The Revolution by Ron Paul Read Free Book Online Page A

in Iraq are people who had never been involved in terrorist activity before but have been radicalized by the U.S. presence in Iraq—the second holiest place in Islam.
    The terrorists, in short, have played us like a fiddle. With the unnecessary and unprovoked attack on Iraq, our government gave them just what they wanted.
    Americans have the right to defend themselves against attack; that is not at issue. But that is very different from launching a preemptive war against a country that had not attacked us and could not attack us, that lacked a navy and an air force, and whose military budget was a fraction of a percent of our own. A policy of overthrowing or destabilizing every regime our government dislikes is no strategy at all, unless our goal is international chaos and domestic impoverishment.
    It is time for us to consider a strategic reassessment of our policy of foreign interventionism, occupation, and nation building. It is in our national interest to do so and in the interest of world peace. This is a message that resonates not only with the American people at large but also with U.S. military personnel: in the second quarter of 2007 our campaign raised more money from active duty and retired military than did any other Republican candidate, and in the third quarter we raised more than any candidate in either party. Then in the fourth quarter we received more money in military donations than all other Republicans put together. This message is popular, and it is based on American security, fiscal sanity, and common sense.
    C HAPTER 3
    The Constitution
    T hough written constitutions “may be violated in moments of passion or delusion,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1802, “yet they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally and recall the people.”
    Whether we are yet emerging from our own moment of disorientation after 9/11 is difficult to say. I believe, though, that enough Americans are taking a sober second look at what we have allowed our country to become, especially since that terrible day, that the Constitution may yet reemerge as a document to which the people may be rallied and recalled.
    In early American history the Constitution figured heavily in political debate. People wanted to know, and politicians needed to justify, where the various schemes they debated in Congress were authorized in the Constitution. In the twenty-first century, by contrast, the Constitution is like the elephant at the tea party that everyone pretends not to notice.
    The power of the executive branch, for instance, has expanded far beyond what the Framers of the Constitution envisioned. One mechanism that has strengthened it is the executive order, an instrument by which presidents have exerted powers that our Constitution never intended them to have. An executive order is a command issued by the president that enjoys his authority alone, not having been passed by Congress. Executive orders can have legitimate functions. Presidents can carry out their constitutional duties or direct their subordinates by executive order, for instance. But they can also be a source of temptation for ambitious presidents (am I being redundant?), since they can always try to get away with using them as a substitute for formal legislation that they know they cannot get to pass. He can thereby circumvent the normal, constitutional legislative process.
    Executive orders were rare in the nineteenth century; for a president to issue even several dozen was unusual. The first twentieth-century president to serve a full term, Theodore Roosevelt (who served two, in fact), issued over a thousand. His distant cousin Franklin Roosevelt issued over three thousand. Executive orders continue to serve as a potent weapon in the president’s arsenal.
    Congress has sometimes been complicit in presidential abuses of executive orders, either by giving express sanction to the president’s action after the fact or ignoring the abuse of power