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| The Revolution: A Manifesto | 
 enlarge | Author: Ron Paul
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $21.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  580 reviews
Sales Rank: 107
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 192
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0446537519
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.931092
EAN: 9780446537513
ASIN: 0446537519
Publication Date: April 2008
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Product Description
This Much Is True: You Have Been Lied To.
- The government is expanding.
- Taxes are increasing.
- More senseless wars are being planned.
- Inflation is ballooning.
- Our basic freedoms are disappearing.
The Founding Fathers didn't want any of this. In fact, they said so quite clearly in the Constitution of the United States of America. Unfortunately, that beautiful, ingenious, and revolutionary document is being ignored more and more in Washington. If we are to enjoy peace, freedom, and prosperity once again, we absolutely must return to the principles upon which America was founded. But finally, there is hope . . .
In THE REVOLUTION,Texas congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul has exposed the core truths behind everything threatening America, from the real reasons behind the collapse of the dollar and the looming financial crisis, to terrorism and the loss of our precious civil liberties. In this book, Ron Paul provides answers to questions that few even dare to ask.
Despite a media blackout, this septuagenarian physician-turned-congressman sparked a movement that has attracted a legion of young, dedicated, enthusiastic supporters . . . a phenomenon that has amazed veteran political observers and made more than one political rival envious. Candidates across America are already running as "Ron Paul Republicans."
"Dr. Paul cured my apathy," says a popular campaign sign. THE REVOLUTION may cure yours as well.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 575 more reviews...
Ron Paul's Legacy April 12, 2008
788 out of 841 found this review helpful
Ron Paul's legacy--from decades of principled defense of freedom, peace, and sound money--is inculcated in this very important book. Just the right length, it convincingly and eloquently advances the Ron Paul philosophy. It's a book for beginners and for all of us, no matter how well-read, on liberty, Austrian economics, the Federal Reserve, the free market, the welfare state, and the warfare state. No mere "campaign book," this is one for the ages. And I especially appreciated the suggested reading list at the end. Ron, thank you for your shining example in congress, for teaching millions through your presidential race, and for being--as this extraordinary book shows--the Tom Paine of the second American revolution. Fellow Ron Paulians, we have only begun.
The most important book written since COMMON SENSE April 22, 2008
387 out of 414 found this review helpful
Dr. Ron Paul's THE REVOLUTION: A MANIFESTO is a concise (167 pages) and convincing argument for a return to America's libertarian principles. During his campaign for president, Dr. Paul established a very diverse following: Republicans, Democrats, Greens, and "even some anarchists," he would joke. In truth, many people were drawn to him due his obvious sincerity -- a breath of fresh air! -- even if they did not fully agree with or understand his ideology. Now they will understand and become Austro-Jeffersonians, one and all!
The first chapter, "The False Choices of American Politics," demonstrates why those Ron Paul supporters who do understand his message cannot bring themselves to vote for either McCain or Hillary/Obama, or even to really care who among them wins: There is very little (if any) substantive difference between them. They may disagree about when and where to use foreign intervention, but never over whether it should be used at all. They may disagree over how fast interest rates should be cut by the Fed, but never over whether the Fed should exist. You get the idea.
Chapters 2 and 3 are titled "The Foreign Policy of the Founding Fathers" and "The Constitution," respectively. Here Dr. Paul challenges his neocon and liberal opponents to openly condemn the wisdom of the founding fathers, which they do with their actions, or else follow it. The framers of the Constitution were far from unanimous -- there were bitter disputes among so-called "Federalists" (Hamiltonian nationalists) and "republicans" (Jeffersonian decentralists) -- but today's neocon/liberals reject the wisdom of both parties, taking an expansive view of their powers that even Hamilton himself would have seen as excessive.
Chapter 4, "Economic Freedom," may be an eye-opening one for many readers. First, there are the liberals who were attracted to Dr. Paul's campaign, who may for the first time be presented with a contrast between the true Austro-Jeffersonian libertarian brand of capitalism and the inflationist, Kudlow & Company / Forbes magazine variety. Secondly there are many "paleoconservatives" I met who supported Dr. Paul but were under the mistaken impression that he was against free trade -- nothing could be further from the truth! In fact, as Dr. Paul points out here, he is 100% in favor of unilateral, unconditional free trade and 100% against quotas, sanctions, embargoes, duties, and protective tariffs. He does oppose phony "free-trade" deals like NAFTA and the WTO (joining many liberal Democrats in doing so, but for different reasons) not because they "steal American jobs" (they don't), but because they limit trade too greatly. Furthermore, they erode constitutional sovereignty and work for the benefit of politically connected elites, something with which libertarians, paleocons, and liberals can all agree.
