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Nov. 3, 2019 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
47:35
'Breaking Washington's Addiction to War' - Ron Paul

Ron Paul delivers the keynote speech at this year's Ron Paul Institute Washington Conference on "Breaking Washington's Addiction to War."

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Time Text
Want to Hear the Truth 00:03:42
I don't really know how to introduce Ron Paul.
I work with him every day, and it's a joy and a delight, but it's a personal thing.
So I'll let Ron Paul speak for himself.
Dr. Paul.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
You know, when I give these speeches, I often think about giving a lot of other speeches.
And then I think about Washington.
David might have been the exception.
But the speeches I gave on the House floor, before I gave it or afterwards, I never got any applause.
But so it's great to be among friends who are willing to applaud and cheer us on because encouragement means a whole lot to us.
And that is why we do this.
It's a wonderful thing.
You know, I think most people know my background, but the background is probably pretty important because so often I have young people coming up to me.
And, you know, by the way, the number of young people here today and that has joined our movement, I really get a big kick out of that because they are the wave of the future.
But the young people, you know, have asked me quite frequently after, you know, sort of the light bulb goes on and say, I'd like to do that.
I think I want to be a congressman and I want to run for Congress.
And they'll come and ask me specifically, they say, how do I do it?
How do I become a Congress?
And I said, don't even think about it.
And there's a very real, real reason for that because when I was formulating my viewpoints and getting very interested in speaking out, that was the last thing from my mind was to go to Congress.
But in 1973 and 74, when I first announced and ran, it was a Watergate year.
Republicans were in the doldrums.
It was just horrible.
And Texas, even at that time, there were only three Republican congressmen in Texas.
So when I was looking around, I thought, well, maybe if I just announce as an independent, they'll let me talk about what I wanted to talk about.
And I was motivated a whole lot by the monetary policy and the breakdown of the Bretton Woods principle.
So I thought about the independent and then I changed my mind because the Republicans didn't have anybody.
Nobody wanted to run as a Republican.
And the incumbent congressman had been there for 25 years.
And so it was just, you know, who would ever want to do that?
But my motives were different.
And it wasn't to go to Congress.
And I remember telling Carol, and I probably told you this story a little bit before, but I told Carol, I said, you know, I'm thinking about running for Congress.
And she said, what in the world would you want to do that for?
And I said, well, she knew I was interested in the monetary issues and the gold standard and that sort of thing.
I just want to talk about that.
And she says, you know, that could be dangerous.
I said, how can it be dangerous?
She says, you could get elected.
Matter of fact, she said, you will be elected.
And I said, no, you don't get elected by running against Santa Claus and say, I'm not going to give you any more of your stuff.
But, you know, even back then, she said, people want to hear the truth.
Fed Creates Inflation 00:15:40
They want to hear the truth and they're going to believe what you're saying.
And you're going to get the votes and you'll be elected.
But, you know, over the years, the district changed a whole lot in Texas.
Basically, I live 50 miles south of Houston.
At one time involved Galveston, but went over and was even west of Austin.
So it was big and small and coastline and farmers and different things.
I can remember they had a major change with redistricting, and it went from a lot of farmers in rural areas to a coastline where there was a lot more chemical plants.
And I can remember the media coming up to me and they say, well, now what are you going to do?
You're going to have to change your story.
You're going to have to appease the people who work in chemical plants.
And you've been talking to the farmers.
I don't understand.
You know, I played the role.
I said, I don't understand what you're talking about.
If you're presenting the case for liberty, who cares where they work?
And, you know, I think that is the case.
We tend to put people in groups.
One thing that I've found over the years, especially running for office, and I hear it every send every time.
And it's impossible to ignore this, but because of the reality of it all.
But I don't like putting people into groups.
You know, what group do you belong to?
Oh, you know, I'm a Hispanic American.
I'm a Cuban American.
I'm a black American.
I'm a white American.
I'm an Asian American.
And all of a sudden they think, you're a part of a group.
And I think it just totally destroys the whole principle of individualism.
And I think that, and it's pumped up a lot.
And I think it stirs up dissent, you know, because how do the blacks vote?
