WHAT I THINK......DAN HANNAN

Ron Paul is an unusual phenomenon: a politician who always answers questions fully and honestly. This tendency often gets him into trouble: although people say they want straight-talking representatives, they often react with horror when they get one.

Dr Paul’s ruthless application of his convictions - minimal government, localism, personal freedom and adherence to the letter of the US Constitution - alienates many of the conservatives who might have been expected to back him.

For example, although he doesn’t agree with abortion - as a GP, he says, he delivered thousands of babies, and never came across a case where a termination was necessary for the mother’s physical or psychological well-being - he insists that abortion law ought not to be a federal prerogative and, during his 2008 presidential bid, resolutely refused to give the Pro-Lifers the assurances they wanted.

Similarly, when almost every conservative legislator, including a great many Democrats, supported a law to prevent gun-shops being sued for crimes committed with weapons they had sold legally, he voted against the measure on grounds that it represented a usurpation of jurisdiction from the 50 states

Many Republicans regarded his opposition to the Iraq war as almost treasonable. Although the issue is no longer the shibboleth it was - plenty of conservatives, knowing what they now know, wish that they had kept the trillion dollars to spend on something else - Ron Paul is still treated with suspicion.

Now I don’t always agree with the Texas Congressman. Indeed, I don’t agree with his absolutist non-interventionism. Although, like him, I opposed the invasion of Iraq, I’m glad the US intervened militarily against Nazism and Soviet expansionism, and I regard the alliance of free English-speaking nations as one of the happiest geo-political facts of our era.

None the less, no conservative should dismiss Ron Paul’s anti-war arguments without giving them proper consideration. Essentially, he believes that the US is wasting her strength through imperial overstretch. This observation would once have been a commonplace in the GOP. From the earliest days of their party through to Robert Taft in the 1950s, Republicans tended to view foreign policy adventurism as the enemy of personal freedom, dispersed power, small government and, indeed, the constitution itself. They understood that the founding fathers had counselled against imperialism precisely because they had feared the concentration of power. They grasped that there was an incompatibility, in Russell Kirk’s phrase, between an American Republic and an American Empire.

There is, of course, an alternative tradition in the GOP: the tradition of John McCain and his all-time hero, Teddy Roosevelt. Decent and honourable people disagree with Paul; but there is neither decency nor honour in implying that he is an al-Quaeda apologist, or a witless tool of the terrorists.

As you’d expect, Ron Paul has fanatical supporters, who make up in fervour and in high principle what they lack in numbers. They are called the Campaign for Liberty, and they comprise an extraordinary coalition, ranging from prim Republican matrons to dreadlocked peaceniks. The one thing they have in common is a dislike of state coercion.

I am in Philadelphia, addressing one of their regional conferences. While there are some odd types among them - including, alas, a couple of 9/11 conspiracy theorists - most of them are, like their hero, extraordinarily high-minded. They are less interested in winning office than in winning the battle of ideas. They see themselves, with some justice, as the true heirs of the Republic, keeping faith with the vision of the Founding Fathers and the promise of the Constitution.

In Ron Paul, they have found something the founders dreamed of: a citizen legislator, who takes his oath of office seriously, votes as his conscience directs, and cannot be bought. Sometimes, Dr Paul is eccentric. Occasionally he’s wrong. But, by Heaven, I’m glad he’s there.