Ron Paul: The Most Hardcore Anti Drug War Presidential Candidate in History!
What was it like being the absolute most hardcore opponent of the drug war way back in the 1988 US presidential race? Ron Paul! Looking back 31 years later, most of the things Ron Paul advocated as a 1988 Libertarian Party candidate for president have now come to pass. Watch Ron Paul's keynote speech at the Ron Paul Institute's May 2019 "War on Drugs" conference in Houston! And come join us next month in Washington DC for another GREAT Ron Paul Institute conference! RonPaulInstitute.org/conference
I appreciate all you for coming and supporting the Institute.
So that pleases us very much.
And I want to thank our special speakers, Jacob and John, and who was that other fellow that we had?
Paul, because I know Paul's dad, and we're delighted to have the three there.
And Adam, we need to compliment you for not only giving your speech, but acting as MC and keeping the Institute going.
So, Adam, very good job.
How many here have actually looked at or know about the Ron Paul Liberty Report?
A couple.
You see Daniel and I then quite frequently, and you know what the program is all about.
But you know, there is one individual that sometimes doesn't get recognized for getting the program on the air.
And that is Sircon Ashe.
He's back there, the technician.
Sirkon, see, I really respect what he does because I'm not really into all this technology.
I have a telephone that's smarter than I am, so that gives me a problem.
But Sircon actually does everything in the studio by himself.
And what amazes me is the connections that he's able to make because we probably, Daniel and I communicate with a lot of different stations, a lot of different countries.
So my guess would be maybe 10 countries around the world that we communicate.
So we reach a lot of people.
And he's able to manage all these wires and do all this and get the connections.
Sometimes we have our problems, but they're never our fault.
So they're always somebody else.
But it is a big job.
And of course, we should recognize the individual who really pushes.
He pushes me to come out at all times of the day and week.
And that's Daniel McAdams, our CEO.
Now, I do want to introduce one other important individual.
It had something to do with us getting here and doing things and me being on schedule.
That individual is my wife, my wife, Carol.
Now, I want to tell you, she's a very tolerant person.
She puts up with a lot.
She's been married to her first husband for 62 years.
So, but Carol, you know, she told me early on in the marriage that when I started tinkering around with political ideas, she was quite content, you know, to stay at home and work at home and take care of a family and this sort of thing.
And I was very content to be in medicine.
I enjoyed that tremendously.
Family First00:10:33
Even when I accidentally won that first time and stayed for a few years, I was anxious to go back to medicine.
And I did.
I went back to medicine for 12 years.
But she said that she wasn't that much interested.
And she never maintained that she was the political expert.
But there was a time, you know, after I was in office, and then I left for those 12 years, and then somebody wrote me into running for a president in 88 as a libertarian.
And it's interesting that Adam read that statement because I think we didn't do a lot of statements in that campaign, but that was one that I thought symbolizes the issue of personal freedom and the problems you face.
So that issue, it was very clear.
They knew my position in 1988.
And they've known it all along.
But I was always amazed that it never really hurt that much in my local district.
And that was the big issue.
So when I had been out and was identified strongly as a libertarian, it supported getting rid of the drug war.
And so the one prediction or the one deep concern I had was if I ran for Congress again, there's no way, you know, if I did it stoically like I did the first go-around, I said, they're going to listen to the charges because that's what they're going to use.
So when I decided to run, there were, you know, probably about 12 or so Republicans in the delegation, and I went and talked to them.
They were my old friends.
But I was up front with them going to run, and I said, I can be help to you because it's a Democrat.
Now, I think I can beat the Democrats in there, and I can change that seat.
And you know what?
I didn't realize how powerful I was because within three weeks the seat was changed.
They got him to convert to be a Republican.
They promised him everything, million dollars and support of both of the bushes.
And Newt Gingrich came into the test stricken to campaign for him.
And 56 or so incumbent House of members supported him.
So I thought, there's no way, there's no way this can happen.
And so we had our first press conference.
The district reached up and it was near Houston, but it was mostly rural and south.
But we decided to have the press conference the nearest we could from Houston and try to get press coverage.
And we had it and we did have some press coverage, but it was small.
And yet I made a little presentation.
The first question was, on the drug war, does this mean you're going to legalize drugs and let kids have drugs?
This sort of thing.
The very first question, I said, I expected it.