They all vote the same way, don't they?
They don't even give anybody a chance.
And of course, our emphasis is on the individual.
I keep thinking that a true libertarian is probably genetically colorblind and that color shouldn't be seen at all.
And I think that's our big problem.
And it's a consequence of the fact that people were put in groups and they were punished, punished by laws and governments and other groups.
And therefore, these groups would come and fight back as a group.
But I don't like that.
I want to preserve the principle of liberty, which is individual and have individual sovereignty and self-reliance.
And the whole principle is totally different than what we have.
Now, I think this is a natural consequence of the fact that government's too big and they're collecting too much money.
They're printing too much money and they're passing out the loot.
And so people start lobbying for it.
You know, there's a lot of talk and it's all legitimate of the corruption in the political action committees, the PACs, and all the money that goes into campaigning.
And I'll have people come to me.
We want you to support this bill to really curtail the way these PACs operate and the people who donate money.
Now, if you have a free society, you don't have to worry about that because government wouldn't be passing anything out.
And besides, if you believe in the First Amendment, you don't believe that petitioning Congress should ever be regulated.
And I think that whole problem is a symptom of a problem.
And the problem is big government, big government serving special interests.
And therefore, the answer is always regulate them.
We'll create problems, but then we'll regulate.
It's somewhat like what happens with the Federal Reserve.
You know, the Federal Reserve gets involved in monetary policy and destroying the pricing structure, especially of money.
And then it invites regulations.
There's maldistribution and there's weak economies, recessions and inflations.
And we just have to regulate it and solve the problem instead of saying, well, the problem is the Federal Reserve.
So the solution is very easy.
Get rid of the Federal Reserve.
Now, that's a real radical idea.
Nobody wants to really talk about that.
But I did anyway.
I was looking back over some of my political things.
And that very first campaign in the early 70s, one of my positions was the gold standard.
And of course, people have made fun of it all.
And I talked about the Federal Reserve for a long time because I truly believe it is an engine.
It's an engine of inflation, the engine of distortion.
It's the engine of promoting big government.
It's so immoral.
And it's the way you pay for wars.
It's the way you pay for the welfare state.
So it is an important issue.
And it's not a new issue.
The whole issue of control of monetary policy has been there throughout history.
They did it differently.
They used to inflate by diluting the metal or clipping coins or whatever, even trying the various paper currencies.
And so it's been around for a long time.
But I think what happens is the government gets too big.
They can't afford it.
And they can't tax more.
And then they bring up this really immoral, evil monster of taxing people in a very sneaky way.
Just dilute the money, supply, you know, print up the money, and the wages will go up, the prices will go up, and everybody will be better off, which is a farce.
It's not true.
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer and then capitalism is blamed.
And that, to me, that is a real beef on my part, that the conditions that we have in this country today, they'll go back and the people who want to promote the socialism and bigger government will say, look at this discrepancy in wealth distribution.
This is not fair.
But I think many conservatives, many Republicans fall into the trap.
They defend the system that we have.
It's not defendable because it's not so easy.
They'd like to make it easy that there are Republicans and Democrats and they just happen to disagree.
But that's not the way the system is put together.
I make it more simple.
And the way I see this, instead of worrying about who's conservative and neoconservatives and all kinds of conservatives and neoliberals and old liberals and all this thing and trying to figure it out.
And then the libertarians come in and then there's some libertarians that aren't libertarians.
And I think there's only the one word that I like the best that can describe all these problems, whether it has your personal liberty being left alone, whether it's us minding our own business and not going overseas and tell other countries how to live and how to spend your own money.
And the word that I use, which I think describes it and makes it easier to sort out, is interventionism.
I don't want the government intervening in my personal life.
I don't want the government intervening in foreign policy.
I don't want the government intervening at all in anything that we do.
So non-intervention is the answer.
And yet today, where is there any non-intervention?
You know, I think the founders understood that pretty well.
But now we have, especially in this age of the internet and talking about freedom of speech, the undermining of the Fourth Amendment, what's going on today, it's really, really bad.
