“They Want CHAOS In The Streets"– Ron Paul On Empire Collapse, Censorship & The WAR On Liberty
Dr. Ron Paul joins Patrick Bet-David for a powerful discussion on government overreach, economic collapse, Libertarianism, and the fight for freedom. They dive into inflation, the Federal Reserve, Trump, Musk, and the future of America in a rapidly changing world.
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Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller “Your Next Five Moves” (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Congressman Paul, why don't we just open up the Constitution and read it?
Do you think President Trump and Musk are making progress in shrinking the government today?
I am not expecting the budget deficit to shrink this year nor the next year because there's too many people who have become dependent on it.
So there'll be an emergency this year, believe me.
Has the enemy of the state changed and evolved from what it was in the 70s, 80s, 90s to who it is today?
The people that run our universities are not on our side.
The education of our founding fathers is unbelievable.
And there were no universities to brainwash them.
If the situation and the scenario happen that you're claiming, to get it to the levels that you'd like it to get to, it's a massive disruption to the system.
No?
The damage has already been done.
Bubbles have to burst.
You better be prepared because that would probably cause a civil war.
You don't sound optimistic?
No, I'm the most optimistic person in the world.
No, this life miss for me.
Adam, what you think?
The future looks bright.
My handshake is better than anything I ever saw.
It's right here.
You are a one-on-one?
My son's right there.
I don't think I've ever said this before.
Today we have somebody who has developed, and he may not even know it.
I'm sure he does.
Thousands of disciples of his because of what he's taught over the years.
And every time he speaks, I was just sharing a story with Dr. Ron Paul earlier about what you and I, the first time we sat down together in Houston, and that stuck with me till today.
It's an honor again to have you on the podcast, Dr. Ron Paul.
How you doing, sir?
Thank you very much, Patrick.
Good to be with you again.
It's great to have you on here.
So, question, what everything that's going on right now, what all the policies that we're seeing, where you're seeing the deals happening with the Panama Canal and BlackRock, or Doge, Elon talking about the $100 billion in savings, or the tariff wars between Canada and China and U.S. and Mexico, with everything that is taking place, what are you most excited about and optimistic about?
And what are you most concerned about?
Oh, boy.
You know, the individual issues that you mention are secondary for me to the philosophy that motivates people to do things.
So if somebody is a socialist or somebody is a libertarian, who motivated them?
What have they read?
Who's influenced your ideas?
So I think right now what we're facing basically is the late recognition how much trouble we're in.
And of course, they're once again saying, well, yeah, there's too much cover.
We have to cut waste fraud and abuse.
Well, I've heard those terms all the time over the years, and nothing really happened.
But I think this time it's different because it's bigger.
There's a sort of a conclusive end coming because the bankruptcy, and I used to talk about, oh, well, there's a moral bankruptcy and a financial bankruptcy.
And I would talk mostly financial because I was more interested in the monetary system and the debt.
But, you know, lately, I think I have been moved.
Not that I think there's a big difference between it because you can't separate the two.
But I think the moral bankruptcy is what exists and has existed throughout all of history, you know, good versus evil and the whole thing about natural law versus government law, all these things.
These are the big pictures.
And where do people fit in on this?
And I try to simplify and say, well, you know, are you an interventionist or not?
You know, and I can talk to you about, you know, where you want to intervene.
Oh, yeah, I want to intervene and do this and that.
Well, my view is that we as individuals, and especially if you're in government, you should be a non-interventionist other than to deal with people who are aggressive and causing trouble.
But for telling people how to live, what to do, how to spend their money, how to draft kids and send them around and start wars and without declaration and all this stuff, there's a lot of interventionists.
And guess who I think it is?
I think there's just only two parties you ought to worry about, Republicans and Democrats, because they accept these principles.
But that doesn't mean I can't see the difference.
And in some places, you know, there definitely is a better movement.
They all talk about, you know, now, oh, you got to cut the spending, cut the spending.
But I think it's coming to a climactic end.
I think $36 trillion or something.
And then I hear schemes like, oh, all we have to do is buy a couple of crypto and they're going to go up in value.
We're going to pay off the national debt.
Well, that's just, you know, grabbing the straws on solving the problem because the problem is a moral approach to committing oneself to non-aggression.
I'm not going to use force.
But everything government does is the use of force.
And that has to be designed.
There will be some force.
We have a national defense and things like this.
But individuals, our problem, I think, stem from the fact that most people still, in spite of all the violence in the street, most Americans would say, no, you shouldn't lie, cheat, steal, and kill people.
You know, that's aggression.
But what do we do when governments do it?
We totally ignore it and participate and send them money without even paying any attention to the restraints in the Constitution.
I'm thinking, you know, like declaration of war.
Look at all the war and the killing that's gone on and all the money spent, which is all unconstitutional.
It's violent.
The monetary system is just an act of violence.
That is so corrupt.
That's fraud and abuse.
And yet that isn't even being discussed today, how terrible that is.
But, you know, you or I, Patrick, if we did it, that we'd go to jail for that.
And they still know that if we steal and hurt people, that's bad.
