tomepats
I love Ron Paul. Up to this point, I've loved everything I've read by him including Revolution: A Manifesto, End the Fed, Liberty Defined, and The School Revolution. Perhaps it is because I am too familiar with his work that I found this book to be rather uninspiring.
He really seems to repeat himself over and over. He steadfastly challenges modern popular opinion on war (which is itself brave and commendable) but I don't think he has really advanced the conversation. He attempts to deal with the common “isolationist” argument but doesn't address the equally common genocide objection. This is a tough question but one libertarians face whenever they discuss the issue with opponents. He discusses the famous Swiss neutrality but doesn't effectively take on the objection that their neutrality was only made possible by American intervention.
A lot of his arguments take the form of “the myth that war does not help the economy has been disproved”. I certainly agree but I didn't find any persuasive arguments as to how. That may have required a larger book but in the 230 pages, of this book several arguments were repeated again and again. I didn't disagree with anything he said but I didn't find anything that I felt could change someone's mind or even make them give pause. Perhaps the book was meant to be more of a rallying cry for the already initiated; a sermon for the choir to give encouragement. I will say it has encouraged me to think more about how non-intervention can be better promoted but was not especially enlightening or inspiring.
To the interested, I would recommend reading Chapters 1, 2, and 21. The rest was difficult to get through and mostly superfluous.
Entertaining, enlightening and edifying. Malachy Walsh synthesizes the lessons he learned from his schooling with the nuns and Jesuits, his career in marketing and his life long appreciation of the Great Books in order to provide a truly accessible roadmap for writing, and writing well.
The last chapter outlines the lessons, rules and ideas that Walsh explains and expands upon in the rest of the book. This outline is an amazing reference resource that will keep Walsh's book near my desk at all times.
The reason this book was so enjoyable, though, was Walsh's ability to make great writers like Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas and Shakespeare eminently accessible, pulling the curtain back on their proclivity for literary pilfering, while blending his hilarious insights and experiences from the ad making world.
As a parent, there is much that Walsh recovers that I want to make a part of my children's education. I have a few years to try and catch up myself! But Walsh provides the tools and points to additional resources that I'm excited to explore.
As the book tells us, St John Paul II made a visit of little over 24 hours to the Polish hub of Stevens Point in Central Wisconsin just two years before his election to the papacy. The pride in that visit that shines through even to the present day from this town is inspiring and telling of the impact that great man left on rural Wisconsin and the world.
Any proud Wisconsinite will find a brief yet meaningful biography of JPII that is sure to inspire further reading. Any faithful Catholic will happily share in the overflowing joy the author has in telling this story.
For one day in the life of St John Paul the Great to affect so many is humbling yet unsurprising when we learn what made him who he was and how he lived every moment in the present.