When I left Congress here a couple years ago, one comment, I had a little speech I gave, but one of the things I had some suggestions at the end.
But my one was that what you really need is to protect the First Amendment.
I believe in the Second Amendment too, but the First Amendment allows us to still come here, you know, our expression.
But it's not very secure because when you think of what's going on and think of the challenges we have with even using the Internet, I was excited about the Internet and I'm not, you know, a computer person, but boy, when I first discovered, somebody showed me this, you know, way back.
I said, where is this information coming from?
Out of the sky someplace.
And I wanted to know exactly where it was coming from.
You know, the internet is so great that I'm amazed.
You know, I write a lot of stuff, a lot of notes, read a lot of books, stick in here.
And I'm the worst, you know, I don't organize very well.
I don't have a good system.
And I can't find what I want all the time.
It works pretty well.
But it's pretty amazing when I have written something, I know about it, I know the title, and I said, I think it's up here, I think it's up here.
I go to the internet.
It's pretty bad when they're more organized on my stuff than I am with my own.
But the downside of this is they're so well organized, they know everything about me.
I don't want them to know.
I mean, they don't need to know about it.
So that is a big problem.
I think, you know, sorting all that out and intellectual theft and things that are going on now.
But I was very optimistic when the technology changed and we had the computers because I really believed that there would be challenges and difficulty.
But I've always had confidence, I still do, that the solution isn't government regulation.
I think it can come from the market.
If there are smart enough people to develop these things, they ought to be able to protect us from the danger being done.
I think now that I look back at it, I have a better understanding of it, the real problem was as this was developing, as social media was developing, it wasn't, oh, this is free enterprise at its best.
No, it was controlled by the government.
And they're nothing more now than the long arm of government, just like the military-industrial complex.
I mean, they are the ones that, you know, they're exempt from lawsuits and they turn everything over to the government.
They do anything the government asks them to do.
So that is a real problem.
But the answer to that is having enough technology in the free market to protect us against that without thinking that we need another 1,000, 10,000, 50,000 regulators to come in.
But that's the whole principle.
The government creates all these problems.
Like I said, the Fed creates the problem and it's done because of the mischief and the immorality of the Fed.
But the people scream, these things are happening.
Oh, well, we'll have regulation.
What about Dodd-Frank?
It was all regulating.
And every time there's been a major crisis, all the way back to the Depression, SEC comes in.
And after Enron, it's always another set of big regulations.
If you're not for them, you know, you're against the people.
Why don't we just eliminate the causes?
But we have, as a people, have become way too dependent on government.
But the good news is the numbers are coming our way.
It's like 68% of the people don't even believe the government.
And that is good.
I mean, daily basis, it's not only about the wars.
They lie us into the wars, but they also lie about economic statistics.
What was the report this week?
500, was it 500,000 jobs that they said that were new jobs?
And they say, oh, that was a mistake.
None of those jobs were created.
And then they'll talk about inflation.
Oh, yeah.
This is absolutely bizarre.
If you were looking for why the Fed was designed, it was supposed to be for a stable currency and get rid of this inflation.
But if they print all this money, trillions and trillions of dollars, but it didn't go where they wanted, then they say, oh, what we have to do is we have to find out how to make the CPI go up faster than 2%.
How can we destroy the purchasing power of the average person faster and faster?
Of course, even now, and it depends on the people.
If you're retired and on a tight income, your inflation rate might be 5%.
And others don't even need to care.
You know, they don't care what the price of clothes and food and medical care costs.
It's something they can ignore.
But this whole idea that they design a policy and the money goes buying debt, increasing debt and bonds.
And then all of a sudden they say, well, we need more money spent by the consumer.
That's why I think the next go-around, the next QE, which is coming, it's going to be more directed to the consumer and to the individual.
You know, the helicopter money, you know, get it down there, get it into the pockets of people, and you have to spend it.
And, of course, some of that stuff can move rather quickly.
And the whole thing isn't going to be turned off with better management.
That's the whole thing.
Better management of all that's going on in Washington is not going to be changed by electing a few more congressmen.
That doesn't mean I'm against that because I happen to have fallen into that trap and went up there and tried to make the best of it.
