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Nov. 29, 2019 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
46:46
Ron Paul Classic: My Battle Against the Fed

We hope you enjoy Ron Paul's speech from the 2010 Mises Institute Conference at Jekyll Island, Georgia.

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Time Text
Ron Paul's Vision 00:02:42
Dr. Ron Paul first started reading Austrian economists when he was in medical school.
Studied them, studied libertarian theory, studied American history.
And when Richard Nixon on August 15th, 1971 closed the gold window and imposed price and wage controls, struck him like a bolt of lightning, as I think it struck many of us.
And he saw at that time what this meant.
What it meant was for the first time in world history, you would have the World Reserve Currency, central bank, with absolutely no restrictions on the creation of money.
And he knew that this might take a while, but at some point it was going to mean disaster for the United States and disaster for the world.
And so he decided he was going to dedicate his life in his educational way, in public office, all his speeches and his writings to fighting the Fed, to fighting for sound money, to fighting for all the values that go along with sound money and honest money.
Mises Institute was very blessed in the beginning to have his support to help us get going.
He made a huge impression on everybody who had anything to do with him all his career, whether as a doctor, very successful obstetrician and gynecologist delivering 4,000 babies, or as a public official.
But boy, everything sure came together when he ran for president.
He called forth millions of young people, changed hearts and minds, and I think now, as everybody in the country is aware, does a very good job of confounding bad guys in power, whether it's Rudy Giuliani or Ben Bernanke or Alan Greenspan or all the rest of them.
So we're very honored at the Mises Institute to have Ron as our distinguished counselor all these years, to have him as a role model, if I can use that phrase.
And I hope you'll, as I know you will, help me welcome this great American.
As somebody pointed out to me last night, Harry Tinsley, there's been nobody in public life in this country like Ron Paul since the days of Jefferson and Randolph and John Taylor of Caroline and men of that sort.
So how blessed and lucky we are to be living in the age of Ron Paul.
Dr. Paul, come and talk to us.
Ron Paul's Vision 00:15:31
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Like I've said so many times, I like to get out of DC because I never get an applause up there.
Among friends, it's sort of very nice to be here and get that.
And nice to be among so many who are obviously supporters of the Mises Institute, but obviously supporters of what I've been trying to do.
Lou had a grand idea about the Mises Institute, and I've had my own little angles about how to change the world.
But the truth is, is Lou can't do it by himself, and I can't do it by myself.
There has to be people like you to support us and get behind us because there's nothing that comes easily, and you can have a grand idea, but it doesn't work unless you have support.
So it's really nice to be here with so many good supporters of the freedom movement.
Lou mentioned about Carol's birthday.
I was going to do that.
He sort of stole my thunder.
But I will add one thing, though, about that.
I think I was, I don't know, misled a little bit, or I maybe was fooled into believing that I'd get away without giving birthday presents about every four years, but I haven't gotten away with that one bit.
She claims that she has a birthday on the 28th and March 1st, so she wants two days instead of no days on these off years.
So it's one thing, but she has stayed rather young, but right now when she has her next birthday, she'll be the same age as I am.
But, you know, she and I have been married for a couple years, something like 53 or so, somewhere around in there.
And, you know, we talk to a lot of young people about the freedom movement, but I think that those who aren't young are young at heart.
And we're, I hope, considered young at heart because over the years, we have always, you know, wanted to build a house for ourselves.
And we're in the same house that we moved into when I started my medical practice back in 1968.
But we were always too busy raising kids, sending kids to school, medical practice, campaigning, and we never got around to it.
But we finally, we had bought the land for the house 40 years ago.
But we finally are getting to the point where we're probably going to build this house.
And when I bought the land, I found out that there was a real nice slope and a creek running through it.
And I thought, boy, this would be great.
I'll never have to worry about drainage.
So we went out about a year ago to get a building permit.
And I don't know if anybody's involved in development or anything, but you just don't walk up.
We know we have to have a permit.
You don't walk up and give them $25 and get a permit.
