Ron Paul is often asked questions about who he supports in the presidential elections. In this segment, he discusses the big picture and how he comes to his conclusions as voting hysteria grips a vast majority of people.
Be sure to visit http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com for more libertarian commentary.
Ron Paul is often asked questions about who he supports in the presidential elections. In this segment, he discusses the big picture and how he comes to his conclusions as voting hysteria grips a vast majority of people.
Be sure to visit http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com for more libertarian commentary.
Today I want to talk a little bit about the election and some of the questions I get when I'm being interviewed.
One of the most common questions I get asked is, who am I going to support and how important this election is?
Don't you think this is the most important election ever?
And I'm usually pretty negative on that.
I've obviously been involved in politics for a long, long time and involved in elections.
But the significance of the election is a lot less than a lot of people think.
I think so often it's a distraction, elections.
I've always emphasized the philosophy, the philosophy of a people, and the prevailing attitudes have more to do with it than any particular election.
And I've always said that if elections really mattered, they'd be illegal.
But no, there's a lot of activity and a lot of money spent and a lot of back and forth.
And generally speaking, Republicans and Democrats go back and forth.
And it's easy to pin the two parties as being very, very close philosophically.
And I watched it in Washington.
There was no real disagreement between the two parties verbally and the rhetoric was a little bit different, but we always ended up with more government.
This time it's not so easy to just simplify that and say, you know, there's no difference between the two.
Well, the parties, there's no difference, but there definitely is a difference.
Trump is certainly not like a Hillary Clinton Democrat, and he's certainly not like a Mitt Romney Republican.
So there is a difference, but he certainly isn't a libertarian.
So that's where we are today.
And do I stick to my statement that elections aren't all that important?
It's still what the people are thinking and what type of economic policies we follow and whether or not we accept interventionism.
I, of course, think they're so important.
And I think that one of the problems going on today is why we don't have real answers and why I'm not expecting any real changes because even if one of them comes up with the right answer, stop and frisk happens to be now more endorsed by Democrats than by the Republicans.
Momentum for Change00:07:54
But, you know, so it's a real mixed bag.
But I think there's a tremendous momentum in the system.
We have momentum for more spending, more printing of money, continue with our foreign policy, continue with Keynesianism.
The momentum is so great.
So let's say they really did want to cut.
And I don't think either candidate and the major candidate right now really wants to cut spending because sometimes they compete on who's going to spend the most on infrastructure and they both agree that we have to spend more money on the military.
So that process goes back and the momentum is so great that nobody's going to cut.
Nobody's going to get rid of a department of any department of education or energy.
Nobody even going to bring it up because there's too many powerful special interests that would be hurt and on the short run they would have some gripes because they would suffer some consequences.
So that's not going to happen.
The momentum for spending, the conditions are such where the people expect government.
The people who are receiving welfare benefits would riot if they thought their benefits would be cut.
And what would happen if you cut the military-industrial complex and how the welfare goes to the wealthy in the banking system, the Federal Reserve?
That's just not going to happen.
So therefore the election, I think, too often is a distraction.
I think that the debt is going to continue.
The spending is going to continue.
The foreign policy will continue.
And I think the monetary policy, even though Trump has mentioned this criticism about the Federal Reserve causing a bubble, he's right about that, absolutely.
But he doesn't come up and say, well, get rid of the FOMC, get rid of the power of the Fed to regulate interest rates, get rid of the Fed to monetize debt, which is really the problem.
And that's going to have to come in a long time from now.
You know, the other thing going on, and you read about it every day, is this runaway cultural Marxism and what's going on in the colleges on words you can't use, the obsessiveness with that.
You can't say woman, you can't say man, and people get into trouble for this.
And you know, at the same time, most of them will profess, oh, I believe in the First Amendment, but this is hurtful language.
Well, the First Amendment wasn't designed to protect us to say uncontroversial things, that we weren't to ever say anything that would offend somebody.
Offending people is a natural right.
It might make no sense.
It might make you look like a jerk, but you can't outlaw people from using, making bad judgments and looking like a jerk, whether it's socially or whether it's economically speaking.
So they don't realize that this First Amendment is in some ways respected.
When it comes to religious beliefs, people generally recognize the fact that you have different religious beliefs or you can be an atheist in this country.
And also, we don't outlaw the reading of communism and socialism and authoritarianism and inflationism and Federal Reservism.
We're allowed to talk about that.
But when it comes to something social, all of a sudden they want these authoritarians to come down with political correctness.
And if you use the word wrong and somebody takes offense, then you're going to get into trouble.
You might lose your job and people just gang up on you.
There's a lot of momentum for that.
And unfortunately, that is going to continue.
Hopefully the American people wake up.
The whole problem with what we're facing, whether it's economic or foreign policy or monetary policy, is we're marching rapidly toward a total breakdown of our system.
I mean, there's going to be more antagonism over political correctness.
People aren't going to put up with that.
They're going to get angry.
We have militarization of the police, overreacting to the people in the inner city, demanding what they're entitled to.
And the conflicts are there.
At the same time, our country's going bankrupt.
We're broke.
We don't have the money to do any of this.
We don't have it.
And somebody has to eventually cut the spending.
But we're marching to a breakdown of this system.
And what will be a challenge is the dependence on government.
Right now, most people think that they are entitled to certain things and they can depend on government, both rich and poor.
It's a totally opposite condition than what the founders thought they were giving us with the Constitution, with limiting government, protecting liberty, and allowing people to solve their problems.
And we want equal justice under the law.
We don't want perfect equality, which is a goal of socialism.
So that all has to change.
And I believe, though, that there are some good signs showing that people are waking up to this, but not on the short run.
This election is not going to make a difference.
Waking up the people to what the correct philosophies are, and the political changes are minor.
You know, if there's some political changes, it might happen, but it doesn't deal with what's going on.
We're working in conditions of an era changing, the era of big government, the bankruptcy of the country.
And if we don't deal with that, we're not going to solve our problems.
I'd like to see, you know, the consensus in the country, but he decided to give liberty a chance.
And I think it would be good for a change to try liberty, but we don't.
Every time we go with bigger government, and that's what I see in the campaign today.
So even when I hear good things from either side thinking there's a libertarian tinge there, I don't really expect it to happen.
I think the momentum is too great.
There's too much indoctrination in our system, too much control by the military-industrial complex.
The deep state is really in charge.
Nobody's worrying about the deep state.
Do you think in the debates they're saying, well, what we really need to do to change this country is we need to expose the deep state and make sure the CIA doesn't get out of control and get overly involved in our own elections or get involved in other elections.
No, most people don't know about the deep state, but the special interests are really in charge, and that's not going to change with one election.
It's only going to change when the philosophy of the country changes and decides that the role of government be radically changed to that of protecting liberty, following up on the original intent of the founders in this country to have a country where individual liberty would be important and that the First Amendment means something different than regulating language and what one can say.
And the university supporting an issue like that, and the university supporting Keynesian economics, which says deficits don't matter, Keynesian interventionist economics that says, you know, pruning money is a good thing.
These things will end.
We have to challenge them.
The sooner the better.
The sooner we get the American people to say what we need in this country is liberty.
Liberty will solve our problems.
We need equal justice under the law.
And then we will see some progress.
Hopefully we can work to see that day come soon.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.