But if you look at it, stupidity and ill-advised people and people who just want more power and money in government, they cause a lot of harm.
And if I compare that to, you know, what people think, oh, all we have to do is get rid of USAID and things will be okay.
I'm for getting rid of that, believe me.
But there's a lot more to it.
I want to see and discuss the philosophic principles that allow people to justify their involvement in participating in this violence.
So how do you feel about what they're doing with Doge now?
And if you were an advisor at the highest level, maybe even leading the charge, what else would you go after next?
I wouldn't go after, I would still want to attack it in a philosophic way.
Today, see, if you have a bad program, and right now we're starting to see that they'll have to retain some of USAID.
And it's the principle, if you permit something, just 10% of what you think is, that's the seed and it'll grow.
If the Congress has an argument, should this budget be $100 billion or $90 billion?
And they said for $95, that's not progress.
That's endorsing 100% of the principle that they should be involved in either some type of social program that's helping the very wealthy, the pharmaceuticals or the military-industrial complex.
So once you commit to that principle, then we're in trouble.
But if you're looking for one item, I mean, I go back to the item that motivated me to get involved in the details of it.
And I would think that if you didn't have this privilege of the very few people who are involved to be able to create the worldwide reserve currency, the dollar, and that would be our Federal Reserve.
I mean, that's how everything is paid for.
And that is the most immoral thing in the world because it's a debt.
I mean, it's a tax.
It's just a tax.
It's a wicked tack on the middle class and the poor because they print the money, they value the currency, and that is a tax, a tax on the people.
And they try to balance this.
And we just had a meeting this week with the Fed and they talk about technicality.
Oh, this and that and that.
And none of that is possible.
You can't know those things in economics.
So I just get a biggest charge or disgust too with all the talk about what should interest rates be?
Ron, what would you do?
What would you do to interest rates?
Well, I wouldn't try to decide because the interest rates is so important.
It tells you the price of money and whether the activities that the people are participating in are wise decisions or not.
So I think it's that big picture that I want to see.
And I would still go if you had the one thing.
Some people ask me this, and I'll say, well, this, that's changed one law.
The Federal Reserve cannot buy government debt.
And because they buy the debt, there's a guarantee and we're wealthy and all that.
But I also recognize that if I was there and I were there and I did that and no more government purchase of debt, you better be prepared because that would probably cause a civil war.
Do you think the philosophies of the libertarian philosophy, you would still consider yourself a libertarian today, yes?
Would you consider yourself a libertarian?
Yeah, I use the word, but there are ways to qualify.
Even within the Libertarian Party, there are libertarian-leaning type or conservative leaning.
But I still call libertarians the best term that I use, although because some people think that's a negative term.
I frequently will use freedom and liberty, but libertarian.
As soon as they put the AI, IAN on there, people are saying, oh, you're just a libertarian.
So I use it, but I know if you said, do I call myself a libertarian?
I do.
Okay.
So whenever I see IANA, I think about Armenians because I'm half Armenian.
So I think about libertarian in a different way.
But the reason why I asked that question is, do you think the libertarian philosophies would be very difficult to do for a company as big as ours, a country as big as ours, where it would be a good philosophy to start off a nation with?
So even if somebody like you got in, it would be very hard to get it to the levels that you would like it to get to.
Because to get it to the levels that you'd like it to get to, it's a massive disruption to the system.
No?
The reason you give for not doing it and it wouldn't work is the reason why I want it because it is too big.
You can't manage this government.
You have, see, for me, all activity, social, religious, sexual, international, every react, every activity should be voluntary.
Both sides have to voluntary, have a voluntary agreement to what they're doing.
That's what happens in the marketplace.
And there's a lot of that left, but there's a lot of corruption too because there's so much regulation.
So, this stuff about how do you do it with this mess we have?
Well, yeah, I think we have to get rid of it.
And the founders knew exactly what they were doing by trying to prevent this.
But how many people, and how many times do you hear them talking about Article 1, Section 8, and Amendment Number 10?
You know, they don't mention it, but it's not very sincere.
I remember one time after a debate for the presidential thing, a student came up to me and he was very pleased.
He said, Boy, I understand what you mean and all this stuff.
And I said, Well, he was praising me.
And I said, Well, you know, and I was curious because somebody at that particular night after me, you know, he spouted off how dedicated he was to the Constitution.
And when I look at what they do, 98% or 80% of all that happens in Washington is technically immoral and illegal under the Constitution.
I said, Well, why don't you go talk to him?
He says, Well, I didn't believe him.
You know, so he was telling, he was spouting the delight of the Constitution.
But to hear this college kid, I thought it was astounding that all of a sudden I said something, he said something.
But so that's what I got impressed with young people.
I think young people have a room in their brain to still accept, you know, some of the newer ideas and understanding or renewal of an idea of liberty.
And so I think it's, I think it's wonderful that young people will look at it that way, but it's terrible.
I still think it can be boiled down to what was readily apparent through all of history of natural law and government law.
And even before we had civilization, there were a lot of rules.
The main rules of natural law, you can't lie, cheat, steal, or kill.
