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Believing in Secession
00:03:16
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| Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report. | |
| With me today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host. | |
| And Daniel, good to see you. | |
| How are you this morning, Dr. I'm doing very well, very well, ready and raring to go. | |
| I understand you might have a few questions for me. | |
| These are the days that I like because it's easy for me and it's all on you. | |
| All I have to do is read without messing up. | |
| So it's yes, it's Ask Ron Paul. | |
| That's what we've got up today serving up. | |
| So let's cut right to the chase and put up the first question. | |
| This is from Thundaga, who I've been told is a regular on our live forums. | |
| So we're grateful that he participates. | |
| He or she, I should mention, participates. | |
| Ron Paul, if you were president today in California, Oregon, and Washington decided to secede from the U.S., would you pull an Abraham Lincoln on them or would you let them go peacefully? | |
| The very existence of the U.S. is predicated on secession, right? | |
| Well, this is an easy question because it just turns out that Abraham Lincoln isn't my favorite president. | |
| You know, he did a few things I didn't like, and he really loved the idea of the Republic sticking together, indivisible forever. | |
| And I believe in secession. | |
| I believe in the principle of secession. | |
| So, no, if somebody wants to leave, let them go. | |
| I'm just wondering whether someday we shouldn't have it where we can expel a few of them. | |
| But we were not going to have that. | |
| And Lincoln sort of settled this whole thing about secession, killed a lot of people to defend the ability of not allowing people to secede. | |
| But most of the founders of the country in their early history, they believed in secession. | |
| They unfortunately took it for granted that it would be expected. | |
| The states were coming together voluntarily. | |
| They assumed that they could voluntarily leave. | |
| But that wasn't the case. | |
| And the first talk of secession happened to be up in the Northeast, and they were unhappy with the South. | |
| But instead of waiting for a civil war to occur, they wanted to leave. | |
| And nobody challenged the principle. | |
| And, you know, a lot of people say, oh, you know, you're for secession. | |
| That means you don't like America and you don't like what we have. | |
| And actually, you can be for secession and still like what we have. | |
| And matter of fact, improve what we have because it's the threat of secession which is the greatest benefit. | |
| But just think of how much more cautious the federal government would be if they knew, well, if we mistreat Texas or some other state, maybe they'll just jolly well leave. | |
| And that would be, that would restrain the government. | |
| That was more or less the purpose of having two senators representing a state and being elected by their legislature rather than by popular vote, that you had to take care of the states and you shouldn't trample the states. | |
| So secession is a good principle whether you use it or not. | |
| And sometimes the secession might not be perfect, but the principle is very, very important. | |
| The founders believed in it. | |
| They promoted it. | |
| It's just too bad that they did not clarify it and put it into the Constitution that if you're unhappy with the Union, you are permitted to leave peacefully. | |
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Secession's Bipartisan Appeal
00:11:39
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| Good. | |
| Now let's switch over to number two here. | |
| What do we got? | |
| Ty Tashler is interested in knowing, how does the government raise money by means other than taxation? | |
| Well, you know, they have a couple tricks, but their biggest trick is they've invented a way to get money without taxation. | |
| And that is you just print the money, you know, and that's it. | |
| But it is a tax anyway. | |
| It's a taxation because if you double the money supply, the money that the people are holding, in theory, you know, it's not perfectly neat, but in theory, you know, the value of the money that the people are holding is cut in two. | |
| So half of the money is gone, half of the purchase power is gone. | |
| So if the Congress won't raise taxes, they can run up debt and print the money and devaluate it, and it acts just like a tax. | |
| So that is the way it's done. | |
| And during the Second World War, I recall the Second World War because as a kid I was delivering newspapers and things, and we were involved in collecting quarters to put in a little envelope to get a government bond to support the war effort. | |
