Dr. Never: former Rep. Ron Paul on how 'military interventions by the United States after World War II were all unjustified'.

• Author: Welch, Matt
• Position: Interview

On May 15, 2007, at a Republican primary debate in Columbia, South Carolina, longshot presidential candidate Ron Paul shocked the room with his answer to a question about how 9/11 changed America: "Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years."

Then-frontrunner Rudolph Giuliani, visibly agitated, interrupted the proceedings to condemn Paul's "extraordinary statement ... that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq" and then demand a retraction as the crowd went wild. Campaign reporters, straight and ideological alike, started writing Ron Paul's obituary. Politico Executive Editor Jim VandeHei, on CNN's American Morning the next day, said that "Rudy Giuliani came off terrific ... mostly because he got that softball, where Ron Paul lobs it to him and basically blames the U.S. for the 9/11 attacks....You dream of those moments when you're a candidate, that's for sure." Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt agitated for Paul to be barred from future GOP debates. National Review's headline captured the media Zeitgeist succinctly: "Giuliani Up, McCain Up, Romney Down, and Ron Paul Out--Way Out."

But a funny thing happened on the way to Paul's seemingly inevitable ostracism from the Republican Party for the sin of noninterventionism: His star began to rise, while Giuliani's crashed and burned. Not only would the rambling septuagenarian outpace the famous former New York mayor in both delegates and the popular vote during the 2008 campaign, his message of peace and American pullback electrified a new generation of activists and voters, while Giuliani's hawkish stance has become less popular by the day.

Now retired from Congress after a second, more successful run at the White House, Paul can gaze out at a world and a GOP that has become much more sympathetic to his once-lonely view of the world. His son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), has been hanging out near the top of the polls for the 2016 presidential race, selling a more Republican-friendly version of intervention-skepticism. There are entire armies of young libertarian activists--including many recent military veterans--who got their introduction to the philosophy through Ron Paul's bracing criticism of U.S. misadventures abroad. You can't talk about libertarian foreign policy without talking about--and to--Ron Paul, reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch caught up with the three-time presidential candidate over the phone in October.

reason: What should we be doing with our foreign policy? How should we approach the world?

Ron Paul: We certainly had some good advice in our early history, and we haven't followed it. Whether it was Washington or Jefferson, they generally talked about a foreign policy of staying out of the internal affairs of other nations and staying out of entangling alliances. That's 100 percent opposite of what we do.

But on the very positive side, [their advice] was to set an example and have a country that defended liberty, and maybe others would want to follow us. As far as dealing with other nations, it was to strive for peace. The best way to achieve that would be through commerce, through trade. So they were strong believers in that, and I am too.

We're so much better off now with China than we were when I was in high school and we were killing each other. Hopefully we don't drift back into that kind of thing with China.

Those would be the goals that are very, very positive. Along with the moral and constitutional right and obligation for us to have a strong national defense to defend our security, but never to use it to go around the world looking for monsters to destroy, which has been driving our foreign policy, especially these last 15 or 20 years. It just seems like if we don't have somebody, we have to go looking for them. I think that is a policy of disaster, and it's going to bankrupt our country. The policies always fail.

reason: You mention monsters--there are monsters in the world, for sure. Whether they are exactly as Washington defines at any given moment is perhaps a separate question...