And that's been known from way back.
I mean, that was even before they had printing presses.
They knew those were the laws.
They were done imperfectly.
But that's a natural law.
People know that and they know it now, but they overcome it by justification.
Oh, but we need it.
Somebody is going to be poor and they won't have any food.
Yeah, I am convinced that if you want to have the maximum amount of peace and prosperity, you want to have the most minimum amount of government because there's this tendency that people who accept the idea that you can use force and not be something that's immoral, they will go ahead and do it.
So that's why governments grow and you can't shrink them.
They will end themselves.
And just like the war is in.
So you said governments grow and you can't shrink them.
So how do you shrink them?
So do you think President Trump and Musk are making progress in shrinking the government today?
I think what they're doing philosophically and calling all this to our attention is the most important because it's already look at the resistance they're getting.
And so, yes, you could have something here and there, but the approach right now, I say, well, maybe it'll work with the Department of Education.
It isn't just shrink it, it's to get it out of the federal government.
At least that would be moving in one direction and put it all on the states and say, Oh, wouldn't there be terrible education and all this?
And that's just, I just don't buy into that.
I think the bigger it is, the more centralized it is.
And if you can't do it at the city level, you go to the state level.
They think that doesn't work because there's too much corruption.
So they go to the federal government.
Oh, then they go to the UN and NATO and say, well, the world is too complex.
You can't let people make those kind of decisions.
We have to have smart people go to these international organizations and sort things out.
And all it does is lead to the bad guys taking over.
But I think what Musk is doing is great, but I see it as an educational thing because, quite frankly, I am not expecting the budget deficit to shrink this year nor the next year because there's too many people who have become dependent on it.
They want it, and there'll be some pain and suffering.
And that's where the real problem is.
So you think it's going to take a couple of years?
Nothing 2025 and nothing 2026?
No budget cuts.
There'll be budget cuts, but I don't think you'll see the deficit go down.
No, I don't think one or two years is going to solve the problem.
But if people have all of a sudden change things, people's attitudes have to change.
One best recent example that I think this point about attitudes have to change as more education and morality was what happened under COVID.
I mean, from my viewpoint as a physician and a libertarian, I thought that was so atrocious and what was done just because the government, government bureaucrats was going to deny a lot of people medications that the people decided they wanted to take.
And we'll put them in nursing homes and take care of them.
And then, oh, finally, oh, 82% of them died.
You know, this sort of thing.
So I think that we have to move in that direction.
During COVID, the people woke up.
The parents went to PTA meeting.
And people who were, it was, to me, it was the most ridiculous thing to live through for two or three years.
We're still suffering the consequence.
How much money did Trump spend?
He was on the deficits were horrible under those conditions.
Oh, but this is an emergency.
So there'll be an emergency this year, believe me.
There will be an emergency and there will be somebody that says ready to invade Florida.
So we'll have to mobilize and there'll be another epidemic and that kind of stuff.
So I don't sound optimistic.
You don't sound optimistic.
No, I'm the most optimistic person in the world because I think where we've made our progress is in this idea of understanding what is going on.
I mean, Austrian economics is really, it just came alive since World War II.
Progressivism and socialism.
Oh, how about the 19th century?
And that's been around a long time.
But I think the Mises Institute and the various institutions, and that's why I spent a lot of time in education more, to try to explain this.
Because when the people became aware of what was happening, you know, finally happened to change.
Okay, what about war?
How did that, the people woke up and people finally were, you know, figured it out that Vietnam War was insane.
You know, 78,000 or 68,000 Americans killed for no reason at all.
And we're still participating in wars all over the world.
And we say, well, yeah, but no Americans died, but our bombs are killing people, whether it's in Ukraine or the Middle East or Yemen.
It's all our bombs.
And that's a moral issue because the people sit by and say, I don't even know where Yemen is.
I don't care.
And I want to know whether my Social Security check is coming.
So that's going to exist.
That's not going to go away.
But I think the philosophy of a lot of people outside our university system, whether it's the Mises Institute or the other various groups, because there's a lot of good group.
I think that I think there's a big, a big positive thing.
When I went, even in the last two or three decades, when I went to Congress in 1976, I mean, they looked at me and they were, what are you doing?
There's two of you up there voting.
You're voting with a radical left-wing person, but they didn't understand the philosophy of liberty and why if you're going to have liberty, you can't have it in one area, social sexualism, but not in economic things.
And I think that philosophy is alive and well.
And when I go to college campuses and the ones I went to campaign, I was excited about what is there and it's still there.
And I think you even mentioned a positive thing when we started.
There's a lot of people, and I don't hardly understand it because there's a lot of people still talking about some of those issues I talked about, you know, 10 years ago.
So I'm very optimistic about that, but realistic about was this an easy battle?
No, it is not.
The reason why I said, are you optimistic is because you said you're going to see there's going to be an epidemic or there's going to be something that someone's going to need money for us to print money, Florida.
You said, watch, there's going to be a situation for us to spend money.
That's what you're saying, right?
Right, because that'll keep coming and that'll keep being our problem.
