US politicians did not waste a second to use the Nice attack to push their own political agendas. It was radical Islam, some said. Deport foreigners, some said. Declare war, said others. War against who? Who benefits from attacks like this? The national security state, to be sure.
Be sure to visit http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com for more libertarian commentary.
US politicians did not waste a second to use the Nice attack to push their own political agendas. It was radical Islam, some said. Deport foreigners, some said. Declare war, said others. War against who? Who benefits from attacks like this? The national security state, to be sure.
Be sure to visit http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com for more libertarian commentary.
Would like to talk about the most noticed event in the last 24 hours.
And of course, it's the killing that went on in Nice and a lot of talk about it.
And one thing that I've gathered from this is that all attacks and killing and violence are not equal.
And yet there are some people who would like to.
You know, if you're a Liberal Democrat, you say, well, it's the guns.
That must be the gun.
So we have to find out whether it was the gun that really did this, that caused this problem.
And then the other people say, well, no, it's just radical Islam.
We've got to, you know, declare war against Islam and, you know, go on their battlefields and settle this.
But give me an idea on what you have found looking into this driver.
Because I understand the driver had a truck and planned to kill people, but he didn't get out and mow them down, to the best of our understanding.
Is that correct?
Yeah, he apparently rented this delivery truck a couple of days earlier.
He drives a delivery, drove a delivery truck for his career.
He was a 31-year-old Tunisian man with French residency permit.
He rented this truck a couple of days earlier, and in the midst of the Bastille Day celebration on the walkway between the beach and the city, he periled into them at about 50 miles an hour.
I think he went about a mile, and it's just a scene of absolute carnage.
But once he stopped, the French police, and I've seen video of this this morning, opened fire into the truck and took him out.
But this hasn't weakened the cry for expanding our war against Islam.
I mean, some of the pundits now are saying, well, we have to expand the war against Islam.
How does that make any sense?
Immediately they said that.
And from what we've seen, and of course things can change, and sometimes they change in strange ways.
But from what we've seen, they interviewed his neighbor.
There was a piece in the Telegraph this morning.
They interviewed the neighbor.
He was depressed over a divorce a couple of years earlier.
He had had financial problems.
He was aggressive and an unpleasant person.
But they also said he wasn't religious.
He was more interested in girls than in going into the mosque.
So it's a more nuanced picture, but as you say, immediately.
Yeah, but you know, and then there's cries for several people.
Well, we have to declare war.
Let Congress participate.
Let Congress declare war.
The question is, against whom?
Who is it exactly that we're going to declare war against?
And, you know, if it's to expand the war against Islam, that doesn't make any sense.
It doesn't sound like he was representing any variety of Islam.
It was a more personal thing than Islam.
So what about when people commit crimes that had even less to do with it?
I mean, let's assume that he's Mideastern and a Muslim, but it had nothing to do with it.
But what about somebody commits terrorism like Timothy McVeigh?
I mean, whom are you going to declare war against?
And what if it's conceivably we have a bad incident where in the name of Black Lives Matter, a bunch of people get killed and white police get killed and they declare that they're out to kill white people with guns.
I mean, why didn't we declare war then?
To whom do you declare war against?
And in this case, as is with others, and we have brought it up, that for people to participate in this, even if it's loosely linked to Islam, it's very much linked to these individuals who are totally deranged.
They're loners and they're out of their mind.
So how do you declare war?
And besides, if you say, well, this is terrorism, this is terrorism, terrorism is a tactic on what you do.
And just like I mentioned, the different groups use violence to get attention.
So you really can't declare war against terrorism.
You have to declare war against a certain individual.
So some people think it's some of these countries.
If we could only stop the immigration from some of these countries, we could prevent this.
It wouldn't have helped in this case, would it?
Not necessarily because he was a legal resident of France.
But, you know, Rupert Stone is a writer on terrorism.
He studies the issue.
And he tweeted out earlier today, how do we know this isn't just a case of mass murder?
I mean, why is everyone assuming that it's terrorism?
And I think it's a good question.
There's no manifesto.
There's no claim to be operating on behalf of any group.
And so the question is sometimes mass murder does happen.
But the point that you were making, I think, as horrible as this crime is, the reaction of the usual suspects, the politicos, may actually be worse because of what you're saying.
And maybe I can, Chris, our intrepid colleague, dug up a couple of quotes from some of our political leaders in reaction to what happened.
