Is the globalism that seeks to concentrate power in a few unelected international bodies like the UN and IMF about to spectacularly crash? Will a new internationalism, driven by technology, replace the geographic nationalism of the 20th century? Doug Casey and Nick Giambruno join us in this very special episode of the Liberty Report...
Is the globalism that seeks to concentrate power in a few unelected international bodies like the UN and IMF about to spectacularly crash? Will a new internationalism, driven by technology, replace the geographic nationalism of the 20th century? Doug Casey and Nick Giambruno join us in this very special episode of the Liberty Report...
Thank you for tuning in to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
Co-host today is Daniel McAdams.
Daniel, good to see you.
Good to be with you, Dr. Paul.
Good.
We're going to have a very interesting program today.
Two experts on internationalism, but the good kind.
They're not the globe.
They travel the globe, but they're not globalists.
We'll may talk about it.
And that is somebody I've known for a long time, Doug Casey.
He is well known in the libertarian circles.
He graduated from Georgetown University.
I know Doug from back in the 70s and the 80s that he would have some meetings up at Aspen called the Arist Society, and I got to know him from there.
And he's also been well known for the books he's written and especially for crisis investment.
I think that's the name of one of his publications.
He is known as the international man.
And Doug, it's very nice to have you with us today.
Well, thank you, Ron.
I'm talking to you right now from Capujate, Argentina, where we have a development that we put together some years ago.
And as I speak to you, especially since the election of the new president, this is a relatively free country, and I'm celebrating with the Cuban cigar.
Oh, great.
Wonderful.
I also want to introduce an associate of yours that you work with quite often, and that's Nick Giabruno.
He's with us today, not in the same place that you are, but I think in the same country.
And Nick, it's good to have you with us.
He's the editor of the internationalman.com.
Nick, good to see you.
Thanks for having me, Dr. Paul.
Good.
Okay, Doug, now that you're smoking Cuban cigars and that the world is living in peace with Cuba once again, I just wonder whether that's a good sign that we're moving in the right direction, that internationalism of the bad kind has failed and the globalism is done with.
And what are you anticipating, especially with this recent election?
Is the nation state going to be undermined?
And have we ushered in a new era that we can all sit back and enjoy and smoke a cigar?
Well, I wish I could say that was the case with some certainty.
But, you know, the whole world is continuing to go in the wrong direction with all their financial controls and border controls and rebilitarization and lots of wars and this type of thing going on.
So that's the bad news.
But the good news is that the common man seems to be revolting as evidenced by the election of Donald Trump in the U.S. and Mauricio Makri here in Argentina.
And the fact that Dilma in Brazil is being indicted.
And it seems like all over Europe, the non-establishment characters are going to win in the months to come.
So I'm not sure what to make of it, actually.
I saw both of you gentlemen had a very interesting interview that you did together very recently in the International Man, I believe.
And you sort of sketched out a kind of history timeline, which I found very interesting.
You talked about how we began with tribes, then we moved into kingdoms, then came the nation state, which is sort of a geographic accident of birth.
And then you say we're moving into a new era where we will have a new sort of voluntary society that technology itself will lend itself to.
Maybe if you could explain this timeline better, I think it would be very interesting.
Well, let me speak to that, if I may.
Yeah, that is the way, those are the three great stages of political evolution of the world.
And I'd like to believe that Neil Stevenson was quite correct in his absolutely stellar novel Diamond Age when he says that the next evolution is going to be files,
where people aren't loyal to some government just because they're born there, but they find their own countrymen, no matter where in the world they are, whether it's the Congo or France or Burma or the U.S. people that you share views with and philosophies with and see life in the same way that you do.
And these files will become your new extended family, perhaps with millions of people.
So I'd like to think that that's the next evolution.
And it's enabled by the internet, which is the greatest invention since Gutenberg put together movable type.
Nick, I think with the international man, you're part of what Mr. Casey is talking about.
Can you tell us a little bit about the publication, the e-publication, and what its purpose is and what role it plays?
Oh, yes, absolutely.
But I think first it's important, you touched on this a little bit earlier.
It's very important to distinguish between globalism, which is bad, and internationalism, which is not bad.
And globalism simply means the centralization of power into global institutions like the United Nations, NATO, NAFTA, FATCA, GATTCA, and these kinds of things.
They're not good things.
It's the centralization of power on a global basis.