And I don't think non-intervention, non-interventionism is far enough along to stop all that because we're too slow.
We finally stopped wars like Vietnam.
We finally stopped COVID, but we need to stop that before they start.
How do you do that?
The founders understood it.
How do you do that?
Well, I think Reed probably read the education of our founding fathers is unbelievable.
And there were no universities to brainwash them, basically.
And they also, you know, took, they didn't have the system.
They didn't go to government schools.
But boy, I'll tell you what, I am impressed with the education they achieved.
And historically, they do something about Greek history and Roman history, the whole works.
And liberty just hasn't been recently invented, but it's evolved over these years.
And I think we've made tremendous progress in the last three or four decades.
But it's a long way to go.
I'm a realist because I understand human nature pretty well, because there's this over, overrunning, you know, overriding issue that people do want a free lunch.
And if they have the free lunch, they certainly don't want it taken away.
And that's what we're witnessing now.
There's a lot of resistance out there.
And the universities are still filled plugged with the people teaching the philosophy they gave it.
Oh, yeah, boys can go, what is it?
Boys can become girls and set Olympic records.
Well, for me, as a physician and a libertarian, that's sort of nutty.
No, I'm with you on that part.
So this is why I asked you the question earlier when I said, do you think to fully get the libertarian philosophies in there, it's tough to do when America is this big?
You can talk about it, but it's easier to do to start a country.
And this is kind of where I was going with it.
This is where I was going with it.
And the question I want to ask.
But let me ask you a question.
I want you to go into this part.
So, for example, right now, you said this year, next year, I don't see the deficit moving.
We're still going to be spending.
It's going to take a year or two before we get there.
Great.
So then for somebody from the outside looks and says, okay, Dr. Ron Paul, so Trump is president now.
So then say a person like Joe Biden gets in in 2028.
I'm just making this up.
I know a lot of people think it's going to be JD Vance and all of it, but let's just say Newsom gets in.
So then philosophies change.
So if Elon and Trump do what they do the next four years and they show results and say they drop another crisis that happens in 2028 to get people to hate Trump and Musk and they use fear porn and they scare the crap out of America and they go for a person like Newsom.
You're constantly changing the pendulum where philosophies don't have enough time to create momentum.
I don't know if this makes sense.
So this is kind of like Steve Bannon was on Cuomo yesterday and Steve Bannon was telling Cuomo that, you know what we need?
We need Trump to go for a third term.
And Cuomo's like, that's not possible.
We can't do that.
And he says, no, that's what we need.
We're already working on it.
I don't know if you saw this clip or not, Rob.
If you got it, you know, I want you to hear this clip here.
It's Bannon with Cuomo.
Rob, if you can plague this, you'll hear the audio.
Go for it.
Well, a man like this comes along once every century if we're lucky.
We've got him now.
He's on fire.
And I'm a huge supporter.
Want to see him again in 2028.
And obviously, anybody who doesn't like what you say, but judges is it a function of a lack of intelligence, doesn't know anything about you.
I don't make that mistake.
You're a smart guy.
You know he's term limited.
How do you think he gets another term?
We're working on it.
I think we'll have a couple of alternatives.
Let's say that.
We'll see.
We'll see where his definition is.
We'll say what the definition of term limit is.
All right.
Well, so you're talking about litigating this issue because I don't want people to listen to our interview and say Bannon's cooking up an insurrection.
Bannon is cooking up.
You know what I mean?
I want people to get a straight take on where your head is.
What do you suggest?
Chris, as you know, I've had greater long shots than this.
We supported President Trump after the election.
I realize you don't believe the election of 2020 is still.
So I guess the question I'm asking is, in order for us to keep a philosophy of Doge, Department of Governmental Efficiencies going and really teaching this, don't you think you need the same philosophy to be running the country for 12 years so everybody get locked in and saving money?
Because if we keep changing administration, we're losing momentum.
Yeah, it's not going to be two years or 12 years.
I would ask you, how long did it take to undermine the basic thrust of the revolution, you know, the Constitution and how it was written and what the 9th and 10th Amendments mean?
That was an erosion that took a long, long time.
The erosion came from the universities and they're still there and they preach this stuff.
So I think the reason why I don't think that I'm not worried about it not being done in six months or two years or three years.
Is the damage has already been done.
There has been a damage done by bad philosophy, but it created a monetary system and a and a uh and an empire.
We have an empire, they don't just but they do disappear.
And I think that's what that's what's big about what's happening today.
But in economics, if you spend too much money and you have a lot of debt, and then you uh then you have a lot of malinvestment because if you disrupt the interest rate, people do dumb things because they think there's a lot of money being saved and there isn't.
So you end up with bubbles, and the bubbles have to burst.
There's a liquidation period.
So the Suda people realize that liquidation is good.
In 1921, there was this crisis that came up, but in 1921, they were still not a Kane, they weren't Keynesian that you had to just print a lot of money.
In a year and a half, the JD GDP went down sharply, like 15%.
It was horrible, but they didn't have any bailout.
And everything was recovered.