And maybe I could read a couple and see how you might react.
First is our old friend Newt Gingrich.
And here's what he said.
We should test every person here who is of Muslim background.
If they believe in Sharia, they should be deported.
We have to monitor the mosques.
This is the fault of the Western elites who lack the guts to do what's right.
If Newt were here, and I was in a great debate with Newton, I'd say, Newt, would that have prevented this incident?
And what is the obvious answer?
There's no way that would have helped prevent this by invading.
But for the most part, everything has happened since 9-11.
Yes, we have done a lot.
But the victims of what we have done have been the American citizens, the individuals.
So if we're going to start monitoring individuals and profile, you cannot escape.
It's sort of like having passports, you know, carrying your papers in order to catch illegal aliens.
Well, how can you do that without affecting American citizens?
But that seems to be of less concern.
So Newt says, you know, we just have to profile, invade the mosques and everything else.
I don't think that sounds, and he's a historian.
Didn't he claim he was a bit of a historian?
But I would think that he is totally divorced from what civil liberties are about and what our Bill of Rights are all about, and that it leads to a conclusion that is nothing more than aggravating a situation because even though there are people who say that we have been in an unconventional war, a military guy said, unconventional war for a long time, and this is part of it.
Well, it turns out it isn't part of it.
But there is this conflict between East and West.
There's no doubt about it, even though this one doesn't seem to be related.
And Dallas was not related.
But there is this conflict going on, and we do have it.
But it's probably less than most people realize how important that is.
But the conflict, the people who want to declare war and go over there, they even want to use NATO.
Oh, yeah, NATO can go over there and fight this battle.
But I don't know how in the world that could possibly help by declaring war, because the way I see it, recent history shows that there's been a declaration of war there.
There's no doubt about it.
West vs. East Conflict00:08:54
But I think it's more the West declaring war against the East.
And the East and the Middle East see us as invaders and we're crusaders and it just goes on and on.
But that problem is actually a little bit set aside here.
But it doesn't stop them.
I mean, here, we want to accelerate and increase, declare war against Islam because of this case.
But do you think Obama and his crowd are all of a sudden say, well, I guess it isn't guns.
It isn't guns.
He didn't need a gun.
All he needed was a truck.
And Timothy McVay killed a lot of people.
He didn't have a gun.
Some of the big killings, it doesn't even occur with guns.
Yeah, you know, regardless of, in a sense, I mean, it sounds calcium, regardless of whether it was a terrorist attack or not, it's had this enormous propaganda effect.
Even if it was just a lone, deranged, sick person who did this, the perception is that this is another example of Islamic terrorism, so we've got to hit them.
And if you ask the average person, that's what they will come away from this thinking.
So whether it's some grand plan to plant this in the minds of people or what, it certainly has had that effect.
It's sort of the old saying, don't ever waste the crisis that comes.
But, you know, I think the right was set, the left was set back a little bit, you know, because of the Dallas shooting.
It had, you know, the left was doing it.
It was the radical Black Lives Matter group.
But the right was set back because it wasn't Islam.
So now they can take it and say, ah, now we can do it.
We're going to make use of this thing because we want to accelerate this war.
They're coming.
They're coming.
And yet, we've pointed out how many people actually have died from even close to being legitimately called a terrorist attack in this country in 15 years.
It's like 94 or something.
But they were immediately wanting to shift it over and turn it back into the anti-Islamic argument.
And I haven't heard it, but I'll bet it's out there where the left is not going to soften up.
It's really the guns that causes all the trouble.
You know, it's the old saying, it's hard to resist repeating it, that when your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
And you see that in some of these other quotes.
General Michael Flynn, who was on the short list to be Donald Trump's VP nominee, former head of the DIA, he said, they have declared war on us.
This is a world war.
Trump himself chimed in and said, I've been saying it, we should use NATO for a purpose.
So whatever the event, they're going to push their pet project, which is war.
I think if he wants to use NATO, does that mean that NATO has to invade France or whatever?
And if Black Lives Matter, does NATO have to come in here and settle this?
See, that doesn't make any sense.
But back to the general theme of this warring factions that are going on.
I argue this in the case of the presidential debates that one of the most morally challenging positions taken by George Bush was preemptive war.
And he more or less established that in 2002.
And he said that we have to take it to him.
We can't wait.