But no, the whole thing is that the people will have to respond eventually to this and the people will.
And that's why I think it's so great that the education is there.
But in the 70s, when I went up there and talked about the Federal Reserve, you know, their eyes glazed over and everybody thought you needed a Federal Reserve.
What do you want to audit the Federal Reserve?
And on and on.
It's different now.
I think that when we read stuff like David Stockman and others, that when this bus comes, I don't think the Fed's going to get a free ride.
And I think this is going to be more than just the Fed not getting a free ride.
I don't think interventionism is going to get a free ride.
I don't think our foreign policy is going to get a free ride because this thing is going to come down and our empire is going to end.
They all end.
I mean, and sometimes they end quickly.
Like most of the time, they end quickly.
But, you know, even our sharp downturn, Solomon Brothers, were rather a sudden event that caused a lot of trouble that we're still not out of it.
So there will be a cataclysmic event economically that's going to bring this down.
And we will bring our troops home.
You know, they're coming home.
And I think the other thing that's been talked about is what is this going to do with our position in the world?
And fortunately, the reason the empire goes is that we won't be believable.
We won't have the money.
Lot of Confidence in Young People 00:02:51
And all the enemies that we have made, you know, how can they be friendly to us?
Because we go, we have this foreign policy.
It's magic.
We march into a country and say, well, we like your country.
We like your oil.
And what we want you to do is ABC and we'll give you a lot of money.
We'll give you foreign aid and all this stuff.
But if you don't, we're going to give you a lot of bombs.
We're going to bomb you.
And they usually capitulate and say, well, I don't think bombing is a good idea.
So they capitulate and go with the numbers.
And that's why we're in 180 countries and we continue to be.
But I think it's going to end.
And in spite of all these problems, I'm still on the side of optimism because I think technology is fantastic.
And for some reason, I have a lot of confidence in young people, young people.
And I'm delighted to see young people at our conference.
And we believe when we left Congress that our, you know, the Institute will not appeal to the young people.
But I was convinced there was something else true about it because of my experience running for Congress and going to the campuses.
And I thought this issue isn't a conservative issue, obviously.
And if you can find good progress, progressive, you can have this, you know, the coalition coming together.
And I think of an audience like this because I've just talked to a lot of people, and your backgrounds aren't the same.
They're different.
Some were liberals, some were socialists, some were conservatives, libertarians, and people come together.
But to me, not only do we come together because we know we're sick and tired of wars and they're not part of our history, it's not part of our constitution, but just think of the mess we have.
And you say, well, how are we going to have assimilation and diversity and everybody gets this?
And so did I.
We need a lot of good management for this.
But just think about it.
We still are going to have people socially liberal and their lifestyles, their religious beliefs are going to be different.
And if you think you're going to change it, you're not.
And there's going to be people who spend their money differently.
Some people might even go out and gamble and stuff like that and play cars and waste their money and do things.
And they will have different reasons.
Other people will want their freedom for other things.
And most people think it's a good idea to spend your own money.
Even the college kids that were considered radical leftists, I got loud cheers when I said, I think you have the right to go out and earn your money.
You have the right to keep it.
You have a right to spend it any way you want.
Why Freedom Matters 00:10:33
And they usually knew that when I talked about lifestyles, I never said it, but they knew exactly what I was talking about with the tolerance of a lifestyle.
As long as you don't hurt somebody else, what you eat, drink, and smoke, that's your business.
And I used to get a big kick out of it because I'd go through that litany and then I would say, and I even believe you have the right to drink raw milk if you want to.
Now, I thought that, oh, how'd that get out of my head?
So there was applause.
And as the years went on, it got louder and louder.
But you all know about the principle is so perfect.
You know, why aren't we allowed to drink raw milk?
You know, the government has to tell us.
And I was raised.
My parents had a small dairy.
It was a retail dairy, but it was sort of out in the country.
And we gathered up the milk from the farmers.
But we didn't drink raw milk.
And my dad strongly believed in pasteurization.
I often wondered, what would he think if I'm out there promoting raw milk?
Because I think back then, cleanliness and sterility was very important for selling milk.