I'm not going to be surprised.
But the Republicans, you know, had gotten rid of the Democrat, or got the Democrat to become a Republican.
So the Republicans were, they had some people from the old Reagan administration because as much as I liked Reagan and got along with him real well, I wouldn't vote for his budgets.
Because the truth was, the Reagan budgets were worse than the Carter budgets.
And I said, how can I vote for this when every one of us voted against Carter's budget?
Now you want me to vote for this.
So we did this in Clinton.
Carter's budget was pretty bad.
And so when I ran and the Democrats were piling on and attacking me, we had a larger primary.
I had to get into the runoff because the person that they were supporting, all the money and all the big people were behind them.
But there was a long list of people and I did not get, I did not win that primary, the preliminary.
I was in second place, so I got into the runoff.
And this was a big deal.
But when I was running against them in the primary, in that race, that we finally won, the main thing they used was the drug issue.
And I know Carol will remember all the commercials.
And, you know, you showed some pictures of the nasty things.
That's what they did.
They put it up there.
Ron Paul hates kids.
He's going to poison the babies and all that.
So, I think we answered that ad by me delivering a baby and holding a baby.
And the people never believed it, and it was overkill.
So, I win that election.
And so, the Democrats, then I had to run against the Democrat in the final.
That was sort of the primary.
So, they did the same thing.
Both the Republicans and the Democrats used at least a million dollars, which was a lot of money back there, and they used the drug issue.
And we did much better than I ever dreamed.
I was sort of, you know, well, let's see what happens.
So, that was interesting enough, but it didn't carry over because we could win the election.
We ended up winning the election.
So, my conclusion was that the people were way ahead of the politicians and the Congress, and they already knew they accepted my position that the drug war was bad and drugs were bad.
I didn't take a pension.
I don't like people using drugs.
And so, that position was held.
But when they were putting those real nasty ads on, I mean, this bothered Carol.
She was less tolerant then when they were blasting me for wanting to destroy babies' lives and just didn't care about people.
So, she said, Ron, you need to do something to make sure your image is a little bit different, that you're not harsh.
We tried the ad, but they were really hitting hard on it.
So, she said, Ron, why don't we do a family cookbook?
I thought, Family cookbook?
What do you want a cookbook for?
She said, We'll put family recipes in.
We'll take pictures of each family and put their pictures in.
No way.
I said, People don't, they want to hear me talk about the Federal Reserve.
They don't want to know.
So, but I was tolerant too.
I said, All right, let's try it.
And of course, it went out and it turned out to be pretty popular.
So, when I would go to my Republican friends after that, I would tell this little story that I strongly objected if I did it.
But I tell you what, it turned out to be the most popular political piece we ever had.
It was the right thing, which makes a point.
Yes, the Federal Reserve is important, freedom and prosperity is important, non-intervention foreign policy.
All this is very important.
But if you're involved in politics, there's a little bit more involved.
And probably, since we lived in the Bible Belt and the Bible Belt wasn't necessarily promoting drugs, that they would be more open to the family things.
And they're not involved in those other things.
So, reaching out to people, which means, does that mean you're being hypocritical and compromising?
No, but you're trying.
The 80% of the people out there probably don't even think about election until the last few minutes.
And then they do like to know who it is that's running and they like to trust the person.
I think trust is something that people can convey and people will vote for, even though they don't understand the issues.
But her position in her cookbook has been rather popular.
I remember one time, though, she really embarrassed me.
This is about you today.
The speech is yours.
No, we were at a restaurant and we were getting ready to leave, and I got in the car.
And all of a sudden, we see a woman right racing to our car.
Of course, I knew why she was coming.
She was coming to get my autograph.
And so I rolled down my window, and she went immediately right under Carol's window.
And she wanted to talk about families and cookbooks and sewing and all this stuff.
So that was a humbling experience.
But anyway, it's been a good experience.
I've always been surprised that we have done as well as we did.
Somebody said, didn't you get really, really frustrated living with us people up there?
Look at what you believe in.
Look how hard you work.
And you don't even have a bill to name after you and neither a highway.
But I warned them when I left.
I told my friends, they were friends.
They just knew where I stood.
I said, when I leave here, I don't want any of you naming a federal highway after me or any federal building.
They assured me, don't worry.
It's not going to happen.