| But later on, I found out it was just a pretense to get people, you know, thinking about the war and part of the same thing, why we had rationing and all. | |
| To do this, but the war, World War II, was paid for by debt, a huge amount of debt, and it had to be accommodated by the Federal Reserve. | |
| So if one thing, and this question sort of suggests it, you know, if there were no other ways and you had to tax the people for all the nonsense they do, fighting endless unconstitutional wars or running a welfare state that just breeds problems for us, I would say this would be very good. | |
| This would restrain the growth of government. | |
| But because they can tax and finance deficits in a sinister way, it does the one thing that I think is one of the most dangerous things about the Fed, it enhances the growth of big government for all the different reasons, whether it's the military-industrial complex or for the bankers or for the politicians or whatever. | |
| So this is something that would be prevented. | |
| But the principle is well taken, asking about taxation and how it's done. | |
| And this is one way it's done. | |
| To some smaller degree, they have penalties and they collect money and they collect for licensings and things like that. | |
| Some people might not call that a tax, but that's minor compared to the corruption of destroying and undermining the value of the currency. | |
| All right. | |
| Let's move on to number three here. | |
| And this is a good one, I think. | |
| This is one that I think will be enjoyed. | |
| This is from Zeb Siegfeld. | |
| And he asks, How can we convince younger people who tend to be further left and right to become libertarians? | |
| Well, you know, this is a good question because this is what I think about a lot. | |
| And this has always been my goal: to get people to think libertarian, think about liberty. | |
| And the one thing that seems to be appealing that can guide them away from this left-right is to say that you don't have a choice in left and right in principle because both left and right, Republican and Democrats, endorse authoritarianism. | |
| They endorse the collective idea that groups have rights and not individuals. | |
| But they both endorse this principle of collectivism and interference and authoritarianism. | |
| But it's different. | |
| It's a little bit different. | |
| They might not always agree on which war to go in and what date they should invade. | |
| They don't agree exactly who should be the top beneficiary of the welfare state. | |
| So there are arguments there, but they're minuscule when it comes to philosophy. | |
| And this is why people get so frustrated when things get bad. | |
| They change parties. | |
| It doesn't do a bit of good because they don't change philosophy. | |
| It's still based on this authoritarian approach that the government tells people what to do, whether it's their personal liberties, whether it's economic liberties, or whether it's our interference overseas. | |
| It's too bipartisan. | |
| We have to teach people, young people, to think that, well, if they're unhappy with corporatism and say, oh, corporatism is all a Republican issue, I'm going to vote Democrat. | |
| That's complete nonsense because corporatism is endorsed by both parties and switching parties doesn't help. | |
| You have to switch philosophy. | |
| And that is the reason that libertarianism or voluntarism is the principle we need. | |
| You say, well, that's a loser. | |
| Libertarian Party has been around since 1972 and they haven't amounted to much. | |
| I've been in the Libertarian Party and in some ways it hasn't amounted to much in the conventional political sense. | |
| But it should be there to advance the cause of liberty. | |
| And this is something that if people realize the difference, they might say, well, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, it makes no difference, Republican or Democrat. | |
| Why do this? | |
| That we have to get people to understand liberty, understand how valuable it is, understand why there's economic value, but to understand that your personal liberty is your life and your activities, as long as you don't hurt anybody, you can do anything you want. | |
| And if you're willing to work, which you should be in a free society, you get to keep it. | |
| And all of a sudden you say, well, that is different than Republicans and Democrats. | |
| So you say, when the Democrats are in and say, oh, the deficit's going up and there's too much spending and all this nonsense. | |
| What we need is the Republicans to come in. | |
| But what do the Republicans do? | |
| Because they believe in the same principles of big government, interventionism, and they don't believe that the problems that we have can be solved by voluntarism. | |
| They don't understand how beneficial and how efficient the market is. | |
| The market is a regulator. | |
| They don't understand this. | |
