Ronald Ernest Paul, a physician, author, activist, and retired politician from the United States, was born on August 20, 1935. He represented Texas’s 22nd congressional district in the United States Congress from 1976 to 1977 and again from 1979 to 1985, as well as the 14th congressional district from 1997 to 2013. He ran for president of the United States three times: in 1988 as the Libertarian Party’s nominee and in 2008 and 2012 as a Republican Party contender.
Paul, who identifies as a constitutionalist, is against a number of governmental policies, including the military-industrial complex, the war on drugs, the war on terror, and the governmental Reserve’s existence and taxation. He’s also been an outspoken critic.
Paul, who identifies as a constitutionalist, is against a number of governmental policies, including the military-industrial complex, the war on drugs, the war on terror, and the governmental Reserve’s existence and taxation. Additionally, he has been an outspoken opponent of laws that authorize widespread surveillance, like the USA PATRIOT Act and NSA operations. Both of these free-market organizations, which emphasize minimal government, were founded by Paul in 1976. He also became the founding chairman of the conservative PAC Citizens for a Sound Economy in 1985.
The Tea Party movement, a fiscally conservative political movement that began in 2007 and gained popularity in 2009, has been dubbed the “intellectual godfather” of the movement because it is primarily opposed to most forms of interventionism.
Paul worked as an obstetrician-gynecologist from the 1960s through the 1980s, in addition to serving as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force from 1963 to 1968. When his son, Rand Paul, was elected as a US senator from Kentucky in 2011, he became the only Representative in history to hold two Senate seats concurrently.
Ron Paul is a Senior Fellow and Distinguished Counselor at the Mises Institute. He has written several books and, in his political campaigns, supported the views of Austrian School economists like Murray Rothbard, Friedrich Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises. He has stated that his ideal form of government is that of President Grover Cleveland.
Following the success of his 2008 presidential campaign and the passion shown by the grassroots, Paul declared in July 2011 that he will not run for Congress again in order to concentrate on his 2012 presidential campaign. Despite winning four states in the 2012 primary and placing among the top four delegates in both contests, he declined to support John McCain and Mitt Romney’s Republican nominations when they ran against Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, respectively.
Paul declared in May 2012 that while he would not be running in any further presidential primaries, he would still seek delegates from states that had already completed primary elections. Paul was awarded the second-most delegates at the Republican National Conventions in 2008 and 2012, after only McCain and Romney in that order.
Paul announced his retirement from Congress in January 2013, but he continued to give talks advocating libertarian and libertarian-conservative ideologies on college campuses. Additionally, he still offers political analysis on YouTube as co-host of The Ron Paul Liberty Report.
In the 2016 presidential election, Paul, who was not running, garnered one electoral vote from a Texas elector who was unfaithful. This made Paul the oldest recipient of an Electoral College vote, and the second Libertarian presidential candidate to receive an electoral vote in history, following John Hospers in 1972. Paul is 81 years old.