And part of that was, like, people assuming, well, they're getting ready to attack as we go and start it.
But that isn't it.
Part of the Bush doctrine is that you go and you get rid of regimes.
You interfere in elections.
You get rid of people.
And what have we done?
I mean, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ukraine.
And then they say that somebody else has started it.
Yeah, I think some nuts can grab hold of this and use religion at times, but too often it isn't religion.
You know, religion is minor.
You could put religious incentives on the West as well, because I do know some very devout Christians who love preemptive war.
They think it's God's will that we enter into this battle and encouraged and gave Bush the greatest support for this.
I think that's where our real problem is when we come to these overall conflicts.
But the second problem is back to what we deal with, and that's the propaganda.
You have the anti-gun people, and you have the anti-Islam people.
No matter what it is, they're going to use some incident.
And especially the more violent it is, the more you can stir it up.
And they don't address a couple things.
They don't address the foreign policy.
Foreign policy is not negotiable.
Republican or Democrat, we're there to spread our exceptionalism and American greatness.
And then when it comes to some of the problems here we have at home, how sincere are they in dealing with the police brutality, dealing with the incarcerations unfairly, the justice system with the drug war, the economic problems, the unfairness of the system, which then is captured by the people who say, well, we're not getting enough stuff.
We need more stuff from the government and we're entitled to it, rather than saying, well, maybe it's government policy on economics.
Maybe it's the Federal Reserve and the monetary system that is designed to help Wall Street and the wealthy.
They don't deal with that.
That is irrelevant as far as they're concerned in connection with this violence.
But people can get pretty frustrated.
I used to make the comment always sort of jokingly, but there's probably some truth to it, that people don't vote from their heart or their head.
They vote from their bellies.
And when people get impoverished, whether it's their fault or economic conditions' fault, that they strike out and they feel like they have to find vengeance.
And I think we're seeing a little bit of this.
And that's true internationally as well.
Look at all of these countries where we have pursued this regime change or invasion policy.
We've created enormous poverty.
We've dislocated entire societies with this policy.
And we've stirred up people.
So should it be a surprise, their bellies are empty too, and they're angry too.
And I'm sure you're referring to the mass migration.
The mass migration, economic policy, as well as our foreign policy and the chaos that we've created by preemptive war.
And then to turn around and say, they started, they started it, we have to go after them.
But we have this mass migration, and then we have cultural Marxism.
You know, this political correctness and this welfarism that's run wild.
And you come into any country, no wonder there were a few Brits who were sickened of it, and they, you know, at least by the majority vote passed Brexit.
So, you know, to get out of that mentality.
I think they have a long way to go, but at least the people spoke out about this.
But it is a consequence of bad policy.
But that's off base.
Governments aren't to be criticized.
And what we need is more of it.
We need to be more aggressive.
We need to torture people.
We need to kill civilians.
We need to kill family members to make a point.
And that's what we've been talking about.
And I cannot see how that can be very helpful internationally.
And I cannot see how we can deal with violence here at home if everything is either guns or Islam.
That, I think, is the big problem.
I want to thank everybody today for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
Once again, we talk about an incident where a lot of people were killed and a lot of nonsense spewed out afterwards, and a lot of misinformation and a lot of political grandstanding to take advantage of it to promote their cause, whether it's anti-gun or anti-Islam or pro-intervention, and never deal with the fallacies of an interventionist foreign policy, the fallacies of our economic policy,
and the fallacies of failing to look at what the big difference between a lone wolf and an individual who's really psychiatrically sick and gets thrown into this mix, commits a violent act, and then everybody's scrambling to take advantage of it and say, Ah, yeah, I can make my point now because this guy, you know, is anti-American, he's pro-Islam.
Remaking the Middle East00:00:56
And it's on and on.
So I think just common sense would work.
Sit down and relax and look and try and study and find out if non-intervention in foreign policy is a worthwhile philosophy and look to see if in getting rid of the economic intervention internationally of international banking and central banking and the principle of deficits being worthwhile and printing money as worthwhile.
And then we have a lot of people who suffer economically be willing to admit the complications that have gone on in the Middle East from us marching into that country over the last 15 or 20 years trying to remake the Middle East.
And they've used those same terms.
We need to remake the Middle East.
Well, they may need some remaking, but I tell you what, our efforts to go over there and try to remake the Middle East has been of no benefit to anyone.
Want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.