Join Daniel McAdams and Ron Paul for a discussion on Dr. Paul's new book about the tenth anniversary of the "Ron Paul Revolution." What was he thinking at the time? Where is the movement today? Where is it going? You will be surprised at the conversation and by the book!
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The Revolution's Message
00:13:02
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| Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report. | |
| With me today is Daniel McAdams. | |
| Of course, he's our co-host. | |
| And Daniel, today I understand we have something different, and you're in charge. | |
| You're going to be asking me a few questions, is that correct? | |
| Yes, I've been promoted for the day. | |
| But here's what we need to talk about, which is your new book, Ron Paul's new book, The Revolution, at 10 years. | |
| We worked on it. | |
| We've worked on it for a while. | |
| We actually did an advanced little party at our conference in September where we had kind of a pre-introduction of the book. | |
| We sold a few copies, but now we want to talk about it on the show because we want to have everyone to have an opportunity to purchase the book. | |
| We have a special offer at the end. | |
| But we need to talk about this book 10 years since 2007, 10 years since Ron Paul exploded onto the scene. | |
| And, you know, you write down an important date in the book very early on, and it's the date December 16th, 2007. | |
| Why is that so important? | |
| Well, this was when we caught the attention of the media and other politicians, and that's when we had a fundraiser which broke all records. | |
| I think it was over $6 million. | |
| And it was on the Boston Tea Party Day, celebrating the Boston Tea Party, and the beginning, really, of this whole movement that has been more recent of the Tea Party, the modern-day Tea Party movement, which we will talk about because we felt like we were participating in it, and the supporters started it, but of course it didn't remain the same way. | |
| But on that date, it was really amazing. | |
| I remember Kent Snyder, our chairman at the time, he says, this set a goal of, you know, because he had heard about this, they set a goal and see if they would donate $500,000. | |
| And if I came in pretty well, he says, Ron, he says, I think we should see if they can reach a million. | |
| And I was reluctant. | |
| I thought this overbearing pressure on people, do this, do this. | |
| Well, they've already done it. | |
| And I knew what the supporters were like. | |
| The supporters weren't part of the military-industrial complex. | |
| There were a lot of college students, and I saw them as not having that much money. | |
| And so I said, maybe we shouldn't do that. | |
| Before we knew it, it just, the more donations, and people started watching it, their names would go up when they make a donation. | |
| And it really was a bomb. | |
| And a lot of other people since then have had fundraising bombs. | |
| But this was a bomb in the sense that it exploded this whole idea of a libertarian movement and a Tea Party movement. | |
| And then that was equivalent to some of the significant events that occurred in the debates. | |
| And what was amazing about it, and I remember back, is that although Kent did rightly capitalize on it, this was essentially a grassroots effort. | |
| This was not the official campaign. | |
| These were people who had followed your message, who had loved your message, and they got this thing going. | |
| They wanted to help the campaign separately, which is really the whole message of your movement, which is that do whatever you want to do. | |
| And this is what they wanted to do. | |
| Well, then it became very popular for me to use a quote that I had used a little bit, and that is that an idea whose time has come can't be stopped. | |
| And when I saw this spontaneity of people, you know, coming to the rallies and all, that, well, maybe this is an idea whose time has come. | |
| People today now are refuting this. | |
| They'd like to say, oh no, it is all fake, it's over and done with. | |
| And of course, the book is to explain how I saw things back then and where we are now. | |
| And maybe try to explain why some people think and maybe are fearful that this revolution is over and done with because obviously I didn't win the presidency and we don't have enough to influence the House of Representatives. | |
| We have a good senator or two, you know. | |
| So Washington is a bad place to look. | |
| And this is why we have to look elsewhere if we want to look for our success. | |
| But I do challenge those who say that it was, you know, it was a blip. | |
| A blip on the radar is over and done with. | |
| I don't think ideas are like this. | |
| I believe these ideas are significant. | |
| I believe this system that we have today is doomed to failure and something has to replace it. | |
| But it's up for grabs on what the replacement would be. | |
| And I've predicted that when this comes down on us, it will be every bit as significant as the collapse of the Soviet system. | |
| And there's a lot of things going on internationally. | |
| There's a lot of things going on in this country, in spite of the fact that there's a lot of complacency too, because, you know, there's a lot of rich people getting richer every day, but that might be part of the problem because we also see this underemployment and the labor participation rate is not right, and there's more inflation. | |
| So there's a lot of concern. | |
| But I do not believe for a minute that we have disappeared. | |
| I think we're alive and well, and I try to make that point in the book. | |