See, what I'm convinced of, Patrick, is that if I got my freedom, if you had your freedom, everybody had their freedom and you couldn't do any violence.
That if they took all our wealth, everything in the bank is wiped out, I think a year or two, things would just be so boomy, just so people could be rewarded for their effort.
And it would never get that bad.
There wouldn't be anything there.
But if people didn't have an income tax and didn't have to deal with all this nonsense and all this regulation, that's what they're trying to do right now.
That's what Musk is trying to do.
But it is.
It's overwhelming of what it is.
So I don't think it'll happen until people understand the philosophy of what's going on on economics.
Because if you run up a $36 trillion debt, you say, what does liquidation mean?
We have to declare bankruptcy.
If you or I had, you know, $10 million debt and we had to quit, we'd have to get another job or declare bankruptcy or something so we could start over, but not yet.
We're not ready to start over yet.
We're ready for the liquidation.
And that's where the real test will be.
Because the cultural Marxists and Marxists said, we want chaos in the streets, and they're getting it.
And it's going to get worse.
And the chaos in the street, because they want to replace it with true Marxism.
I want to replace it with true liberty.
Oh, so here's how I think about what you just said.
So if we look at that right there, 1920, 1921, Rob, if you can go to the images to just see it, I know he won't be able to see, but I'll kind of state it.
So you'll see a big nosedive, right?
With what happens that, you know, in the economy.
But what happened eight years later?
The Great Depression comes and that gives the opportunity for a guy like FDR to say, this is why we need unemployed.
This is why we need Social Security.
This is why we need this.
This is why we need that.
If the situation and the scenario happen that you're claiming to happen, like let the market crash and go through it, I mean, you are giving the opposition and the Marxists an easy play to get out there and say, you see, we tried, we tried Trumponomics, we tried Doge, we tried this, and look what it did.
It hurt the small guy, it hit middle America.
How are we going to handle?
So this is why I keep when I have conversations with libertarian, I see myself as a libertarian when it comes down to economics.
The only thing I see right now is that in order for momentum to be created, where there needs to be a locked in belief in one system for many years, I think that is very challenging to do in our kind of a system.
And I think that's one of the reasons why you're seeing the bannon and some of the other guys talking about we may need to have the same administration for back-to-back terms, even though we can't do it, for us to actually show results on what's possible.
Okay, I think you're looking for a gradualist approach, and that should always be, you know, when they came up with a vote over the years when I was there, they put it on, attach it to a bill.
Let's get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse.
So I was cynical.
I said, you're not going to do it.
And they didn't, but I voted for it.
So there is it.
But on me setting the stage and helping the Marxists by pointing out this thing's going to get worse.
Well, you don't have a choice.
If I were there and posed all these beliefs on shrinking caddy overnight, you know, or no, it's just a gradualism.
That's what we're working on right now.
Just think of the reaction they're getting.
You know, Trump and the whole group to try to come back.
They're getting a lot of groove.
But you don't have a choice.
The damage has already been done.
The money has been spent.
The abuse of the currency has been done.
You have the foreign policy.
What did Trump say today?
Well, what we need to do is take over all the electronic plants, all the power plants in Ukraine.
Oh, they have oil.
We'll take over that.
Well, how do we go into the Middle East, which I strongly oppose?
They said, don't sweat it.
You know, when once we take over that oil, that'll pay for all this warmer.
So they always have that.
But the downside, the disappearance of the debt and the malinvestment.
People don't talk about malinvestment.
That's all the mistakes.
That's when they have 2,000 houses and the market said there was only room for 1,000.
There has to be a bubble there and you have to have these corrections.
But if you have the correction is going to occur, the people should understand 1921 versus what they did in the Depression.
The Depression was horrible.
They introduced so many programs and it never worked until, oh, the war will save us.
Yeah, we'll kill millions of people and distract them from the stupid economic policies we have.
And we keep doing the same thing over and over again.
And it goes back to the money issue.
You could do any of this thing if you didn't permit fraud by a secret group of people to print money to take care of the special interest.
Well, the people, the poor people have to eat, don't they?
Yeah, the poor people in the pharmaceutical industry, the military industrial complex, none of that would exist if you couldn't print money and maintain an empire that has dominant control of the reserve currency of the world.
That will die.
They die over the centuries.
And this one is in the death throes pretty soon.
It will, but it won't be because we're tinkering around and cutting a couple dollars here and there.
Nowadays, more than ever, the brand you wear reflects and represents who you are.
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Sir, how do you feel about the fact that president's playing offense?
Like he's a business guy, so he likes to own real estate and a lot of different properties and good locations.
So he goes and buys the, I think it was a post office right next to some next to the White House, builds it up really nice, fancy 99-year contract, land lease.
He goes to New York, does all these great properties.
He always wants to build nice Trump towers, Vegas all over the place.
So his mindset is expansion, right?
So you hear him talk about Canada should be 51st aid.
You're seeing brokering the deal with BlackRock to buy the two ports on Panama Canal.
They bought 43 of them for $22.8 billion to prevent China from having control over the Panama Canal.
He talks about Greenland.
