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My message is one of freedom and individual rights. I believe individuals have a right to life and liberty and that physical aggression should be used only defensively. We should respect each other as rational beings by trying to achieve our goals through reason and persuasion rather than threats and coercion. That, and not a desire for ?economic efficiency,? is the primary moral reason for opposing government intrusions into our lives: government is force, not reason.
People seem to think I am speaking of principles foreign to the Republican tradition. But listen to the words of Robert A. Taft, who in the old days of the Republican Party was once its standard-bearer:
?When I say liberty I do not simply mean what is referred to as ?free enterprise.? I mean liberty of the individual to think his own thoughts and live his own life as he desires to think and to live; the liberty of the family to decide how they wish to live, what they want to eat for breakfast and for dinner, and how they wish to spend their time; liberty of a man to develop his ideas and get other people to reach those ideas, if he can convince them that they have some value to the world; liberty of every local community to decide how its children shall be educated, how its local services shall be run, and who its local leaders shall be; liberty of a man to choose his own occupation; and liberty of a man to run his own business as he thinks it ought to be run, as long as he does not interfere with the right of other people to do the same thing.?
As we?ll see in a later chapter, Taft was also an opponent of needless wars and of unconstitutional presidential war-making.
This is the Republican tradition to which I belong.
Early on in my presidential campaign, people began describing my message and agenda as a ?revolution.? In a way, it is, albeit a peaceful one. In a country with a political debate as restricted as ours, it is revolutionary to ask whether we need troops in 130 countries and whether the noninterventionist foreign policy recommended by our Founding Fathers might not be better. It is revolutionary to ask whether the accumulation of more and more power in Washington has been good for us. It is revolutionary to ask fundamental questions about privacy, police-state measures, taxation, social policy, and countless other matters.
This revolution, though, is not altogether new. It is a peaceful continuation of the American Revolution and the principles of our Founding Fathers: liberty, self-government, the Constitution, and a noninterventionist foreign policy. That is what they taught us, and that is what we now defend.
I was never interested in writing a campaign book, as they tend to have (deservedly) short shelf lives. But the ideas I have been promoting, and which have struck a powerful chord with so many Americans, are ideas that are overlooked and neglected because they do not fit into the template of trivial questions with which I opened this chapter. This book is an opportunity to highlight and explain them in the kind of systematic fashion that campaign speeches and presidential debates simply do not allow. The revolution my supporters refer to will persist long after my retirement from politics.
At the same time, I am also describing what the agenda of George W. Bush?s successor should be if we want to move toward a free society once again. Our country is facing an unprecedented financial crisis precisely because the questions our political and media establishments allow us to ask are so narrow. Whether or not politicians actually want to hear them, it has never been more important for us to begin posing significant and fundamental questions. ?In all affairs,? Bertrand Russell once said, ?it?s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.? I?m not in the habit of quoting Russell, but when in American history has his sentiment been more true?
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