It's taken us almost a year.
I mean, you've got to go to the city, you got to go to the county, you've got to go to the Corps of Engineers, you've got to go to FEMA, you've got to just beg and plead, you've got to find out the regulations about septic tanks and wells.
And, you know, I was having so much trouble, but we finally had success.
And I want to tell you, this tells you that the system really works.
It really does work.
It's cumbersome, it's bureaucratic, it's nonsense, you know, it's a nonsense for us, and it's very frustrating.
But tell you what, the political system really works because I finally got it done when I called my congressman.
So it is rather frustrating, but I've said for years that we don't own our property.
Believe me, I just found out you don't own your property.
We rent our property, we pay taxes on it, and then if we want to use it, it isn't very easy.
And you have to fight to be able to use your own property.
Last week or so, I guess it was about a week ago, we had this little gathering up in Washington.
It was called CPAC.
Anybody hear about CPAC?
There were a lot of people who didn't like the outcome, and they actually booed the outcome.
And that was so depressing, it broke my heart.
But the one thing, though, that got me out of out of being depressed over those who didn't like the results, I found it rather entertaining because there was a lot of talk about this event on the internet.
But I noticed one suggestion that I thought was rather interesting.
And the suggestion was, well, the whole thing was rigged because there were too many young people.
It was those people that were under 25.
So the person writing in said, CPAC, if they want to exist as a viable organization, they have to change the rules of voting.
Nobody's allowed to vote if they're under 25.
So, you know, there used to be a saying you can't trust anybody over 30.
And I'm just wondering that are they going to try to exclude anybody under 25?
You can't trust them either.
But I'll tell you what, from the many people I've been running into, the under 25s, they're very much alert to what's happening.
and I'm going to stake out my position with them because that's where I see a lot of encouragement and where we should be working.
You know, the booing has happened to me more than once.
You know, in the presidential campaign on occasion, there was booing.
And occasionally, you know, there was resistance by the Republican leadership.
Can you believe that?
They resisted the few things that I was saying and doing.
But it was just a little bit bewildering, and it tells you a little bit about where we are when individuals who consider themselves the elite and the leaders and those who are setting the standards.
If one takes the position that the Constitution is worth following, since many, like everyone is supposed to promise to follow the Constitution, but literally ridicule us who believe in these things, that there's something wrong.
And then we come up with this whole idea about going to war.
Oh, yeah, they love war, but they don't even want you to have to declare it.
And remember, I told a story a while ago about when we were getting ready to go into Iraq, and I insisted that we have a vote on declaring war or not.
And guess what?
The chairman of the International Relations Committee said, oh, this is frivolous.
Why are we doing this?
That part of the Constitution is anachronistic.
We don't follow it anymore.
And this is the attitude that we put up with.
But one of the things I have found when I talk to the young people on the campuses is that when I ask them, what got your interests?
And some will say, you know, your position on the war or your position on Austrian economics and the position on the Fed.
But very often they'll say, it's your position on the Constitution that you follow the Constitution, and they like that, and that invites them in, and then they look at our whole entire freedom philosophy.
So I see that as just a wonderful thing.
I am encouraged because of two things.
I believe that that remnant of people, and I'm sure there are plenty in this room who have been thinking along these terms, fighting and understanding it, and feeling so frustrated, especially 25 or 30 years ago, we're less frustrated now because of organizations like the Mises Institute.
But that remnant is much bigger.
And the Bible tells us you can't measure the remnant of the true believers who will hold things together.
And to my amazement, it was.
It was much, much bigger.
And it wasn't individuals that had not ever heard of our philosophy.
It was people who were just sort of waiting and what can we do and sick and tired of the political process.
And it was enough to energize them.
But to me, even the bigger surprise was to find out how ready the next generation is to looking at the freedom philosophy, sound money, free markets, personal liberty, a change in foreign policy.
As far as I'm concerned, that is fantastic, and the reason why we ought to all be optimistic about what we can do in the future.
