Beware (And Prepare): The American Empire Is Collapsing
When empires fall, they do not go down gracefully. The collapse is sudden and the consequences are permanent. Like the schoolyard bully who is finally defeated, his former victims and enemies revel in his fall. The US empire is now teetering on such a collapse. The signs are all around us. Aggressive US foreign policy, self-destructive monetary policy that debases the currency and hides inflation, a monstrous national and individual debt load. The writing is on the wall and the wise are preparing. What can we do?
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
Today is Labor Day, and we are doing our program audio only, no video, but we'll be back in regular business tomorrow.
But I want to welcome Daniel as co-host because he's back from his trip and his wonderful conference that he was in charge of up at Dulles Airport.
Daniel, good to see you here again, and welcome back.
Good to be back with you, Dr. Paul.
Good.
Today, Daniel, I want to talk about, there's been a couple articles out, and I've talked about this subject for a long time.
How long will the American empire end?
And right now, there's a lot more talk about it and recognition that it's unsustainable.
And there are economic statistics that verify this, and there certainly are foreign policy problems that we're facing that indicate that we're not the powerhouse that we used to be.
And I know that we've heard a lot of propaganda how great the economy is, and there are statistics that are, you know, at least they're better than what they could be, but there's no indication that there's real growth.
If you look at the growth in this country compared to the debt, guess what?
Debt is going up about five or six times faster than manufacturing.
And so what we have right now is everything based on debt, and that's self-limiting.
And that's one of the reasons I've stuck to my argument that you'll see the disappearance of it because we have become soft.
We don't emphasize the work ethic.
The socialists are on the attack and everybody thinks they can get something for free and the deficit's exploding.
And there's really not much attention paid to this.
If you look at the current administration and the current Congress, there's really Republican or Democrat, there's not much concern about deficit.
So if we're right on this argument that debt can be very, very harmful eventually, but more likely it'll be slower and has been slow because we've had the reserve currency of the world.
But I think it's cracking.
I think Jackson Hole meeting just recently indicated that the internationalists, the financiers that were there are getting concerned about our economy collapsing.
But I'm sure you've thought about this a little bit because I think that there may hopefully be some good news on the foreign policy because it might have to force us to change our policy.
Yeah, and you know, our inspiration for today's show was a piece you saw on the internationalman.com written by Jeff Thomas.
And it's a great piece, Falling from Grace, The Decline of the U.S. Empire.
And I think it's great maybe just because it agrees with what you've been saying and we've been saying on the show for a while, which is, you know, a couple of real important takeaways.
One of them being that once an empire starts collapsing, it's inexorable.
It can't be reversed.
And it also happens at great speed.
It happens so quickly, people don't know what happened.
And it's happened before in history over and over again.
And there's a pattern that empires go through before they collapse, you know, and it starts with, it starts with strong work ethics, self-reliance.
They build a strong nation based on that.
And that's how certainly the early 20th century.
But then comes the desire to dominate others.
And Jeff Thomas writes about this starting with Teddy Roosevelt.
But then he started talking about the decline in the 60s is where it began when the U.S. started pursuing unwinnable wars, began accelerating the destruction of the currency.
Of course, that'd be the early 70s, and to expand itself into control of the world.
And that started to decline.
And that's what Jeff Thomas wrote.
That kind of goes in line with what we've been saying.
And it sort of underscores our big fears about for the future.
You know, I think so much of this starts off as a moral issue of the people, you know, looking for something for nothing and believing the wealth will last forever, have a military power that's the greatest, and having a currency that we can print endlessly.
And it does create what you were talking about, this dependency and getting rid of the work ethics.
But I think that it really boils down to how people react to having prosperity.
Because in many ways, it's ironic.
I think freedom and free markets and sound money gave us great wealth.
But in some ways, we became complacent for it because more people say, well, no, no, I don't want to participate.
Why don't you just give me help?
And so the welfare state grows.
