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July 4, 2019 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
13:06
What's Ron's Favorite Part Of The Declaration Of Independence?

With all the white noise on July 4th - tanks and flyovers, speeches - it can be easy to forget exactly what we are celebrating. In this special edition of the Liberty Report, Ron Paul explains his favorite part of the Declaration and why...

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The Declaration's Dual Purpose 00:06:16
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With me today is Daniel McAdams.
Daniel, good to see you.
Happy 4th of July, Dr. Paul.
That's right, this is a very special day.
I remember 4th of July very much as a kid, and fireworks!
That's what I would identify with.
But there were times, though, as the years went on, that I was a little bit frustrated that I wasn't hearing the things that I thought were appropriate for the 4th of July.
And today, what we're going to do is talk a little bit about that and what might be important to me as I read the Declaration of Independence or anything, any thoughts that you might have, because it is a very special document.
There are some people who claim that the Declaration of Independence should have been made law, you know, and that the guidelines should have been much closer to that than some of the things that happened with the Constitution.
But anyway, things did change, but there certainly was a major war went on, very significant for history.
One time, one war, it turned out where the people were better off than before the war, and the goal was to have liberty, and it wasn't designed just to promote some special interest, banking interests, or oil interests, or anything like that.
And the globalism wasn't involved.
And there was a strong emphasis on personal liberty.
And I think that is key, and I think that is why we have done well in this country.
But we also, when we understand this and look at it, we realize that we're coming up short.
And, you know, after the Constitutional Convention, it was said that what we have given you is a we've given you a republic if you can keep it.
This is what Ben Franklin said.
And, of course, from our viewpoint today, there's not much left of the republic.
But the seeds of the republic were here, and that's what they were talking about.
Now, what I want to do is pick out one portion here to emphasize that I think is important.
Everything, there's so much in here.
There are complaints that the founders had and the people had, and also the principles of liberty.
That's all very important.
But I want to emphasize two words, and that is we are, or the word is, U.S., United States is, or are.
It's plural.
It's plural in the Declaration of Independence.
The states, the they, the states.
The state.
It's plural, they, the states, and not it's not singular, because now it's is, the word is, is as singular, and we're all a unity.
But let me just read what comes out of the out of the ending, the therefore paragraph.
Twice it's mentioned free and independent states in the end of it.
And I want to just read this.
By the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare that these United Colonies are, and of right, ought to be free and independent states, and they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown.
They, so what they're saying is they're countries, and that's what it was meant to be.
Of course, the big argument was later on that the Articles of Federation wasn't strong enough and didn't give a strong enough central government.
And that may have had some truth to it, but it didn't mean that we had to give up on the whole principle of the republic in a very diverse country, but we still could have retained the states.
My understanding of the main motivations for the Constitutional Convention was twofold.
One, to try to open up trade between the states and movement among the states.
At the same time, work on the currency issue because states were issuing their currency and it wasn't unified.
Nobody was following the gold standard.
So those two things were very important, which led to the Constitutional Convention, which in many ways undermined some of these principles found in the Declaration of Independence.
Yeah, and think about it.
If the initial idea had taken hold and stayed, you'd have something like the Swiss cantons, you know, where you have these different, it's one country with such different cantons.
And some of them, of course, they speak different languages.
Some speak German, some speak French, some speak a language related to German.
But that would be certainly, because what did they, the states, to we, the states together, it really facilitated the rise of the warfare state.
You wouldn't have the total warfare state if you weren't able to do that.
And it also leads to, you know, all of our holidays morphing into being about war.
Memorial Day is not about remembering dead soldiers, it's about celebrating war.
And no, and I don't want to, you know, to rain on anyone's parade, literally, but now we're going to see tanks on the National Mall to celebrate the 4th of July, the Declaration of Independence.
Well, you know, the suggestion I made to you, then I said, well, no, I can't do that, is have some very precise demonstration or a picture of what used to be referred to as the nuclear family.
But that might be considered not politically correct.
But anyway, I think personal liberty is the big issue that came with this, with the revolution and with the Declaration of Independence.
But it really had a lot to do with personal choices and personal liberties.
And that's the whole thing, that even though people will have different opinion of what the family is all about, in a free country, you can make your own description, your own definition.
All your personal habits can be personally determined if you're not pushing them on anybody else.
And it's all voluntary.
So you can have variations.
And that's what it legalized.
It legalized freedom of choice.
The king wasn't supposed to be telling us how to live.
But we certainly have, in many ways, a monstrosity in Washington.
The Power of Personal Liberty 00:06:22
One thing that I think has encouraged so many problems that we have today is the educational system.