Today I want to talk a little bit about the Federal Reserve.
I think that is one of the subjects we've had here at this event.
And I've spent a few hours of my life thinking about the Federal Reserve and trying to do something about it.
But I think what has happened here recently with the passage of the audit the Fed in the House of Representatives is an example of what we can do if we stir up the grassroots.
And not only has this been beneficial, and so many different individuals got interested in this, it goes to show that if you're on the right track and you are speaking the truth, that it will not be endorsed as a partisan issue.
Transparency of the Fed is not a partisan issue.
It's a bipartisan issue.
It's pervasive.
Not because the politicians in Washington got together and say, oh, okay, let's do something in a bipartisan faction.
They don't do anything in a bipartisan faction on purpose because what they're involved in is political power.
They endorse very similar views, but it's a true political power struggle.
But the fact that the grassroots had been awakened enough to get the message to their members of Congress had to do with so many of those who joined us in that effort, 317.
All the members of Congress have supported this bill.
And this, I think, demonstrates rather clearly that the attitude of the people is very, very important.
And if we see that, it should encourage us because when the time comes when we are forced into monetary reform, if the people are demanding that we not put up with a secret organization like the Federal Reserve that gets to print this money and do all this mischief and also follow the dictates of the Constitution, I don't see any reason why we can't win this fight.
It's not going to be easy, obviously, but this system is going to end.
And therefore, we are going to have the opportunity.
Matter of fact, this morning there was an article on the internet dealing with the IMF.
They've been stirring around and talking about what they would like to do.
And they are talking about the alternative.
They know what we know.
They know this system is not viable and something has to be done.
But they're working on an international paper currency run by the IMF.
You know, something online of the SDRs.
But, you know, we have a good test of this when an artificial fiat currency is designed, not as an outgrowth of a sound currency, but one that is designed.
And maybe that will give us a hint as to what will happen when the IMF comes up with their next one.
Maybe we can look to the Euro to find out what's going to happen, you know, to the next worldwide fiat currency.
But if we had our way, we would have an international currency.
We would have a global currency and we would have globalism based on free trades and friendship with other nations and a commodity-backed currency, but not a political money.
So it is a struggle, and that is what's going to happen because this system can't last.
It's going to break down.
This week, I don't know if you noticed, but I did have a little conversation with our friend Chairman Bernanke.
Anybody see that this past week?
But he was a little bit disturbed.
And when I speak, I hope I can speak for others other than just myself.
when he claimed that what I was asking him and insinuating certain things have been done by the Federal Reserve, he had the nerve to say that we have bizarre ideas and I would say let's prove someday that he's the one that has the bizarre ideas, us.
But the Fed has a precise function for the politicians.
And I sort of addressed this in my five minutes.
But I was claiming that I was trying to answer very briefly, which you don't have much time to do it in five minutes.
but the Fed's claim is always, oh, if the Congress knows what they're doing and they can have oversight, the Fed could be politicized.
And we wouldn't want a political system like that.
Oh, no, they're not politicized.
Just the fact that they can help out Goldman Sachs, that's not political.
Just the fact that they have to respond to the president and they work closely with the Treasurer, Secretary of the Treasury.
Oh, no, that's not political.
But I mentioned to him, I said, you know, you don't want us to have anything to say about it because the Congress would encourage you to inflate the currency and keep interest rates too low.
And the whole world is saying and accept the fact that one of the reasons we got ourselves into this mess is the Fed kept interest rates too low and for too long.
And what did you do when you got in?
You lowered them even more.
And then you say that the Congress would have too much influence on inflating the currency and keeping interest rates too low.
It's a preposterous argument.
He didn't respond to that question that I had on that one.
But I did tell him that there's more to this political association than behind the scenes, the political control of the Fed, because it is politicized for the special interest.
But I told him that the Federal Reserve and the Congress have a very cozy relationship.
The truth is, is not many members really understand in details nor care a whole lot, but those who created the Fed and those who manage affairs and the reason why leadership on Republican and the Democratic side aren't interested in having true monetary reform is that Congress can't exist without the Fed.
