In His Own Words: Ron Paul On His New Book, Swords into Plowshares
Liberty Report Co-Host Daniel McAdams interviews Ron Paul on his newest book on living through war and achieving peace. The book, Swords into Plowshares, goes on sale today! Look for it on Amazon.com.
Liberty Report Co-Host Daniel McAdams interviews Ron Paul on his newest book on living through war and achieving peace. The book, Swords into Plowshares, goes on sale today! Look for it on Amazon.com.
Liberty Report Co-Host Daniel McAdams interviews Ron Paul on his newest book on living through war and achieving peace. The book, Swords into Plowshares, goes on sale today! Look for it on Amazon.com.
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With me today is Daniel McAdams.
Daniel, good to see you.
Hello sir.
Daniel, I understand that today is a little bit different because you're going to ask me some questions.
I hope I can give the right answers.
Yes, you're going to be on the spot.
Okay, what's the subject here?
As if I didn't know.
As everyone knows and everyone's talking about, you've got a new book out, Swords into Plowshares.
The book is now on pre-order and it'll be shipping on the 17th of July.
And everyone is excited about this.
I keep clicking on Amazon to see it just rising up in the rankings.
You know, everyone is interested.
And I tell people, this is really the first book, if I'm not mistaken, that you've done solely dedicated to the issues of war and peace and especially about peace and prosperity.
Is that right?
Yeah, that is right.
I think almost every book I write has economics in it and different things in foreign policy.
So I end up always talking about because I recall one time in a debate, the announcement was, well, last week we did economic policy.
This week we're going to do foreign policy.
And I sort of objected.
I said, you can't do it that way because foreign policy does have economic consequences.
So yes, it's the only book that has been written in this manner.
But one similarity would be that many ways it's personalized, you know, in the sense is I know about philosophy, but a lot of it comes from my memory and how I was raised and what I thought was true way back when.
And so often I have said that so many of us who were taught in public education and even in colleges, and then when you discover what's really going on in the world, I say you have to unlearn those things that the establishment had taught us, whether it's the schooling system or whether it's by our TVs or government or whatever.
That's the one thing when I first read the early drafts of the book and we were working together on it and I was struck.
I worked with you for 13 or so years in Congress, at least weekly, if not daily.
And so I felt like I knew you pretty well.
But when I read the book, what struck me so much is how personal it was, how personal it started.
Years Of War Influence00:15:39
It was a side of you that I don't think people really get to see that much.
And how was that decision for you to make it such a personal book?
In a way, that concentration and interest in the subject probably evolved over the years.
Because if you'd asked me, what was the main issue that got you involved to do public speaking?
Because my public speaking started in a campaign, but the campaign wasn't to win an election.
And that came in, that came after the breakdown of Bretton Woods.
I was very fascinated with monetary policy, and I started speaking out and ran for Congress.
And I don't know what happened.
I ended up getting elected.
And all those things happen.
But I didn't enter politics and didn't public speak because of my experience during the 60s when I was in the military.
I thought about it a lot.
But in time, I saw the military and the war and peace thing all in one.
So by the time I had a chance to pick a committee, I always picked banking, financial services, but then I would always go to foreign affairs and get on those committees.
Sometimes they didn't allow me on foreign affairs because I didn't support foreign aid.
Can you believe such a thing?
That the Republicans wanted me to be dedicated to foreign aid, and then we might let you on the Foreign Affairs Committee.
But over the years, it became, I had become much more intensely interested.
Then I would go back and think about, when did I first think about war?
And it's been a long time.
I can't remember when I didn't think about war because, You know, my first memory in life was when my youngest brother was born, and he was born in 1939.
And so I know I was remembering things when the war broke out.
And of course, those four years, or less than four years, matter of fact, you know, through 42, 43, and 44, and a little bit of 45, I remember very clearly, you know, every single night my parents were very intensely interested because we had several members in the family in the military and there was rationing and my dad was an air raid warden.
I mean, and we would listen intensely to the radio and when they would have these warning signals, you turn off all your lights.
I mean, it was very vivid for somebody that was less than 10 years old.
And you also even had some family on the other side in Europe, so you had this sort of strange...
Yeah, we had a set of cousins.
As a matter of fact, they were twins.
They weren't close cousins.
It was probably a second cousin, but we knew about them.
And they would come to our reunions.
But they were drafted, and they were sent over, and one got captured.
And I can remember so clearly my, we were taught to say our prayers at night.
And we always prayed, you know, for our family and for those people in Germany that we were trying to kill.
And as years went on, this was, it didn't make any sense.