All three constituencies will also cheer Chapter 5, "Civil Liberties and Personal Freedom." Here the contrast between Jeffersonian libertarianism (once considered "liberalism" before that philosophy was given a bad name in the early twentieth century) and the so-called "conservatism" of the neocons and post-WWII New Rightists is perhaps at its greatest. Ron Paul supports the Constitution and the limits it places on government -- which makes him a "blame America" leftist among the neocon punditry, all apologists for the liberal Wilson/FDR/Truman/LBJ foreign policy, by the way.
But the best and most important chapter, without a doubt, is Chapter 6, "Money: The Forbidden Issue in American Politics." Here Dr. Paul expertly details the operations of the Federal Reserve System in stunning clarity -- no conspiracy theories or half-truths that often further obfuscate discussion of the secretive monetary authority. The Austrian (and true) perspective on the Fed is not to be horrified that the Fed isn't a government agency (it is, even if indirectly), but to be outraged that all banks are essentially arms of the government. We don't need the government to have even more control over the money supply, we need it to have no control whatsoever (the exact opposite of what movies like FREEDOM TO FASCISM seem to suggest). What's more, Dr. Paul doesn't spread the myth that the Fed somehow profits as an entity when it creates money (its profits go to the Treasury), but instead, politically connected individuals and businesses profit at the expense of working-class and poor families. You see, the effects of inflation are not uniform -- the Fed System works as a wealth redistribution system from poor and middle-class to the rich and politically connected. How so? Buy this book and find out!
Finally, the book ends with the self-titled seventh chapter in which Dr. Paul lays out a moderate and realistic course that could be accomplished over one or two presidential terms. I'm tempted to share this blueprint for you here but I don't want to discourage anyone from buying the book. Instead, I'll use the last few words of this review to lament the fact that this blueprint will certainly not be implemented by the next president. Perhaps a young man or woman who volunteered for Ron Paul's campaign in 2008 will work his or her way up through the political establishment and be swept into office, with a like-minded Paulian Congress, sixteen years from now (just as Reagan followed sixteen years after Goldwater -- not that either of these two are to be looked at as heroes. . .). We can only hope that the Republic can endure that long!
Now or never . . . April 17, 2008
381 out of 413 found this review helpful
I think it is fair to say that Ron Paul has risked his life by identifying the essential elements by which the power elite controls our lives. Dr. Paul is a giant in the fields of sound Constitutional doctrine, sound economics, and the philosophy of freedom. Having spent years reading hundreds of books on these same subjects, I can truly appreciate how he has not only mastered these subjects but has provided the quintessential reading list for lovers of liberty everywhere.
The book is a wonderful synopsis of the hopes and expectations of the Founders and how we have fallen short of those expectations and is sprinkled with insightful quotes from Thomas Aquinas, Ludwig Von Mises, Frederic Bastiat, et al. In short, it is exactly what it claims to be . . . a manifesto - a statement of political principles and intentions.
And what are those intentions? A call to action to complete the revolution started in 1776. One man cannot start a revolution, but like Thomas Paine with "Common Sense" he can waken a dormant spirit. Let the revolution begin.
 Libertarian dogmatism April 30, 2008
239 out of 528 found this review helpful
I'm probably the only non-libertarian to review this book, so I expect a lot of unfavorable ratings. While I agree with much of what Paul says, there are clearly some weak spots in his argument. I would focus on two: health care and Islamic terrorism. Paul's analysis of health care is the usual Republican bromide: leave everything to the magic of the marketplace. He uses the specious example of the veterans' hospitals to make his case why national health insurance is a bad idea. What he fails to understand is that the problem of the VA hospitals arises because the government owns and runs the hospitals- which is not what health care reform advocates are proposing. What we are advocating is socialized insurance, where the government pays the bills but the doctors and hospitals are private. That's what France does, to take one example, and their health care system is vastly better than ours. I recommend Paul Krugman's book Conscience of a Liberal for an excellent argument for single-payer health care reform- also see Melvin Konner's Medicine at the Crossroads.
I also think Dr.Paul is a little too sanguine about the threat of Islamic terrorism. While many of the Bush administration's proposals go too far, we can't simply withdraw from the Middle East and hope the problem goes away. Having criticized him, I would like to praise his evaluation of the housing crisis, his proposal to legalize drugs, and his opposition to the Iraq occupation, among many other positions.
I appreciate Paul's consistency. I just can't take the whole package.
