Ron Paul's Revolutionary Manifesto

by Floy Lilley
by Floy Lilley

We’ve just finished watching yet another boring presidential debate in which, with the exception of the contributions by Ron Paul, no major issues were debated. Instead, John McCain and Mitt Romney were permitted to spend the bulk of the time arguing about the supposedly major differences that separate them, when in fact they actually agree on everything.

And that’s what our larger debate in American society is like, too: we never get to discuss fundamentals, only minutiae. Should we have troops in 129 countries or 130? Income tax or national sales tax? This restriction on freedom or that one?

Ron Paul is about to blow the lid off the whole political establishment, the whole crooked game of which McCain, Romney, Clinton, and Obama, for all their supposed differences, are all an intimate part.

Ron Paul has written The Revolution: A Manifesto, to be released by Grand Central Publishing. It covers everything establishment politicians lie about or ignore: war, sound money, terrorism, the economy, the IRS, civil liberties – you name it. It’s written to be understood by ordinary people – and to wake them up.

It is the most extraordinary book ever written by a public figure in America. And Ron Paul, as we well know, isn’t just any public figure. He is the great truth-teller of our time, and the greatest champion of freedom the U.S. Congress has ever seen. Ron Paul is throwing down the gauntlet, defining the issues that he and his movement – which are not going away – intend to hammer home from now until the end of time.

The preface to the book is already online, courtesy of Grand Central Publishing (which is not connected to the Book Bomb). Read it at the Preface link here.

An excerpt:

Every election cycle we are treated to candidates who promise us "change," and 2008 has been no different. But in the American political lexicon, "change" always means more of the same: more government, more looting of Americans, more inflation, more police-state measures, more unnecessary war, and more centralization of power.

Real change would mean something like the opposite of those things. It might even involve following our Constitution. And that’s the one option Americans are never permitted to hear….

With national bankruptcy looming, politicians from both parties continue to make multi-trillion dollar promises of "free" goods from the government, and hardly a soul wonders if we can still afford to have troops in – this is not a misprint – 130 countries around the world. All of this is going to come to an end sooner or later, because financial reality is going to make itself felt in very uncomfortable ways. But instead of thinking about what this means for how we conduct our foreign and domestic affairs, our chattering classes seem incapable of speaking in anything but the emptiest platitudes, when they can be bothered to address serious issues at all. Fundamental questions like this, and countless others besides, are off the table in our mainstream media, which focuses our attention on trivialities and phony debates as we march toward oblivion.

This is the deadening consensus that crosses party lines, that dominates our major media, and that is strangling the liberty and prosperity that were once the birthright of Americans. Dissenters who tell their fellow citizens what is really going on are subject to smear campaigns that, like clockwork, are aimed at the political heretic. Truth is treason in the empire of lies.

There is an alternative to national bankruptcy, a bigger police state, trillion-dollar wars, and a government that draws ever more parasitically on the productive energies of the American people. It’s called freedom. But as we’ve learned through hard experience, we are not going to hear a word in its favor if our political and media establishments have anything to say about it.

If we want to live in a free society, we need to break free from these artificial limitations on free debate and start asking serious questions once again. I am happy that my campaign for the presidency has finally raised some of them. But this is a long-term project that will persist far into the future. These ideas cannot be allowed to die, buried beneath the mind-numbing chorus of empty slogans and inanities that constitute official political discourse in America.

That is why I wrote this book.

The only drawback to Ron Paul’s manifesto is that it will not be released until April 30. That’s where RonPaulBookBomb.com, a new grassroots effort, comes in.

The goal of RonPaulBookBomb.com is twofold. First, for The Revolution: A Manifesto to debut at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Second, to reach 1 million Americans with Dr. Paul’s manifesto.

The site asks people to pledge to buy at least one copy of Dr. Paul’s book on or before the April 30 release date. It keeps a running counter of how many people have pledged. How high can we get it by April 30? (Is there any precedent for anything like this in the history of publishing?)

This book can change our political landscape. It is brilliant and explosive, the kind of book no one in Washington would ever consider writing. The more it sells, the harder it will be for business as usual to go on – and the more firmly we will lay the groundwork for the freedom movement in the years ahead. Here is the instrument to propel the Ron Paul Revolution well into the future.

If the media won’t deliver Ron Paul’s message to our fellow Americans, we must do so ourselves. This book is a classic for our time, a powerful and devastating indictment of the one-party system that governs and loots us and of the official media that pretends we have a real debate in this country. It is also one of the greatest, most learned and inspiring defenses of freedom and the traditional American republic ever written.

If this doesn’t wake up America, nothing will.

The organizers of RonPaulBookBomb.com hope to make publishing history on April 30. Let’s go pledge, and make it happen.

And pre-order the book!

February 1, 2008

Floy Lilley [send her mail] is an adjunct faculty member at the Mises Institute. She was formerly with the University of Texas at Austin’'s Chair of Free Enterprise, and an attorney-at-law in Texas and Florida.

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