And I think that centralization of power is always bad.
Internationalism, how I would define it, is a little bit different.
It's about people spreading different aspects of their life around different countries in the world.
And the reason you would do this is not to centralize power, but to divorce yourself as much as you can from the politicians and bureaucrats in any particular country.
So this might mean getting multiple citizenships, multiple passports.
And that's particularly handy because any government can really revoke your passport or your citizenship, basically, for any reason they want to.
So they can put you under house arrest.
You can't travel without a passport.
I don't like that we even need to travel with passports.
But the fact of the matter is, if you're going to need them, you might as well have a lot of them so that your political risk is in a sense diversified.
So really, internationalization and internationalism is really just about diversifying your political risk versus globalism, which is about centralization of power.
So my publication actually has its roots in Doug's first book, which has the same name, International Man, and it's all about doing exactly that and removing as much political risk from your life as you possibly can.
And I think the best way to do that is with internationalization.
I'm going to follow up on that because I think that's a very interesting distinction.
Because, you know, generally speaking, if you're against globalism, which I speak out against all the time, some people interpret that, you know, at least in a narrow sense, that that means protectionism and that you need to close in and it's nationalism, but they don't realize that the true internationalism doesn't require government, like you point out,
that you don't need treaties, you don't need NAFTA, you don't need the WTO, and that if you have a truly libertarian society where the borders are much more open, it's so different.
So often in Washington, I was challenged, oh, you're an isolationist, you don't want to do this, you don't want to go to war.
But, you know, it's the people who believe in globalism that are always putting on sanctions and looking for wars and putting pressure on them.
So a lot of times, you know, the people that look at this, our enemies, will turn around and say, oh, you are a bunch of isolationists.
And I work hard to try to separate the two.
There was a time that other libertarians used isolationism as a neat little term, but they meant it to be a good term.
But I never liked the word of isolationism to try and define what I consider to be a principle based on the non-aggression principle.
But you're totally right, Dr. Paul.
And it comes down to a battle of ideas.
And really, in my opinion, it's not an honest argument to call somebody who is against globalism an isolationist.
I mean, anybody who can think clearly can clearly see that that's just a pejorative and is not a serious argument.
Why the press and the politicians continue to use it?
I mean, maybe it's effective.
But I mean, anybody can really see through that argument.
And I think you're 100% correct.
We should actually use the term non-interventionist.
That's my favorite.
I was coming back to the interview, which we both read a number of times, and it's interesting, you know, and I've seen, Doug, you go back and forth on Trump.
Your critique of nationalism, a both of your critique of nationalism, I think, is spot on, this idea that somehow, through some strange reason, you need to be tied to this geographical soil.
But you have said that Trump is, well, he will be our next president.
You've called him an authoritarian type of figure.
You've been critical.
You said nothing really is going to change for the better.
But you said it's still going to be an interesting ride, and he's still better than Hillary.
Considering the fact that he was elected on the sort of on the back of a kind of nationalist groundswell, a nation-state groundswell, do you see warning flags, though, that these two might clash?
Yeah, that is a potential problem.
Like most Americans, he tends to apotheesize the U.S. military.
And I'm not a big fan of any military, quite frankly.
You shouldn't be a fan of any group of people, but just follow orders from the people above them.
But, you know, this whole thing about nationalism, You can take, you know, nationalism is a negative thing, but for some reason, patriotism is considered a much better thing.
And I've got to say that like nationalism is just a friendly word for nationalism.
It means my country is the best country in the world just because I happen to have been born there.
And I don't think you should be a patriot if you were born in the Soviet Union.
And I don't think you should have been a patriot if you were born in Nazi Germany at a certain time.
So you've got to be careful about using these words.
Yeah, you know, Doug, I think we're agreeing that globalism is on the defense and they've had some setbacks and these recent elections, what's going on in Europe, all shows that they don't have free sailing any longer.
But it seems like some people are getting much more interested in a phenomenon called cultural Marxism.
And also we see a guy by the name of Soros who's very much involved here.
Do you see this as those individuals who are our enemies recognize that they have to do something differently and they are giving up on the tanks rolling across Europe and the World War I, World War II type of problems?
How do you see this culture of Marxism playing out?
Yeah, that's a very interesting question, Ron, because I think everybody but college professors in the U.S. have given up on economic Marxism as being a totally ridiculous and failed set of concepts.