And probably before refrigeration, that was the era that he grew up.
When I try to make the point of how wonderful technology is, and I really think it's great.
You know, if you just look back and the first person back you can remember who was 90 years old, immediately you get to talking to people before the Civil War period.
You know, my dad delivered milk and a horse and buggy.
You know, and that's just a short period of time.
And my beef on all this is technology is fantastic.
And already we talked about computers.
They're fantastic, but they're used by the government to spy on us.
And they should be used for other reasons.
And so the technology is out there.
But think of all the wonderful technology that has raised the standard of living by millions of people in spite of the government.
And yet the technology is used also, and unfortunately made me even more so for war.
Just take for instance, nuclear power.
If nuclear power had been handled a certain way, it could have been a peaceful thing, given a lot of energy, maybe cleaner, who knows what.
But then you have, within months or weeks, we blow up a couple cities and kill hundreds of hundreds of thousands of people.
But that's true about everything.
Jet engines, jet engines are great.
But, you know, it's the war effort that pushed that.
And so much technology is used to kill people.
Where we lack advancement is the social advancement, getting along with people.
You think if the human race is improving, and in many ways we are, that we would be able to have less wars.
So I still believe in that.
I don't know what the results will be, but I think there is a natural instinct for people to prefer peace over war.
And I found that to be the case with the young people because I talked a whole lot about interventionist war and the war position and the Constitution.
And that's where, visibly, that's where I saw more of the support.
We had large crowds and large people.
And still today that I see people who have started their own organizations.
And this whole idea that somebody started an organization, they have so many people.
And I keep thinking, well, you know, in some ways, I see that as enhancing the remnant.
There's always a remnant, a spiritual remnant, an economic remnant.
There's retention, no matter how bad it is.
So the Soviet system, when it collapsed, Russia didn't have to go to the scratch completely, to scratch, that there is a remnant of people who remember and do things.
And that's why I think that it's exciting to see the young people coming in this direction.
And one of our, I think it was our biggest turnout was at Berkeley.
And that made me feel good because there were, you know, you talk about the violence on the campuses now.
And I guess back then, 10 years ago, maybe life was different.
Maybe it was more vision.
But, you know, they had that banking, Wall Street movement or things going on.
And that occasionally show up.
But really, the issue of liberty and saying that liberty is for everybody, use it any way you want to, one rule, don't hurt anybody.
That's breaking the rules.
And what are the rules?
Well, the one rule has four things.
No lying, cheating, stealing, or killing.
Oh, my goodness.
You really want to restrict the government, don't you?
Yes, we do.
And as time went on, a lot of people said, why didn't you join the gang after being up there?
Actually, the opposite has happened.
I was much more tolerant of the existence of government, you know, before.
Now, I think the government is the real culprit.
I really do.
But it's the dependency on it.
It's the people.
It's the educational system.
In those same crowds, you know, that came out to hear me on campuses.
It was still the government student loan programs that existed.
It's all out there.
But that all's going to end with the bankruptcy.
The bankruptcy is working its way through.
And that's what, you know, the Fed was created in 1913.
It financed World War I.
And then we had to have some correction.
And we had the Depression.
And that was the time that they were moving along quickly.
They said, the American people are too stupid.
And we're going to take their gold in.
So they confiscate gold.
So it was on and on.
So that was a declaration of a bankruptcy.
They wanted to just print, print, print.
But then again, they held out and said, well, we can't overdo this.
We better at least pay off the foreigners that hold dollars.
And we promised at $35 an ounce, we'll give them an ounce of gold.
And they started doing this.
And the one person that did it the most was de Gaulle.
And boy, the American people disliked de Gaulle because he wanted the promise paid for.
But no, we went ahead April, August 15th, 1971.
Get out of our way.
We're closing the window.
We're putting on wage and price controls, putting on tariffs and all the mess.
And that was another declaration of bankruptcy.
So the theme that I really pursue now in my own mind in my writing is that the country is bankrupt.
It's literally bankrupt.
And financially, I think that case is easily made.