So we send family members over to Germany where we have relatives still living.
And they're fighting us.
And it just made no sense.
So it was those kind of inconsistencies that built over the years.
And then I discovered, well, this happens in every war.
Just think of the inconsistencies with our Civil War, brothers against brothers, and everybody's misled into this.
And of course, the final conclusion, which comes out in the book rather strongly, it's not you and me and our cousins that start the war.
And I mentioned a quote from my grandmother about this when I sort of must have been questioning her about it.
And she said, the people don't start the wars.
The government start the wars.
And I think that is so true.
So the challenge is, is how do we get the government to stop fighting these wars?
Now, our founders made an attempt at it, you know, to have a restriction and make sure the people had a vote in the Congress and declare war and the president couldn't do this.
But that's all gone right now.
So that's been the real problem.
And I started putting that together.
So I have the time growing up.
And then in high school, I knew about the Korean War, and a teacher went over and got killed.
And, of course, then in the 60s, I was in the service for five years, and the Vietnam War went on, and that was a disaster.
And as the years went on, in my mind, it became even more disastrous.
And now we're in perpetual war.
And I still listen to my grandmother.
It's the government's fault.
And of course, there are some people who would challenge that by saying, isn't the government there to take care of us?
And what would you do?
How would you protect ourselves?
They always raise those kind of questions.
One of the things that struck me is that how this book will, I'm sure it will appeal to everyone, but I think it'll especially appeal to young people.
Because if you think about it, a young person today who grew up after the Cold War, maybe around 9-11, was born, that young person has never known life without the U.S. being at constant war.
And that's how it was for you when you were growing up.
So there's a parallel there.
Right.
And I think young people are very important and ideas are very important, both in a positive and negative way.
And if you watch old series about World War II and the Nazi youth groups, I mean, these people were dedicated and they turned into be pretty bad people because they went along with this.
But other young people are exactly the opposite, the people we run into now.
And that's a different story.
But there was one song that I quote in the book, The Universal Soldier, and it's very, very challenging.
It's an anti-war song, no doubt about it.
But the conclusion is a little bit pessimistic, because the universal soldier is you and me.
And I admitted in one of my major speeches during the campaign that I became a universal soldier.
They said, come.
So I march in and I participate rather than resisting.
And I praise Muhammad Ali for giving up his career as a boxer, you know, his title, to say that they didn't do anything to me.
Why do I have to go there and kill these people?
You know, so that's a big difference and a reason for us to be more optimistic and try to reach the young people because it's only going to be the young people who don't think they have to be the universal soldier.
And they can say the government's doing this and why do we have to support it?
And a system so far hasn't worked.
So we need to do something about why and we allow our governments to provoke these wars.
You know, it's interesting.
Everyone looks at a book differently.
And you told me a little while ago when your wife Carol first picked up the proof coffee of the book, she looked at something that you did that was unique, which is before every chapter, you put a little quote of songs that mean something to you for their anti-war message.
Yeah, that was it.
It's easy.
But I have to, I thought, well, maybe she's not interested in that other stuff.
But I do the same thing when I go to a book.
You know, if there are famous quotes in a book, I think it's fantastic.
And, you know, even some of the things we put on our website, you know, we'll put a person's picture up and a quote.
And a lot of people are very interested because they see the individual, know the individual, and even though it's short and pithy, they think this is great.
This is making a point.
So you don't have to write 30 pages and give long speeches, which I do on occasion.
So let's move into the lightning round section of the interview.
And that is, you know, what I appreciate and like about the book is you can virtually open any page and there'll be a subhead that'll tell you what it's about.
And each one of these are little speeches almost that you could give.
So I was going to throw out a couple of these if you don't mind and maybe you could just give a quick answer because these are things that you that you handle.
War hurts the economy, the myth that the war helped stop the depression.
And once again, as I said, the war issue didn't drive me into politics, but the longer I was in Congress and thinking about it, the more interest I had.
But then I listened to these arguments that people still use today that Roosevelt got us out of the Depression with a war, which is total nonsense.
Just killing people, it gets rid of unemployment.
But what's good putting 10 million people in the uniform and getting a bunch of them killed and consuming more wealth?
That doesn't do it.
Some people profit, like some people would say they profit today from the military-industrial complex.
But if you build a bomb and you drop it over there in Syria someplace, there's been no improvement in the standard of living of anybody, even though somebody made some war profits.
That's completely different.
But you cannot solve the problems of the economy.
Wars always make the economy worse.
You talk a lot about religion and people who manipulate, especially Christianity, to promote war.