So they replaced it with cultural Marxism, which is dividing society into classes of people that are naturally antagonistic to each other, at least in their minds.
So it's very poisonous.
Incidentally, I went to a conference in New York that I was invited to.
I'm not going to name it because a business partner of mine here in Argentina was the sponsor of this thing.
And they had all kinds of people.
They had Soros and they had Madeleine Halfbright and they had Petraeus and all these horrible people there.
And I listened for two days to them as a guest.
And all I could think of is these are parasites talking to other parasites about parasites.
That's what the whole thing was about.
And it's amazing to me that anybody holds these people in any kind of regard or respect at all.
They're horrible people with poisonous ideas.
And they certainly have their counterparts overseas.
You've talked about Europe, and I think Europe is actually quite an interesting place now.
There are some fault lines that are developing.
Of course, we saw the Brexit vote, which surprised the elites.
We've got a vote in Italy coming up this Sunday, which is somewhat more complicated to understand, but certainly there is the chance that it will further push the Italians away from the EU.
And then you have French presidential elections next year, which could indeed get very interesting when you have both Marine Le Pen and Philon going against each other.
Both of them have shown themselves to be hostile to Brussels' hostility to Moscow.
Where do you see Europe and the EU trending?
Well, it's going to break up.
It's an unnatural thing.
Look, the real trend in the world is shown by the breakup of the Soviet Union into 15 little countries.
It's shown by the breakup of Czechoslovakia into two countries, by the breakup of Yugoslavia into six countries, even Sudan broken up into two separate countries.
Breakup Trends00:08:55
It's going to happen to Spain.
It's going to happen to England.
I think Scotland is eventually going to break off from it.
It might even happen here in the U.S.
So the ideal situation is that we have 7 billion little nation states in the world.
So we have more, not less.
So it's a good thing.
Doug, you know, with this reselection, a lot of people have been hopeful, and there was a populist sentiment there, and there are some positive things seen.
But, you know, we can only estimate what might really happen.
Over the many decades that I've been involved in trying to figure this out, I've been really influenced, you know, by the deep state, and I know you mentioned that at times.
And usually you can tell the influence of the deep states rather early, even before an administration takes part.
And I have always assumed, it makes no difference.
Even with Reagan, as soon as he picked his vice president, I knew the ball game was over.
The programs would continue.
But here we have this information.
And how much deep state influence do you think there has been with this new administration coming in and how much there will be?
And also, make mention about where you see the CIA falling in the deep state.
Are they still as powerful as they were when Alan Dulles ran the CIA?
I think they're much more powerful because all these black budgets that they have, I have no doubt that many, many people in the CIA have made millions of dollars taking advantage of these black budgets.
And they're like a government within a government.
Same with the NSA and all the rest of these things.
So the CIA should be abolished.
For that matter, the FBI should be abolished.
The NSA should be abolished.
These are all destructive institutions, but Americans think of them now as being part of the cosmic firmament.
So it's a very bad thing.
And they keep growing their budget and doing all kinds of propaganda to make themselves seem like they're necessary and even noble.
Very negative influence on society, these things.
Okay.
Daniel, do you have something?
Well, just following up on your question, you know, it seems to be an institutional problem in Washington.
You know, even if Donald Trump wanted to drain the swamp, as he says, and this came up in the interview, too, you've got the think tanks.
think tanks dominate policy and they are for the status quo so it's okay i do want to shift a little bit uh over to some investments in the financial markets This is where Doug is well known and an expert on.
And Nick or Doug might reflect on what I'm going to ask about.
And that is the bursting of the bond bubble.
The bubble probably started back in the early 80s.
That's a long time for a bond bubble for 35, 36 years.
But in the last, approximately a year, the 10-year bond went from 1.4 to 2.4.
And it keeps growing.
Do you think we can say it has burst?
It's going to be going in one direction.
We're not going to see 10-year bond prices below 2% again.
And also, why was it that the expectation was that when the Fed talked about raising interest rates a quarter of a percent, the markets would get skittish and they would go down a couple hundred points.
But here, we see interest rates rising, and the stocks are getting to love this.
How do you interpret that?
Nick, what do you say about that?
Well, in terms of the bond bubble, I mean, we're looking, yeah, I agree with you, and we're looking at foreigners who are buying less.
