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Nov. 1, 2018 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
16:52
Voting - Whither Social Security? - Birthright Citizenship - The Worst Tax - #AskRonPaul

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Two-Party System Debate 00:08:50
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With me today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you.
How are you this morning, Dr. Paul?
I am doing well.
What kind of a program do we have for today?
We've got an easy one for me, so I'm just taking it easy.
You're in the hot seat.
You've got to answer questions from our.
I might have to have some help on the answers.
I don't know that I can do that.
Okay, let's give it a try.
But, you know, we're grateful for these, and we have a good time doing it.
So the first one is going to be a combined question.
If we have the first one come up, we're going to read two and you can put them together.
This is from Open the Debates.
He's asking, how does the two-party duopoly get away with restricting Americans' choices to two uninspiring parties every election?
And how do we break free from this two-party trap?
And the second related question, thoughts on voting?
I always remember you saying if voting changed anything, the government would make it illegal.
It seems now more than ever with a more powerful government that democracy is not working, especially when politicians don't follow the Constitution.
Solutions?
Well, first off, democracy doesn't work very well, so that's not our goal.
And the founders' goal was to have a republic, which is a little bit different, but they did actually believe in voting.
I don't think they really had a design to have a two-party system like we had today.
They were a little bit more optimistic.
They thought they'd have no parties.
And yet, immediately, though, they'd have one party and it was divided.
And it evolved to the point where what we have today is a two-party system.
And I think it's tragic.
I think the two parties are exactly alike.
And when people ask me about this, I say, you know, I'm waiting.
They said we needed to solve this problem is to have a third party.
I said, no, I think what we need is a second party.
But the party system is just a reflection of a problem that we have.
Because the beliefs that people have are more important.
If you have a single party and you didn't have a two-party system or you had five parties, the thing that dominates and directs a country is what kind of a philosophy they have as far as economic understanding.
What do they think about civil liberties?
What kind of a foreign policy we have.
And in many ways, we don't have a two-party system because they're dominated by the same ideas.
They're all interventionists, basically.
They want to intervene in our personal lives.
They want to intervene in the economy.
And both parties strongly support intervention overseas.
So the parties are secondary.
But that's what we have today.
And it's a mess.
And we have to sort of put up with it.
And the voting is a tricky question because people tell me, it's not worth it.
I'm not going to go vote, you know, this sort of thing.
And I respect them for that because they're not voting for the right reason.
Probably they're looking at it the way I just described.
It doesn't make a lot of difference.
But then the other answer is, Ron, you've been involved.
You've been working hard to get elected.
I did.
And when I was doing that, I was not trying to be part of the system as much as using the system to promote something I believed in.
So it wasn't like, boy, I'm going to win and have another Republican seat here and there.
No, I always assumed that the vote was going to be a reflection of what I believed in.
That's why it was very important for me to get my message out and make sure that I wasn't tricking anybody.
I didn't want to be elected because I was going to promise more stuff than anybody else.
And I wanted people to look in my direction because what I was promising was self-reliance and responsibility and taking care of oneself.
So the voting is important in that sense because it's a measurement of how successful a person is.
So I was involved, but for the most part, you know, if somebody comes along and starts voting and they get into trouble or somebody's unhappy, you know, it's ignored.
Sometimes it's ignored.
And sometimes, believe it or not, in politics, when they are really, really eager, they cheat.
They cheat on these campaigns.
And I've been involved in those campaigns where they literally steal elections.
So even in the presidential races, there was a lot of shenanigans going on.
But I guess that's a reflection of human nature.
But the system that we have, I think it's the best we have, and we can work with it.
I tried to make it work for the cause of liberty, but then in itself, it's not a perfect system.
The perfect system would be very, very minimal government.
And most of the government, we come from individuals and family life and community life.
But we're a long way from that, so we have to make the best of what we have.
And it is difficult, but I think motivation is important.
I have a lot of young people come up to me after I give a speech, and they're excited.
Oh, this is a great message.
I want to be a congressman.
What should I do?
I said, don't set that as your goal.
