Ron Paul's Keynote Speech - RPI Media & War Conference 2018
Ron Paul delivered the keynote speech at this year's Ron Paul Institute Media & War Conference in Washington, DC last month. Be sure to visit RPI at http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org
Ron Paul delivered the keynote speech at this year's Ron Paul Institute Media & War Conference in Washington, DC last month. Be sure to visit RPI at http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org
Ron Paul delivered the keynote speech at this year's Ron Paul Institute Media & War Conference in Washington, DC last month. Be sure to visit RPI at http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org
And there's the one individual who did most of the organization, if not almost all of it, and that's Daniel.
He's done a great job, Daniel.
He worries a little bit, and that helped.
It keeps him on his toes.
But he's already started worrying about next year already.
You're not allowed to do that.
But anyway, you've done a great job, and it's just a delight to be here.
I get my energy from groups like this.
A lot of people think they get some energy from me, but I can't even compete with Gerald in speaking.
I did get energy.
But it is great to bring people together.
And the different panelists, we're different.
We have different emphases and different approaches.
And I think that's just great.
But, you know, the issue of media, you know, is a big deal.
And sorting it out is not simple because, you know, if you had private property and you had a newspaper, we wouldn't be, and they weren't giving us coverage for our campaign, which they still are able to do.
There's nothing illegal about that.
You know, it's their paper.
But, you know, we have a mess right now.
And actually, Mises predicted the mess in economics, and I think it applies to foreign policy.
That is when you introduce the idea of governments association and getting involved, in, say, in economic policies or in the media policies, that eventually it becomes, you know, corporatism, and then that's very close to fascism.
And I think that's what we're witnessing now, is they haven't said, well, we're buying up all the radio stations and TV stations, but they still have the control of it.
But they were pretty shrewd in getting in on the game with the social media.
When you think about it, they did that in many ways with radio and television.
You know, right away they had a lot, had licensing.
You couldn't deal with it as a private property issue.
And TVs, I remember early on, it must have been probably in the 70s when they started allotting these TV rights.
And all I remember, I don't know what the details were, but we were told, and it's probably a very true story, that LBJ got all the TV rights for Texas, and especially in Austin area.
So it's very much involved.
It's been, but it's much worse.
And now they are very much in control of what goes out.
But it'd be nice for a libertarian to simply say, you know, Google's private.
They can do what they want.
But it's not that way.
There's way too much control and maybe not ownership on paper, but it's control enough that they have ownership.
And that's really the difference between fascism and communism.
They want ownership, and they declare a little bit more upfront and honest about it.
But fascism allows people to own property, and the government just comes in and controls it.
So I think it's very important that we distinguish the two.
And when you sense that there's too much government and the government is getting too close to the corporations, yes, you should be very concerned about fascism and too much control and need for cleaning house.
I think we need to clean house right now.
You know, David Brack is a congressman from Virginia.
He's running a race and they always build up, you know, he's the one that beat Cantor.
But they'd like, the Democrats would like to get rid of him because he's a philosophic guy.
He has strong beliefs and he stands up for them.
But his opponent says that he's ideologue.
You know, he has precise beliefs and he is overly rigid.
And that's the reason why they can't vote for him.
And her argument is that, and I've heard this often in campaign, if you have a rigid belief in liberty and free markets and sound money, then what you have to do, you have to be neutralized on this.
You can't accept that because they want people that don't believe in anything except they sort out information and they know the answers.
They know what the problem is.
The answer doesn't have to fit philosophy.
It's utilitarianism.
And it is a philosophy in itself.
So these people who yell and scream at us for being too rigid in our beliefs, yes, I consider myself rather rigid on what I believe in about what liberty should be all about.
And I'm going to stick with that belief.
But the whole thing is that the people who don't like that, they use it as an excuse to come in.
And the individual that's running against Bratt is an ex-CIA agent.
She's a woman just recently out.
And I don't want to disparage all CIA agents because we've run into one or two that has overcome the obstacles of being in the CIA.
But I tell you what, I can just visualize her being an analyst.
And this is it, A, B, C, D, and you have to do this.
You know, as if you can, and it sort of reminds me of what Keynesianism is.
You know, it's a mathematical problem.
We can calculate.
We create so much money here and write a regulatory here, and we know what the human action would be.
And that doesn't work that way.
But these are people that want to be overly rigid and tell everybody what they have to do.
You know, the war issue and the media issue is obviously a very big issue.
But it's been said in this conference already, it's a war against the American people.
You know, that is where the real problem is.
And, you know, war is the health of the state, Randolph Warren said.
And that is so true that if you believe in the state and the expansion of the state, they either do it inadvertently out of stupidity or because they like the state.
And I would say that most of the people I run into like the state in Washington.
Some do it out of innocence.
They fall into this trap because the one favorite thing they do is to get you to join the gang is challenge your patriotism.