So the wealth in itself is a temptation for people to go and drift.
And I think that's where we are right now.
We think it's going to last.
So many of our officials thought it would last forever.
And we're suggesting and agreeing with others who think that there will be an end to this.
And I think we're especially vulnerable more so than many other empires.
I think this empire is more powerful, bigger, and there's greater distortion and greater debt than any time in our history.
And it's because it is a global economy.
It is because of the consequence of the dollar becoming so powerful, especially after World War II, which enhanced our ability to become the dominant force.
And instead of thinking that, you know, that we're great because we're hardworking, we're great because we became the biggest counterfeiter in the history of mankind, and we're still doing it.
And this one thing that gets to me when they talk about this is there's always going to be a blame game.
You know, Republicans blame Democrats and vice versa.
But that's not where the real blame is going on.
Right now, people are looking to blame foreigners.
You know, it's Chinese.
It's all the Chinese fault.
They sell us too much cheap stuff, and we give them all that paper money.
And China and Russia's statistics aren't all that bad.
If you look at the growth that they do have, they have essentially no accumulation of debt.
Yet our debt is exploding.
And the GDP doesn't really represent growth.
Some of the statistics are the same as they were, you know, 10 years ago when the crunch came.
So in reality, so much is superficial and it's based on deficit financing and borrowed money, borrowed time.
And I think we have deceived ourselves.
But I think this is why there's so much disruption in the country and arguments going on now, because I think everybody sense there is a problem.
And of course, the noise is all coming from the socialists.
Yeah, yeah, we told you freedom and work.
That's why we have to have total socialism.
And they're all advocating that.
So I think that I think the people sense this.
Allies Leery Of The Bully00:05:44
And I think another healthy thing going on is the fact that people are leery of what's happening.
And that's why they're not as trustworthy of our government.
So I think that to find the truth, you have to become suspicious of the people who have been lying to us.
And that has been happening.
I think it's rather amazing that we live in an age where our leaders actually admit they lie and sort of giggle about it.
When you look at Bolton and Pompeo, they admit they lie.
And, you know, we talk about the new world order.
I think we have a new moral order, which is leading the charge in bringing down our establishment.
We bring down the empire, which is not a problem, but it's going to bring down the other things that made America great too.
And that's where our concern should be.
Yeah, exactly.
And, you know, it's hard to wake up to the reality of what's happening.
And it's, you know, so that's why you'll be called an American or something if you look at it.
But Jeff Thomas in this piece, this piece we're talking about, makes a good analogy.
We talk about the schoolyard bully, you know, where the bully slowly rises based on his strength and aggressiveness.
After a few fights, he's revered, then he's feared.
And then his lackeys are all around him.
But then he becomes hated.
And all the other kids want him to be defeated.
And finally, some boy steps up, or girl, I guess it could be, certainly, steps up who has the strength and determination and takes him on.
And he defeats the bully.
The toadies run for the hills.
And the toadies, of course, would be our allies.
And then once this is what we've talked about many times, Dr. Paul, in the show, once that bully is defeated and he's laying down there all bloodied and beaten, all the people, all of his toadies, everyone around him is gone.
And the people that feared him and hated him will be really, really happy to see the defeat.
And I think that's what we're seeing.
And certainly Jeff Thomas writes about this, about how our allies are shifting their view.
And I think really an extraordinarily important international event to think about this is for the U.S. getting out of the Iran deal.
That was a real wake-up call to our allies who have stood behind us, probably to a fault.
And all of a sudden, they look around and they see that the empire is acting absolutely irrationally and in a way that without question is hurting our interests.
And I think that might have been the high watermark, at least in terms of our allies opening their eyes and saying, we can't go along with this anymore.
This has gone too far.
Yeah, and I think they've gone along a good bit because we were in a better financial position and we could give them whatever they needed to be bribed into supporting us.
When this thing broke out in Venezuela, how many 20 countries said, oh, well, we support you.