He talks about what if we build that in Gaza.
He talks about all this stuff.
Does that excite you or does that make you nervous saying, no, no, no, let's just focus on America.
Stop looking at Panama Canal.
Stop looking at Greenland.
Stop looking at Gaza.
How do you view them when you hear him saying those things?
Well, that they're using force to get what they want.
It's anti-libertarian.
It won't work.
It'll eventually crash.
And that's when people can gang up on the people who are doing this.
They're using violence to carry these things out and how they want to do it.
So what they have to do, they have to own the government.
That's why you have, I mean, the best thing that Musk has done has exposed, you know, the amount that USAID has been involved.
That to me is really amazing.
But, you know, most people can understand if I go into your house and steal something from you, it's still wrong and I can go to jail for that.
But when the government goes and you have regulators and you're building buildings all over the place and you get special deals and then you get the loans from the government, the government, this USAID, shows how the special interests went in a circuitous way around all the rules that were there and give money out to the special interests.
And most of it was political manipulation.
So that has to cease and it will because the money's going to quit working.
You say, well, that's chaos.
Yes, it is.
But when it comes suddenly and you have a chaos year, then you have Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
And that's a lot worse.
So you want to prevent that.
But so my position is not going to be one where next year we're going to have a vote and say, oh, Ron Paul was right.
We should cut our spending.
So we're only going to vote for people in the House of Representatives that agree to cut 10% of the budget every year and work our way out of there.
Ain't going to happen.
That doesn't work that way.
The liquidation has to occur.
And unfortunately, it's very dangerous.
And that's where we'll see the problems.
And it is.
It's a contest between who picks up the pieces.
I want to participate in advising or encouraging people to pick up the pieces and go for liberty rather than saying, well, we have to have our culture of Marxists just tell people, you know, everything in their lives, what they can do or can't do.
And, you know, one thing that really bugs me is when we hear that we give some money to a country or some outfit, and then they start like a college campus like Columbia, the college campuses come along and they start lobbying or they start expressing themselves, you know, about the Mideast war.
It's just an expression, a voluntary, you know, freedom of speech.
Oh, you can't do that.
We're going to take your money away.
So that's a double whammy.
First, they shouldn't have given the money to the university.
And the second thing is, are you going to take the money away in order to control speech?
So they destroy several things under those conditions.
People say, well, and they say, Ron, do you know what you're endorsing?
Some of these people are terrible.
Some of them are as terrible as January 6th people.
I mean, they were just terrible.
And they were going to destroy the world.
So that's why I think that it has to be much more clarified.
And I hope I don't confuse things.
But let me ask you this.
Going back to the question I asked.
So it doesn't excite you that the U.S. took control of the two ports in Panama Canal away from China.
It doesn't excite you that the president's trying to get some of the natural resources from Greenland, you know, even though it sounds out of the ordinary or the conversations he's having with Canada, that doesn't excite you.
You don't look at it and say this is all depends how you do it.
I mean, if it's above board, voluntarism, both sides have to agree to it.
But if the Panama, if technically the canal is owned right now, it's been that way for so many years, and you ignore that, that's not moral.
Both sides, it's so easy if you say both sides have to agree, whether it's social, sexual, religious, economic, both sides, everybody knows that about marketplaces.
You go in, if, say, if somebody says, this is going to cost $20, well, that's too much.
And somebody says, well, okay, I'll sell it to you for $15.
Both sides have to agree.
But that's not the way it is.
What they do now is we have a system of government where the lobbyists go to Washington and dictate the sales and what you can do socially.
When you think about who gets to run in races and all that other junk, that just makes things that much worse because we allow the government to use force.
People say, well, you have to have force.
Yes, if I was drafted in 1962 and there were Russian missiles and Soviet missiles in Cuba.
And I wasn't somebody that actually, I mean, I was still interested in foreign policy, but that wasn't my standing ground.
I mean, that's a lot different.
I do believe you have to have a national defense.
But here we have, see, I think all this immigration stuff was more of an invasion because we did something there is we took money from people who were working and we subsidized them.
If you subsidize something, you get more of it.
And then we have these millions of people come in that aren't exactly our friends.
And we avoided the whole principle of property rights.
Because if somebody comes into your house that they say, oh, well, we're short of house.
I want to live in your house and we have a right to this.
Most Americans would say, you get out of here.
But what if you have a town that has a thousand people and they've worked for 25 years and have an infrastructure and the government sends them 10,000 more and they put them in a hotel?
You know, that's insane.
But it's a property rights thing there.
It wasn't voluntary.
There wasn't two sides agreeing.
But if somebody comes in and says, you know, I've worked hard, I've saved this money, and I want to buy this and that.
So people just really ought to understand what volunteerism really means.
It's fantastic.
It would solve a lot of problems and it's not complicated.
Sir, what year was it the first time you got into politics?
What year was it?
First year.
Well, the first minute was on August 15th, 1971, listening to Nixon giving a speech because I was interested in monetary policy.
Now, I wouldn't say I got involved in politics then, but that was when it really excited me when he came to that.