You know, if you don't support the troops and you don't vote for the money, you don't like, you're un-American and therefore you're not patriotic.
But you know, I ran into a few things in the media that drew a little bit of attention and sort of sort of was a bit entertaining for me because as it was said earlier, you know, when I started running for Congress early on, it was because I got interested in the monetary issue.
I was fascinated with Austrian economics.
I was fascinated with the Austrians who were predicting the breakdown of the Bretton Woods, that we couldn't maintain the Bretton Woods standard and that we would default.
We would declare bankruptcy.
We would not keep handing out gold at $35 an ounce.
So that is what motivated me.
And the first time I ran, it was 1973, 74, in the height of the watergate years.
And there were only three Republicans in the delegation of Texas at the time.
So it was, nobody wanted to run.
So when I met, I was thinking about, well, I want to talk about the monetary issues.
So I was checking around about running as an independent, and the Republican Party heard that.
And they were just starved for any jerk that would want to run in a Watergate year.
So they go, yeah, yeah, do this.
They didn't care what I believed in.
I could have been a communist.
Yeah, yeah, whatever you want, just run.
So I got involved.
And, you know, when I told my wife, this was when I was really enjoying medicine.
So I've always been pulled in two different directions: enjoying medicine and doing well.
And I had this wonderful practice in Lake Jackson.
So I told her that, and she said, what in the world would you want to do that for?
And I said, well, you know, and I explained to her, you know, monetary issues are very important.
Up until rather recently, she's been interested and still is very interested in family.
How many grandkids are they, when their birthdays are, and right today, she's begging a cake for one of the birthdays.
So she wasn't interested in this economic issue.
But she wasn't going to say don't do it or anything else.
So she says, well, she said, the big problem with that is that could be very dangerous.
And how could it be dangerous?
Because I knew she didn't believe in the conspiracy theory.
And so, but anyway, she says, you're going to get beat elected.
You could get elected if you did this.
But it was easy for me to reassure her because there was no way.
I said, did you think they would elect somebody that's his main theme is trying to get rid of Santa Claus?
I know, no, you can't win on this.
So she said, well, she says, no, they're going to listen to what you say, even though you're not promising free stuff.
She says, they're going to like what you say because they're going to believe what you say.
And she says, you're going to end up getting elected.
And that was a challenge.
So she was more astute in politics than I was because I didn't think it would happen.
And so I wasn't, I didn't go in to say, so often people will come and quite frequently, young people will want to be involved and they get a notion about what the liberty movement is all about.
And they'll say, how do I run for Congress?
I said, the most important thing that you do right now is don't run for Congress.
Because if you start now running for Congress, you're going to go through the ropes.
You're going to know how it's organized.
You're going to go through the party system, how you're going to raise money.
What you need to do is study and know what you believe in, and then don't even worry about running.
Somebody will make use of your talents if you're a credible person.
But just don't start out and set out to run for Congress.
And I think that a lot of people want to participate, but you can participate in a lot of different ways.
You can participate by running for office.
And I don't discourage people from running the Libertarian Party or supporting candidates.
The whole works.
I've been involved.
And I have a lot of support from people who don't even vote, never would vote, think it's all a waste of time.
But there's always a place.
But the most important thing, as far as I'm concerned, is what you believe in and how you can explain it.
Because if you just say, I believe in laissez-faire capitalism, and be blunt, and people just get turned off from that, they have to know what it means.
And I approach it from the viewpoint that it's a very personal thing.
One of the lines, very short, I used to get a lot of applause for, is I would just say, just to a large bunch of college kids who got excited, I would just say, freedom is popular.
And that would give a lot of excitement because they were thinking, that was after I had talked about what freedom was all about.
But the media over the years and the early years was always something I would moan and complain about, but just figured that's the way it was.
But I had a similar reaction about when there were individuals who encouraged me to run in the 08 presidential race.
So yeah, I'll do that.
But I knew what the odds were and the reality of it and the hard work it would be and all that entailed.
But, you know, it was in that campaign that I think in one of the early debates, I was talking about what I always talk about in very simplistic, straightforward terms.
I believe in non-intervention and we should have a foreign policy of treating other people the way we would want to be treated.
And that I indicated there's such a thing as blowback.
Blowback.
Oh, yeah, the CIA has talked about blowback.
And I had this little exchange.
It seemed to be rather minor exchange with this guy, Giuliani.
You may have heard him.
And the media, you know, went nuts because immediately afterwards they came up and said, you're going to drop out, aren't you?
What are you doing?
You know, I wasn't there for playing these games.
But they were really pounding on me because it was the most insane thing that they ever heard.
And the crowd went wild for Giuliani.
And as I was walking out and going to a press room, I remember our friend Kent Snyder, he came up and whispered to me, he says, guess what?
You're winning all the polls.
Even on Fox.
So the media does control, but think about it.
