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From:Ron Paul , Grand Central Publishing ,
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User Rating: Amazon Sales Rank:#39 |
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12 of 39 customers found the following review helpful:
 Overly simplistic anti-government tirade, 2008-08-07
I can see both good and bad in Ron Paul's book THE REVOLUTION, but let me say right off the bat that I do not support his unrelenting libertarian attitude that government is the source of all evil. Paul rightly points out many problems that we face today - high federal budget deficit, runaway health care costs, belligerent foreign policy, presidential illegalities, and on and on - but in my view these are not the result of government per se, but rather are the fault of the astoundingly bad leadership we in the U.S. have suffered from in the last 10 or so years. There is an increasingly common view, which I sympathize with, that Republicans have deliberately tried to ruin government functions in this country in an attempt to cause more people to reject ALL government. See John Dean's 2007 book Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches for a good example of this argument. I should note that Paul is somewhat more favorable to state and local governments since he says they're closer to the people and thus more controllable than a national government, though from his general anti-government attitude, I assume he would not wish for any governmental body to do much.
To take one illustrative example of the problems described in this book, Paul entirely blames government for the high cost of health care in the U.S. Here he quotes his hero, the economist Ludwig von Mises, who said that "government interventions create unintended consequences that lead to calls for further intervention, and so on into a destructive spiral of more and more government control." Yet one glaring discrepancy here is that most developed countries have much MORE government intervention in their health care systems than we do, yet health care costs in the U.S. are much HIGHER than anywhere else in the world! Nor does he mention the abuses of health insurance companies in this country. What can I as an individual do to deal with those companies? What good is freedom from government if we're thus trampled by big business instead? We need government to set some fairness standards with health insurance. But Paul would never propose such a thing, since that would dilute his black-and-white view that government is all bad and private enterprise is all good. So Paul ignores the problem. The same is largely true with the environment, where he at least supports the concept of environmental protection, yet barely discusses the matter, and for instance does not mention how to deal with the worldwide problem of global warming. Might we need government to do something here? Heavens!
But as I said at the beginning, I do agree with Paul in some regards. For example, he has a good point that our government has gone beyond the powers that the Constitution explicitly granted. I agree that if Congress wants to do more than that, the Constitution should be amended rather than using the "elastic clause" to mean that Congress has infinite powers. I also agree with his emphasis that we must roll back our foreign empire for both economic and practical reasons. He has been adamantly opposed to our invasion of Iraq, and here is an issue that we agree on. (Another reviewer here has a good point, though, that our departure from the Middle East, which Paul advocates, would not be sufficient to deal with Islamic terrorism.) However, although I agree with Paul on some points, and he certainly paints a vivid picture of some enormous problems that we face in the decades ahead, what I am opposed to about THE REVOLUTION is Paul's relentless anti-government tirade that extends to virtually all issues, and which I believe is overly simplistic, sometimes to the point of absurdity.
4 of 4 customers found the following review helpful:
Should be required reading in our nation's high schools, 2008-08-05
The United States has managed to go from being the biggest creditor nation (a good thing) to the biggest debtor nation (a bad thing) in a mere 30 years. We have our politicians and the federal reserve to thank for this. We can all continue pretending that there is not an 800 lb gorilla in the room and just wait for a total collapse or we can heed the advice of Dr. Paul and people like him. It's hard to believe that we fought for our independence from England less than 250 years ago and we've apparantely forgotten why we did so. The constitution is that reminder. It is startling how many personal freedoms and liberties we are willing to keep giving up. We need someone to fight for us. The government is supposed to serve the people; not the people serve the government. This book is a great reminder of the way things were intended to be and where we are straying from the path.
2 of 2 customers found the following review helpful:
Every American should read this., 2008-08-04
What an enlightening book and excellent call to action. It reminds voters why associating yourself with a 'party' is as politically productive as investigating why dirt has a bad taste. A real wakeup call to how far the US Federal Government has gone to ignore, destroy, and bastardize the Constitution. Fire Congress and lets elect some law-makers who will obey the law!
3 of 4 customers found the following review helpful:
An important book. . ., 2008-08-04
Too few people realize that our country was founded on the principles of liberty and limited government. Now, government has grown beyond the Founding Fathers' wildest nightmares, and much of the precious liberty that they fought for has been lost.
Ron Paul offers an insight into how things were meant to be, and also offers a glimmer of hope that things can be fixed. It's an easy, yet thought-provoking read.
Highly recommended.
6 of 45 customers found the following review helpful:
 Skip this revolution, 2008-08-03
First, I read the book.
Now, If you keep yourself informed thru a "fairly" independent newspaper or website and have at least one year of college, you can for sure skip this book.
There is nothing new on it...unless the US Constitution is something new for you. And if it is you can read it online and come up with your own conslusions.
Ron Paul using somebody else's words says that the US Constitution is not a living document - basically - "if you give me a living constitution you are giving me a dead constitution". Then, my question to him will be: where do we stop? The Constitution itself did not include the amendments that came with the pass of time and the understanding that time had change the way we think, hence a more updated document was needed to express these new points of view.
If we did not interpret the US C as a living document, the amendments would not exist, so according to RP the Bill of Rights, the abolision of slavery and universal sufrage - which are amendments to the USC - made our Constitution a dead one.
The economy part is a disgrace.
This man is going senile.
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