Just for the prestige of being a congressman, I think it's the wrong thing to do.
But if it comes in place, and I think there's a lot of luck in politics, where you are and what happens and how things work out.
But having a goal of being in politics and really thinking that we're going to sway these elections and change the country, no, the only thing that will direct the country in a certain direction will be the philosophy of government and what the people think government ought to be doing.
All right.
And let's tee up number two without skipping a beat here.
The second question comes from Michael Alford.
Even though it's unconstitutional, does the government have any sort of obligation to people who have had money stolen from them, stolen from them for their entire lives through Social Security withholding?
Is there an easy way out of this?
Well, the last sentence is an easy answer.
No easy way out of it.
It is illegal.
I think this questionnaire understands it perfectly, but has some sympathy about it because we all have our grandparents and parents and Social Security and say, well, it's unconstitutional tomorrow, declare it's unconstitutional.
Well, already it's being dealt with because it is a Ponzi scheme.
People, you know, who paid into it, so far they're getting what they put in plus more because we're just robbing it from the next generation.
But I think the question is implying, well, what if you want to work your way out of this and make the system more sound?
I think the odds are very slim that would happen.
But I talked about this in the presidential campaign, that if we came to our senses and decided to do it and we want to cut back, and sometimes the Republicans make the mistake that when they want to look like frugal spenders and they want to spend less money, they attack some program, maybe food for children or something, medical care for young people or something, which doesn't make good political sense to do that.
But let's say we wanted to work our way out of it, and my answer to that question has always been that let's see what we can agree on and cut it.
Do not do it by increasing taxes or compounding it.
Introduce the notion that you can go on your own and get out of the system that you want.
But the people that have been dependent, they're not owed a system, but they're owed a little bit of respect and an effort.
So I would cut the militarism.
I would cut all this bombing and killing and wars that we fought and the trillions of dollars.
And you could do that if we started living within our means.
We could have a transition.
Let the people voluntarily get out and take care of the people who are indigent and became dependent, because in a way, you know, we throw it out there and it's hard for people to resist it.
But it is not easy.
Unfortunately, I think it's going to continue.
We will be continuing to rob the next generation until we have the runaway inflation and then just printing more money and running up that won't work.
So that's why what we talk about is so important.
Offer the transition and see if it's possible.
If not, prepare for the worst and say what we need to do is have self-reliance and let people keep what they earn, and that would be a lot better way of doing it.
That's good.
Now we're halfway there, Dr. Paul.
You're just picking up steam.
So let's move on to question number three.
Definition of Jurisdiction 00:03:46
And this is from Jake Gray.
Now, this is one that's in the news a lot, Dr. Paul.
Your best statutory interpretation of the 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship clause.
Well, it is one, and I know it divides some libertarians, serious people who have been thinking about this.
And I have some libertarians that are very, I very much respect, say that it's written there.
It said that if you're born here and you're under the jurisdiction of the United States, you're a citizen no matter what.
So if you're a one-day newborn here and the parents are illegal and they have to go somewhere, this person still is a citizenship.
That's never been an attractive idea to me.
That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.
And I think the problem is the disagreement comes up with the precise definition of jurisdiction.
What does it mean to be under the jurisdiction of the government?
We know the State Department people come in from other countries and they're not under the jurisdiction.
But I think one thing that has caught my attention trying to sort this out is how the writers of the 14th Amendment handle the Indian situation.
So they write it and they say, well, yeah, anybody born here is a citizen, except for Indians.
Oh, they're not born here because they were born on a reservation.
No, they weren't.
They were born in America.
And the reservations were hardly independent nations.
They were sort of a camp where we rounded people up and put them in.
And so they were denied citizenship.
So my point being, the people who wrote the 14th Amendment had some modifications of the definition of jurisdiction.
They weren't under the jurisdiction because that's what they wanted, and they dismissed it.
But later on, there was a second thought on this.
And so they decided in 1924, oh, all Indians can be citizens.
So they backtracked and said that they could be citizens.
But, you know, this doesn't solve the whole problem because there are so many other incidences.