| And you capture it perfectly in a quote that's very early in the book. | |
| I think this captures the theme of the book. | |
| And I'll read it in a second. | |
| But I have to say, when you first said that you were writing a book with this theme and title, I thought it was great and I was excited. | |
| When I started reading it, I started getting a little disappointed because I thought it was going to be all about the great past. | |
| But then I realized, of course, it's not nostalgia at all. | |
| The book is not about nostalgia. | |
| And here's how you describe it. | |
| Though the revolution of 2007 is essentially forgotten in a political sense, the ideology it inspired is very much alive. | |
| And that in the thumbnail, that is the book. | |
| Yeah, that was the whole purpose of encouraging people. | |
| And, you know, like I said so many times in my speaking that, you know, that I wasn't the perfect spokesman and that I could give better speeches. | |
| But there was one thing that I never doubted, of the validity and the significance of the message, because I strongly believe in it. | |
| I believe it was something that I thought about for decades and tried to refine it and try to spread that message. | |
| And I think it's that enthusiasm that has propelled this message. | |
| And a lot of people have joined us. | |
| I keep meeting people. | |
| I was at a meeting just a few weeks ago, and half, more than half the audience had worked in our campaigns, and they were significant people dealing in the cyber world and technology, and they had started businesses. | |
| People have started many different organizations. | |
| So there is so many people out there that have continued. | |
| And of course, when they asked me specifically, like you indicated, I didn't say, well, this is what your job is. | |
| You know, like, here, what's the boss? | |
| It wasn't that at all. | |
| It's in Liberty. | |
| You make up your own mind. | |
| The purpose of a political system is to provide the environment, you know, to allow people to be able to use their energy, release the creative energy. | |
| And since I believe in that strongly, it is a goal worthwhile for me personally, for my family, for our community, for our country, for the world. | |
| It is so significant if they can understand it. | |
| But if you just read the newspapers now and if you just look at the football games and everything else, you might get a little bit confused about what's going on and that we're totally losing it. | |
| But I can still go to the college campuses and come away feeling pretty good, you know, about how these young people are responding. | |
| And I still do that, and it still gives me a lot of energy, just as it did back then. | |
| It was that people gave me a lot of credit for energizing them. | |
| But because there was so much spontaneous activity, whether it was in fundraising or even sending a message, some of the slogans and clichés that I would use actually would start in the audience. | |
| You know, actually, you know, I think the first time I heard in the Fed wasn't when I get up there in the Fed, you know, it came from the crowd, you know. | |
| So that meant people did know and understand. | |
| Yeah, a lot of people came and they wanted to know about it and they got converted, but there's a lot of them that had already been influenced by the ideas of libertarianism, Austrian economics, and it was a result of groups like the Mises Institute that were present and were educating people outside and in spite of the government schools. | |
| And as you say, this book is not nostalgia for the past. | |
| There's a little bit about what happened at the time, and there's enough to get a sense of it, but this really is about the revolution ahead. | |
| And one of the things I found remarkable about the book, this is not something you're going to have a hard time picking up. | |
| It's not going to take you a month to read this book. | |
| But it's about 10 books in one because you start out by talking about the revolution, what happened, but then you go chapter by chapter into all the components of what the revolution ahead looks like. | |
| Economic central planning, militarism and empire, cultural Marxism, self-reliance and morality. | |
| Science is never settled, the deep state, police state, and surveillance state. | |
| I mean, each of these are little books within themselves. | |
| And so it's a great roadmap ahead, I think. | |
| Yeah, well, it's hopeful. | |
| Let's hope that it is well received. | |
| It can spread the message and it might inspire others to dig into it more deeply or inspire them to come up with a plan of their own and get involved and start their own organization or write their own books or become a teacher or whatever. | |
| But we do have a big job because, like I said before, you know, when it comes to the government, when it comes to the media, when it comes to our university, which is the mouthpiece for the enemies of liberty, how can we be optimistic? | |
| Well, it's because they're failing. | |
| You know, there's a lot of people who now distrust the government. | |
| They don't trust commissions to study and explain how terrible things happen. | |
| And I think this is healthy. | |
| But we have a ways to go. | |
| In spite of my optimism about a lot of people understanding this message, we have a ways to go to get enough people to understand the message. | |
| Even though I look toward the 7 or 8% who are in leadership positions ideologically, you still have to get support of the majority. | |
| People have to go along. | |
| Hey, you have to think it's in their best interest to believe in liberty. | |