You know, when you talk about the trillions and trillions of dollars, and then you talk about the trillions and trillions of dollars of creating new money, not going into GDP or growth.
It really isn't.
That creation and duplicating monetary units has nothing to do with increasing wealth in a country.
So that is what they do.
It's distortion.
It's a source of problem.
And that is a bankruptcy.
And most people are starting to realize it, even though this administration hasn't quite caught on yet.
You know, the spending continues.
And in Washington, the deal is between two groups.
You get rid of those two groups, you'll be okay.
It's the Republicans and the Democrats, conservatives and liberals.
It happened all the time I was back there.
It used to be, you know, Tip O'Neill and a Republican getting together.
Then it was Pelosi.
Now it's and Boehner.
Now it's Pelosi and Trump making these deals.
And they get together.
There's no two-party system.
The philosophy is bankrupt.
The people are bankrupt.
And they're all in this game of deception together.
Because if you look at it, is there a real anti-war segment from the progressive Democrats?
It doesn't exist.
They're total hypocrites.
They don't believe in that.
So there's no anti-war, but certainly not in the Republican Party.
How about the Fed?
Who's leading, which party really leads the charge?
Now, we had some sex with the Campaign for Liberty, our lobbying organization.
We worked real hard to get people to know about the Fed as symbolic to audit the Fed.
And we passed it twice in the House of Representatives, and all the Republicans supported it.
Not because they cared a hoot about me, but we didn't, and it wasn't that they listened to my speech, but we went to the people and the people went to the congressman.
So the system, in a way, worked by changing people's ideas because otherwise they say, Ron, what you need to do is be a little quieter.
You know, after time, you can be the chairman of the committee and you get all these things through.
You're nuts.
That's not good.
That's not going to work.
So they do this.
And the people realize this.
And I think they're recognizing the bankruptcies here.
But the other half of the bankruptcy that I talk about more so now because it is important.
And it's been mentioned in this conference today.
And that is the moral bankruptcy.
I think, you know, all this stuff going on encourages people to act in a way that we would consider immoral.
They become dependent and they want more and more.
I don't think it works that as much as the morality of the people succumb to disobeying the Constitution and they create the mess.
Moral Bankruptcy Encourages Disobedience 00:13:54
And many of the founders argue the case that this Constitution laws can't do anything to promote liberty.
That is not it.
The liberty is promoted in the hearts and minds of people.
And this is why I support organizations like this and campaign for liberty and all these things that we do.
And another program that I have, I'm sure a few of you have heard of it, I think it's very important, and that is homeschooling.
And I think when it dawned on me what was going on, I read whatever I could.
I thought to myself, you know what I'm doing is I'm unlearning all the bad stuff I was taught in 12 years of government schools.
So it is an alternative.
It's still available, even though there's a lot of people who would like to challenge it and they have over the years.
But independent private schools, homeschooling, but a lot of people probably have done it like I have.
And that is just go on your own, you know, and read.
And just think of, just think of what Lou has done.
You know, we have a few little pamphlets, you know, I know, so puny.
Lou, you make me feel so puny.
You go to the Mises Institute and you can have shelves of everything.
You can see every book Murray ever wrote and Mises, the whole work.
Now, he's made a big difference.
But everybody makes a difference that cares about this, even if it's one at a time.
And I think that's when the people, the young people, come and I say, don't make the goal of going to Congress your whole issue.
That isn't it.
They want to know how to raise money and get organized and campaigning.
And that has never crossed my mind.
That wasn't what I was thinking about.
But a favorite teacher of mine, I call him my teacher, was the head of the Foundation for Economic Education, Leonard Reed.
And he had instructions.
Not only was he good on all the issues, but he was also good on how to teach people.
Matter of fact, I think Daniel and whatnot, and we sort of copy Lou is getting small groups together and giving lectures on.
That was Leonard Reed's way of doing it.
But his instruction, he really didn't care that much about politicians, but he did have me up there once in a while to talk.
But he said that the responsibility of the individual is to be well informed.
And for the most part, the information you have and your understanding is self-motivated.
And that, he said, if you become somebody that knows something, the answer to it isn't becoming aggressive in promoting your ideas.