Congress And The Fed's Cozy Relationship 00:15:23
They're not enemies.
I mean, what would happen if we had nobody to arbitrarily expand the money supply?
And the Congress would be in a mess.
So Congress likes to spend money.
They get to do the things they want.
If they want to manage the world and they want to have a welfare state and they want to get re-elected, spend money.
That's the name of their game.
And they can tax to a degree, but there's always a limitation.
They can borrow to a degree and there's always that limitation or the interest rates will go up and you don't want the interest rates to go up.
So you have to get the money somehow.
And that, of course, is invoking the inflation tax.
And you print the money, the value is down, prices go up, and somebody has to pay that.
And that really and truly is a tax because somebody's paying for this by higher prices.
And I bring this up when I'm asked about medical care, but I'm convinced there's an inflation tax on medical care, much more so in other things, because we do know that inflating the money supply doesn't raise wages and prices all up evenly or it wouldn't be much of an issue.
Some things go up faster.
The things that the government's involved in will push prices up much faster than others.
So this, the medical care costs are high because there's a big inflation tax on it, plus all the other things that they do, which I won't get into.
So here the Federal Reserve is a taxing agency and it serves the Congress by allowing the Congress not to raise taxes.
If the people want all the spending and the Congress couldn't work with the Fed to inflate the currency, the Congress would have to borrow and push up interest rates or tax and get the people angry.
So as long as they can get away with this, they can, and they have for a long time.
And this, of course, is what I saw in 1971, the handwriting on the wall that this would be an explosion.
And it is.
If you look at anything, any chart since 1971, when it comes to the size of government, the number of bureaucrats, the size of the deficit and the inflation, the charts just go along like this and then they skyrocket.
So we do live in very, very unique times.
We have a worldwide bubble as far as I can tell, bigger and more dangerous than anything we've ever had in the history of man.
But the Federal Reserve does facilitate the borrowing powers of Congress.
They spend, but they can borrow in the ordinary market.
But when they don't borrow, of course, then the Fed becomes the lender which is mixed in with the inflation.
So they will borrow, and of course they will create credit, and credit gets pumped into the banking system.
And through fractional reserve banking, those individuals that are outside the Federal Reserve actually do the borrowing.
And then there's the borrowing that is orchestrated and the mischief that is caused because the Federal Reserve is not responsible for any oversight to the Congress that the Fed under the current law can make loans and guarantees with any other central bank or any other government around the world.
And I am convinced since 1987 when they created the President's Working Group on Financial Markets or the Plunge Protection Team, that they're involved in the markets all the time.
And they can orchestrate this.
So there is a lot of borrowing and mischief that goes on in that manner.
But what else does the Fed do to accommodate the Congress?
Well, they literally lower the deficit, the debt, the national debt.
You say, that's not possible.
The debt is going to be $14 trillion.
It goes on up like this.
But they deliberately devalue the currency in order to lower the real debt.
So they actually, and I've accused Greenspan of that, he really, Greenspan and Bernanke, that they're really working for inflation.
They want the inflation.
That is their desire because debt can be liquidated.
I mean, if you have a $10 trillion national debt and you can have a 10% inflation raise, a devaluation of your currency, you've liquidated a trillion dollars of debt in real terms.
So that is the purpose of the Fed, the liquidation of debt.
Governments, when they go bankrupt, they don't default in the sense of not sending you out a check like individuals and even states would have to do.
But that's also the reason state debt is going to be transferred to the federal government because they're going to print the money and the debt, real debt, is going to go down by the depreciation of the currency.
But the other thing that the Fed facilitates and one of the worst things that they do is it facilitates big government, the growth of big government.
So there's a desire to spend money overseas and fight wars and do all that as well as the welfare state.
Now, right now they're doing a lot of programs, I think on CNN especially, and they're talking about, you know, the broken government and why, you know, we saw Evan Bayh quitting because there's not enough bipartisanship.
