Ron Paul is an American medical doctor, author, Republican U.S. representative and a candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination. He has been an outspoken critic of American foreign and monetary policies, recognized for sharply opposing his own party on many issues.

Ron Paul is a graduate of Gettysburg College and Duke University School of Medicine, where he earned his medical degree. He served as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force from 1963-1968. He worked as an obstetrician-gynecologist during the 1960s and 1970s, delivering more than 4,000 babies before entering politics in 1976.

Following his 2008 run for the Republican Party presidential nomination, Paul became the initiator of the advocacy group Campaign for Liberty. He has become well-known for his libertarian ideas on many political issues, often differing from both Republican and Democratic Party stances.

One of the reasons mainstream journalists often dismiss Dr. Ron Paul and refer to him as a nut is because he keeps talking about issues outside the scope of what journalists say we should care about. This makes his causes appear to insiders and reporters, ridiculous.

He has been warning Americans about the Federal Reserve for as long as I can remember. And he has been calling for an audit of the Federal Reserve for years.

An amendment by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve.

Sen.Sanders said, “As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world. This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.”

Among the investigation’s key findings is that the Federal Reserve unilaterally provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from South Korea to Scotland, according to the GAO report.

Would America be in the financial mess we are in today if we had listened to Dr. Ron Paul decades ago?

Another label the media has given Ron Paul is “isolationist.” But Paul is a veteran who believes in going to war only when it has been formally declared per the U.S. Constitution.

Dr. Paul says, “We shouldn’t have so many injured and in our hospitals because we shouldn’t go to war unless it’s declared. If it’s declared, we should go win it and get it over with.”

If he is an isolationist, why would he be the candidate who gets the most donations from people in the military?

Dr. Paul wants to withdraw from the United Nations, which would be the constitutional thing to do.

Thomas Jefferson, founding father and an author of the Declaration of Independence, stated, “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”

Regarding Israel, Dr. Paul said “Two of the tenets of a true Zionist are ‘self-determination’ and ‘self-reliance’ ...We give $3 billion to Israel and $12 billion to her avowed enemies. How does that help Israel? And in return, we act like her master and demand veto power over her foreign policy.” Ron Paul states, “Any kind of racism or anti-Semitism is incompatible with my philosophy.”

He is against foreign aid, period. “I believe that federal foreign aid is absurd. We’re broke!... It is ridiculous for us to be borrowing money from China and giving it to Pakistan. I have described foreign aid as taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving it to rich people in poor countries.”

Would we be in the international mess we are in today had we listened to Dr. Ron Paul decades ago?

“Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.” – Thomas Jefferson

Julia Manning

Spring Hope