So it was something that was a surprise to me.
And I always thought that the message is important.
It was in some ways, John, I sort of felt like an undercover agent sneaking in with a real message.
And my approach was not so much that I had political clout.
I had zero political clout.
So it was mainly to get along with people.
And I was taught one time by Leonard Reed.
He said, what you want to do is be as well-versed as you can.
And if you know the issues, people will come and ask you about it.
And they'll want to seek you out for the information.
And so I tried to practice that, but there weren't very many people who came.
But there were a lot.
There were several in Congress, that is, members that would come over, and there I am.
You know, I voted by myself a couple times.
And they say, why did you do that?
And they were very serious.
They came to ask a serious question.
Challenging Military Liberties00:16:06
So I would explain it to them.
And some of them really took major steps in moving in that direction.
And those one, two, three, or four that were influenced were much more valuable than the usual method of having political clout.
I didn't have the clout because, you know, I was there long enough.
I should have been the chairman of the banking committee, but that was not going to happen.
So I didn't hold my breath.
They said, well, didn't you get real frustrated over there to put up with that stuff?
I said, no, I just really had low expectations.
I wasn't thinking about changing.
I wasn't going to change an election or even a vote, but I was hoping to change ideas and ideas.
I'd like to say that I would contribute something to changing the world in the long term.
That's what the real goal ought to be.
And that is, I see the process of liberty as something long-term.
It's been known for a long time.
And I like to recite the libertarian message.
It comes from the great religions, and they've been very old.
Don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal, and don't kill.
And that's pretty libertarian.
And that is the message of the non-aggression principle.
And just think of how wonderful a world would be if just a few more people would accept this non-aggression principle.
And of course, that's why we have the Institute for Peace and Prosperity believing that is the case.
I know that we're going to have these problems for a long time.
And somebody, maybe John, somebody pointed out, they're always going to want drugs.
They're always going to want to do it.
Yes, that is the case.
It's always going to be there.
But I think there's been such wonderful progress with the human race in a short period of time.
You know, the earth is like 4 billion years old, but history is only 5,000 years old.
And real progress is only about 200 years old.
And if you think of what's happened in the last hundred years, for me, in a personal way, I look back and think, you know, my dad was born in 1904, and he delivered milk in a horse and buggy.
You know, he saw the cars come in and the trucks come in and all this thing.
So he was alive when somebody was way before the Civil War, and some actually could remember, you know, colonial times.
So this is a short period of time.
And technology-wise, think of the progress.
It's unbelievable.
And, you know, really, in spite of all the government, there's still a lot of people in the world that have improved their living conditions, certainly in this country.
In spite of the problems we see and the dangers we see, the living conditions have improved.
But the frustration that I have always felt on this has been that the technology is welcomed by many, but guess who gets hold of it?
And guess who uses it the wrong way?
And that is the government.
So we want the government out of our lives, not telling us what we can put in our bodies, and we ought to have control of technology where the government can't use it to stir up a lot of trouble and go into another war.
You know, we've talked a lot today about the drugs, and it's very serious.
I did find one statistic, and there were the experts talking today.
I'm not saying this as absolute factual, but I did find a study that sorted that supported what I think is true or a point to make.
But this statistic and polling said that in this country there are more deaths by suicide than there are by drugs.
And we know there's a lot of suicides.
And we know a lot of suicides right now are occurring from our veterans coming home.
And there's a lot of problems in our society that we face.
We're really in a doldrum.
Unfortunately, and this is dangerous to say because it might invite some criticism, that in a way it reminds me of what it was like in the bad days of the Soviet system.
I remember reading the stories.
It was so, so depressed, and people were depressed, and they lived on alcohol and all these things.
And think about our country since the 60s.
It continues to get worse.
It was the drug usage in the 60s, and now we have this, and we have these epidemics.
But alcohol, this polling showed that if you add up everything about alcohol and the problems with alcohol, there's a lot of people still suffering from alcohol.
So in other words, there's a lot of other problems there since we don't agree with the direction of the war on drugs.
We have to say, well, if you believe this, do you really believe in prohibition of alcohol?
Of course not, they don't.
And I poke fun at the members of Congress in one of my speeches that you're obsessed with the uses of drugs and here you come in.
And some of you are, you know, been drinking too much and here you are on the House floor.