There I was in a group that they were very sophisticated politically, you know, had more money than talent and all this kind of thing.
But all I had was a microphone, and I weaseled my way into this group of people who really did not quite understand and figure this is strictly a negative.
We'll ignore him and he'll just go away.
But it turned out that that was the most significant.
If I had to pick the one issue that got the most attention in my political career, it would be that, because I still have people coming up to me.
And I'll say, well, when did you get interested?
And they bring that up.
But that was in spite of the fact that there was a media that was not friendly to me.
You know, the other day, I guess you heard there was a socialist that won a big Crowley up in New York, and she got a lot of attention.
A lot of attention.
Just think of what she's gotten.
She's been all the talk shows and everything.
She's gotten millions and millions of dollars worth of publicity.
And she campaigned.
So far, they're going well.
That is, she's losing them all.
All the campaign.
But she got all this attention.
And to me, it's a reflection, not so much they all sat around and they conspired.
How are we going to handle this?
It's a conspiracy of ideas because they're all a bunch of lefties.
And I got to thinking, well, what if an individual came along and was elected to Congress and he was an invowed libertarian?
What would they do?
What would they say?
Well, it was very well known that I was a libertarian, you know.
But, you know, there was a little bit of attention, but the difference was, you know, very significant.
But one of the reasons is the ignorance.
Voluntary Federal Reserve?00:17:15
Because I can remember for years after I was first elected to Congress, they didn't have the vaguest idea what I was all about.
They would come over and they would be bewildered, bewildered, and the Congressman would sit next to him.
He says, what are you doing?
You're voting with this radical leftist over here.
And they didn't understand the issue of civil liberties or the foreign policy.
But that changed gradually as time went on.
And it became more acceptable.
This is the same way that happened with Federal Reserve.
I was very pleased with the efforts that we made.
And earlier today, Norm Singleton was introduced, who heads up the Campaign for Liberty.
The Campaign for Liberty was a grassroots organization, a lobbying group.
And they did the grassroots work to let the people know about Audit the Fed.
And believe me, it wasn't my speeches on the floor.
Nobody attended those.
That wasn't it.
And it was, I had no political power, you know, absolutely none.
But when we finally put enough pressure, public pressure, on the leadership to have a vote on Audit the Fed, every single Republican voted for it.
And there's one specific reason is because we had a group that lined up and stimulated the grassroots and they called their congressmen.
So even with all the shortcomings of politics, and believe me, I can have a longer list about the shortcomings than all the benefits.
But it does show that efforts are worthwhile.
But it isn't like everybody should run out and run for Congress.
It isn't anything.
I think it's all in ideas, ideas that count.
And people have to, you know, be precise and people have to be able to defend it.
And we have to get people excited.
And that's why, you know, I liked going to the college campuses.
Well, the one thing that amazed me on the college campuses is I would go in and talk about, look at what they're doing to your civil liberties.
Are you awake?
Do you know what's going to happen?
Why are we still in Iraq?
And all this money we're going to say, we are going bankrupt.
And, you know, and on and on.
And it was, you know, if I talked an hour, 50 minutes of it was how bad this was and what you're inheriting and that sort of thing.
And then I would have my closing statement and told them what the answer would be to this if you want to do something about it.
And inevitably, even to this day, people will, you know, pay me a compliment and they'll say, what we like about you is you're so optimistic.
And I wondered about that for a long time.
How can I be an optimist if I come in here and spend most of the time telling you what you have to watch?
And you heard a lot of that today.
This is what's going on.
And it is bad.
And I don't say tomorrow is going to be great, but I think that there's a lot of reasons for us to be optimistic about things and the way they're going.
But it dawned on me that probably what happens is, it might even relate back to my wife's first, yeah, she was my first wife too.
Her first reaction was, you know, they're going to believe you.
And in medicine, you know, we face tough situations when a patient comes in.
She has a very, very serious illness.
Maybe you have to deal with cancer and other things that you have to have a great deal of empathy for people.
And they have to accept it and they have to be willing.
You don't hide it from them.
And then you say, even when the treatment looks risky, you do allow them to have a positive attitude.
There is treatment and this is what we're doing and this sort of thing.
So there's always some hope out there that happens.
And I think that may be what happened in politics.
It's the, you know, this must work with addiction too.
When the addict finally discovers, you know, I'm an addict, I know it.
I wouldn't admit it.
I'm going to admit it myself.
I'm going to do something about it because my friends and neighbors and family can't take care of it.
I have to do it.
And then there's sort of a weight off their shoulders that they're ready to go to work and seek the help that they need.
So knowing the truth and then accepting the correction, because I talk about the correction all the time.
And in my mystical explanation of this, let us say that we can go up there and for some reason our government disappeared.
And we just had a couple people there as caretakers.
And all of a sudden, there was a monetary crisis and the financial markets crashed.
And even the wealthy lost essentially all their money.
Everybody gets much, much poorer, which is conceivable under certain circumstances.
That certainly has happened in places like Venezuela.
So if that happened, what is the most important thing to get us back on our feet?
Is it getting us better people in the Federal Reserve or getting us more compassionate people in the IRS?
No, no, it isn't that.
We want to get rid of the IRS and get rid of the Federal Reserve.
That would be helpful.
But there's one ingredient that you need, and that is a clear understanding and once again, the restoration of our liberty.
Knowing that it is your life.
You have a right to your life.
You have a right to your liberty.
You have a right to use your liberties as you see fit.
And you'd have a precise definition of what rights are.
One of the annoying I've had over the years is the notion that rights come in groups.
You know, we have gay rights, women's rights, and who knows what.
They make up all these different kinds of rights.
But there's only one kind of right, and that is the individual right.
Our right to our life, which comes to us from a creator, comes to us in a natural way.
And we don't get something because we belong to a group, but we should never lose anything because we belong to a group.
And I think that's a message.
Young people responded to that message rather strongly.
And I say it sincerely, that if conditions were like that, I would vote for it.
I would vote for the elimination of the system, even though it led to almost anarchy.
But everybody is in a voluntary position to start taking care of themselves.
I said, just remember, and young people think about, oh, that means I can gamble.
That means I can smoke cigarettes and I can do all that.
And they're favorable for this.
I say, yeah, it means your personal life is your own.
You can do it.
You can wreck your life if you want.
If you earn any money, you get to keep it and spend it away, but you can mess up too.
But you don't have to go to any wars unless you vote for them, and the government does it authentically.
And then you would have choice.
And I said, the one thing is, if we get the free society and you have this wonderful gift of liberty, you have to assume the responsibility for it.
And I tell them, if they mess up in a system like that, you can't go to the government and you can't force anybody else to help you out and bail you out.
Doesn't mean your friends and neighbors and family won't help you the way it has been in the past.
It's not like this is a brand new idea.
It's existed before.
And that usually got a very loud applause when I said you have to assume responsibility for yourself, making the point that freedom really, if you don't understand it, assume responsibility, it becomes chaotic.
If the seeds of welfareism and communism is still there, what they do, they're always going to go back, and we have plenty of that now.
And that's why we see people willing, at least superficially, saying, I'm a socialist and I'll be taking care of that.
But I don't believe, you know, the statistics.
I believe that is a reflection of a very, very biased, and that's propaganda about how powerful socialism is, and these kids are socialists.
I go to the Young Americans for Liberty conferences and the college campuses.
And yes, I do know there are a lot of problems, but I still go back to this whole idea that You can stop an army marching in and taking away our liberties.
You can combat that.
But you cannot combat an idea whose time has come.
And certainly the time has become necessary that we restate these principles.
And I think they can be done in a better way than ever before.
I think there's been advancements in the understanding of economic policy.
I think people say, you want to just go back to the 19th century's gold standard.
No, I don't want to do that.
It was a very imperfect standard.
It was a government standard.
They abused it.
Civil war, they go off the gold standard.
They did all kinds of things.
But they were much more attuned to a monetary policy where there were restraints and they'd restore the gold standard and this sort of thing.
But today, I think there's a much better understanding.
Today, we have the opportunity really to start talking about competing currency.
There are some people who would like to compete, and this is one of the reasons why I always had legislation I still support strongly.
Competing currencies.
Get rid of the legal tender laws.
Get the government out of the way.
The thing of it is, if you have a competing currency, silver, gold, or if somebody can find a cryptocurrency that the people will accept, no fraud, no fraud and deceit.
You can't do that.
But it should be competition.
And right now, of course, there's no competition.
You're not allowed.
The government cracks down on you rather hard if you just seem to vary in the very least.
The purpose of government, though, should be very, very limited, and that should be for the protection of liberty.
And in our Constitution, it's very clear that it wasn't meant to have these federal police forces carrying guns.
Now, I can't remember exactly who said about the guns that people have guns because I've been off on that.
There was not too long ago, it was about 100,000.
Now, I said, oh, it's probably about 120,000, but now I understand somebody mentioned maybe 160,000.
The trouble is, we don't know.
But I wonder, you know, if this crisis is coming and there is a civil war, which I detest, you know, the whole notion of this, but would that mean that the people who believe in the Second Amendment and even will go around any restraints, wouldn't they have a lot more guns than the liberals?
But you know what?
That's probably not true because the liberals just lie about it.
You know, they have, or they organize, you know, if you're in a guarded community, you might not sit in there with your gun to protect your house.
But let me tell you, the houses in Texas are protected by a gun, you know, and a guarded community.
So the very wealthy take care of themselves.
They protect themselves from some of the downsides of open immigration and the problems that we have there.
You never see the immigration going to the gated communities, but you go to see the poorer people and, you know, with the immigrants and with more law breaking.
