Review - The Revolution, by Ron Paul

“The American Revolutionaries did the impossible. So can we.”
--Ron Paul

Ron Paul is an American Congressman from Texas. He’s typically known as a libertarian, although he supports typically early-Republican ideologies. Other things he’s known for are attempting to hail down bills designed to impede upon the rights of Americans, raise taxes unnecessarily, send the country to (unnecessary) war and centralizing power within Washington to distance the populace from their means of freedom. Often this is seen as being a contrarian for the sake of being so – they even call him “Dr. No” (he actually used to be a doctor) for, more often than all other Congressmen combined – being the sole ‘No’ vote. When you take a step back, however, you can see a man campaigning for something other than obstinance: he’s a true-blooded Constitutionalist.

Paul begins his manifesto with some basic mythbusting, tearing down common lies often force-fed to the populace. The government is actually expanding, not shrinking. Taxes are increasing; more senseless wars are being planned, inflation is ballooning – and your basic freedoms are disappearing.

“…in the American political lexicon, “change” always means more of the same: more government , more looting of Americans, more inflation, more police-state measures, more unnecessary war, and more centralization of power.” (p. ix)

What’s refreshing is that Paul isn’t simply pandering to a populace that’s feeling impotent and angry – he has facts, figures, quotes, and actual evidence to support all of his claims. If the Neoconservative agenda to centralize governmental power within the executive branch can be taken as Bible to coming years, Ron Paul reads like sheer eschatology:

“Meanwhile, the housing bubble is bursting [he was right, it did burst] and our dollar is collapsing. We are borrowing billions every day from China in order to prop up a bloated overseas presence that weakens our national defense and stirs up hostility against us.” (p. ix)

The basic foundation of the manifesto is really the idea: ‘What would the Founding Fathers think of this?’ It’s in this thought-experiment that Ron Paul frames many of his ideas and arguments, a methodology that resists being esoteric and, instead, offers a refreshingly simple clarification of what should be accepted by the government and what really shouldn’t.

Paul states that the founding fathers would have been staunchly opposed to the massively interventionist foreign policy that America now promotes, which basically just looks like a big middle finger to the rest of the world. He quotes Washington (liberally and often) as having advocated equal trade with no political affiliation to anyone. Paul cites the timelessness of the Constitution as evidence against the argument that the fathers’ advice is outdated. Although he casually glosses over the seeming isolationism of a completely noninterventionist policy, but goes on to stress that he promotes nonaggressive affiliation.

“The real isolationists are those who choose to use force overseas to promote democracy,” (p. 10)

So with a clear, concise and incendiary finger pointed squarely at the administration bolstering fake-wars abroad and a populace that supports them, Ron Paul suggests that the 9/11 attacks were a response primarily to American presence in the Middle East. Usually, patriotic Americans go immediately up-in-arms at the thought, and condemn the individual championing the idea as “anti-American” – and someone who simply blames America for the attacks. Paul is quick to note that he places the blame squarely on the attackers, because saying anything else would be political suicide, but it’s obvious that he feels the administration’s meddling in Middle Eastern affairs is truly to blame for the fall of the twin towers.

“…it is unreasonable, even utopian, not to expect people to grow resentful, and desirous of revenge, when your government bombs them, supports police states in their countries, and imposes murderous sanctions on them. That revenge, in its various forms, is what our CIA calls blowback – the unintended consequences of military intervention.” (p. 16)

Consider that this is a Congressman – not some 9/11-conspiracy-writing-nutjob – making these comments. That’s why I love Ron Paul – because he’s never afraid to tell you the truth no matter how much it hurts. I’ve never seen his balls – but they must be huge.

“…it was Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, who said on 60 minutes that half a million dead Iraqi children as a result of the sanctions on that country during the 1990s were ‘worth it’. Who could be so detached from reality, as to think a remark like that – which was broadcast all over the Arab world, you can be sure—“ (p. 16)

Paul continues that interventionism only kills liberty at home during the ensuing ‘blowback’ and creates more enemies than it stops. People often ask him why Middle Easterns hate Americans, to which he replies: