Good News: Gallup Finds Half of US Fears Government
A recent Gallup study has found that nearly half of Americans view the US government as the greatest threat to life and liberty, a three percent increase from last year. Is America becoming more libertarian?
A recent Gallup study has found that nearly half of Americans view the US government as the greatest threat to life and liberty, a three percent increase from last year. Is America becoming more libertarian?
A recent Gallup study has found that nearly half of Americans view the US government as the greatest threat to life and liberty, a three percent increase from last year. Is America becoming more libertarian?
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With me today is Daniel McAdams.
Daniel, good to see you today.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
Good.
There's a subject I'd like to bring up today and it's a serious issue and I'd like to see if we can sort this out and that is that there was a recent poll done by Gallup and very interesting.
They claim that one half of the American people see their own government, our government, as a threat.
That to me sounds like, I don't know, progress?
Or is there a problem there?
Yeah, a threat to life and liberty.
And it's interesting if you look at the poll taken over years, it has increased with some stops and starts, but has sort of generally increased over the years.
We were talking earlier about how that really wasn't the case back when you came back into, if I'm not mistaken, the last time you came back into Congress in 97, I believe it was.
Right.
This issue has been around for a long time, but support comes and goes.
I think it's high now.
It might be historically high.
But what I think you're referencing to is I had been out of Congress for 12 years and ran in 96, 1996, and went back in in 97.
And within a week or two, since people knew me a little bit because I had run as a libertarian, I was on C-SPAN.
And high on my mind was some two recent events.
One was Ruby Ridge and one was the burning down of the Davidians at Waco.
And the subject came up.
And I said, you know, the American people are getting to the point that they fear their own government.
I didn't think it was too astounding, but for 20 years ago, almost 20 years, it must have not been appropriate.
It must not have been politically correct.
And of course, in some circles, even today's discussion isn't political correct because we're challenging the concept of American exceptionalism.
But by the time I left the studio and got back to my office, the congressman, Chet Edwards, who was representing Waco, he seemed to take this that I was strongly criticizing Waco.
And here I was criticizing the U.S. Department of Justice and Reno.
And yet he went down there and reamed me out.
And that became a floor issue.
And some of the other Republicans came, why don't you tone it down?
You just got back.
And why are you stirring this?
And I thought, well, I'm just talking, you know, common sense.
But anyway, I think conditions have changed because the sentiment there, I didn't get a whole lot of people.
There were a few call-ins and all that were supportive.
But I think there's a lot more support and belief that we've gone too far.
And we have a couple polls here.
The one, the one that we're talking about dealt with the domestic, but then there's another one, another emphasis by Oliver Stone.
He talks a lot about foreign policy.
And just generally speaking, people in this country are now coming out in opposition together.
The reason I like this is I think we can get into this wedge which we've been trying to create is that if you oppose government policy and if you oppose unnecessary, unconstitutional, dangerous, ridiculous wars, you're not an American.
And now it's getting to a point we can and should, as a patriotic duty, if you want to use that term, to stand up to our own government when they're going wrong.
And maybe this should be encouraging.
And remember back when Clinton did Ruby Ridge and Waco, the big threat was right-wing militias, and they were able to demonize people who were suspicious of government power of so many federal agents with guns.
And I think we have progressed in a way to this point now where the rest of the country's come to where you were back then.
Matter of fact, in this Gallup poll, one of the things that they cited, the reason they fear their own government, our own government, is the gun issue.
I mean, they listed some other things which were very appropriate.
Government's too big.
It's too powerful.
Too many violations of civil liberties.
It looks like they're going to continue to control gun ownership.
And they see this as all a danger.
And yet, hopefully, we will continue to see people like this as not being un-American, and that we can undermine those who preach the gospel of Americanism.
The super-Americanism that we have to spread through force.
That, to me, is really where the big challenge is.
And the only slightly discouraging part, if you look a little bit deeper into the poll, is the fact that there is a real split between Republicans and Democrats.
You know, that 50% overall just distrust the government.
But of that, today, 65% Republicans, 32% Democrats distrust.