So it's a major problem.
But I tell you, I'm not in favor of open borders where anybody walks in and deliver a baby one day and it's a citizen and all that.
But I'm very much involved in travel as much as you can.
You know, there was one thing that they have done to us and it's still ongoing, but I want to take a little bit of credit for changing the notion of interventionism versus isolationism.
Because, and still, there are some libertarians that like the word of isolation.
They're using it in a healthy way.
That is, sort of isolate ourselves from all those wars and getting involved.
But isolation is the wrong word because I don't want to be isolated from the world.
If you have a free and a voluntary society and a natural money, you will have globalism, but it would all be voluntary.
And that is a lot different.
So people think that they like to paint us as isolationists.
But guess who the isolationists are?
These are the people who put on sanctions and fight wars and have international bodies that manage WTOs and NAFTA and all these things.
So Trump's on the right track there, but I don't think we're going to see the elimination of NATO or WTO in the next two years.
But they're doing a good job to make them look inefficient.
And someday it will just fade away.
I think that's really what's going to happen, even on the foreign policy.
We're going to win that argument, but it's going to be under some stressful situation because we're going to go broke.
We are broke.
But there's this illusion of trust in the dollar.
We keep printing and printing and printing.
One of the ironies of this printing is we've developed a system where we have the reserve currency of the world and the world loves it, hates us, but they love the dollar.
And so we print the money.
And what do we do with it?
We spend it overseas.
We spend it in places like China.
And they end up with a lot of our dollars.
And then they manipulate, and then they don't buy what we think they should buy.
So it's all China's fault.
China's caused all the problems.
And we didn't cause the problem by printing all this money, you know, and sending it overseas.
It causes trade imbalances when that happens.
So with an honest monetary system, there has to be a much more balance, you know, in the currency.
You just can't create them out of thin air.
And this is something that would, you know, a free market like this would permit trade, you know, and people traveling.
One issue that I would get into trouble with in the campaign would be Cuba.
You know, I remember a conservative Republican audience, those were generally the audiences I was talking to in the campaign.
Some days I thought I should not be there, but I brought up the subject.
Oh, no, the question had to be, how are you going to treat the Cubans?
How about the embargo?
How about what are you going to do with Castro?
When are you going to get rid of Castro?
And I said, no, we should be trading with Cuba.
It's way too long.
That was started when I was, I think, still in grade school.
And it's about time we did something differently.
But booze and hisses.
They weren't quite ready for that.
But the next day, though, I was reassured that there were some out there that were listening.
So we had a meeting at a restaurant.
I remember about 100 young Cuban Americans came.
And they were all for what I was talking about.
They weren't worrying about Castro attacking the United States.
And I think by that time, the Soviets had left, and there weren't any missiles down there anymore.
And all they wanted to do was maybe visit their relatives or try to help their relatives out.
And so they thought it was all for nonsense.
So it's a real shame that that goes on.
And this whole idea of sanctions, I think, is a very dangerous thing to do.
The philosophy of peace, I think, is what we want.
I know it's anti-war, but it has to be the philosophy of peace.
And that means that we as individuals have a responsibility to ourselves, but we have a responsibility to follow some rules.
It's not lawless.
Matter of fact, if you'd have had a bankruptcy like we had in 8 and 9 and you had a free market, guess what?
You know, the people who got into trouble and over-leverage and were bankrupt, except for the bailout, they wouldn't have gotten bailed out.
The market is tough because the consumer is king in that market.
And if the consumer gives you a tough time in the marketplace, and if people get out, if they go into bankruptcy, you don't bail them out.
So the market is much tougher.
And the bailout system that we have now, we're supposed to smooth out the Fed policy, which is always wrong.
The Fed policy is all wrong, so we're going to regulate and take care of everybody and regulate this.
But it doesn't work that way.
The regulators, how many regulations did we have before the bust in 089?
We had a lot of regulation, and they just want more regulations and more regulation.
And it doesn't work.
But the market can regulate.
People have to, their wealth has to be determined on the product you produce.
And that is a big difference.
Regulating Freedom00:12:23
Pure democracy is not a very good system of government.
The founders did not like pure democracy.
Maybe they would condone the voting of some leaders, but not this concept of democracy where it's the dictatorship of the democracy.
I claim that one of the most democratic things we did in the Constitution is the recognition that because there was a majority vote needed to pass the Constitution and the Declaration was to condone slavery.
So it was democratically done.
So democracy is bad if you start talking about the majority dictating right.
Freedom is set up to help the minority, the small guy, the little guy, and be protected.
The real democracy comes in the marketplace.
That means that every penny spent, every dollar spent by we as consumers make all the difference in the world.
And so we get to pick and choose who's successful and who fails.
The whole problem is that there's too much interference, too much government control, and all these things.
But the marketplace is a super regulator, and we don't have enough confidence.
