Freedom Under Siege

by Dr. Ron Paul, 1987
Excerpted from Chapter 1 of Freedom Under Siege
pp. 36 - 39

If a precise understanding of rights is not generally agreed upon, a political system designed to protect individual liberty cannot be achieved. The signers of the Declaration of Independence declared that rights are inalienable; i.e., incapable of being lost or surrendered. To avoid any misunderstanding, something this important must be clearly defined. Lincoln pointed out the danger of a vague definition when he said:

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word, we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty means for each man to do as he pleases with himself and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the products of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things called by the same name liberty. It follows that each of the things is, by the perceptive parties, called by two different and incompatible names – liberty and tyranny.

The world today, just as in Lincoln's time, is still in need of a good definition for the word liberty. But more than that, we need determined people who believe in and are willing to defend liberty. Those who dare to use the word liberty when promoting violence and tyranny must be clearly exposed. The tyrants must be identified and never confused as friends of freedom. If a battle must occur – which inevitably it must since liberty and tyranny cannot coexist – let it never be supposed that two factions advocating liberty are battling one another. The conflict must be clearly between liberty and tyranny.

In order to minimize the confusion, we must do our best to define rights.

Below is a short, concise essay by one of my favorite cogitators, Adrian Douglas. Although I find the entire piece relevant, it closes with yet another endorsement for Ron Paul. This article is reprinted with permission and was originally published July 4, 2007 on Le Metropole Café and Market Force Analysis.

Independence from which "King George"? By Adrian Douglas

Chapter 4, and the Summary of Ron Paul's book - Freedom Under Siege are now available:

Freedom Under Siege, Chapter Four

Freedom Under Siege, Summary

The rest of the book can be found here: http://dailypaul.com/node/23. Dr. Paul's new book is also available for purchase.

Well folks, Chapter 3 of Ron Paul's book is now available here:

Freedom Under Siege, Chapter Three

The title/subject is the Draft or Freedom. It is an excellent read. Even though we don't have the draft now, the way things are going, I have a feeling we may have in the near future. This is essential reading to bone up on why the Draft is unconstitutional, unfair, inefficient, and basically an all around stupid idea. Very well written, Dr. Paul

I have begun scanning Ron Paul's 1988 book Freedom Under Siege into electronic format. It is a little labor intensive - I'm scanning the pages using OCR software, saving them as Word documents, proofing them, then reexporting them as .pdf files. The alternative was to scan each page directly as a .pdf, but that resulted in files that were just too large. This being the case, it may be a little slow going. So rather than wait until the entire book is done, I've decided to put each of the chapters up as I complete them.

Today I am proud to present the Cover, and the Foreword by Lew Rockwell, and the Introduction by Ron Paul:

Freedom Under Siege, Cover, Foreword

Freedom Under Siege, Introduction

Freedom Under Siege, Chapter One - Individual Rights

Freedom Under Siege, Chapter Two - Foreign Policy

Freedom Under Siege, Chapter Three - The Draft or Freedom

Freedom Under Siege, Chapter Four - Sound Money is Gold

Summary - Have We Lost Respect?

All Chapters - Complete Book

Thank you, Ron Paul for writing these words and keeping the flame of liberty alive.

Michael Nystrom

Editor’s Note – Ron Paul’s 1988 book, Freedom Under Siege is out of print and hard to find these days. As soon as I heard Dr. Paul was running for President, I placed an order for a used copy from Amazon.com, and was lucky enough to get it. It is a logical, clearly written book that should be read by all Americans in order to understand the growing threats to freedom, liberty and the US Constitution.

I have received permission to from Dr. Paul, via his wife Carol, to scan the book into .PDF format and make it available for free download. I will be working on that project over the next several days. If you would like to be notified when the .pdf version of Freedom Under Siege is available, please sign up to the low-volume email announce list for this site.

The Foreword contains numerous reasons why America is in need -- now more than ever – of Dr. Paul’s leadership.

Michael Nystrom
Arlington, MA

Freedom Under Siege, by Ron Paul
Foreword by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
1988

Every American who cares about liberty owes a debt to Ron Paul. From his first run for Congress in 1974 through his gallant try for the Senate in 1984 to his present campaign as Presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party, Ron Paul has been an outstanding leader for freedom.