And in particular, I've spent a lot of time in the Middle East.
I'm looking at Saudi Arabia because Saudi Arabia invests a lot of its money in U.S. treasuries.
And, you know, I'm sure you guys have kept up with what has happened over the past year with Saudi Arabia.
Previously, the Treasury would keep a secret the Saudi holdings.
Now they publish it.
So it looks like there is a growing rift between the Saudis who purchased treasuries over they have over 100 billion treasuries, I think, by last count, 117 if I'm not mistaken.
And they're going to be possibly looking not only to not buy, but maybe to sell those holdings.
And of course, you know, if there's a problem with the Chinese, the Russians have been selling.
So who is going to pick up the slack?
And I can only see the Fed picking up the slack.
And even that might not stop the bubble from bursting.
So I am paying very close attention to Saudi Arabia because I think that could really be the pin that breaks it definitively.
Right.
Okay.
We'll be finishing up here soon, Doug, but I wanted to finish off with a general discussion on just your whole philosophy because I've known you for a long time.
And see if I describe you accurately.
On the short term, we have a lot of problems and there's going to be a lot of bumps.
But on the long term, for human civilization, there's a lot of things positive.
And even we talked about some of the positive things now, the breaking up of the nation state.
So describe that a little bit more about how bumpy is this going to be and how dangerous it is.
And when will we have a lot more people agreeing with us that there's a lot of great things happening and there's no reason why we have to have perpetual war?
To me, it's so simple.
Why don't we get more people to accept one basic principle, the non-aggression principle, and the world would be so much better off?
I think it's a psychological problem, maybe even a spiritual problem that most people suffer from.
And unfortunately, most people, I don't think, think for themselves.
But the friend of the common man in all of this is technology.
And I think Ray Kurzweil is quite correct that within 20 years, we're going to see the singularity because there are many, many areas of technology that are now advancing at the rate of Morton's law.
In other words, doubling in power and halving in cost every 18 months.
And this includes robotics.
This includes virtual reality.
It includes nanotechnology above all.
And these things are going to be like the printing press on steroids.
And they're going to empower the average man.
And they'll find that they don't need the state.
So I think it's going to be a natural evolution.
And I'm very optimistic about that.
That's the good news.
And it's going to happen over the next 20 years.
Simultaneously, there is such a thing as the business cycle and all this debt, which means that some people owe some other people.
And there's so much debt that it's an unstable thing and it can't be paid.
So I think we're going to have the Greater Depression, much worse, and much different and much longer lasting than what happened in the 1930s and 40s and very similar.
So I guess it just depends as to which end of the equation you want to look at.
But it's going to be very interesting.
I'd just jump in and say, yeah, I agree with both of you that on the long term, the nation state is on the way out.
But I think in the more shorter term, with the failure of globalism, I think the jury is still out.
I think the nation state could get us.
It looks like we've lost our connection.
We'll see.
And that can be very dangerous.
Doug has an interesting analogy he's put once.
Well, if nationalism rises, it's kind of like when you're in the zoo and you see all the chimpanzees hooting and hollering.
You don't want to be the one chimpanzee that's not hooting and hollering when the crowd gets all worked up.
So it's a very dangerous time to be an independent thinker, libertarian, in a time of rising nationalism.
So I think we have to be on guard for that, too.
That's all the more reason to internationalize.
Yes.
Also, that if the U.S. goes crazy, as Germany has, as Russia has, as China has, as Vietnam and Cuba, almost every country in the world has had a period of craziness.
I mean, maybe we're going to have one in the U.S.
It's possible.
You know, I think Mencken said something like the greatest danger to government is a man who thinks for himself.
Closing Thoughts00:00:54
And I want to close by saying, and it was great to have both of you on here because you do both think for yourself.
And we are delighted that you were with us.
And I want to thank you very much, both Doug and Nick.
Well, thank you for having us, Dr. Paul.
Let me run.
I can't resist.
I have to say one more thing.
Okay.
And that's I want to thank you for the kind endorsement that you made of my first novel, first of six that are coming out, called Speculator.
And I want to urge all our listeners to pick that up.
They're going to enjoy it.
And it's like carrying this conversation on in a story forum.
Wonderful.
Good to see you today.
And let's get back together again soon.
And I want to thank our viewing audience for joining us.
And I hope you enjoyed the program as much as I enjoyed participating.