And that's something they always throw back at us.
Oh, it'd be laissez-faire, and the corporations would run out of, the corporations would take over.
What are we putting up with today?
Corporations have taken over in not a free market way.
And they were hand in glove with the government.
The government gives them the authority.
And there's several books I read early in my studies, and that had to do with monopolies.
And the theme of the couple books I read was always: the only monopoly that you can have is when the government protects it.
There aren't free markets.
What you have to have is market entry.
But if you're big and have a large part of the market, and you're not prohibited from competing, they get big.
And this is true about the oil in the early days.
How did the Rockefellers do it?
Drove the prices down constantly, and the consumer loved it, and they did well.
But most people think that it would be totally chaotic, but you do have to have some basic rule.
And the one, of course, is not committing any fraud.
But a free society needs to take into consideration some other things.
And I believe most of these things have been endorsed all the way back to Hammurabi, you know, and Christianity and Judaism and even in Islam.
They don't endorse and say this is permissible under a religion.
And that is, you're not supposed to lie.
No lying, no cheating, no stealing, no hurting, and no killing.
And you know, that's, you know, that's a pretty easy mandate to remember, but that's a pretty strong law.
But who does the lying now?
You know, if you just, if you took percentage-wise, I don't know, a couple million people in government and many million here, don't you think the percentage of people in government lie a lot more than your neighbors?
They lie all the time.
And that's a shame.
And who is it in government?
What do they want to do?
What are they supposed to do?
The mandate by government is to protect our privacy.
The Fourth Amendment.
That's what they're supposed to do.
And what does the government do?
They invade our privacy.
And they work with the government.
That's part of what's going on with the social media.
And they invade and they destroy our privacy.
And we see that we're supposed to have openness in government.
We're supposed to know what's going on.
This whole idea of who has clearances, that has to be awfully bizarre.
Most of that stuff shouldn't even exist.
You know, free society, we wouldn't need thousands and thousands of people measuring every single thing that they're doing around the world.
So we don't even need that.
But government, is it open?
No, it's very, very closed.
I think this is just great stuff right now on the Department of Justice and the FBI and the CIA.
If that doesn't wake the American people up, I don't know what will.
That should wake us up and say we've had enough of this.
We want real justice.
We don't want the special interest justice to take care of the powerful special interests in the deep state, the people in the military-industrial complex.
That is not what we need.
And yet, it's upside down.
So the government is secret, and we have no privacy left.
And the effort is very strenuous to keep it going that way.
But in spite of it all, I think there's room for optimism about this because, you know, I mentioned in economics there's been progress, not that we're practicing that, but there's a better understanding about monetary policy and other things.
I hope there's going to be a much better understanding about non-interventionism because I think that if you had a vote in this country today, we have polls that we cite on the Liberty Report where a lot of young people, a lot of Americans, aren't for all these wars.
The majority of American people aren't for it.
The biggest challenge we have is we know what we should do and we know that most people endorse it, but we lose the PR war.
And that's sort of what we're talking about.
The public relations, the propaganda, I remember when Dan was helping me so much when we were trying to stop that thing in Iraq, when it was first started debating, it was overwhelmingly opposed to going to war.
People didn't want to go to war.
And remember, they putzed around and they said they were looking for authority.
They were looking for more conditioning of the American people.
And I guess it went from fall into spring or something.
And finally, the American people came around.
No, the instincts are for peace.
I don't think there's any doubt about this.
And it should be.
I mean, we should be for peace.
And it is peace that creates the prosperity.
And that's why it's strange that if the freest society that ever existed in the history of the world, the freer the society, the more prosperous they are.
It's factual.
You can measure it.
And the more authoritarian they are, the worse they are.
And yet we're not winning the argument.
I mean, it's terrible that we can't win this argument.
And I think it has to be a conviction.
I think it has to be firm.
We have to learn every trick of the trade.
I think we have to know how to present the case and make it look like it isn't laissez-faire capitalism, which connotes something negative.
And also, People would come up sometimes because many, many years before the whole war on drugs started to soften and still moving in the right direction, it has a way to go.
That the war on the war on drugs has changed a whole lot.
But I can remember that early on, even in the 80s and 90s, when I talked about it, I thought, there's no way that this district I have, the Bible Bell district in Texas, they're not going to vote for me.
People were way ahead, further ahead than I ever knew, head of the Congress, and they did.
They would re-elect me on those conditions because I think most people had been exposed and found out how bad it was.
And also, I think one advantage I had on that issue was that the one thing it was, is I think they assumed that I didn't want to legal because I wanted to smoke it, you know.
And I had a medical degree, and I don't like drugs and this sort of thing.
So that was acceptable.
So the issue of the drug is so bad.
I mean, just think, we have more prisoners because of the drug war and because we have more laws to everybody else put together.
You know, it's just horrible.