And if you look back to 2007, it was just flipped.
59% Democrats, you know, and 24% are Republicans.
So a lot of it has to do with whether your guy is in power.
So it's not time for a victory cry yet.
But overall, the trend increases of people who fear the government.
And Ryan McMacon from the Emises Institute actually wrote an article about there and demonstrates this by graft on how it switches around.
But, you know, like the conservative Republicans, when they're out of power, those dirty old Democrats, they spend too much money.
But then when they're in charge, what do they do?
But that's part of what I think people are resenting.
And this is the reason why we have to help people straighten this out.
Maybe that partisanship will change a bit.
Because, you know, even though we didn't go to a complete victory or anything in our campaigns, the people who got interested, interestingly enough, were usually out of government.
You know, they're not voters.
They weren't strong Republicans or Democrats.
And they were young people, too.
And I think the one poll in there, one article indicated that where the opening is for the ideas that we express are, amazingly, like it's a surprise to me, are young people and minorities as well.
I think it's such a shame that we talk about minorities as a group.
Why Groups Matter Less00:03:43
What are you going to do for this group?
What are you going to do for this group?
Just so we don't do anything to them is important.
But we have to appeal to them with the principles of liberty and why that principle is good.
And you take care of individuals.
And then the group becomes less significant.
Because when they talk about groups, they have a right to think about it because they've been considered negative because they belong to a group and there's been laws that actually punish them.
But I think to get out of it, you can't concentrate, well, what are you going to do for this group?
And what are you going to do for this group?
What are we going to do for Wall Street?
There's another group.
And that was another resentment they had in this poll was the 1% of wealth.
And I work hard on trying to distinguish earned wealth versus wealth that comes from colluding with the government and being partners with the government.
Yeah, that was interesting.
A little point that Ryan McMacon made in his polls.
It was a poll taken last year by Pew, and it found that while only about 11% of Americans self-identify as libertarians and demonstrate they understand what it means in that group, very, very high for young people.
So that is the future.
But I think he mentioned even there that a significant number of Hispanics are open to this.
But of course, I want that to be the secondary thing.
I want people as individuals to believe their best interests are served by protecting their interest and their liberty.
And so it's their life.
They run their own life.
It's their money.
They get to spend their own money.
That they're never forced into paying for or fighting in wars that make no sense.
And that should serve the interests of all individuals and all groups.
But if they're looking for handouts, if they're looking for benefits, just think about, you know, I keep thinking, and I continue to speak on college campuses.
Do I have to go there for a statement on what I'm going to do for the students?
Oh, okay.
There's $1.3 trillion students owe.
Oh, we'll just throw that out the window so you don't have to pay for it.
But now they continue to expand it, and they say even if they don't have to pay for it, which a lot of them aren't, they still pay for it because they're inheriting a society based on debt and Federal Reserve financing, so there aren't any jobs.
So it didn't do any good.
They get out of college, so they pay whether they have to pay, you know, whether it's paid for directly by them paying their loan back or whether it's paid for by the government running up more debt and printing more money.
That to me isn't the solution.
People have to realize it's in their best interest.
So, but you know, the other article I mentioned earlier I thought was interesting what Oliver Stone is doing right now.
And he's been able to provoke a bit of interest over his professional time.
But his article that came out about him, I think it's interesting, Oliver Stone, forget ISIS.
America is the great threat to the world.
So he emphasizes, you know, how the world is looking at us.
And he comes down, you know, pretty hard on our foreign policy.
Very critical.
The destabilization of the Middle East.
And, you know, I can see how that would be misread by people as saying that he's blaming America.
You dealt with that in your column this week, but it's not America that's gone over and destabilized Syria.
It's a small group of neocons and humanitarian interventionists that have done it.
So it's not America.
It's a part of the U.S. government that's done it.
Yeah, there has to be a distinction between the country and the people and the culture versus the government.
And that's why we have less problems when the government is very small.
Government Overthrow Risks00:05:49
When the government is very big, you run into problems like this, and then it takes a while for the people to wake up.
When the country is very wealthy and the currency is very strong, boy, you can coast a long time.
