Railing against classic liberals and the “new” conservatives he illustrates how our imperial empire along with our aggressive actions overseas have spread us too thin and have not made us more secure, but have actually threatened our security by sowing the seeds of contempt for our presence by making us the “Bull” in the overseas “China Shop”.
Wrapping himself in the Constitution as it was originally written and intended, not as it has been stretched, pulled, and distorted over two centuries to become the source of our problems rather than the cure for our divergent agendas, Ron Paul shows us how the Constitution is a living document through the amendment process, not through legal interpretation of what our founding fathers might have meant.
When he turns to a discussion of the economy, his strongest argument and to some extent the true heart of the libertarian movement he explains the fallacy of a system where everybody’s hand is in the cookie jar. At some point we will all go hungry and that point is fast approaching. Later he discusses inflation and the devaluation of the dollar as the most insidious form of taxation because we don’t even realize it is happening. And he is correct.
Of course the libertarian agenda is not complete without a discussion of civil liberties which he handles first by describing how our privacy has been invaded and second by using the example of our “War on Drugs” to show how huge federal programs cannot be reversed once they have been set in motion, even it poorly motivated, and even if they invade the very core or our civil liberties…such as the right to make decisions about our own bodies. It is here where I find my first episodes of cognitive dissonance in Ron Paul’s agenda because he is clearly pro-life and therefore anti-abortion and anti-Kevorkian. Yet these choices are not included as liberties which should be permitted or protected.
A second area where I find difficulty is in the unflinching belief that a total free-market economy will evolve into an altruistic state that cares about employees and the environment versus devolution into total anarchy. It’s not that I believe anarchy will result, it is that I believe corporations become monolithic bureaucracy’s as big and profit motivated and therefore uncaring about individuals, their rights, and their personnel freedoms as the Federal Government is being accused of becoming, albeit without a profit motive and with, as we would like to believe a form a checks and balances and the potential, at least, to have to account to “The People” as their elected officials.
But this is a book review and not a political debate. Whereas I would give “The Revolution” five stars in the attempt to put the Libertarian agenda in one place, I have subtracted one star for not providing a better explanation of the dissonance noted above. I have also deducted a star for the incessant US bashing and the relentless description of Nazi Germany with the accompanying veiled comparison to our Federal Government. I recognize the dangers of fascism but resent the arrogance and implication that our countrymen are so stupid and misinformed that we would never course correct in time to prevent such a catastrophe. We are simply too diverse a people for that…and if the best example he can present is the sugar quota driving up the cost of sugar in our Country, then I invite Ron Paul to have a “Coke and a Smile” off our shores, because apparently he likes foreign Coke better…page 72, “…American colas use corn syrup instead of sugar: American sugar, thanks to the quotas is simply too expensive. (And it is also the reason that colas in other countries taste so much better.)” I like American Cola, thank you very much.
Good book, good delivery, the best of the Libertarian Party is yet to come and they can thank Ron Paul for opening the door.
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