Like, oh, I know the answer for this.
Get out of my way and do it my way.
Matter of fact, I was extremely on the opposite side in Washington because I didn't think anybody really cared.
And I found out later on more people cared than I realized.
But no, his point was, become informed.
Somebody's going to come along or you'll have your own idea.
Somebody in this conference already told me what he's doing.
I said, there, you know, people would come and what would I tell them?
What do I do?
What do I do?
And I said, do whatever you want.
And that's it.
And people have done it in different ways.
They've started different organizations.
And of course, coming here, I would hope that it's always do your thing, come, learn more, but have fun too.
And I think that happens at our conferences.
And I think that's important because if it's all a bore and you think the world ends totally tomorrow, you know, that's not very exciting.
So there's a lot of good things that happen.
But, you know, I do think the moral crisis is here.
The founders warned us about it, that if you don't have a moral society and manners, they called it, you can't, the Constitution doesn't mean anything.
But what's going to happen when the big one really hits?
I think there's grassroots out there.
I'm more optimistic now than I was in the 1970s.
You know, libertarianism is a pretty new word back then.
You know, they only had a candidate in 1972 for the first time.
So, no, it's doing very much better.
There's no reason why we can't be optimistic, but the individual has to do something about it.
Some people will seek you out and they will use you, but you have to have fun doing it.
And I think that the timing is something that is age-old.
I don't think we're going to have the cure, but I think we can have the improvement.
I think we can move in a direction away from what we do.
We can have a lot less.
You know, so far, you know, the tragedy of the 19 or the 20th century was horrible and it's horrible now.
But, you know, we're not dropping nuclear weapons.
And, you know, we don't have the tanks rolling, but we have people spying on us.
So it's a different battle that's going on.
But, you know, I indicated I'm not too happy with who really controls the internet, even though I use it every day and they have a good filing system for me.
I've also been fascinated with this talk about and the articles that came out with the Quincy Institute.
That to me is pretty fascinating because, you know, there were times when I'd want to understand Soros a little bit more and I'd go back and read what he believed in and his statement.
I said, you know, it doesn't sound that bad.
I know what he's doing didn't sound very good.
But, you know, some of the principles, I thought, well, that doesn't sound too bad.
And of course, Charles Koch, somebody I've known, and he makes statements.
Occasionally, they're pretty libertarian.
But I think of the two of them, it's not exactly the answer, but now they're coming together.
And I like coalitions because, you know, I like to work with people like Ralph Nader and the different congressmen, Dennis Kucinich, bring people back.
They're over here and here, and try to bring them together with the issue of individual liberty.
And I think it's conceivable.
But this is something that can be done, and we should encourage, you know, bringing people together.
And that's why I really am optimistic about the positiveness of the ideas of liberty, because it's not divisive.
You don't come out and say, well, all right, I have this plan.
I know how we're going to get all the races to come together.
There will be no racism and we're going to have a wonderful world.
No, you just teach people about why you don't want to be killed and you're not going to kill anybody else.
You know, just bring that out together.
But it's hard for some people because some are very aggressive hawks and they think we have this moral obligation to go over there and defeat that dictator that's killing his own people, gassing his own people.
And then others will say, well, we have to feed them over here.
So we have to steal from you, take the food and put it over there and let them fight out which warring faction gets to take our food that we send over there.
No, it's not like that.
It doesn't work that way.
Besides, our side of the argument is it's more efficient.
I mean, what is being done is, well, some of the progressives, Democrats would say, well, yeah, we don't want any of these wars, but we want the money and we'll do this and we'll either spend it on welfare here or welfare over there.
So they don't quite get there.
But giving up the violence, I think, is a good idea.
But the violence, the violence is the real issue that we have to deal with.
And that's why the non-aggression principle is so important, because it's not complicated.
If you go out and ask a thousand people on the street and define it, do you think people have the right to come and take money out of your pocket?
Do you think that people have a right to tell you what church you have to go to?
Do you think it's right for us to start a war with our CIA having regime change in Venezuela because we don't like the guy that got elected?
Nobody's going to say, yeah, we like that idea.