And people, and that again is an industry.
There are people who promote laws because we'll take care of them in the prison.
That's our business.
We'll make the country safe.
So it's one of those things.
There's always some special interest.
But the drug issue has been and will continue to be a problem for a while.
But eventually, you know, I think we're going to win that.
And we're going to win on the foreign policy because I see a cataclysmic problem arising.
Similar to what happened with the Soviet system.
You know, the Soviet system came down.
Not too many people in 88 and 89 says, you know, next month the walls are coming down and everybody's going to, the system is over with.
It wasn't there.
So I think that we're vulnerable, vulnerable in a good sense, that because we can't afford it, we can't continue to do it.
But the people still trust it.
The people want our dollars, and we're still very powerful.
We still have a lot of weapons.
We intimidate, we control the financial markets, but that doesn't mean it's going to work forever.
And I think it's going to come down.
And maybe we can just come home like the Soviets did.
In other words, I don't think my speeches are going to convince the Congress to all of a sudden vote differently.
But if they run out of money, really, what we did, we ran out of the money, we ran out of gold, but we kept that printing press computers going.
And the confidence in America and America's money has continued.
But it is not going to continue, and that will be a real challenge, but also an opportunity for us.
Because I think the issue of liberty is so important.
That's my issue.
People here on the drug issue, they used to say, well, you're for legalizing marijuana, and I'll always correct some.
I said, that's sort of the case.
But I'm not just out there legalizing marijuana.
I want to legalize freedom.
Let the people decide about the freedom and assume their responsibility.
The wonderful thing that I like about a libertarian free society is that it brings people together.
And I think one of the panelists might have mentioned it.
We talked about bringing people together, progressives and middle roaders, everybody, bring people together on things that they believe in.
And They say that liberty should attract liberals, even if they have a different religion or no religion, even if they have social habits that you don't like, if they follow the principle of no aggression, you've got to be tolerant.
You don't have to tolerate evil and harm, but you have to do that.
And a lot of conservatives can't do this.
Oh, no, we have to regulate this or that.
You know, they just, you know, people are dumb and they're going to hurt themselves, and we have to protect them from themselves.
Well, I'll tell you what, a society that sinks out, and our society has been that way.
How many laws are on the book protecting us from ourselves?
You know, so, so many things are trying to protect us from ourselves.
And all that does is take away liberty.
But, you know, it's bringing people together.
I think that's the most important thing because you don't have to socialize with people who use their freedom if they follow the rules.
And that is fine.
And I often, so often, the crowds I would get, it was pretty bearable.
There were a lot of different people who would come to the rallies on the college campuses.
You know, there was a movie out, and many of you probably have heard about it that I want to just talk a little bit about how it ended.
That was a movie called Johnny Tremaine.
The Battle of Ideas00:04:56
And that was a story.
I think it came out in 1957 in the movie that was out.
And it had to do with Lexington and Concord and those young people that were involved.
And it was a book of fiction.
And after the battle was over, Gage, the general, the British general, was standing there looking at Boston.
And there were thousands of campfires there.
And he was, you know, philosophizing about this.
And it has been said in history that he was probably fairly sympathetic, somewhat sympathetic, the colonists, because I think he was taken away in charge of the Massachusetts colony.
But he looked at that, and that would have been back in April 1775.
It was the first battle, of course, of the Revolutionary War.
And he said, and he looked out and saw that.
He says, 10,000 people came, soldiers came.
And tonight, and this is what we have.
And then he said, tonight, 10,000, tomorrow night, twice that.
20,000.
They're coming, they're coming.
And he says, this is not a mere military victory.
He says, we have been vanquished by an idea.
And I think that is, you know, very emphatic, vanquished by an idea.
And the people at that time did have an idea.
He says, vanquished by an idea of liberty.
And then they dedicated themselves to continuing the battle.
There was a suggestion, oh, this is the end, and this is the end.
Isn't he glad it's over?
And Johnny Tremaine said, it's not over.
It's just the beginning.
And it is an ongoing battle.
It's going to continue.
It's been with us, you know, for a long, long time.
And I think we have to continue it.
I like to think of it in context of the big picture of history because history is just a drop in the bucket.
You ever think about it?
Think about how many stars are in our constellation.
It used to be I'd read it was 40 billion.
Now they estimate it could be 100 billion.
There could be 100 billion galaxies ever expanding.
And our solar system is probably 45 billion years, 4 billion, 5 billion years old.
And what are we talking about?
We're talking about a couple years.
I think if you look at all of history, we have some recordings of human activity, five, six thousand, you recorded history, those five to six thousand years.
But progress in history, when has it occurred?
Probably in the last 300 years, probably in the lifetime of some of our relatives.
You know, because my dad was born in 1904, and he knew people that were nearly 100 years old then.
But just think of the industrial revolution of these many years.
And now there's another revolution going on.
And it's all technological.