Go do what you have to do.
And you know, they didn't support.
They probably just despise the fact that we were going to go in there and have another interference after all these years in Central and South America.
So they said, why are you doing this?
But they still put the name on because they're fighting because we still are powerful.
We can always come down on sanctions and freezing financial markets like we do.
And we can also use military power.
We can blockade and stop goods and services from going into a country and then freezing assets.
And they saying, well, we're preventing war.
But those are all acts of war.
And so we are engaged in war in many ways.
I think our allies, like you point out so well, is they're getting leery of this.
And I don't think we can depend on them at all.
And you also mentioned their point that, you know, the climax of this comes rather rapidly.
But I think the problems have to build.
I think that's the way, you know, stock markets are.
Stock markets go up and down and up and down, but they can rise steadily.
And look at what's happened even in these past couple years.
And even though we've had our problems, they keep growing and growing, even though it's on false assumptions.
But when the end comes, and we're not near, we're getting near, but we haven't had the end of the rising in the stock market.
Believe me, when it comes, it's going to crash is the way I believe.
And I think that's what happens to empires.
And that article pointed this out, that it weakens to the point when people give up.
And that takes us back to a lot of what's taught in Austrian economics.
There's a subjective factor in placing value on things.
So you can be deceived for subjective reasons to put more value on something.
But ultimately, the collapse comes when there will be an event that will finally shake the confidence.
So I think the confidence in our system and in our dollar is all an illusion.
And we will see that come.
And you know, Daniel, what I get asked a lot, and I'm sure you do too.
Well, you guys are worried about this.
Tell me what day that's going to happen.
So I'm not sure of that day.
So I'm going to let you answer that question.
When is this going to happen?
If you have any insight at all.
I remember very well sitting there in 1989 and watching all of a sudden them using hammers and chisels to break down the wall.
And none of us could catch our breath.
It was astonishing.
So I think it'll be like that.
All of a sudden, it just snowballs.
But, you know, you talk about our wars overseas, and that's important.
But I think another indication of an empire in collapse is that the government increasingly goes to war against its own citizens, and particularly the truth tellers.
Government at War Against Truth Tellers00:08:21
We talk a lot about the whistleblowers telling what is being done in our name.
And that's an important war against them, but also a war on citizens, the increase of the surveillance state.
Now they want to keep all of the Patriot Act stuff forever, never get rid of a spy on us always.
And then the other issue is how aggressively the U.S. government is at war against Americans, its own citizens.
They want to control any and eliminate any news or analysis that goes contrary to the establishment.
And we talked about this a little bit a couple of days ago, Dr. Paul, about this Bloomberg report that the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Project Research Projects Agency, DARPA, is going to war against what they call disinformation.
Basically, that means that DARPA is working on a system, as Kurt Nimmo wrote, working on a system preventing news and analysis contrary to the establishment narrative.
And that means a war against this program, a war against all of us who try to say that, no, our interventions overseas are not making things better.
They're making us poorer and people more miserable.
So you wonder how much more aggressive the U.S. government will be against people that are trying to get the truth out.
That's the part that's pretty scary.
Yes, it is.
And I mentioned that it's a shame now that our leaders, people who have important positions, sort of can giggle and say, well, that's my job.
I was in the CIA.
That's what they taught me to do, to lie.
And we're supposed to just brush that off.
But I think that has great significance.
But I think what you're talking about and what we're concerned about is, you know, the morality gets flipped.
And right now, you know, the saying, truth is treason in an empire of lies.
They live by their lies.
And if you come along, like you have and you've been attacked, you come along and you tell the truth, which we've emphasized, you know, the whistleblowers to get to proper recognition.
But they're the ones who are getting punished for telling the truth.
And that boils down to where the moral decay is.
And therefore, I think that is the reason that the empire ends.
And, you know, I keep thinking about even when the Soviet empire was big, we had a lot of reports, and they were probably most of the time true, is their society was decayed, you know, that they didn't do anything.