But I think the important point here, which is appropriate for the current discussion, is, all right, let's say the people have come around to my definition of wanting to change it.
How would you do it?
If you were president, would you just write an executive order and do it?
No, I wouldn't do it because I don't believe that's the way it should be done.
There's a lot of discussion that can go into the 14th Amendment overall, but if you're dealing just with this jurisdiction, I would treat it as a congressional issue.
When they decided to exclude Indians and then put the Indians back in as citizens, they didn't alter the amendment.
You know, they didn't go back and have another amendment like they had to do when they had prohibition of alcohol.
What they did is they went to the Congress and the Congress passed a law and made the adjustment.
So I would think that hopefully we will deal more with this precise definition of jurisdiction.
I think that a lot of people now think that it's not, you know, this broad definition is not a good definition, but they're also torn in with this issue of being a strict constitutionalist to say, if you're born here, you're a citizen, and you have to be under the jurisdiction.
Well, I think that's a tricky term, and I think it should be clarified.
And I would do it with legislation.
I do not believe you have to change the Constitution.
All right.
Now we're going to the final question.
This is going by nice and quick.
Good answers.
And this is from Wisconsin.
Government Owns Us? 00:03:34
Taxes.
What makes the income tax inherently worse than any other tax?
Isn't what's more important how much money being stolen, not where it's coming from?
You know, I think there's a good point there that raised the question: doesn't it make a really difference on where they take the money, you know, get it?
You know, and I guess there are some economic numbers that you could maybe on the short run get a statistic and say, well, if you take $10 billion from a sales tax versus $10 billion from the income tax, that maybe the economic harm might not be too dissimilar.
But for philosophic reasons and personal reasons, the income tax is the worst of all ways of raising revenues.
And I think what it does, it establishes a principle that the government owns us.
You know, we have a right to our life and our liberty.
And we should have a right to the fruits of our labor.
And that should be an extension of our life and liberty.
So therefore, when the government comes along and says that what you earn as income belongs to the government, and you can have some of it on our terms.
So the government then goes and they get into the mischief of writing tax codes that are thousands and thousands of pages long, trying to return some money to the people who had earned it.
And it's just really an impossible task because there's no way to be fair.
It's the lobbyists who make the decisions and who gets the attention.
But you know, the income tax, I put in the same category as the military draft.
Now, nobody's worrying about the military draft right now.
Although military registration is there, the state, the powerful state, our government, still says, if we need you, if we need you to go fight a war and it's unpopular, but we really need you to fight for our safety and our Constitution and our liberties, we own you, so you will register.
You belong to the government, and this is why, even though the draft is not going on now, I argue strongly, don't have a registration for a draft.
And if there's a war coming and somebody's going to invade us, people should volunteer and be willing to fight for their country.
But when you have a draft, it means that, oh, you want to send people to Korea who wants to go to Korea, or you want to send people to Vietnam.
It was a lot more complicated for those wars than it was for World War II.
But World War I, it was started, and that was very detrimental.
But it's ownership.
Government owns us if they can have a military registration and draft.
Government owns us if they have an income tax.
And you say, well, they have to have some money.
Well, you know, a user tax, it's not too difficult for me to figure out that the people who use the highways probably ought to pay to use it.
Even if it's a government user tax, that's a little bit better than saying that we're going to tax your income.
So it's the philosophic problem that we have.
The government is involved in too much, doing too many other things, and they love taxing income because they can play on this.
Well, if you've made more money than the other guy, you're a mean guy and you probably stole it all, so we have to penalize you even more.
Today, that's only half true because so many rich people have made money because they were part of the banking system or the military-industrial complex, and that's a different issue.
Philosophic Problem of Income Tax 00:00:27
But I don't like the income tax, and the founders didn't like it, and we didn't have it.
We really owned it, got it rolling along in 1913.
It's time to totally repeal the 16th Amendment and get rid of the income tax.
Sounds good.
Well, thank you very much, Dr. Paul, for answering our viewer questions, and thanks to our viewers for participating in this.
We really enjoy having you watch the show.
Very too.
Very good.
And to our viewers, I want to thank you very much for tuning in today.
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