From foreign follies to freedom: Congressman Ron Paul's new book, A Foreign Policy of Freedom, exposes America's foreign-policy follies and espouses the Founding Fathers' wisdom as the key to freedom.

A Foreign Policy of Freedom, by Ron Paul, Lake Jackson, Texas: Foundation for Rational Economics and Education, 2007, 372 pages, paperback. (For ordering information, see page one.)

In the scandal-a-day culture of the Beltway, Congressman Ron Paul is an anomaly. Plain-spoken, unassuming, and unsullied by quid pro quo political wheeling and dealing, Dr. Paul has been, in the words of one congressman, the "constitutional conscience of the House" for many years. A prolific writer and speaker, the Texas congressman is that rarest of Washington endangered species, an experienced legislator who combines unswerving commitment to constitutional principles with a deep understanding of the doctrines of political and economic liberty on which our republic was founded.

Now Dr. Paul, who recently announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States, has produced another timely book, A Foreign Policy of Freedom, intended both to shed light on the follies of modern American foreign policy and to show the way back to the foreign policy espoused by the Founding Fathers.

As a U.S. Representative from 1976 to 1984 and from 1997 to the present, Dr. Paul has been in Congress during many of the worst foreign-policy escapades of the last generation, from the aftermath of the Vietnam War to the ongoing war in Iraq. A Foreign Policy of Freedom, a collection of speeches, journal entries, and other commentaries, takes the reader on a tour of American foreign-policy history from the death of Mao Tse-tung in 1976 to very recent events in the Middle East. Along the way, the reader glimpses now-little-remembered events--like American involvement in the Falklands War between Argentina and Great Britain and President Reagan's ill-starred intervention in the Lebanese civil war--through the eyes of one of the very few true partisans of liberty on Capitol Hill.

The principles of a sound and moral foreign policy, Dr. Paul reminds the reader again and again, have not changed since the Founders' day. George Washington's policy of avoiding "entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world" is as prudent in our day as it was in his. James Madison's observation that "the means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home" resonates in a time of open-ended war on terrorism as in no other. At times Congressman Paul's warnings to his fellow legislators, invoking as they do the same principles over and over, might seem repetitive, especially to the reader already in sympathy with his ideas. But to his colleagues on Capitol Hill, most of whom regard the Constitution and the ideas of the Founders as quaint anachronisms, the thunderous truths of limited government (including limited foreign policy) cannot be repeated too often.

A particularly revealing chapter records a discussion in the House amongst Congressman Paul and several of his colleagues about that least-regarded of constitutional prerogatives, the power of Congress--and Congress alone--to declare war.

In October of 2002, when Congress was debating passage of a resolution to allow the president to make the decision to wage war in Iraq, Ron Paul warned his colleagues in the House against such a transfer of power from the legislative to the executive branch. To make his point, Congressman Paul introduced a resolution calling for a congressional Declaration of War against Iraq--a measure Paul intended to vote against, since he was opposed to such a war on moral grounds. Nevertheless, he wanted to teach his colleagues who supported military action that voting in favor of a declaration of war was the proper route to follow.

In the recorded debate, Congressman Paul reminds his colleagues that the resolution they intend to pass never mentions war nor Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, but only "talk[s] about transferring the power and the authority to the president to wage war when he pleases." The executive branch, Congressman Paul maintains, was not to be entrusted with the powers of war. In the words of James Madison, "The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrate, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it. It has, accordingly, with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature."

Moreover, Congressman Paul points out, the proposed resolution was primarily concerned with enforcing our so-called obligations under the United Nations, making a mockery of constitutional supremacy.

Congressman Paul notes in conclusion that some objected to "tying the hands of the President." But that, Paul maintains, is precisely what the Constitution intends. "That is what Madison is talking about, tying the hands of one person to make the decision to go to war. Therefore, I think ... if there is a declaration of war, we will fight to win it and it won't drag on and be endless and lead to another one."

In response, Congressman Henry Hyde derides declarations of war as "inappropriate" and "anachronistic." "There are things in the Constitution that have been overtaken by events, by time," he insists. "Declaration of war is one. Letters of mark and reprisal are others. There are things no longer relevant to a modern society."

Ah, yes, modernization trumps principle--in this instance, the "anachronistic" notion that the Constitution, not Congress, the president, or the United Nations, ought to be the highest legal authority in the land. For Congressman Hyde and his ilk, the Constitution is to be disregarded at the whim of Capitol Hill sophists, whenever its limits on government power become inconvenient. At least Henry Hyde is honest in his disdain; an overwhelming majority of lawmakers and think-tank pedants privately hold the entire philosophy of limited government to be outmoded and dysfunctional. Socialism and empire-building, after all, are so much more 21st century.

Well, not really. The time-tarnished excuses for arbitrary, absolute government are as old as the state itself, metastasizing with changing vocabulary and social fashion, but little altered in substance. Just as the Romans embarked on a program of naked imperialism at roughly the same time that they set aside their own constitutional restraints and began erecting a welfare state, so the rise of welfarism and warfarism in modern America have gone hand in hand. There is, Ron Paul's book reminds us, a fundamental inconsistency in opposing Big Government domestically while endorsing militarism overseas (as many of his Republican colleagues do). Nor is there any logic in opposing empire-building while supporting every domestic welfare scheme ever concocted.

Congressman Paul does the reader a great service in a chapter reprinting his address on the House floor on July 10, 2003, in which he exposes the flawed thinking of so-called neoconservatism. Now a household word, thanks to the influence of neoconservatives in the Bush administration, neoconservatism has been around for decades, and is approximately a synthesis of ideas and strategies once identified with the left, including Wilsonian internationalism and elements of Trotskyite socialism. According to Congressman Paul, the neocons "agree with Trotsky on permanent revolution, violent as well as intellectual" and "express no opposition to the welfare state." To the neocon movement Dr. Paul attributes the Bush doctrine of "preemptive war," a tenet completely at loggerheads with traditional Christian notions of "just" (i.e., defensive) war, but which squares well with the neocons' enthusiasm for Machiavellian realpolitik.

Perhaps the most discouraging aspect of Dr. Paul's book is the incomprehension and downright contempt with which his views have been met on Capitol Hill. Like Rome's Cato the Younger, he is a legislator largely isolated from his peers in the corridors of power, because he seeks not self-aggrandizement but the dismantling of a gargantuan welfare-warfare state generations in the making. And despite the accuracy of his commonsense forecasts (as far back as September 2002, Ron Paul was predicting "thousands of American casualties" in Iraq), most of Capitol Hill still seems willing to ignore his warnings against imprudent foreign-policy decisions.

But that can change. Perhaps a coming day will see more men like Ron Paul in Congress. A few dozen such could put an end to politics as we know it. But in the meantime, we are all left to wonder how differently history in our time would have unfolded, had official Washington only paid more attention to Congressman Ron Paul.