I just read Ron Paul's book "The Revolution, A Manifesto" and did some more research on him.

According to www.house.gov, Ron Paul is a Texas Congressman who stands for a limited federal government as per the Constitution. He believes in lower taxes, free markets, more personal liberties, sound monetary policies based on commodity-backed currencies, and free trade with other nations and foreign non-intervention. Mr. Paul does not vote for any legislation that is not authorized by the Constitution. He is an outspoken critic of the Federal Reserve's inflationary measures, its power, and its non-accountability. He advocates a return to the gold standard.

Ron Paul, born and raised in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, graduated from Gettysburg College and the Duke University School of Medicine. During the 1960s he served as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force. He began his medical practice in Brazoria County in Texas in 1968, specialty in obstetrics/gynecology, where he delivered over 4000 babies. He has been married since 1957 and is the proud parent of 5, and grandparent of 17.

Despite receiving only single digit percentage of the public support in the 2008 Republican primary, he remains extremely popular on the internet.

Here is the most popular Ron Paul video currently on Youtube put out during the 2008 presidential campaigns.

If Ron Paul truly represents truth in politics, why didn't he gather more steam? Why don't Americans take him more seriously? Here are some criticisms of Paul's philosophies.

Don't libertarians (of which Ron Paul ideals largely are) believe in no government? Isn't that promoting anarchy?

It seems to me, the biggest obstacle he faced was going against decades of American reliance (real and perceived) on a strong centralized federal government. When Dr. Paul says that we need to abolish the Department of Education, IRS, FEMA, our involvement in the United Nations, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Energy, etc., many people's immediate reaction is that this guy is insane. They translate that into him being anti-education, anti-tax, anti-emergency funding, pro-corrupt oil, anti-poor, racist, and on and on. Paul responds that he's a Constitutionalist, that these are areas intended for private markets, state, or local legislation.

Ron Paul shares the country's founding philosophy that the power structure should be family, local government, state government, and then federal government as a last resort. This ensures that the most power is closest to home, which prohibits the rise of powerful kings and dictators, something the founders were very familiar with at the time. Most people today look to the federal government first to solve their problems. Paul also believes that most of the above issues can be much more efficiently solved privately or locally than federally.

Why so much emphasis on the Constitution? The founding fathers were white slave owning Bible-thumpers who are completely out of touch with today's Americans.

I am not a political expert, so to me, that's actually a decent argument. I hate that some of the founding fathers were slave owners. To me, that severely knocks their credibility, especially when it comes to issues of personal liberty. I think many Americans today take the Constitution less seriously because of that.

What I do understand is that a country must have set written rules to follow. The Constitution is our set of rules, and the Constitution has means to be amended. If there is something that is not working or unjust, such as the legalization of slavery, amendments to the law must be made. So we either have to follow the rules, or change them. Otherwise, we are a lawless society where anyone can do anything they want whenever they want.

According to Ron Paul, most large government departments and programs today are created unconstitutionally, or unlawfully. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution lists what the federal government is allowed to do. Everything else is supposed to be done by either state or local governments. None of the programs Ron Paul wants to phase out were supposed to be regulated by the federal government in the first place. He's not anti-poor or anti-education. He just believes that these issues should be taken care of privately or locally, as they always have been before the creation of these departments.

Question: If we as Americans believe there must be these federal agencies, why didn't we just update Article 1, Section 8, since that's the law? It is too time-consuming. Law makers instead decided to reinterpret what Article 1 Section 8 originally meant. Notice it reads "The Congress shall have power to...[list of duties] and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States." Legislators drive a truck through the term "general welfare". They also do so with other terms such as the "necessary and proper" clause. After quoting James Madison on the subject, Ron Paul writes in "The Revolution":

"And of course, as Madison elsewhere wrote, if the federal government really had been intended to carry out whatever action might promote the general welfare, what was the point of listing its specific powers in Article 1, Section 8, since this superpower would have covered all of those anyway?" (pg. 47)

Defenders of new legislation quote founding fathers as well and now we have these long incomprehensible debates about the original intent of the Constitution. Combine that with the fact that they spoke the English language differently than we do today, and it's no wonder the Constitution is so uninteresting to most people. So as it is now, the lawmakers create more and more federal departments, and the average person just shrugs their shoulders and goes on about their day.

Ron Paul is an isolationist. He is dangerous to national security.

Ron Paul believes in a strong national defense, but adamantly supports the founding fathers views that we must engage in free trade while making alliances and enemies with none. According to "The Revolution", most of our wars since Korea have been declared unconstitutionally. Ron Paul agrees with Michael Scheurer, chief of the CIA's Osama bin Ladin Unit at the Counterterrorist Center in the late 1990s, that our intrusive foreign policies have everything to do with terrorism against the U.S. Dr. Paul goes on to make a case for the United States being safer by eliminating a large part of our huge unnecessary overseas military spending in 130 countries around the world.

If he believes in individual rights, why is he against a woman's right to choose to have an abortion?

Ron Paul believes that abortion is a state's right issue, not a federal issue. As to his personal beliefs, in his book, he shares a story when in the 1960s during his medical residency, he walked into the middle of an abortion by hysterotomy. The woman was six months pregnant and the two pound child was put into a bucket in the corner of the room to die. The baby tried to breathe and to cry, and everyone pretended the baby wasn't there. That alerted him to the importance of the issue.

He then went on to describe the terminology used to describe unborn babies, the federal government's role in the issue, and the federal court's role. He did not however go into any of the modern practices of abortion or even address the issue of the individual's right to their body or when a baby should be considered a person and should be protected by the law. For a doctor who has both great knowledge of the birth of children and is a champion of individual liberty, I find it a little strange as to why he doesn't further share his views in the life vs. liberty aspects of the issue.

It's impractical to go to a gold standard.

After reading the book, I'm still unsure of how a gold standard would work. Ron Paul is a believer in Austrian Economic theory, which is something many mainstream economists seem to brush off. I don't know who's right. But between monetary terms and principles such as fiat, fractional reserve, inflation, deflation, recession, depression, notes, bonds, distribution effects, etc., it's no wonder most people fall asleep at discussions of the Federal Reserve yet can get outraged against a $398 million bridge to nowhere. Useless bridges are easier to understand, even if it's only a drop in the bucket compared to what the Fed does.

Ron Paul is religious nor does he believe in evolution.

NOTE: I am not a political expert or a representative of Mr. Paul's. If you feel I've misrepresented any of his views, please let me know where and why, and I'll try my best to correct it. Thanks.

I have only read "The Revolution, a Manifesto", Ron Paul's latest book. Here's a chapter by chapter breakdown of the book, is Ron Paul's The Revolution any good?

What about you?

How familiar with his views are you?

Which issues do you agree with him on?

Which issues do you disagree with him on?

Why would you or would you not vote for him?