That was a moment.
But I wanted to express myself.
So I ran for Congress and won a seat in 1976.
Okay, so 71, you saw Nixon, 76, you got involved.
So, you know, for someone like you, when, you know, it's coming from an economic standpoint.
1971 is 54 years ago.
So you've seen different enemies over the years.
Has the enemy of the state changed and evolved from what it was in the 70s, 80s, 90s to who it is today?
Yeah, that's where the improvement has been.
There are more people understanding what volunteerism is.
And see, then the numbers don't bother me too much.
It's the quality of people.
But the people that run our universities are not on our side.
I have a homeschooling group.
There's a lot of homeschooling groups.
Yeah, yesterday, I can't believe it.
There was an announcement.
I think it was Illinois.
They were cracking down on people who were teaching their kids in homeschooling.
Well, from their viewpoint, it wasn't perfect.
And we have to protect them.
We have to make sure what they're going to learn.
No, that has to stop.
But it's an educational thing.
That's where there is a lot of progress.
There's a lot more homeschoolers.
One thing is, is when we had that horrible time under COVID, the homeschooling group grew, you know, tremendously.
So they're out there.
But the fact you say, well, that's only 10%.
Well, I'll tell you what, there wasn't 90%, there wasn't 51% of the people who endorsed the revolution back then, but the leadership of our country, the founders of this country, they were the ones that really counted.
So I think that I think there's a lot of positive things on it.
And besides, it doesn't require me to argue that, well, Patrick, what we need to do is get all our kids to learn how to shoot straight and kill all these people because they're not killing the right people.
So let's go invade Greenland.
I think, yeah, you say, well, I know what's going through your mind, I'm assuming.
What you're talking about is so little.
This is a big problem.
And you think you're going to change things by nickel and diming it?
No, I think an idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by armies.
And I believe this.
An idea whose time has come.
And I would like to help the idea of liberty to come where the American people will stand up to it and really change things.
Sir, has the president and Elon Musk asked you for help?
Indirectly, but not directly.
They did some positive things for me on X.
They would repeat some of my programs.
I think early on when this started, I put a thing up that stop all foreign aid and made my case for it.
And I think it was reproduced, where I might get 50, 60, 70,000 people to look at my stuff.
I think we had millions of people when Musk put that up.
So he was supporting it.
And they even mention, they've tried to be friendly and we talk, but I recognize the significance of what they're doing and what I do.
I can't be a very significant person.
I work in a different area, changing one mind at a time, changing it to the point where people get excited.
And I think that's what excites me because one person whose mind has changed and starts something.
And that's why I mentioned what people ask me what to do, just do whatever you want to do, but do it.
And somebody will use you.
Somebody will take it there.
You don't force yourself.
And if it's an idea whose time has come, you will be used in a positive way.
Last question before we wrap up is who concerns you the most today?
You know, when I think about the Federal Reserve, when I think about who has the most power, is it the president?
Is it Federal Reserve?
Is it the technocracy, these social media companies?
Is it the richest people in the world?
Who would you say are the most powerful people in the world?
I mean, we know about the Rothschild when we read about Federal Reserve and some of the involvement they had.
Who do you look at?
As somebody who is very well read that are the most powerful people in the world today?
Well, as a group, authoritarians, they think they know what happens and they can tell people how to live and how to spend their money because they're the opposite of a voluntarist who says that you can't do anything unless both sides agree.
And I mean, most of the people that I would look up to would be, you know, free market Austrian economists who write this out explicitly.
Mises was a great influence on me.
Leonard Reed was an influence on me from the Foundation for Economic Education.
But they taught this.
And I read those books and I understood the issues.
And that's what I think is important.
So whether it's 10% or 15%, it's not a big deal for me.
I mean, if you just have the ideas out there, because the people go along, most people go along, you know, to get along.
Because, you know, do you think the American people right now are worrying about Greenland?
They say, well, that's a joke, or somebody says, oh, that's a good idea.
And why would anybody say such a thing?
So I think that it's I think there's a lot of positive things.
And all I know is in spite of the fact that there's a systemic attack right now by most politicians in Washington, one way or another, they attack freedom of expression.
That's dangerous.
When I left Congress, I gave a little speech and I said, that's our biggest threat.
If we mess up on the First Amendment, where we can't express ourselves, and believe me, both sides are doing that.
And that is going to be rough.
But like I also believe that if you're working with an idea whose time has come, you cannot stop it.
What idea do you think time has come today?
The concept of liberty?
What ideas time has come today?
You're saying specifically liberty, freedom.
Yeah, in my case, it's liberty.
And understanding the difference between liberty and Chamber of Commerce, Free Enterprise, I had to talk to them and all they wanted was come up and lobby for money, not lobby for liberty.
But there's more of that now.
But I found my encouragement came from people that actually I was shocked because people that were still in grade school understood this stuff as far as I was concerned.
And they were excited about it.
And they're still communicating with me when they were in grade school and high school.
And they're out there.
And I don't know who they are.
And we never know.
We never know who the remnant is made up of.
And they're the people who keep things going and keep the ideas alive.
