Truth, justice and
the Ron Paul way

>> A passionate group of Montrealers try to
spread the message of the Republican
Party’s biggest maverick

FREE AMERICA: Jack Grondin (right)
and Grant Rostig at the Bar-B-Barn

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

It’s Sunday, Feb. 3, and in the back of the Bar-B-Barn on Guy, a revolution is being plotted. Sometimes the revolution is plotted at a Cage aux Sports, but, this being Super Bowl Sunday, it was decided the Bar-B-Barn’s a better option.

The group isn’t made up of your run-of-the-mill anti-government, anti-globalization or anti-war activists, although those topics are popular here. But it remains a strange fact that a good many left-wing activists around the world share some common principles with a maverick Republican presidential candidate from Texas. The people gathered at the Bar-B-Barn are the Montreal Ron Paul Meetup Group, and they want to spread the word of the humble country doctor-congressman’s plan to change America forever, and, they think, for the better.

Netroots north and south

What attracts the group’s members to Paul is his emphasis on civil liberties and decoupling the United States from any kind of foreign entanglement—from foreign wars to international organizations like the UN. Domestically, it means devolving power from the federal to the state level on everything from abortion rights to gun control to environmental regulation. He wants to abolish income tax and the Federal Reserve Board, hates the war on drugs and is also strongly opposed to illegal immigration, voting in favour of the 2006 Secure Fence Act. A long-standing Republican, Paul ran as the Libertarian candidate for president in 1988, coming in third with 0.5 per cent of the popular vote.

The Montreal Meetup Group—one of almost 1,200 groups in 32 countries, according to ronpaul.meetup.com/about (Montreal ranks 429, with 71 members; the biggest is New York City’s, with 1,330)—is organized by Jacques “Jack” Grondin, a 60-year-old semi-retired engineer who’d never heard of Meetup Groups before Paul came along. But that’s representative of what’s happening in the United States. Distrustful of Big Media, Big Business, Big Politics and Big Government, Paul’s supporters have taken to the Internet in droves, organizing their own events and message dissemination, and proudly point out that they’ve set records in online fundraising. He also has more MySpace friends, at 128,500, than John McCain and Mike Huckabee combined (but trails both Hillary Clinton, with 182,636, and Barack Obama, with 273,702, badly).

Grondin says he and the 70 other group members are interested in Paul’s campaign because, “We’re worried about where individual freedoms are going, we’re worried about having Canada at war, which is essentially to build a pipeline though Afghanistan, we’re worried about America being at war and spending a fortune in Iraq.”

Asked why Canadians are supporting Paul, he says, “If we can get a man like this in the White House, it’s a major deal, not only for America, but for Canada and for the world.”

Grondin, like Paul, is a self-described libertarian, but there’s no ideological centre to the group’s politics. “I’m pretty much middle of the spectrum myself, but the group has representatives from the far left and the far right. The issue is to try and unite them in pushing the cart in the right way for Ron Paul.”

Conspiracies big and small

Throughout the conversation, Grondin tries to stay on-message about the Paul candidacy—liberty, truth and freedom from all outside influence—and away from personal politics. He does say that 9/11 was an inside job, and that there are plans “well advanced, in deep secrecy I should add, to turn North America into a union, much like the European Union,” and to build the North American Corridor.

Others, like Grant Rostig, a former Torontonian who lives in Austin, Texas, but occasionally visits here and participated in the meeting, says 9/11 at the very least bears further investigation, a position Paul supports. Rostig, however, does mention that entities like the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations are out to create a “New World Order.” Rostig ran for Congress in 2006, with Paul’s endorsement, but lost.

Realistically, Paul’s candidacy for presidency is already over. His best showing on Super Tuesday was second place in Montana. Last weekend, he formally announced he’d be streamlining his campaign, but not bowing out. Meanwhile, he’ll be concentrating on running his congressional race, hoping for an 11th consecutive term—although for the first time in years, he has to campaign to win the Republican primary, a sign that he is not the Republican establishment’s first choice.

Grondin writes in an e-mail this week that, while more effort needs to be spent on protecting his seat in the House in order to ensure that he is heard, the race for the White House is still on.

“These changes to the campaign, far from being the capitulation that his opponents would claim, represent an escalation of the hostilities to two fronts.”