| And I think they will, because right now, if you do some statistics as we go into war and the wars that are going on, I think we win all the pooling. | |
| But if right now, for instance, nobody five years ago or even four or two years ago said, you know, we need to invade North Korea, we need a bomb. | |
| And yet now the numbers are shifting because of that propaganda. | |
| Same way when we were working against going into Iraq. | |
| The people were against it. | |
| It was shifting. | |
| The people, if they can just get more people in leadership to say, you're on the right track, stick with this. | |
| It's peace and prosperity that we want. | |
| We want property rights and freedom of contract and civil liberties, all these things. | |
| That if they would only be convinced, and this is economic understanding, that will all the world be better off? | |
| Won't you? | |
| How will you take care of the poor people? | |
| And what would happen if you don't have a Federal Reserve? | |
| You know, this sort of thing. | |
| And so I think the message, it's so powerful. | |
| It's just a shame that a message like this that's based on a moral authority, a moral principle, it provides more peace and prosperity. | |
| Why are we doing so lousy? | |
| Well, one thing is the amount of freedom we did have created great prosperity. | |
| People concentrated on the prosperity and the redistribution of prosperity and using the government to do this, and they forgot about how it was produced. | |
| And now we're at this impasse, and that is why this is important. | |
| This whole message is important. | |
| And I am delighted to say I think it's alive and well. | |
| There's a lot of people out there, and it's going to be absolutely necessary that we start talking about production. | |
| You do not produce wealth by producing and printing more money. | |
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Why It's Important
00:03:11
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| And that's what they believed in. | |
| Get doesn't matter. | |
| Just print money and everybody will be wealthy. | |
| Well, it didn't work in Zimbabwe. | |
| It didn't work in Venezuela. | |
| It's not working well here because the poor are getting poorer and the middle class is shrinking. | |
| So it's a fertile field out there, and that's why the message is well received. | |
| And you know, the evidence that the revolution is ongoing is that the things, the themes, the topics you brought up in these couple of presidential runs have become part of the national conversation. | |
| Everyone knows about the Federal Reserve now. | |
| None of them talked about it before. | |
| Everyone knows that the military supported you beyond all the other candidates combined. | |
| The ideas and the themes you brought up, they may not be at the top of the political headlines, but they've worked their way into the national conversation. | |
| And I would argue the international conversation because I got a great story from one of our best supporters and good friends. | |
| He runs a ship in Africa. | |
| And he told me a great story. | |
| He was here a couple of months ago. | |
| We gave him a bunch of Ron Paul t-shirts because his crew are mostly Nigerian Americans. | |
| And he wanted them to have Ron Paul shirts on, you know. | |
| So he told me the other day they are all in the airport. | |
| All of his crew were Nigerians with Ron Paul t-shirts. | |
| It just happened that a group of Nigerian Americans had landed at the airport at the same time. | |
| They saw all these Nigerians with Ron Paul t-shirts and they ran over to him and said, you know, we love Ron Paul. | |
| We love Ron Paul. | |
| This is in Nigeria. | |
| So it is a worldwide phenomenon. | |
| So I should go to Nigeria and run for political office. | |
| You never know. | |
| You never know. | |
| You could be elected. | |
| That's amazing. | |
| You could be elected. | |
| But, you know, this is, I know I'm biased, but I really enjoyed reading this book. | |
| Very different from your last book, which was very emotional and a lot of history. | |
| This, I think, is a very fun read. | |
| It's a very quick read. | |
| And it leaves you feeling very optimistic. | |
| So I think everyone is going to really enjoy this book. | |
| And I hope everyone purchases this book. | |
| It's available now at Amazon.com. | |
| Go to Amazon, buy the book, review the book. | |
| But actually, Dr. Paul, I have, there's more. | |
| There's more, as they say. | |
| Something even better for our supporters, for those of us who want to help us out, help us out with the show, help us out with the Institute and those things that we do. | |
| For the month of October, for a $100 contribution to the Ron Paul Institute, and I'll have the email here, if you make a $100 contribution, Dr. Paul, I'm putting you on the hook here. | |
| Dr. Paul will personalize your copy of the book for you. | |
| He'll address it to you or to a family member or a friend, and he'll sign it himself. | |
| If you make this purchase, if you send us a $100 donation, you will get a book that's personalized from Ron Paul. | |
| How is that for a lady? | |
| That sounds pretty good. | |
| We might stay in business for a few more months then. | |
| Well, people are always asking, how can we support what we do? | |
| We enjoy the show, we enjoy the conferences, we enjoy the website. | |
| And this is one way you can help us out and get a great piece of history. | |
| Sounds good to me. | |
| Well, Dr. Paul, I'm going to close the show out. | |
| I'm going to thank you for joining me with the Liberty Report. | |
| And I hope everyone gets this book and reads it. | |
| You're going to have a lot of fun. | |
| Get a bunch of copies and send them to your friends. | |