Ron Paul + Jesse Ventura = Critical Mass April 21, 2008
130 out of 173 found this review helpful
Ron Paul excels at the Constitutional fundamentals: individual liberty, sound money, and non-interventionist foreign policies. Although I am dismayed by his unwillingess to play well with others (Ralph Nader has the same problem, Jesse Ventura does not), and he does not have a strategy for governance as much as a laundry list of non-negotiable starting points, he is still, for me as an estranged moderate Republican, an inspiration for breaking with the two-party spoils system.
This is an eloquent book in which he draws with extreme care from the thoughts of others, always attributed in the text, and provides a series of arguments that do not call for the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney, but certainly do call for the impeachment of the complicit Congress. Three books in particular support his angry denunciation of how Congress--both Republican and Democratic--has allowed the Executive to attack our civil liberties, sustain executive warmaking never intended by the Founding Fathers, and precipitated an unprecedented financial crisis. Congress standing still for "signing statements" [and I would add, for morons like Gonzalez that give all Latinos a bad name], is the last straw.
See:
Running On Empty: How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
He cites Michael Scheuer with admiration, and as I am one of the very few to notice this in my reviews of Scheuer's books, I am delighted that he validates Scheuer's basic view, to wit, Bin Laden and terrorism against America are motivated by *our* presence in Saudi Arabia, our foreign behavior, our unilateral militarism, virtual colonialism, and so on.
He suggests that it was the Clinton Administration that first set the course on Iraq, being too willing to listen to lobbyists for Israel. Of course it was Cheney and Rumsfeld that gave Sadaam Hussein the WMD as--as the joke goes--kept the receipts.
He is very specific on Iran not being a nuclear threat to the USA (and in other writing, e.g. our weekly GLOBAL CHALLENGES report from the Earth Intelligence Network, we note that all the oil states are going nuclear as fast as they can).
He labels the neoconservatives as false conservatives.
At this point in my notes I have written "This is an original work rife with learned quotations from other scholars and practitioners."
He is starkly upset by how the Bush-Cheney regime has destroyed the US dollar, not just with Iraq, the The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict but with our global presence that Chalmers Johnson has addressed so ably in The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project).
Halfway through the volume he takes issue with those who call for a "living" Constitution, and pointedly says that this would equate to a dead and worthless Constitution. Later in the book, but it goes beautifully here, he writes that the Constitution was intended to restrain government, not citizens.
He is also against the draft and income taxes, both of which suggest people are property of government and can therefore be forced into labor. As he states, "young people are not raw material" for the government to play with.
He cites former Comptroller General David Walker with admiration. Walker told Congress in the summer of 2007 that the USA is insolvent, and they ignored him. Today Walker runs the Peter Peterson Foundation and his mission is to educate citizens on their own governments high crimes and misdemeanors in the economic and financial arena.
He shares my view that the Federal Reserve should not exist and manufactures credit out of thin air, one reason we will see more credit bubbles.
He ends by pointing out that the Patriot Act not only violates all our liberties, but was unnecessary because the USG had all the information it needed in advance of 9-11 was was in his words, inept. I disagree. I am fairly certain Dick Cheney received nine different warnings, including from Pakistan and Israel, and he arranged an exercise so he could control the government and let it happen. I think Larry Silverstein, with Bush family assistance, planted controlled demolitions to get rid of his asbestos problem at tax payer expense, and I think Rudy Guliani should be indicted for his role in "scooping and dumping" fire fighter bodies in his rush to destroy the crime scene. See, among many other excellent books and videos, 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, First Edition
He favors the legalization of marijuana and is opposed to attention deficit and other drugs being prescribed to children without adequate testing. I put the book down wishing that Gary Hart, Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, Ross Perot, Michael Bloomberg, Jesse Ventura, and Ron Paul could have formed a new party, the Constitutional Party, and cleaned house. I have lost all respect for Bill Bradley--he sold out to the Trilateral Commission and greed (as did Al Gore). See Obama - The Postmodern Coup: Making of a Manchurian Candidate
John McCain is walking a tightrope. In my view, if McCain can form a Transpartisan Cabinet now--even if only a transitional one--and get David Walker and Ron Paul to lead the group in creating a balanced budget that wipes out the national debt and begins pulling back from all our overseas bases, especially the secret ones that are not worth the outrageous $60 billion a year we pay for the 4% we can steal and not process), then I think it is possible some good may come from this election. Otherwise, it is just four more years, and we MUST create a new political party.
IMHO.
See also:
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Don't Start the Revolution Without Me!
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
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