| The market can regulate because you don't bail out anybody and you don't subsidize anybody. | |
| And you have to satisfy the consumer. | |
| Well, the further left you go or right where you accept the idea that government should be helping the producers and subsidize people, the less likely that they will have any success whatsoever. | |
| So people ought to look at the benefits of how the market works and voluntarism. | |
| And if the businessman doesn't do well, you don't bail them out. | |
| You know, just think of this bailout process during this last downturn in the housing bubble. | |
| And that's why we're still suffering from it, is because both sides are for the bailouts and for the intervention. | |
| And they think that if I'm against regulations and against the Federal Reserve, then the world will come to an end. | |
| Well, this economic world that we're pretending to manage with the reserve currency of the world, the dollar, and our military believing is coming to an end. | |
| And that's when we better get very, very busy and present the benefits of liberty and why Republicans and Democrats so far have not been able to do it. | |
| It's not a partisan issue. | |
| Right now, the reason the Republicans and the Democrats agree on so much, and they're very bipartisan, is the fact that they all went to similar schools. | |
| Probably 90% of them were totally educated economically by Keynesian economists. | |
| And they believe this stuff, that deficits don't matter, you need a Federal Reserve, inflationism is good. | |
| So they believe all this thing. | |
| So what has to happen is we have to get another generation to be introduced to the ideas of liberty and sound money and endorse them. | |
| And then when they have the influence and they have a prevailing attitude, it doesn't mean that you have to have a third party. | |
| Keynesianism is bipartisan. | |
| If liberty is bipartisan and sound money is bipartisan, then the people there will be educated to that and they will do it. | |
| You know, be as influential as the Keynesians have been with the bipartisan Republicans and Democrats. | |
| But we have to present the case for liberty and show how much more beneficial it is for the satisfaction of personal liberty and the satisfaction of having peace and having the satisfaction of prosperity. | |
| Then maybe they'll give up on these pretend battles between Republicans and Democrats. | |
| All right, well, moving into the home stretch, the final question, it's going to be a fun one, I think. | |
| Shaheen M. asks, what is your favorite Rothbard book? | |
| You know, Murray is one of the Austrian economists that I got to know very well. | |
| Matter of fact, he even was helpful in the Gold Commission times back in the early 1980s. | |
| I got to know him, but before I even met him, his book on the Depression influenced me a whole lot. | |
| The way it was written, it was easy to read. | |
| You know, Mises has so many great books, and I tried to read all of them, but human action, you know, you have to work at that. | |
| But Murray Rothbard's book, The Great Depression, really is clean and clear-cut. | |
| And he presented the case for saying that the Federal Reserve was responsible for the Depression because they inflated and distorted the interest rates all through the 20s. | |
| And he made it so clear. | |
| And I was raised in a Republican family. | |
| I can still hear the argument. | |
| Well, you know, the only reason Hoover had trouble was because the Democrats wouldn't cooperate with him and pass his bills. | |
| Well, it turns out, according to Murray's reporting and others, is actually Hoover was getting a lot of support for intervention and mischief and doing the wrong things, which Roosevelt continued to do and why we had this Great Depression. | |
| But he had me understand why it wasn't the fault of the Democrats and not the Republicans, and that it wasn't just fall, it just didn't fall out of the sky, that there was a reason for it. | |
| It had to do with the Federal Reserve. | |
| And this was a long time, I read that book a long time before I was involved in politics or had met Murray. | |
| But it had a lot of influence on me because it was so significant. | |
| The Federal Reserve is the culprit if you care about people suffering. | |
| And I can remember hearing in family talk about the people suffering and how they tried to get started again. | |
| And of course, it was so-called ended with the war, which is nonsense as well. | |
| Unemployment ended because everybody had to go off and fight a war. | |
| But no, the American Great Depression by Murray Rothbard opened up my eyes and really contributed a whole lot to my interest in the Federal Reserve System. | |
| All right, Dr. Paul, you live to fight another day. | |
| That was great. | |
| That was really entertaining and educational. | |
| Very good. | |
| And I want to thank our audience for joining us today. | |