Once the governments took over states and federal government, that introduced bad history and bad economic policy and all these things.
But that is a problem that we have had for a long time.
But that was never, that was not why they fought a revolutionary war.
That's not the purpose even of the Constitution.
But that is what's happened.
And so structurally and intellectually, the high ground is, or not the high ground, but the important ground, the university, they preach something completely different.
Matter of fact, they mock anybody who might say, well, that's not constitutional.
What kind of aid do you live in?
Well, you gave me a homework assignment, and you don't do that very often, so I took it pretty seriously.
You said, go through the Declaration and pick out your favorite part of it, because I'm going to do the same.
And that's kind of neat because I hadn't read it in a long time, and I hadn't really reflected on it in a long time.
And I went back and read it, and I thought, this is pretty neat.
And we actually need another one of them right now, because here's a couple.
This first one I think is a real zinger.
This is their list of grievances against King George.
This is why they're going to break away.
We've had it.
He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
Talk about the IRS, the FBI, the DEA, the TSA.
I mean, I don't think George could have imagined in his wildest dreams.
You know, the question comes up is why are the people so complacent?
Complacent.
Because things are keeping us safe.
But don't you think things are a lot worse than what they were fighting over?
Take the income tax.
I mean, the total tax that the colonists were paying really wasn't very high.
I think probably one of the most offensive things could have been the stationing of troops in their communities and in their homes.
That would be enough.
But they were annoyed with the taxation.
That's what I think the Tea Party was all about.
But it was control.
But what we put up with is just astounding.
People don't have a love of liberty.
They don't really understand it.
They don't see any benefits.
They see the downside of what people have done to undermine liberty.
And they end up with all the money and all the power.
And so it is a sad state of affairs where we are today compared to what the ideals were back then.
But the elimination of the ideals of the Declaration of Independence didn't disappear overnight.
It didn't disappear, you know, in 1978, you know, immediately with the Constitution, you know, by 83.
That took a long time.
It's a gradual erosion.
It's like a cancer.
It keeps growing, but I'm reversing it now.
A big job.
So there needs to be another declaration.
Now, Jefferson had given some advice on that.
Actually, he was a little more aggressive than I am.
I want another declaration, and I want another revolution.
Of course, I want a peaceful revolution.
I want a nonviolent revolution, but I want one dependent on principle.
And I want to try to incorporate the brilliance of the founders.
What I am impressed about is the educational system has caused so much harm.
But these men were very well educated, but they were almost self-educated.
I mean, they didn't have public schools to go to.
And it's very impressive of how they knew the classics.
They use a lot of biblical history in their descriptions and what they did.
So we do need another revolution, but we would modify the terms until otherwise indicated.
Yeah, a revolution of ideas.
Well, I'll just close out by wishing all of our viewers a happy 4th of July.
I hope you have a nice day.
If you're so inclined, I actually would recommend sitting down and taking a look at the Declaration of Independence again, or for a first time if you haven't done it before.
It's actually quite interesting and it's very enlightening, and I'm glad I got my homework assigned, and maybe hopefully more Americans will come away with the idea that this whole thing that they can do all the stuff that George did and worse because they keep us safe.
They don't keep us safe.
They just take away our liberty.
So happy Fourth.
Very good.
Nice statement, Daniel.
And it is very important that we look at this and try to assess where we came from and why we fought a revolution, why we had a Declaration of Independence, and the description of the problems that they faced and put it in a proper perspective.
I think really, as brilliant as I see the founders, knowledge has advanced a lot since that time.
There's actually a better understanding of monetary policy, how the economy works.
Austrian economics was never even completely identified then.
But freedom and voluntarism is better understood by the libertarian community.
It's better understand by those people who love liberty.
And yet, the powers to be the people who have accepted government intervention, planning, and this world empire that we have, it has to be challenged because if we just forget about it and let things go, things are going to get a lot worse.
But what is happening in the country, there is some revolution going on.
There is a lot of activity.
I visit with young college kids, and they're not like all the ones you hear about on television, that they've lost their way.
But there is a source of change coming, and that, of course, is my goal to convince enough people that when this next revolution comes, this intellectual revolution comes, that we once again look at what the founders did, look at our declaration, and move on from that and even do a better job because, believe me, it's worthwhile because where we are, we're just going back, drifting back to the history of mankind.
Wars and wars and killing and all the things that go on, there's no reason why that can't be reversed.
Reintroducing Liberty Principles 00:00:14
And hopefully, the Liberty Report contributes to improving the situation and reintroducing the ideas and principles of liberty.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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