Ron Paul. Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom by Ron Paul. New York, NY: Grand Central Publishing, April 19th, 2011.325 pp.
In light of this being an election year I think this book is quite relevant to read even though neither Ron Paul nor his son is in the election. What I appreciate about Ron Paul is his conscious effort in being principled in his approach towards politics and this book truly reflect what’s important for him: Liberty. He makes the point that the term liberty can be quite misconstrued today so it is important to talk about what liberty is and the importance of safeguarding it.
This book explores fifty issues concerning the subject of liberty. Arranged alphabetically, Ron Paul tackles subject such as abortion, the CIA, immigration, foreign aid, States rights and Keynesian economics. I appreciate his insight from the perspective of him being a Constitutionalist, a libertarian and a proponent of Austrian Economics. I think one can appreciate his concern for liberty even if one might not agree with him with everything. Certainly there were things I disagreed with Paul but I still felt I learned something even with interacting with his position. Over time I have found I am more in agreement with Ron Paul than any other politician and I think it is unfortunate that he’s retired but I hope his message would gain more hearing.
I enjoyed reading Ron Paul’s argument against Keynesian economics. I enjoyed his discussion about bipartisanship and how sometimes pursuing “political moderate” policies that walks in the middle of the road isn’t the best thing especially if one is trying to work out a “middle of the road” compromise with a bad policies. What should matter in the end is not being in the middle among one’s political peers, but whether the policies and issued pursued are sound. Paul makes a good point that often a lot of bad policies from the government is the result of the drift towards being “moderate.” I also appreciate this book raising the concern of militarism, monetary policies and other bad “fruits” of Statism.
However, there are things I also disagree with Paul. Let me say again that I agree with most of the content of the book and my disagreement does not take away from the fact that I thought this was overall a good book. The following are my criticisms:
- I wished Ron Paul was more strongly pro-life. He certainly believe abortion is murder and as someone who has delivered a lot of babies as a doctor Ron Paul is adamantly pro-life in his stance towards the pre-born being a person. But in terms of his political approach he thinks the state should be the ones who should ban abortion and not the Federal government. I don’t see why it shouldn’t ever be banned at the Federal level especially since life is that important. I once read a quote that we ought to be lovers of liberties first and secondly as the citizens of our respective country we are at. I like that. Since life is that precious, why not pursue as our aims to ensure that the preborn are protected at the larger level of the Federal government rather than individual state? I understand the states should have more role in order to ensure a central government that isn’t that powerful to encroach upon liberties, but still isn’t the freedom of life the prerequisite of all other liberties and if that’s not worth protecting at the highest and centralized level what other things should the Federal government be concerned about?
- Ron Paul is at his weakest when he talks about religion. He’d talked about Christians who wanted to bring about a tyrannical theocracy that’s forced upon others. I imagine the actual numbers of Christians with such an agenda would be fewer in numbers than he might think. I found it ironic that Ron Paul once had on his staff Gary North who is a theonomists that Paul could have consulted. Theonomists do stress de-centralized powers and opposes Statism and it would have been interesting to see Paul interact with them. Even as “fringe” among Christians as theonomists could be, certainly I don’t think some of Paul’s concern is warranted concerning Christians.
- When it comes to understanding Christianity in comparison to other religions, I was kind of embarrassed to read this book. I didn’t realized how ecumenical Ron Paul was and how he stresses the superficial similarities of the various world religions. It was kind of disappointing.
Again this book is worth reading. It is worth discussing and thinking through, election year or not.
Purchase: Amazon
The Domain for Truth 
Interesting comments. Ron Paul is a Libertarian. Libertarianism is essentially conservatism without God. Conservatism simply does not work without God, because conservatism relies on the voluntary restraint of the people that only arises from the desire to please God by placing the need of other before the needs of self. Without God, personal behavior tends to focus on sinful self. That’s why John Adams said, “The Constitution was made for governing a moral and religious people and is wholly unsuitable for any other.”
Good point. I am rather cautious with secular libertarians though I appreciate some of their insights.
Libertarians have some good basic thoughts. They’re just not viable apart from God.
Also, compare Ron Paul’s book with, “The 5000 Year Leap: A Miracle that Changed the World.” It is billed as “Principles of Freedom 101” and is the book that President Ronald Reagan wanted taught in all the schools. Sadly, his wish remains unfulfilled.
Wow I never heard of that book that Reagan liked. Have you read it yourself?
Absolutely! Nearly everything in my copy is highlighted. It’s THAT good.
Reblogged this on Talmidimblogging.
Thanks Vincent for sharing this weekend book review with your readers.
You welcome Pastor Jim!
Interesting about the theocracy comments. You say he has theonomists to advise him. It’s surprising given that that he could make such a statement. I don’t know a lot about theonomy but it seems as close to theocracy as anything put forward by mainstream Christianity. It is clearly not theocracy but my point is that if that’s what he is exposed to either he assumes other Christians are closer to theocracy than theonomy or he is just confused.
Gary North is one of the leaders of Theonomy and use to work for Paul’s Congressional office. I wonder how close they were actually. Theonomy has a big libertarian streak perhaps and Austrian economics influence, perhaps more than some of the internet followers realized when one read Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Gary North, etc. Frankly I don’t see the threat of a Christian theocracy that plausible. Thanks for reading this J.W!