Product Description

The best way to understand Congressman Ron Paul is to take a look at his voting record. He has never voted to raise taxes. He has never voted for an unbalanced budget. He has never voted to raise congressional pay. He has never taken a government-paid junket. He has never voted to increase the power of the executive branch. He voted against the Patriot Act. He voted against regulating the Internet and he voted against the Iraq war. Operating from a unique strain of libertarian republicanism, Ron Paul's beliefs are refreshingly logical, even if you disagree with his principles. He is a Republican in the truest sense of the word, not at all what that word has grown to represent. This is his call to arms for a nation that needs to change but doesn't know how. Barry Goldwater defined a conservative in the 1960's and with this manifesto, Ron Paul redefines it for the modern day.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24825 in Books
• Published on: 2009-12-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

About the Author
Ron Paul, an eleven-term congressman from Texas, is the leading advocate of freedom in our nation's capital. He has devoted his political career to the defense of individual liberty, sound money, and a non-interventionist foreign policy. Judge Andrew Napolitano calls him "the Thomas Jefferson of our day."

Customer Reviews

Manifesto for a world revolution
As a Republican presidential candidate, Ron Paul is understandably a man concerned primarily with the United States, rather than with England or the rest of Europe. However, the ideas expressed in his book, The Revolution: A Manifesto, can be globally applied given a preliminary understanding of the original American revolution and the later construction of the US constitution. The world is suffering from a surfeit of statism, posits the Good Doctor; we have exploding financial bubbles, endless wars, dissolving currencies, and diminishing civil liberties, racing like the four horsemen of the apocalypse across the entire world. With astonishing clarity, Ron Paul exposes how these inter-linked beasts are related and how they can be tamed via the use of a simple ingredient the United States once used to believe in; freedom. The Republicrats of America must hate him for exposing their carefully spun fallacies behind central banking, foreign policy, fiat currency, and the welfare/warfare state. So, if you want to understand what is going wrong in the world and how it can get fixed then you must read this book, especially if you want to know what America should do to become the beacon of hope it once used to be, rather than the imperial aggressor it has unfortunately become. Personally speaking as a Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist, and a follower of Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe, I feel that the Good Doctor places a little too much reliance on the ability of any constitution to restrain any government. However, he has written a beautifully crafted piece of work which it is possible to read in one sitting, despite its comprehensive coverage of the entire remit of western world government. The text will also help you understand the basic tenets of Austrian economics, a political philosophy based upon peace, prosperity, and freedom, which may help you remove any scales of state indoctrination from your eyes, if you feel inflicted with the fuzzy feeling that somebody has been hiding the truth from you, for most of your life, about how governments really work. In brief, I believe this book could help save the world as we know it. I hope it does and I hope this review has done it the truly magnificent justice it deserves. Go Ron Paul.

A Pauline Conversion
Here in the UK, we could learn a lot from the sentiments of Mr Paul. At a time when politics has become a profession rather than a vocation, self interest is the politician's only concern. This book argues for less government intervention in our lives. He quotes George Washington to the effect that "Government is not reason; it is not eloquence, it is force".

The author is a devotee of the Austrian School of economics with its liberal belief in the healthy instincts of the capitalist society uncluttered by the meddling of government agencies. All the evils of our society arise from such meddling he says, whether it be intervention in the politics of foreign countries, foreign aid and at home the banning of drugs and the spending on welfare and medical aid. He even argues against the levying of income tax.

The pandering to special interest groups always distorts the economy and leads to waste and bureaucracy. He opposed the bailout of the banks for this reason (welfare for the rich) which we have slavishly followed over here in the UK. The UK has a lot to learn from Mr Paul. Only yesterday the UK Government took drastic powers of "snooping" into electronic communications in the alleged fight against terror. Yet the Government's own activities are shrouded in secret.

Somehow the public must stem and then turn the tide of this undemocratic way of government. In ancient Greece each citizen was required to serve one year in the administration and was obliged to follow the Constitutional laws in every particular. Any irregular behaviour was heavily punished. I recommend this book for those who have wanted a system of politics unpolluted by false sentiment and framed for democratic people with fellow feeling and humane intelligence.

An Inspiring Read
I bought Ron Paul's book to find out more about American politics.

Instead what I purchased was a true eye opener. Immensely readable Paul provides a clear strategy to solve the problems in America today, both those which are often portrayed in the media and those which are unspoken-such as international debt. These policies, which are well thought out, are written clearly and simply without the usual tendency in political books to over complicate.

Paul also avoids a regular problem of ignoring the opposing views and his critics. Too often the writers opponents are seen as unworthy of comment by the writer. Instead Paul gives answers the problems critics have with his policy standpoint.

A final worthwhile comment is that the book is not simply relevant to Americans. Though strong emphasis is placed on the American system the policies presented are sensible and realistic wherever the reader is in the world.

I recommend this to anyone who feels there is nothing new or different in politics. Here is proof that there is.