution on Sept. 17 (the date the document was adopted, in 1787), or the closest school day available.

It would be wonderful to see the U.S. Constitution taught in the public schools. I will believe such a course of education is underway when someone can show me a list of study questions being presented to today’s students, including:

• Article I Section 8 grants to Congress alone the power "to declare war." Did President Bush seek and declare a congressional "Declaration of War" against Iraq? If not, did he violate the Constitution when he sent troops to attack that nation?
• Article I Section 8 says the Congress can exercise "exclusive Legislation in all cases" over the District of Columbia, and may "exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be ..." May it exercise such exclusive authority over Yucca Mountain – building a nuclear waste dump there without state permission, for example – even though it can show no bill of sale, nor written consent of the Nevada Legislature to allow it to purchase that land? Where in the Constitution does that authority arise?
• Article I Section 10 says "No state shall ... make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts." What was the founders’ experience with fiat paper currency that led to the insertion of that clause? Does the widespread acceptance of "federal reserve notes," not convertible into gold and silver, violate this provision? Why or why not?
• The Second Amendment says the right of the people to keep and bear arms "shall not be infringed." Do background checks, waiting periods, $200 taxes, and requirements that a machine-gun purchase be approved by your local chief of police constitute "infringements" of these rights? Where in the Constitution are such restrictions authorized?
• The Fourth Amendment says a house cannot be searched without a warrant "particularly describing ... the person or things to be seized." Yet police routinely seize firearms found during searches, even when no firearms are specifically listed on the search warrant. Is this constitutional? Can the courts waive such restrictions without going through the amendment process stipulated in Article V?
• A constitutional amendment (the 18th, since repealed) was required to outlaw alcohol nationwide. When was the constitutional amendment ratified which authorizes the similar outlawing of marijuana, cocaine, and opium? What is its number?
• The 13th amendment says "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Are compulsory schooling or military conscription consistent with this provision?

Not so dry and dusty, any more, is it? Better to stick with condemning the founding fathers as slave-owning misogynists, perhaps.

Anyway, again, while I was looking for that quote I came across the Joseph Sobran essay from which Vin Suprynowicz derived his paraphrase. It is called "How Tyranny Came to America." I don't know when it was written, but based on the content it was sometime between Ross Perot's 1992 run for the presidency and Ron Paul's entry into the current race. Toward the end of it Sobran strikes me as being almost prophetic because he seems to be describing the tsunami that is rapidly approaching, mostly unobserved expect among a small group of fanatics, but will soon break across the American political scene once the primaries begin.

Can we restore the Constitution and recover our freedom? I have no doubt that we can. Like all great reforms, it will take an intelligent, determined effort by many people. I don't want to sow false optimism.

But the time is ripe for a constitutional counterrevolution. Discontent with the ruling system, as the 1992 Perot vote showed, is deep and widespread among several classes of people: Christians, conservatives, gun owners, taxpayers, and simple believers in honest government all have their reasons. The rulers lack legitimacy and don't believe in their own power strongly enough to defend it.

The beauty of it is that the people don’t have to invent a new system of government in order to get rid of this one. They only have to restore the one described in the Constitution — the system our government already professes to be upholding. Taken seriously, the Constitution would pose a serious threat to our form of government.

And for just that reason, the ruling parties will be finished as soon as the American people rediscover and awaken their dormant Constitution.

I suggest you go read the whole thing here. You might start to get a clue about why so many people like me are so excited. Or you might recoil in horror because for those on the outside, for those who feel the have so much at stake in the status quo--whether they reside on the left side of the herd or the right--the American Revolution just might look like the end of the world as we know it.

Me?

I feel fine.