They're not going to do that.
So it's something that it's the information that we have to get out there.
Because I think politically speaking, I think if it's a real contest, I think the peace candidate wins.
And I think in the last election, Trump was the peace candidate.
He made more sense on it.
And here we had Hillary.
And now, even the stuff coming out on Obama, I think foreign policy was even worse than I realized.
He was sneakier about it.
That's probably one thing I like about Trump.
He has his problems, but he's not sneaky.
He parts it out.
We know where he stands.
But I wished he'd, well, I don't want to get into that.
But it is wonderful that we've been able to come together.
And I think we plan to continue to do that through this.
And of course, I want to thank everybody for coming and the support that you've given us.
And I hope on occasion you take a look at the Liberty Report.
And I think we have to recognize that we couldn't have had our program here, believe me, if we hadn't had Daniel doing all the work.
Of course, that's not quite fair.
He already recognized the fact that he has enslaved his family to do their work.
No, Daniel, you've done a great job.
You kept this going.
It was your idea to get it started.
And I came along for the ride to see what would happen.
And I think that things work out always a lot better than I expect.
I don't over expect a lot of people will come up to me and say, how did you ever stand it up there in Washington?
Didn't you get so disgusted with that?
I said, I never did.
I said, I was never bothered about it.
I said, I just had low expectations.
And I did well.
And, you know, I think there is more hatred and all that mess up in Washington.
It's probably worse even in this short period of time.
But I didn't experience it because I think I guarded myself against it.
I had no political instincts of saying, you Republicans did this, you Democrats did this, and argued back and forth.
To me, it was always about the ideas.
And it became neutral, more or less.
And I was always looking for an opening.
And some people would come and they'd sit down and ask me, why did you vote this way?
You're the only ones doing this.
And I'll finish with one story about those lonely votes.
And that had to do with the gold coin votes.
I imagine some of you heard of the Congress would come up with a $30,000 gold coin to honor somebody.
And they were very good and nice people.
I think it was various religious leaders and all.
Mother Teresa got one.
Father O'Connor got one.
Cardinal O'Connor.
Anyway, it came up and I voted against all of them.
I said, well, I can't read it.
Article 1, Section 8, where does it say that we can tax the people and get this coin and give them this honor?
And one time I played the Davy Crockett story, I went down the floor and I said, all right, you guys want to give the Cardinal a gold coin.
I said, I'll put $100 down and I'll contribute it.
Nobody volunteered to pay it.
And it's when they take your money, then they can do all these good things.
But that was a lonely vote.
And by the time I got back to the office, the staff, they usually don't get too excited.
They were pretty excited this time.
And the person doing the press came out and said, oh, we're getting calls and the New York Times really want to know why did you do this?
Is he anti-Catholic or what's going on?
And the staffer said, he says, I just told him that you vote against all those things on principle.
And the people at the New York Times, oh, okay.
What good are you if you're voting on principle?
So, you know, it was, you know, a lot of fun doing it that way.
But a few people would come up and they would change their votes after a while.
I felt good and badly about losing Walter Jones, who was on our board and all.
But Walter Jones was really, really hawkish, you know, in the war.
And he changed his mind on that and gave me some credit for it.
But people will change.
Most people in Washington, you might not want to believe this.
Most people I've ever met, if I had up all the people in Washington, the people I met in the military, the people I met in my schools, in my medical practice, you know, everybody was pretty nice.
People Know What's Coming 00:00:51
I never ran into vicious stuff.
And so when I see that stuff on TV with the politicians going at it, I think, yes, it's a little bit different.
It's a little bit worse.
But I think what you're seeing is the frustration of the bankruptcy.
They know, people know what's coming.
And I think the Federal Reserve knows what's coming.
They're planning the next QE.
They're prepared.
And I think we all should be prepared.
And we have a list of things on for survival, but that's set aside.
There's only one thing you can do to really prepare because if you do, if you think you're going to have canned goods and gold, the government is too powerful.
If they don't want you to have it, they're going to come and take it.
The only thing that will preserve and protect us is the protection and the preservation of our liberty.
Thank you very much.
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