So it is something that the problem without that.
The question is, what's the purpose of government?
Is the purpose of government to protect us against risk against ourselves?
And that's where we are flawed.
People will say, no, it's to make you safe and secure.
We don't want you to get hurt and that is our job.
That's our moral obligation to do it.
Even if we have to take all your liberties away, we'll treat you like the cattle in the field, but you'll be safe.
But the society, In our society, in a free society, risk is very important.
It's always going to be there.
It's who should be in charge.
And I think we already do a pretty good job if you're any type of a reasonable parent.
What is the very first things you usually do with children?
You know, some things are dangerous.
And almost every child, I wonder what percentage of children, I don't know what age two, three, or four, maybe even a two-year-old would know.
You don't get on a, you don't walk out on the street, or at least you look both ways and this sort of thing.
And parents teach these habits.
Why is it that we think the government has to protect us against ourselves and therefore we have to help?
But we've gotten to the point that the government is supposed to make us safe.
But when they do that, it's this notion of the challenge on who's responsible for developing excellence and virtue.
I think that's what my personal goal is, and that's what I hope a lot of people's goal.
And that's what happens in a free society: work for virtue and excellence.
And the government shouldn't have anything to say about that.
If government says, yo, we agree, we want you to work toward excellence, and we'll give you motivations, we'll give you free college, and we'll do all these things, and you can work for that.
But when the government takes that rollover, trying to tell the people how to live and become excellent and virtuous, believe me, they do it only at the expense of liberty.
And yet, we have turned over so much to the government.
And this whole thing, the responsibility in many ways, the violation of our civil liberties.
But what about our military?
You know, our military, you know, I was in the military for five years, and I think it's way out of proportion to what it'd be.
I don't think we should ever have a military budget.
I think we can have a defense budget, but not military.
No money for the military.
What we want is money to defend our country, which is quite a bit different than just saying military.
Military, there's pretty good support for it.
It's called the military-industrial complex, and they make a lot of money.
And then they go and challenge, and then they take all this wonderful technology, not used for the enhancement of peace and prosperity, but to promote the wars.
And in spite of all that, we have a lot of benefits.
But just think of how they messed up on this drug war.
But don't you feel good that we can make rope again out of hemp?
I mean, we're making progress.
So we want to be able to release this energy so that people can, you know, work and take care of themselves.
And we need to do this in a moral and responsible way.
I've said on the House floor, I said, you know, there's two arguments that you should never use on the house floor.
And I said, I'm not going to use them today because I know you're not going to listen.
You never use a moral argument or a constitutional argument on the house floor, but you use a pragmatic argument.
And there are some opportunities for pragmatism.
You know, we argue a non-interventionist foreign policy, but pragmatically, we argue that it's idiotic and you have the downside to it.
So being pragmatic about it, I think is very important because I can recall on the House floor if a piece of legislation came up, and there may be some controversials, and the lobbyists have been real busy.
I remember one time when we were debating how much money and what weapons we were going to buy for Columbia.
And the big argument was which helicopters we were going to buy.
And so I don't know if it happened there, but to make the point is members of Congress don't pay a whole lot of attention to what they're doing until they run to the House floor because somebody will tell them, the leaders, especially if they're in leadership, they'll tell you what to do.
So they go over and they have a list.
These are the countries that support the companies that support it, and these are the companies that supports the other one.
Oh, yeah, this guy's in my district.
And so that's the way they look at it.
And that's the way they come up with an answer.
But the war on drugs has been such a devastating event for us.
And it continues to be.
I want to, you know, I lean toward optimism.
There was a time when I said, and it has not quite occurred, but I always thought prohibition of alcohol.
Remember, and they had so much respect for the Constitution, they wrote a constitutional amendment.
And then they had to repeal it.
So I've often said, the American people, especially when I saw some sympathy for our position in my own district, and it didn't hurt me, is that people are going to wake up.
And the people are going to say, this is insane.
This is this quit it.
And we're there, but it's very clumsy.
And it was pointed out as not going as smoothly as we'd like.
But, you know, eventually it just overwhelms.
You know, people probably are using a lot more drugs in the places you weren't supposed to before.
No, the sentiments of the people, very, very, very, very powerful.
So this hasn't happened.
But this week, I want to read a bill that was introduced to show you they never quit.
