Dear Supporter,
These past 17 months have been among the most exciting and eventful of my life. Together you and I delivered a message of freedom the likes of which American politics had not seen in decades. I wasn’t sure the country was ready for it. But it was a message, I discovered, that many Americans had been waiting for a long time to hear.
I have been blessed with the most informed, well read, and enthusiastic supporters of any presidential campaign. Your extraordinary efforts in organizing and fundraising grabbed the attention of millions of Americans and shocked just about everyone in politics and the media. I still cannot get over all the fantastic work you did.
Something of great significance has just occurred in our country’s history.
With the primary season now over, the presidential campaign is at an end. But the larger campaign for freedom is just getting started.
Therefore, I am happy to announce the official launch of the Ron Paul Campaign for Liberty. The work of the Campaign for Liberty will take many forms. We will educate our fellow Americans in freedom, sound money, non-interventionism, and free markets. We’ll have our own commentaries and videos on the news of the day. I’ll work with friends I respect to design materials for homeschoolers.
Politically, we’ll expand the great work of our precinct leader program. We’ll make our presence felt at every level of government, where just a few people with our level of enthusiasm can make a world of difference. We’ll keep an eye on Congress and lobby against legislation that threatens us. We’ll identify and support political candidates who champion our great ideas against the empty suits the party establishments offer the public.
We will be a permanent presence on the American political landscape. That I promise you. We’re not about to let all this good work die. To the contrary, with your help we’re going to make it grow – by leaps and bounds.
This is the most ambitious venture of my political career, and I think it can achieve great things. But I can’t do this alone. I need you to help me. I need your energy, your creativity, your ideas, and your dedication.
People frustrated with our political system often wonder what they can do. I have founded this organization to answer that question, to give people the opportunity to do something that really makes a difference in the fight for freedom. Please join me by becoming a member of the Campaign for Liberty. Our goal is 100,000 members by September. Can we reach it?
Our campaign netted 1.1 million votes in the primaries of a shrinking Republican Party. Millions more support us. I need you to help me reach them – and to keep making new converts to the cause. What a force we can be, if only we rise to the occasion.
Now what about the Republican Convention in St. Paul? Our delegates will attend, of course, and I expect our contingent to have a visible presence there. Without disruption, we will do whatever we can to influence the party and its platform, and return the GOP to its limited-government roots. This is very important.
This brings me to my second announcement. I invite you to join us at Williams Arena at the University of Minnesota on Tuesday, September 2nd, for a grand rally. We intend to draw over 11,000 people. We’ll have live music and entertainment, and special guests. I’ll address you all as well. A massive rally will generate still more interest in our ideas. And what a great time it will be.
Remember that it was Senator Robert Taft, who shared our views, who was called Mr. Republican. But we are not merely the Republican Party’s past. If the enthusiasm of young people for our campaign is any indication, we are also its future.
Right now I will need your patience and input as we develop our program and assemble just the right team of individuals. But it is my intention to launch the Campaign for Liberty in its full capacity at our rally in Minneapolis this September.
Over the past week we’ve learned that the Democratic presidential nominee, supposedly an antiwar candidate, is committed to the same rhetoric, the same propaganda, and the same aggressive intentions toward Iran as the Bush administration. As usual, the major parties refuse to offer Americans a real choice.
The Campaign for Liberty will lay the groundwork for a different America, the kind of America you and I, and millions of our fellow countrymen, want to inhabit.
“Dr. Paul cured my apathy,” a popular campaign sign read. Others said our campaign cured their cynicism. We have now reached a moment of great moral decision: will we let ourselves retreat into apathy and cynicism once again, or will we dig in for the long haul and fight all the harder? Will we retire from the scene quietly, or will we give the establishment the fight of its life?
“In the final analysis,” I wrote in my new book The Revolution: A Manifesto, “the last line of defense in support of freedom and the Constitution consists of the people themselves. If the people want to be free, if they want to lift themselves out from underneath a state apparatus that threatens their liberties, squanders their resources on needless wars, destroys the value of their dollar, and spews forth endless propaganda about how indispensable it is and how lost we would all be without it, there is no force that can stop them.”
The time has come to act on these words. May future generations look back on our work and say that these were men and women who, in a moment of great crisis, stood up to the politicians, the opinion-molders, and the establishment, and saved their country.
Join us, and be a part of it.
For liberty,
Ron Paul
