Golden Content, Mediocre Presentation | A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship...

Informative | A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship | Ron Paul

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	• A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship Ron Paul Foundation for Rational Economics and Educati, 2007 - 372 pages average customer review:based on 68 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A True Citizen-Statesman

Heralded as a "modern day Thomas Jefferson", Ron Paul is spot on with his assessment of US foreign policy. This book is simply a collection of speeches made on the House floor (as well as a few diary entries) pertaining to foreign policy over the last few decades.

Ron Paul has gained mainstream popularity only in the last year, but it's amazing to see how consistent he has been with his message. Very unusual for a politician! Hopefully one day the government will get the message, and follow a foreign policy our founders advocated.

Ron Paul FTW!

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Golden Content, Mediocre Presentation

It behooves the reader to understand that this book was rushed out for publication in order that the Paul campaign could say that they had a new book out on the market--just like McCain, Giuliani, Obama, and Huckabee also had at the time.

There are many problems with this book, but overall I found the book very rewarding. Nevertheless, certain issues must be redressed for a _NEW EDITION_.

1. There is no logical progression to the speeches. They are arranged chronologically. A speech about Colombia will follow a speech on the immorality of the draft--and after that the reader will read an anti-United Nations diatribe. The content is all pretty golden, but it's hard to make most of it stick since there is no logical progression of ideas.

2. The table of contents does not list the speeches, and no index even exists. It's therefore extremely difficult to find specific lines--or even whole speeches--in this 372 page book.

3. There are over twelve typos in the actual text. Inexcusable.

4. Some of the typography is...questionable. Random sentences are put in bold, for example. This distracts from the argumentation and instead attracts undue attention on singular points. There is a reason that great writers use their sentence and paragraph structure--their rhetorical strategy--to emphasize points that need emphasizing...not bold type.

But the content--oh, where to start? This is a masterful collection of a stalwart's life-long battle with foolishness. Whether he's dealing with the crisis in Lebanon, the many escapades of Clinton, the inanity of foreign aid, or our present government's infatuation with Afghanistan and Iraq, Paul adroitly defends the classically conservative foreign policy of men like Robert Taft, Edmund Burke, and to a lesser extent Reagan and Goldwater.

Peppered throughout, Paul's hardline paleoconservative views on fiscal policies and civil liberties match the ardor and prowess of a Sowell, a Hayek, a Reagan, a Goldwater, or a Mises. Especially fantastic are his "State of the Republic" addresses--and his 1984 Farewell Address, which supposedly caused quite a ruckus in its day.

All in all, read it for sure, but understand that it needs some serious emending. I'd be happy to donate my time to re-typeset it; to create an index; to redo the table of contents; and to organize the speeches by subject, not year.

4 stars.

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Informative

Who needs public education on this topic when you have a constitutionalist explain it to your in words it was supposed to be told in?
Awesome, hands down, great book. People have asked if im reading it for a "class" and I tell them.. uhm, no, im reading it because Ron Paul is inspiring and hes definitely a figure to look up to.

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Ron Paul: my new hero

I had previously held the opinion that the claim that the Iraq War was all about oil, and that big business was pushing our agressive, nonsensical foreign policy, was just a part of the liberal agenda to reclaim the white house. Surely, this could not be true; how would US citizens ever let the government get away with that? To spend trillions, and worse yet, allow young people to die, for oil? When at the same time it appears to be so important to use clean energy that the government must mandate and subsidize it? That just wouldn't make any sense!

I agree with Dr. Paul 110% on economic policy - he is very well learned in this area - so I was willing to hear him out on foreign policy. I was shocked by what I read. Many times, Dr. Paul predicts those things (in his address to Congress) which do end up occurring. That's the most appealing part of this book - you see the obvious timeline, taken down in Congressional record - Paul's prediction, Congress ignores, disaster ensues, aftermath, Paul's prediction, Congress ignores, disaster, etc.. This occurrs frequently enough, you'd think after 20 yrs, Congress would listen to the guy.

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Real Substance

My book has Ron Paul's signature on front, from when we had lunch with him last Fall. Beyond the signature, the book has real substance that changed my outlook on our foreign policies and interactions with supposed enemies (think Vietnam).

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

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