You know, we make progress, we nibble away.
And this was a bill brought up, and I don't want to pick on anybody in Texas, but he's the Texas House Foreign, today, House Foreign Affairs Land Republican, the ranking member.
His name is McCall, if anybody knows him.
2780.
It sounded real good.
It's a bill to stop the flow of illicit opioids into the United States, and it's going to do wonderful things.
It's going to cure the problem and stop the flow and have more bureaucracy, but no more money.
Of course it's going to be more money.
And it's just more technology.
So they have to respond.
Everybody knows about the epidemic, but they won't admit anything about why there is an epidemic.
And matter of fact, some of it, and I've already alluded to it, which is it's probably beyond all our control because this is the thing I call the moral doldrums that existed much worse in the Soviet system, and it's encroaching on ours because, you know, people are just in the drug culture and just all these things going on.
But I think it's realigning itself.
People are trying to challenge that.
But when you see the cultural Marxists and all this stuff coming out now, it is a big, big challenge.
But the people in Washington, you know, are still going to be after us and passing legislation.
That's all they know what to do.
But we can't give up on it or be discouraged because I think we have made progress.
When I went to, when I ran the first time, when I explained to Carol about me running, it was an outgrowth from what happened in 1971.
It had to do with monetary issues.
And I thought that was so outrageous and so bad.
And that was closing down, admitting our bankruptcy, closing down of the Bretton Woods, putting on tariffs, wage and price controls, the whole works.
And then taking gold out of the monetary system.
So that inspired me because I had been studying and reading about it and reading to Austrian economists that predicted this all through the 60s and exactly as they said it happened.
So I decided I would just speak out on it.
But as time went on, I was always interested in the bigger issue of liberty.
But then when it dawned on me that the monetary issue is really big, it's really big because there's nothing that we can do these days without the corrupt monetary system.
But it's also that corrupt monetary system that's going to end all this.
There's going to be a realignment or a chance to reassert our liberties and get back on our path.
But the reason I say that it's the monetary issue in the Federal Reserve is that you can't finance the war on drugs, you can't finance the wars overseas, you can't finance a welfare state, and it won't do you any good to get a Republican Congress and a House in the Senate and a Republican president because statistically they don't spend as much.
They usually spend more than the Democrats.
And that's where the big problem is.
So they preach it every day.
We hear more.
It astounds me that one day we hear the greatest market in the world.
The stock markets are skyrocketing.
Everybody has a job that wants.
We have more jobs available.
No inflation.
GDP's up.
It's wonderful.
But we're very fearful.
What we have to do is we have to put on tariffs to fight what's coming.
And we have to increase spending.
And we certainly, certainly can't allow interest rates even to linger or move in the slightest direction toward a market economic rate.
And so on one hand, everything is perfect.
On the other hand, things are worse than the deep depression.
Concerns About Interest Rates00:07:23
And we're going to do all these things.
But believe me, they're going to clash because I just happen to believe that I don't believe the government.
And that's where, that's really where the problem, and that's good news.
And that's why if we can continue to educate on an issue like the drug war, the people are with us.
The statistics we heard today, the numbers are out there.
The people are there.
I shouldn't have been shocked that I got elected, you know, because people were waking up and they're waking up even more.
And that's very good.
But people don't believe the government anymore.
You know, this thing has annoyed me this last two years, you know, of fighting over who won the election and all that.
The exposure of the FBI and the CIA and the Justice Department, I think the exposure is all right down the line, probably all true.
And I think that's good news because the number of people now who don't believe the government are growing and growing, and that's what you need to get rid of them all.
You know, another thing that I've often looked at on how to sort all this out about, you know, why do we have so many laws?
And I think Lysander Spooner, you know, sorted out pretty easy.
He says you shouldn't count vices as criminal acts.
And I alluded to that a little bit about excellence and virtue.
And who's responsible for protection and taking care of difficulty?
But he said that he said that vices are not Criminal ideas, and John in his speech pointed that rather well.
He defined the proper role of the police.
If you're going to have a police, it should be people who are, you know, doing physical harm and doing breaking those laws that I've mentioned, lie, cheating, stealing, and killing.
Yeah, that's, I guess we could use a couple policemen there.
But even then, under our system, the police ought to be local, you know, for the most part.
And yet, we have it at the national level.