The ideas are only that count.
But the ideas of using government to use force.
Now, I don't think that what's going on now to cut spending.
Some people say, well, that's using force or cutting off my check.
But no, there's a lot of serious people.
I give as much positive messages about what the commission is doing, trying to cut spending as I can, because I know for the most part, their heart is in the right place.
But I'm just trying to be a realist and say, well, you better be prepared for a lot of anger out there, and people are going to be upset because they think they have a right to these things.
You have a right to life and liberty, but you don't have a right to somebody else's stuff.
And right now, there's too many people who still believe that they have a right to somebody else's stuff.
But when the stuff runs out, we better be prepared to patch up the holes with something more positive.
Do you remember where you were at the day President John F. Kennedy got assassinated?
I wrote it into my little pamphlet on not too long ago.
Yeah, I was drafted in October of 62.
I was in my residency.
So they took me out of my residency at Henderson Hospital.
And I was inducted into the military.
And that was over the Cuban crisis.
But I was inducted by January of 63.
And Kennedy was, and I was a flight surgeon.
I was a head flight surgeon at that particular day when Kennedy landed at Kelly Air Force Base the day before he was assassinated.
And I had a theoretical responsibility, which was just theoretical.
It was, believe me, nothing, nothing special other than the fact that he was there and they told me about it.
I was to be aware of it if anything went wrong.
I watched the plane take off.
I remember that vividly.
And then the plane, I think, stopped in Houston.
And then the next day it stopped in Dallas.
And that was it.
So I knew exactly where I was the day before and the day of the assassination.
And my little booklet I've written recently, I talk a lot more about that because my personal experience was the fact that I was close to it the day before he was assassinated.
Your impression of what you think took place, and if you've been following any of the stories with the 80,000 documents that have been released, has anything been shocking to you?
Well, I didn't read those 80,000, but I think today they said, well, we were going to redact it all, but we are not going to do that.
No, my pamphlet, my little story about it, is I think, matter of fact, I date that the 1960s as the decade and the assassination as the installation or the recognition of a coup,
because that's when the FBI, the CIA, and others, just think Jack Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy assassinated, Martin Luther King assassinated.
Other civil rights leaders were killed.
And I, yes, I've read every book I could read and I'm firmly convinced that it was not a lone killer.
80% of the American people say they don't believe the government now.
That's really healthy.
That's wonderful because Oswald, Oswald, nobody believes it anymore.
And too many people, you know, that was one thing they always had jokes about in the Soviet Union.
They always made jokes about the government because everybody knew what the truth was, but everybody knew they had to lie, you know, in Phil.
So I think it's, but I do.
I date the 60s as a conversion into what the CIA has done.
And it's a lot of, you can, you, there's a lot, a lot of people who are very well versed in this, and there's a lot of books on this.
And I happen to believe a lot of that stuff to be true.
Do you believe when you say a lot of this stuff, a part of it, the fact that he wanted to end the Fed and that was one of the things that they were not too happy about?
Is that one you believe in or not necessarily?
I believe that.
I've seen some people that might not be, they just disagree and say, oh, no, there were other things.
No, I'd listen to that.
But no, I think it was the monetary issue.
And that Kennedy wanted to stop the war, but he increased the war in Vietnam.
And that was, but later on, there's a story about his friend that he was living with at the time converted him to a peacenaker.
And he was.
He had announced it will be different after the election.
Last question.
I've said this twice now.
You've been married 68 years.
What secret sauce?
What do you have that you can share with the rest of us?
Oh, be tolerant.
Be involuntary.
Agree on what you're going to do.
No, I think sometimes it's just being courteous to people, you know.
But I don't know.
I don't have one magic thing to do, but mostly it's just basic decency.
Sometimes the decency is not revealed very often.
But no special things, but I think that's plenty.
That's plenty.
Dr. Ron Paul, thank you so much for your time.
It's always an honor and a privilege to speak to somebody like you that has the wealth of knowledge.
And I'm glad to see that you've inspired thousands out there that are disciples of your teaching that are continuing the message.
So thank you so much for your time.
Thank you very much for having me, Patrick.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Nowadays, more than ever, the brand you wear reflects and represents who you are.
So for us, if you wear a future looks bright hat or a value tame gear, you're telling the world, I'm optimistic.
I'm excited about what's going to be happening, but you're a free thinker.
You question things.
You like debate.
And by the way, last year, 120,000 people got a piece of future looks bright geared with value tame.
We have so many new things.
The cufflinks are here.
New future looks bright.
This is my favorite, the green one.
Just yesterday, somebody placed an order for 100 of these.
If you watch the PBD podcast, you got a bunch to choose from.
White ones, black ones.
If you smoke cigars and you come to our cigar lounge, we have this high quality lighter cutter and a holder for the cigars.
We got sweaters with the value tame logo on it.
We got mugs.
We got a bunch of different things.
But if you believe the future looks bright, if you follow our content and what we represent with value taint, with PBD podcasts, go to vtmerch.com.
And by the way, if you order right now, there's going to be a special VT gift insight just for you.
