Video: Ron Paul at Kansas City Event

Ron Paul takes questions from a packed crowd at the Uptown Theater in Kansas City.

I just saw this video on the Daily Paul, and it blew me away. I've been a Ron Paul fan for a number of years now, certainly long before he threw his hat in the ring for the current presidential bid, but I'm also a bit of a pessimist. Something striking about watching this video is that my pessimism was swept away and I found myself thinking about how things could be verses how they are. There's something about Paul's easy, honest and plain spoken manner of explaining the complex issues and dilemmas this country is facing that just draws me in and instils something I havn't felt in a long time: Hope.

In this short (just under 20 minutes) question and answer session, Congressman Paul tackles a wide range of topics in his usual straightforward, no-nonsense way (I guess that's easy when you speak from the heart and have a wealth of knowledge and experience to back up what you say). He touches on: immigration, marijuana laws, liberty, the constitution, marriage and civil unions, central banks and the dumping of gold to prop up the dollar, peak oil, the federal reserve, rolling back unconstitutional and illegal presidential orders and signing statements, gun regulation, veterans, protecting the borders, nafta and the hated superhighway, free trade, tarrifs and taxes, special interest influence on government, redistribution of wealth, the military industrial complex, Bush's possible war crimes, property tax, reduction of the size of government and freedom versus authoratarianism. Yes, he packed all that into 20 minutes and in an easy, coherent fluid way.

This video is well worth watching.