What's next for the Ron Paul revolution?

Truman started this defiance of the Constitution. In the Korean conflict, which official Washington called a "police action," 36,407 US service men and women were killed. That's more than all those killed (22,424) in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Spanish-American War.

In his book, Paul writes: "The Framers [of the Constitution] did not want the American president to resemble the British king…." He quotes Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers:

"The President is to be commander-in-chief.... In this respect his authority would be nominally the same as that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces … while that of the British king extends to declaring war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies – all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature [Congress]."

Do these kinglike actions by recent US presidents really matter?

Absolutely. Just look at Iraq. The war is being fought by a shrunken volunteer military – made up of less than 1 percent of the American population. This is convenient for politicians. With no congressional declaration and no draft, most American families don't feel the real pain of war.

But White House failure to get a declaration handcuffs the president when things go wrong – as now. The American military is clearly too small for simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet even McCain, who says winning in Iraq is vital, shies away from imposing an unpopular draft.

Paul sees this and other problems – runaway taxes, mounting US debt, an "American Empire" mentality that has put US military bases in 130 countries – as symptoms of Washington's failure to follow the Constitution.

David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, says of Paul: "I was very distressed, frankly, with the way he [Paul] was sort of dismissed [by other GOP candidates]…. He was speaking to values that they should respect." He says: "Ron Paul is talking to people who are thirsting for the real thing. And he's hitting the same chords that Goldwater hit and that Reagan hit in the early days…. He's a very healthy phenomenon."

So far, Paul has about 42 delegates. There is hope that with enough delegates, he will win the right to address the convention.

Big media still ignores him. But his followers are determined to push the government closer to the Founding Fathers' vision.

It's a long shot. But so was the American Revolution.

• John Dillin is a former managing editor and Washington correspondent for the Monitor.

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