You can fight a lot of wars.
You can, you know, manipulate the power and force people to use the dollar and do so many of these things and get away with it.
But eventually, you know, the debt catches up and it's undermined.
You consume the wealth and it doesn't last much longer.
Yeah, I was just going to say, you know, the other, you know, while we can be encouraged that people are becoming more distrustful to the government, there's a danger that that can manifest itself in a more extreme way.
We were looking at another poll earlier that found that by Gov, which found that nearly a third of Americans would support a military coup against the government.
So that's what happens when you move to the extreme.
Yeah, and I'd have to really look into that.
And, you know, when we talked about it, I thought, could this possibly be true?
And you looked at that closely, and it really poll claims that, but it does seem to be an extreme viewpoint.
I want the opposition to be there, but I don't think that's going to be the answer.
For me, it's theoretical in that force doesn't usually solve any of the problem.
But what are the odds of winning?
You know, how many guns can you go up against?
And although I expect to see some of this happening, but not so much that there is a planned conspiracy and a coup, what I foresee is the danger of the breakdown of the economic system.
And then there's bartering and there's more violence in the city because there's no way they're going to pay these pension funds and Social Security.
Then there's going to be problems.
And then the fights will be there and there will be violence.
But that to me is a little bit different than the perception you have with a military coup.
So I just not, I don't think that's likely to happen, but it represents a sort of a strong sentiment.
It might be reflected in the current presidential race where people seem to be favoring the man on a white horse, whether he's a socialist or a crony capitalist or whatever you want to call it.
And no matter what one person says, the other one, I don't play poker, but it's sort of like you have to up them to stay in the game.
So one person says, you know, this is what I would do on America.
Oh, no, but this is what I would do.
I'd build a bigger wall than you would build.
You know, it goes on and on.
And it's all militancy.
And the left is having fun on that now because probably they're digging a hole for themselves.
They're going to be tough, tough, tough and be construed as extreme right-wingers and anti-immigrant and anti-Hispanic on all this thing.
But I don't see how that's going to work.
I think they are setting the stage.
And people are.
You know, the Republicans are, the stronger and tougher you are, the Republicans are drifting toward these individuals.
But that is a traditional thing.
When society breaks down and government breaks down, they want somebody to come and use force and take care of them, take care of me, feed me, give me a house, give me free education.
And someday they're going to wake up and find out there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Eventually you pay for it.
And unfortunately, the payment comes at the sacrifice of liberty.
And that, of course, is what's happening now.
And the sacrifice with our foreign policy is the sacrifice of liberty and the encouragement of all countries to have a very distasteful look at what America is all about.
So that should be our big concern.
But I would like to thank everybody today for tuning into the Liberty Report.
This is an important issue, but I think it could be solved rather easily if people look at the aggressive principle.
If people would reject the use of aggression to try to have their ways, it would solve so many problems.
But the people who talk about this, the Republicans do this, and the Democrats do this, and they have all these solutions, it's all based on the use of aggression, personal aggression with the use of government.
If you can't do it yourself, go to the government and act for government to do this.
And they're always forcing, redistributing wealth, taking care of certain groups, bailing out Wall Street, having a secret type of monetary system which serves a special interest.
But eventually the country goes bust and that's where we are.
That is what we're facing.
The markets right now are very, very rocky.
And I think the gold is starting to show this difficulty that we're having.
So I do expect a lot more violence in this country, but I certainly don't advocate those individuals who think that, oh, yeah, we can just overthrow the government.
No, the government's going to overthrow itself.
The Soviet system collapsed, not because there was a coup and they went in there and overthrew, but the perceptions of the people were such that Khrushchev or Gorbachev and others, they just had to give up.
They came home.
Their empire collapsed.
So that is what has to happen.
The people's ideas and ideology and the support for the government has to change.
That's when we'll get our liberties back, and just the nature of that liberty and how well it's done depends on the people and how well they understand the non-aggression principle.
And that to me is the solution for so much of our trouble today because that would provide us the vehicle for allowing people their life liberty and their ability to spend their money as they see fit.