The Antidote to Blind Partisanship and Empire Liberty Defined Ron Paul, Grand Central Publishing, 352 pages Julie Borowski
I
’ll admit it. I’m a recovered neoconservative. It took years of education, but I grew out of it. I’m just thankful that I saw my flawed logic at the young age of fifteen. I was born at the tail end of the Reagan administration, a meat-eating, flag-waving, and gun-loving little girl. While the other kids in school were giving speeches about puppies and Disney movies, I was giving overly passionate speeches about the insanity of gun control legislation. My parents were Republicans and I thought that party affiliation must have been passed on through the bloodstream. I naturally did no research into the policy positions of the Republicans I cheered: If they had an “R” after their names, that was good enough for me. So it should come as no surprise that I was thrilled when George W. Bush became president in 2000. Finally a Republican in the White House! Things were going to change, right? After September 11th, I remember sitting at lunch with a bunch of 12 and 13-year-old girls trying to figure who attacked us. I never thought that maybe, just maybe, our foreign policy which has killed thousands of innocent civilians in the Middle East over the past few years had something do with it. I had no idea that America had military bases all around the world in countries that were no threat to us and didn’t want us there. The next few years were confusing. I wrongly believed that the 9/11 attacks were somehow connected to Iraq. I uncritically listened to the pundits on the television and thought President Bush was being courageous for starting a bunch of new wars. It showed that we weren’t weak. The terrorists hated us for our “freedoms.” Bush was one of us. I wasn’t supposed to criticize a Republican president ever. But after the passing of the poorly-named PATRIOT Act, which so clearly violated the Fourth Amendment, I began to be concerned. As a devoted Republican, I tried my best to ignore it, but as I saw images of dead civilians and disfigured children online, slowly I began to question our mission in the Middle East. What exactly had been accomplished? Was it worth the deaths of thousands of our men and women and innocent Afghan and Iraqi civilians? As Joseph Sobran said, “War has all the characteristics of socialism most conservatives hate: centralized power, state planning, false rationalism, restricted liberties, foolish optimism about intended results, and blindness to unintended secondary results.” During the 2004 elections, at the age of 15, I first heard the word “libertarian.” I spent hours researching this new philoso-
phy on the internet and became disillusioned with both parties and politics in general. But as I would learn in 2007, there was someone in Washington who agreed with me. Someone who was equally concerned about our foolish, immoral, and costly foreign policy—and yet still a staunch fiscal conservative and Constitutionalist on domestic issues. Someone named Ron Paul. Since then, Dr. Paul has been published several times, but his highly anticipated new book, Liberty Defined, is a must-have for anyone desiring to know the truth about liberty. Condensed into one volume of “50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom,”Liberty Defined is a comprehensive A-Z guide of topics from abortion to Zionism. It’s the book I wish I’d read as a young neocon—it would have saved me a lot of confusion—and it’s a book I can only hope will be read by many equally confused young people today. Following Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential run, an increased numbers of pundits and politicians have paid lip-service to the word “liberty.” It’s now so commonly used as to be almost meaningless, often considered interchangeable with the very different concept of democracy. Liberty Defined is crucial for its exploration of the real definition of the word “liberty” in the spirit of our Founding Fathers. Chapter by chapter, Dr. Paul explains how to restore our constitutional republic. He has the rare ability to translate complex philosophies into the vernacular without employing oversimplified, vapid rhetoric. It’s clear cut and easy to read. The book’s wide scope includes substantive chapters on the major themes of Paul’s legislation and speeches—empire, monetary policy, and taxes, for instance—as well as eye-opening sections on lesser known positions, such as unions, envy, evolution, and campaign finance reform. Even the most devoted Ron Paul supporter is bound to learn something new. It’s clear why Ron Paul has such an adoring fan base: Liberty Defined is timeless. With the exception of the death penalty, none of Ron Paul’s views listed in this book has changed in the past 30 years. This is truly an astounding feat for a man who has been in the halls of Congress for 14 terms. From just a glance at the table of contents, which lists issues such as morality in government, moral hazard, and demagogues, it’s apparent that this isn’t a typical political book. As we all should know, Dr. Paul is far too principled to be your typical politician. The book courageously tackles taboo subjects such as child pornography, flag burning,
35 Young American Revolution