And the challenge that we have is the technological revolutions of the last two or three hundred years, which is a mere drop in the bucket.
It has produced a tremendous improvement in the living standards of a lot of people.
There's no doubt about it.
But it's also produced a lot of needless, miserable killing by wars.
So when they create, you know, jet airplanes and nuclear power, it doesn't always go to a good use.
It ends up destruction.
And I keep thinking that for civilization to advance, we have to get to the point where the technological advancements have to be used for something else.
So far, it's gravitated to being used to some degree on our standard of living, but mostly it is used for killing each other.
And that's where so much of the money goes: killing each other and endorsing the wars that has gone on.
So right now, though, the technology is still there.
And there's no reason why us to think that we're locked in.
People say, no, that's humankind.
We've been told there's wars and rumors of war and will never change.
And you shouldn't talk about liberty.
You're too naive.
Just forget about it.
You know, I just, I guess I'm just not full-headed.
I just don't want to accept that.
Not that I think tomorrow is all going to be better, but if you don't offer it and say that there is a better way, and things move quickly too, they're moving very, very rapidly.
So that's why, you know, the ideas are so important.
And we talk about numbers and we talk about not the need for 51%.
We need 8%, 10% of the people.
Draft People's Concern00:05:07
And that's why I love to come to an audience like this because you're in that group, you know, of people who care and understand and want a better life and understand the importance of using the concept of liberty to move on to a better life.
That doesn't mean we know, but nobody knows what's going to come tomorrow, you know.
But I think it's up to us to deal with our own lives and our own humanity and our own responsibilities in the best way we can.
I do it because I get satisfaction from it because I think it's the right thing to do.
It isn't, somebody says, oh, Ron, you sacrificed too much time.
There's no way in the world do I think for a second that I'm sacrificing anything.
I mean, I happen to enjoy to come to meetings like this and see successes.
And I'm happy to meet people and encourage people.
I love talking to the young people who get excited about this.
So it's something that there's no reason not to enjoy.
And I told the young people that I talked to, I said, yes, especially when we were in the campaign, get involved and do this.
I said, but just remember, it's tough work, and you ought to be able to do it and have fun.
So I can imagine that in an audience like this, there's some new people here and other ones, and you're going to meet each other.
And hopefully you've had some fun, new people, and you build good friendships.
And there's no reason that you can't.
It's a lot more fun than trying to Solve every problem of the world.
And I'm going to close once more because I want on one issue, and that has to do with Gorbachev.
And Gorbachev and Rand and I talked about that the other day because Gorbachev is somebody that I sort of from a distance marveled at him as a person.
But Gorbachev, you know, sort of put the nail in the coffin to the Soviet system without killing everybody.
And this is a big deal.
And I often thought he might turn out to be one of the most significant persons of the 20th century.
But he is not, I don't think he's been, they tore down Stalin and Lenin, but I don't think they'll put up a monument.
I may be wrong on that.
They'll put up a monument for Gorbachev because they think some of the people say, oh, he doesn't like the empire.
And he undid our empire, and we don't like him for this reason.
But I think obviously he did the right thing.
And also, it was during a time, you know, during the Cold War in 1963, when Kennedy had to call Khrushchev.
I was glad they were talking to somebody.
I had just been drafted and I was in the military.
And this is the whole fallacy that I put up with for years: and I met quite several here today, either in the military or had been in the military that are strong supporters.
I said, you know, during the campaign, the media, the bigoted media, said, oh, you know, and they'd ask the question, how come you're so unpatriotic, you know, and blaming America for all these problems?
And they'd go on and on.
And I said, yeah, but, you know, somebody did a study on all the candidates when we were in that OA campaign to check and see who got the donations from the military.
And I got more money than all the rest of the candidates from the military.
And I guess we're supposed to be bewildered.
And I said to myself, well, I should be surprised.
I was in the military.
The last thing I wanted Johnson to do was to expand the war in Vietnam.
You know, I didn't want to.
But most military people, and maybe the colonel knows better, but I think there's always some in the military that are a little bit way over the top.
But I think most military people want to defend a country.
And they're not looking just to go out.
And the one thing that I am convinced of, when we get up in these hot wars, today we get into these drone wars and different things.
But if we have a hot war like a Vietnam or North Korea, it doesn't happen by the young people of a country like Korea or Vietnam that from age 18 to 25 and get together and they say, well, folks, you know what we need is we need to have a war with those Americans.
And the American young people over here say, yeah, we need to have a war with Vietnam.
Maybe they'll give us a draft again and pull us up.
And it's so absurd.
And yet, and they're the ones who have to die.
You know, it's totally insane.
So the only thing is, at least now it's toned down a little bit.
We don't have a draft.
Some people think we should have a draft and the people would be more concerned.
No, we don't need a draft to figure out a non-interventionist foreign policy, a policy of peace and prosperity.