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.(Book review)

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.