They didn't work and they drank a lot of alcohol and all those things.
And just look at, just look at the decay in our cities today.
Who would have ever dreamed that it could change so quickly?
You know, did anybody three or four or five years ago say, oh, Within a few years, we're going to see people living all over the streets of the big cities and without sewers and bathrooms and everything else.
So that's a rather quick, quick change.
But I think it's because they see that you can't tell the truth because that is treasonous, because the truth is relevant.
You know, communism always taught that they believe in truth as long as the party determines what is true or not.
But I think we're essentially at that point because why do our people, and we witnessed that when we were trying to stop us getting involved in Iraq, why do they believe this?
They go along with listening to the lies.
And then there's also this thing, if you don't go along with them, you're unpatriotic.
So I think the solution to so much of this is the truth, the truth about foreign policy, the truth about why they fight, and the whole thing that people have to know the truth about economic policy.
You know, this whole thing, this whole thing about, you know, that you don't have to work is crazy and that deficits don't matter.
That's really insane that they think that isn't the case.
And they look at this and say, you know, there's a basically rule in economics that Austrians emphasize a whole lot.
And it's been a long time.
It's been available to economics.
It used to be said originally that if I sold you something, you know, I had an advantage and you had the disadvantage.
It was never a trade-off.
But when people do it voluntarily, not one side wins over the other side.
Both sides win.
So that law and rule and understanding is totally destroyed.
And this idea that to live and eat and have a house, you know, you're supposed to work, you know.
And people say, well, that's cold and heartless.
Well, I would say that if you create an environment that turns our streets like San Francisco and LA and all these cities that look like third world cities, I would say if you're unconcerned about that and you perpetuate the philosophy that gave us that, that you don't have enough concern to study and find out what really causes the kind of problems that brings an empire down.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, I would just close out if we're ready.
Excuse me, by saying you talked about, you know, the war on truth tellers.
And I guess in my own small, relatively insignificant way, I got caught up in that, strangely enough.
And, you know, we've talked a lot on the show about how the social media uses NATO-funded and military industrial complex funded fact checkers and organizations to decide who should be banned and who should be silenced and how disturbing that is.
Well, it came home to Roost a few days ago when I found out, according to Twitter, that I've been permanently banned from Twitter for basically making fun of Sean Hannity.
I made fun of the fact that I watched his program and he was talking on and on about the deep state and the deep state.
And I looked at his lapel pin and he had a CIA lapel pin on.
So talking about the deep state while endorsing that very deep state.
And I jokingly said, you know, he acts like he's mentally retarded.
And that's probably not a very polite word, but certainly that is how he's acting.
The word is used by millions of people on Twitter with impunity.
But somehow in this case, I got caught up and they said because I did that, I was promoting hate.
And so banned permanently.
So not that my little effort to get the truth out is very significant, but it certainly means that I will not be able to tweak the noses of these sort of hypocrites, I think, any longer.
Okay, very good, Daniel.
And I'm going to finish off with a positive note.
Some days it's hard to find one, but there's a positive part of this.
I mean, more and more people are starting to realize that our government's lied to us.
More and more people will realize that the current status quo is ending.
The far left progressives know that, and they're lining up to pick up the pieces.
But I think those of us who believe in liberty and understand how it works and how free market property ownership works, this is good because it's not going to be changed by the Congress.
You can send a message and you can spread news that way.
But no, the empire has to end.
The whole system has to be rooted out.
And that has to happen for us to be able to assert and put our positions in place.
And this is where we have excelled.
The libertarian message, especially in the free market, is better understood than ever.
But the obstacles have always been great and they always will be great.
But I mean, if truth is on our side, eventually it's supposed to win out, even though all we have to do is convince them that we have changed the status quo.
We no longer believe that the empire should lie to us, and all we want to hear from the people is the truth.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to this Liberty Report.