And one of your subtitles is Killing in the Name of God.
I thought that was powerful.
Yeah, and that's probably one big disappointment I've had the more I studied and the more I've realized it.
But then that's been around a long time.
And that particular thing challenges the Christians because there were a segment of Christians that were very, very super hawkish, us, and endorsing preemptive war, you know, in the Middle East.
And that is disappointing because, and I would cite some biblical things, you know, in the debate about, you know, a foreign policy of non-aggression and looking toward what the Prince of Peace would say.
But there are some Christians that do this, but it's not what I understand from Christianity.
But this is not to indict Christianity alone.
I think every religion is vulnerable, you know, toward stepping over bounds and using religion to motivate people to kill.
And I think that is wrong and actually a gross distortion.
And some people who are anti-religion would like to say, see, it's those religious people.
Religion causes all these wars.
But then the question they have to ask is, you know, what, three, four hundred million people killed in the 20th century?
I wonder how many of them were killed as a consequence of some atheistic dictators, fascists and communists, that they, even though they were atheists, they became the god.
You know, the government became the god and they wanted to be worshipped.
Like even still today, they consider the dictator of North Korea godlike.
And of course, there was a godlike figure in Japan and these different places.
But that doesn't mean they're reflecting true Christian values or the values of most religions because I think there are some good things that bring major religions together, like the Ten Commandments and striving for peace and recognition of private property and endorsement of the Ten Commandments.
That isn't like a monopoly of the Christian faith.
Yeah, the just war theory.
Well, speaking of great gods, you talk a lot about the war presidents, and I think you decry the fact that the great presidents in U.S. history are the ones that are considered great for being great war presidents.
And that's upside down, right?
Right.
Ivan Eland, who wrote the book about reassessing the presidents and reassessing Mount Rushmore.
Because we were taught from the very beginning in grade school on up that the great presidents were war presidents, from the very first president, which we sort of exclude from this category, but certainly from Lincoln on.
You know, Lincoln was a great president.
He saved the nation.
And then we had Wilson, and then we had Roosevelt, and then we had Johnson.
And fortunately, so far, our most recent super war hawk, George W. Bush, isn't getting the positive statement that these others.
Evidently, it's going to be a while before he gets put into the category of a great president because he instigated all these wars.
And I hope that is a lesson.
But some people believe that, and I think George W. Bush thought this, that he wanted to go down to history as a great president.
You sort of needed to be a war president.
Wartime presidents are more likely to be chosen.
But hopefully we as a people, and especially our new generation, will not reward people who use violence to promote a certain cause.
And it wouldn't be a Ron Paul book without a positive and happy ending.
And that's what's so uplifting toward the end.
One of the later subtitles is, Spreading Truth Can Build Resistance to War.
I think that's the only thing that can do it.
And I do think that people have a right to defend themselves.
You should have the right of self-determination and certainly on a personal level.
But I'm suggesting that the next stage for humankind is to go advance the cause of civilization, which is a bold statement.
But just think, what impresses me so much is 200 years ago, and I think about my dad who was born in 1904, and he could look back with somebody that was 100 years old.
I mean, in that short period of time, they saw, you know, machinery and steam engines and cars and trucks, and now we're in a computer age.
So much has been achieved, and it's fantastic.
And in spite of the waste and the wars, there's been such a tremendous improvement in living conditions.
Not for everybody.
I mean, the people who still haven't become advanced in that technology still live very poor, and the world is getting poorer.
So my suggestion is if the human race can advance, and if technology advanced to improve our living standard, and unfortunately, that was used in warmongering, too.
I mean, you can have nuclear energy, but think of nuclear energy can be a very useful thing.
But if it's used for nuclear bombs, it isn't.
So much of our expenditures go not to just to improve the benefits of humankind, it goes to enhancing the killing.
So that has to be rejected.
And there's no reason, in my estimation, that we can't go to that stage.
But you have to admit a couple things.
Government starts war.
And if you can't get one to live within the law, like our government doesn't live within the Constitution, that eventually, if we truly believe in this, we have to refuse.
We can't be the universal soldier and always obediently go and say, yeah, whatever you want to steal, you need some cannon fodder today.
I'll send my kids and make heroes out of them, like they do in the Middle East on both sides.
So that is, I believe that's a possibility, but it's not going to be immediate.
It's going to take time to do this.
And this is what, of course, that I strive for.
And of course, I claim that it will come once they realize that ideas have consequences and good ideas should have good consequences.
Well, you know, millions of people are going to read this book, and I think it's very exciting what they're going to get out of it.
So we should be very uplifted and positive about it.