What are we thankful for at the Ron Paul Liberty Report in 2017? Tune in to our special Thanksgiving program today for a few of our favorite things... What are we thankful for at the Ron Paul Liberty Report in 2017? Tune in to our special Thanksgiving program today for a few of our favorite things...
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A Time for Gratitude
00:10:39
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| Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report. | |
| With me today is Daniel McAdams. | |
| Daniel, happy Thanksgiving. | |
| Happy Thanksgiving, Dr. Paul. | |
| Very good. | |
| Thanksgiving Day has always been one of my favorites. | |
| I think that it's always nice to be thankful. | |
| And fortunately for me in my lifetime, in my professional life and all, I feel very fortunate and very thankful. | |
| And therefore, it's been a special day. | |
| And it's usually a time that we try to gather up the family. | |
| And we'll have almost all the kids and all the grandkids here over the weekend. | |
| So that'll be good. | |
| And I imagine you will be spending your time at your home for Thanksgiving. | |
| We do. | |
| We don't have as big a group as yours, Dr. Paul, so we don't have to have three or four turkeys. | |
| But I'm going to, thankfully, our mild Texas weather, I'm going to try to smoke a turkey this year. | |
| And I've got tomatoes and basil in the garden, so I may do something with that. | |
| Maybe we'll have to come at least taste that. | |
| That sounds pretty good. | |
| Well, you know, the one thing is that a lot of times at this time of year when Thanksgiving rolls around, people will refresh our memories about 1620 at Plymouth Colony in the first Thanksgiving. | |
| And it's a fascinating story. | |
| And I imagine they don't emphasize the points that we emphasize in public schools. | |
| I doubt if they teach them what really went on. | |
| But there was something there to be thankful about because they had a great harvest. | |
| And most people don't, you know, if they don't look into the detail, they don't remember or they don't recognize that two years before that, the first two years, they were starving and dying and it wasn't working because the whole colony was being run on a collective basis. | |
| They had basic socialism and the governor, Bradford, that was his belief and that's what the people believed because they came across as religious humanitarianism and really believed that communism would work. | |
| Everybody would work together and the people who needed, you know, the old theory. | |
| But it didn't work. | |
| The work ethic didn't work. | |
| As a matter of fact, it did the opposite and people started to starve. | |
| So the first two years we can't be thankful for it. | |
| But what we really can be thankful for is if everybody knew this message, the answers are there. | |
| This is the reason they shouldn't be looking in the direction of Bernie Sanders or socialism. | |
| We've had the test early in our history. | |
| Very early. | |
| And because the solution was when they were in such terrible shape, Bradford said, hey, we have to try something else. | |
| And there was knowledge of private property back then. | |
| They knew about this, but the emphasis was they were idealistic and they thought it would work, you know, under this circumstances. | |
| So Bradford says, by this time, you're going to own your own property and go to it. | |
| Guess what? | |
| Pretty good results. | |
| And ultimately, they did come here for a better life, even if they had to learn a little bit along the way what it takes to make a better life. | |
| And I think that really is the great thing about the country is from then throughout history, people have come here looking for a better life, a way to better themselves in really a land of opportunity. | |
| My great-grandparents were immigrants. | |
| They came here with the exact same thing. | |
| They were stuck in Europe where they were going nowhere, and they came here for the opportunity to make something of themselves. | |
| So there still is a lot of that here. | |
| Well, you know, this is a moral and religious issue of independence and freedom that they were concerned about. | |
| But the real message here is the recognition that individuals have liberties and private property works and that freedom creates wealth. | |
| This was the whole issue. | |
| It did not create selfishness. | |
| You know, because there was more incentive for each family that had a plot of land to work harder and the production went up, they actually had excesses. | |
| They started trading and selling and bartering, and all of a sudden there was a lot, a lot more wealth. | |
| So they became wealthier, which was very good. | |
| But the self-reliance also introduced this whole notion of self-respect, you know, and the feeling of good. | |
| The satisfaction that they gained from this. | |
| And of course, that's when people are happy. | |
| I've always argued the case and frequently overused the word with my kids and my grandkids. | |
| What did you do productive today? | |
| I love to say, you need to do something productive because I always assume that as I was growing up that when I did something, I could see it. | |
| I think that is human nature. | |
| But we de-emphasize that if you're a collectivist. | |
| And this was a real test between collectivism and freedom. | |
| Earlier in our history, unfortunately, it was a rocky ride. | |
| And, you know, by the time the founders came along, they had refined this whole idea. | |
| And they made a tremendous effort to try to preserve and to emphasize the importance of free individuals and private property rights. | |