One other thing I think could help in trying to sort all this out is in one area, I think we need more gun control.
We need to have gun control and eliminate the guns of all the federal bureaucrats.
And there's probably over 200,000.
I used to say 100,000.
They say, forget Iron, you're way behind.
And there's always more and more.
And I guess you would know how I voted on the Department of Homeland Security.
I mean, that's a monster.
And I'm not going to mention a thing about the TSA because if I did, they would never let me on the airplane again.
But no, we're being challenged, and people are complacent, and there's a few waking up, and you say, well, Ron, if this was really a big deal and we're making progress, why do you get 100 people together?
Why don't we have 5,000 people together?
Why don't we have 100,000?
We're doing okay on our program.
We have 180,000 subscribers.
It's still small, but it's growing.
But the big thing is, the numbers aren't that critical.
And like I mentioned before in the introduction, that the image of a politician is pretty important.
It's the small number of people, 8 to 10% of the people, if they're writing the right thing and changing the philosophy, the prevailing philosophy is really what counts.
When people say, you should have done more work to clean up the Congress, I never went there to clean up the Congress because that's not possible.
But Congress changes and reflects what the people think.
Now, in a minor little way, we contributed to the change of an attitude dealing with the Federal Reserve.
I always thought that nobody's going to listen to you.
Get rid of the Federal Reserve tomorrow.
That's not going to sell.
But if you want to get rid of the Fed and you want to challenge them, support auditing the Fed.
Explose them for what they're doing.
What have they done over these last 10 years and even longer?
And I've had that bill for a long time, and we had two votes on it.
And it passed in the House.
It never got through the Senate.
But all the Republicans voted in support of it.
They weren't doing it for me.
I had no votes to trade.
And they weren't, and a matter of fact, they probably didn't even want to allow it to happen because of credibility.
But boy, I'll tell you what, the Campaign for Liberty organization that we have reached a lot of people.
And the people woke up and said, why not?
Why not find out?
You know, we need to know what they're doing.
So I think we've made a lot of progress.
If you take the attitude toward the Federal Reserve today, well, if I compare it to when I first went to Washington in 75, big difference.
But what about even just since the last downturn 10 years ago with the big bailout?
People know about that.
And the Fed's not going to get away from with their lying and all.
And the Fed really will be, you know, it will be the demand for more money and more spending.
They have no room to raise interest rates, no room to change the monetary policy.
I mean, the telltale sign was when the chairman of the board went to Trump, don't you dare raise interest rates, stop it.
And he did.
And you know what happened after that?
And Xi, president of China, used this as an example of his, was really despising what Americans were doing to him because we yell and scream at China.
Oh, you have a weak currency.
You're doing this.
And you're competing with your currency.
We're the biggest cheaters in the world when it comes to currency manipulation.
And we have the reserve currency of the world.
So he was mad because what they did was lower.
But all that does, it's just handwriting on the wall.
And that means they're getting desperately close.
And they're at a point where a next recession is going to cause a real calamity.
Most of the money, or a lot of the money borrowed from the Federal Reserve these last 10 years, has been going into corporations and banks.
And the money went into buying stock because the goal, and Trump's goal, keep the stock market up.
Stock market has to stay up.
So they borrow a lot of money.
They buy up their stock.
The stock prices go up.
Everybody's happy.
The executives get big bonuses.
And then what happens in the recession?
They're already having premiums to pay on their principal, you know, even though interest rates are low, they will have, you know, some interest to pay.
But in a recession, when all this activity doesn't do any good and the stock market goes down, I think the trouble is so overwhelming that I don't think anybody's going to pay any attention who smokes marijuana.
I think there's going to be a bit of anarchy.
Anarchy In Recession00:00:50
I just hope that doesn't happen.
And that's why we're to try this, get the information out.
But if you end up, which I don't predict, something, anything leaning toward a Zimbabwe or Venezuela, I mean, there's probably a lot of bartering going on down there.
But it isn't that difficult for solving these problems, whether it has to do with the drug issue and responsibility.
But the number one thing is the American people have to, by a large majority, change their attitude, what the role of government ought to be.
And it's not to make us safe and secure or spread democracy around the world.
It is to protect liberty.
If we limit government to that and cut the budget by 80% and let the people go back to work, I believe very sincerely that we will have peace and prosperity.