MARK WAITE / PVT Dan Kempf, of Las Vegas, holds up a sign promoting candidate Paul's message of restoring the original American revolution. Advertisement

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul looked out at the standing-room-only crowd at the Bob Ruud Community Center Monday night and exclaimed to loud cheers: "Looks like a lot of people care about freedom in this country. And the Constitution."

Paul talked of restoring the original American revolution, which reverberated deeply to a Pahrump crowd.

The Texas congressman, evoking his stance from his run as a Libertarian for president in 1988, advocated abolishing the income tax and the Federal Reserve System, bringing all the troops home and the re-institutionalization of liberty.

Paul said after the rally he is running as a Republican because the deck is stacked against third party candidates..

Paul said he reluctantly entered the campaign but has become energized by the support, particularly after Nov. 5, when he said his campaign raised $4.3 million in $100 donations and energized 20,000 new supporters.

"The Internet's been around for a while but it's never happened where all these things are coming together. First, the exasperation the American people are feeling about what's happening to our country, not only economically but in foreign policy and in monetary policy as well," Paul said.

Paul said he sees the desire to move from forced tyranny and violence into freedom and less choices. The one-day fundraising gave his campaign credibility, he said.

"The media may realize, wow, this is not just a couple people on the Internet, a couple fringe people," Paul said. "People in this state, they love liberty and limited government and have confidence in it. So a good showing here could be just as attention-getting as any single day of fundraising."

Paul drew one of his three-dozen rounds of applause when he noted his vote against sending nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain.

"I see no way the people in Texas have a right to put nuclear waste in your state without your permission," he said.

Paul drew more applause when he pointed out that Texas, unlike Nevada, has hardly any federally-owned property which he said is the way it should be.

Foreign policy is costing the U.S. a trillion dollars per year, Paul said. In one of his 10 references to the Constitution, Paul said the Constitution said America ought not to be involved in entangling alliances and the internal affairs of other countries.

"We could save hundreds of billions of dollars by bringing our troops home immediately," Paul said. "I don't think we should ever go to war without declaring it. If we declare war everybody should be behind it and fight it and get it over with, but not these undeclared wars that just go on and on and on and just drain ... us."

While Democratic presidential candidates talk about pulling troops out of Iraq, Paul went further. He advocated bringing troops back from South Korea.

"We've been in Japan and we've been in Germany since World War II. We're in 130 countries around the world. We have 700 bases overseas and the truth is, even if you like this idea and this it's important that we be over there, we don't have any money, we're broke. We can't even fight that war in the beginning and we can't pay our bills at home without borrowing money from a nation like China. They have become our bankers," Paul said.

The U.S., he charged, was further aggravating the Arab world by building 14 permanent bases in Iraq and an embassy bigger than the Vatican. By changing foreign policy, the government would have hundreds of billions to pay for social benefits at home, he said.

The excessive spending leads to taxes, then Washington still doesn't have enough money so they borrow, and when that still isn't enough, government prints more money, he said.

"I'd like to make sure the American people have sound money. Money that's backed by something, backed by something that the Constitution says and the Constitution also gives no authority to a central bank. It means that when we have our day in court and we have a sound monetary system and a sound economy, we won't have a Federal Reserve system," Paul said. He added to more applause, "to keep all the fruits of our labor we would not have the tax system we have now and we would not have an income tax."

Special interests which control things in Washington, D.C., like the corporations are making billions off medical care, Paul said. But Paul, a Texas obstetrician, said the solution isn't to go from corporate medicine to government medicine, but through changes in the tax code.

"The answer can be found in freedom. They're not difficult to find," he said.

The American people became fearful and trusted government to take care of them after the terrorist attack of 9/11, Paul said. Laws that were passed didn't address the problem like the Patriot Act, while foreign policy got worse.

"The odds of a foreign army coming in and invading this country are essentially zero. It's not going to happen," Paul said. He said the terrorists aren't a foreign army like the Chinese or Nazi Germany, only a small number of people so upset at America they are willing to become suicide bombers.

The U.S. shouldn't reward illegal immigrants with amnesty, Paul said. He charged there's talk about creating a North American union with a common currency.

"One thing we ought to do is protect our borders. We have border guards in Iraq. I think those border guards ought to be back here," Paul said to more applause.

Young people have become energized in his campaign, Paul said, and will unfortunately inherit a great deal of debt. They may pay into Social Security for 30 years without getting anything out of it, he said.

As he left the stage, the crowd chanted "Ron Paul! Ron Paul! Ron Paul!" A woman led the crowd singing "The Star Spangled Banner." He then shook hands with members of the audience in a back room at the community center.