| And even during the communist era in Europe and Eastern Europe, they recognized this. | |
| After a period of forced collectivization where untold millions died, some countries more than others recognized that if you provide a little bit of private incentive, if you allow some private property, things will flourish. | |
| I know places like Hungary, they had the highest standard of living in the communist era toward the later part because they were allowed to start some businesses. | |
| They were allowed to grow things for themselves, have livestock. | |
| So they even recognized it there. | |
| You know, even in religious groups, in the Christianity as well, there were those and are still those individuals that say that you need the government because we have been told, you know, by Christian beliefs that you should be charitable and take care of your fellow man. | |
| But they only recognize and claim that government redistribution of wealth is charity, which is not true. | |
| It's authoritarianism that violates the concept of individual rights. | |
| And if you do that, the importance of the individuals, you destroy actually the chance to have your own concept of religious liberty. | |
| But they give up on this on economic liberty. | |
| But one of the downfalls, and they still use it today, I'm sure you've heard of this is this is necessary because it's charity and that is our job and that's why the government has to do it. | |
| And for some reason it doesn't seem to have been working out so well. | |
| I mean when it becomes charitable to give everybody free health care or the government gets involved, all of a sudden things don't work so well. | |
| Yeah look there was no charity. | |
| There were no charitable hospitals before the government got involved. | |
| You know Catholic hospitals, Protestant Jewish hospitals, religious, non-religious, all charity hospitals. | |
| Yeah, we look at this, you know, the concept of liberty, the thing that we are thankful for and the whole message from this is really the solution to helping the needy. | |
| Is it perfect? | |
| Obviously not. | |
| Man is imperfect. | |
| There's always going to be problems. | |
| But the interesting thing about this early history was the people became more charitable. | |
| You know, when it was government, collectivist charity, it failed and people starved. | |
| But when people had wealth and they wanted to be charitable, but they thought it had to be collective. | |
| That was the mistake. | |
| But all of a sudden with more wealth, they felt better about themselves. | |
| They were happier people. | |
| And I think it is a source of happiness when people feel good about self-reliance. | |
| And yet the emphasis today, the enemies of freedom, you know, and free markets are always claiming that people are unhappy because they don't have enough stuff, you know, and we have to take more from the rich and this, and never looking at, you know, the fallacies of corporate welfare and, you know, crony capitalism all. | |
| And so they put it into one lump sum. | |
| So I think there's a tremendous message in Thanksgiving, the original for Thanksgiving day that they had then, and what is going on today. | |
| But I'm sure there'll be a lot of people that will have Thanksgiving and they won't think too deeply about what was the first Thanksgiving like and why shouldn't we be more thankful about the recognition on the first Thanksgiving that liberty is what we needed. | |
| And also to recognize, once we know this is true, instead of saying, oh, we have our liberty, that's it, to recognize why it's necessary to pursue liberty, refine liberty, improve on liberty, teach liberty, because there's nothing automatic about it because there's always going to be, just like back at the beginning, the people who said want to be the humanitarians with a guillotine, to be a thug, and say, you will be generous and you will be charitable. | |
| And so the job is there. | |
| And so recognizing liberty is one thing. | |
| The second part is recognizing the responsibility and the understanding one has about liberty in order to continue this process, which I think has been great for our country. | |
| And we should all be thankful. | |
| Absolutely. | |
| Well, I'll do my final thank yous, of course. | |
| I'm thankful for the great things about this country. | |
| There are many great things. | |
| I'm thankful for family. | |
| I'm thankful for the people that I work with because I enjoy it so much. | |
| But I also want to say I'm thankful to all the viewers of the Liberty Report. | |
| You know, everywhere we go, we'll run into people that say we watch the Liberty Report every day. | |
| We watch it very often. | |
| And it really, we talk about this, Dr. Paul and I do, and we really are truly grateful that you follow what we do here at the Ron Paul Liberty Report. | |
| Very good. | |
| And I want to thank our viewers, obviously, also for the support they have given us and tuning in so frequently. | |
| It means a lot to us. | |
| But of course, to me personally, it means a lot if we reach people and the message is well received and the follow-through can happen because right now there's a lot of reasons to look and say, you know, this place is a mess because we complain about the mess in foreign policy and economic policy. | |
| But I'm also very optimistic and thankful that I truly believe the message of liberty has constantly improved, though it has not been translated into better government at the very present time, but it has been translated into the fundamental understanding which plants the seeds for eventually reflecting it in our government. | |
| So once again, I want to thank everybody for tuning in, not just today, but every day when you come to the Liberty Report. | |