And I tell them, I think there's way too much bipartisanship.
I mean, they're always getting together.
Bipartisanship on the Federal Reserve, bipartisanship on the deficits, bipartisanship on foreign policy.
They're working together all the time.
I mean, it's designed to do that, and at the same time, it increases the power of government.
So I think what we need is, and what we have to have is, of course, change in attitudes, not more bipartisanship.
We do want them to be bipartisan, but the only question that should be asked is, what are you going to be bipartisan?
It's fine to be bipartisan if you're going to audit the Fed in order to get rid of the Fed, but if you're going to be bipartisan to be able to allow our presidency to declare war and actually devise a program which is now in place, which is such an outrage,
this should wake up every American, and that is this whole notion that one individual in the administration can name an individual as a threat to our country and even as an American citizen can be put on an assassination list.
don't you think that we ought to scream about that, reverse that, and bring that to a halt?
The system that we have with deficit financing and the Federal Reserve being involved also facilitates the military-industrial complex.
The incident that I mentioned this week with Bernanke was that we sent $5.5 billion, and I think that's pretty well documented, and it's appearing on the internet now, all the documentation of this.
$5.5 billion in the 1980s because we had to take care of our friend, Saddam Hussein.
He was our buddy.
But he was also looking for a nuclear reactor, which we sent him over, and he was supposed to be using some of the money for that.
But he was also buying a lot of weapons.
So here it is, they create this money, send it over there, no appropriation, buying weapons in the military-industrial complex, and the Congress asked no question.
This whole idea that they can create this money and it's going to be off-budget.
What about these train loads, literally truckloads of cash that went over in tunes of billions and billions of dollars that were passed out after we invaded Iraq?
The Congress never appropriated this money.
I would think that maybe the people in this country should be outraged over that.
And why should we wait any longer?
We have to expose what is happening there, especially so that we know what we should do if and when this breaks down.
To assume that next week they're going to listen to our speeches and our efforts and all of a sudden change, those odds aren't very good.
But the more people that know and understand this, the more likely it is that we'll come out of this better.
The Federal Reserve and the way it works with the banking system through fractional reserve banking is a cartel.
It's a monopoly.
It's a cartel.
And a lot of people make a lot of money off of this.
And it wouldn't be like that if you had free market banking or even a revised system that we have today excluding this power to the Federal Reserve.
But that's a lot of money involved.
It's not a couple hundred million.
It's not even in billions.
It's literally trillions of dollars.
And nobody knows the exact amount, but it could very well be $2 trillion that the Fed did off-budget created in order to take care of their buddies during this financial crisis.
And what were they buying?
And what were they putting into the hands of the taxpayers?
You know, the bad debt, the bad debt they couldn't get rid of.
And they would call this illiquid.
They couldn't sell it, but it was worthless.
That's the reason they couldn't sell it.
And yet the taxpayer had to take it.
What did they do?
They just changed victims.
We're the people who were making all the money during the bubble formation and then holding all that bad debt, they get bailed out.
And who gets stuck with it?
It's middle-class America that gets stuck with it because we end up buying it.
We end up inflating the currency.
And already, what do we have here in the past 10 years?
I date the recession that we're in right now coming from the year 2000.
Not much improvement in the economy in the past 10 years.
Real wages are down.
Unemployment is steadily rising.
And we don't see a lot of improvement there.
But most people don't recognize that the problem really hit until two years ago.
But it's been going on a lot longer than now.
The other reason why we should look at the Federal Reserve, and it's related to foreign policy, directly and indirectly.
Indirectly, it facilitates deficit financing and they monetize that debt because we're spending money on these wars.
But also, they're involved in our foreign policy.
If they can make deals with foreign central banks and foreign governments off the books and we don't even know about it, we can talk, you know, they can do all kinds of mischief.
And then their cozy relationship with the CIA.
The CIA can own their own banks.
And sometimes when I think about these wars in Afghanistan, I at times believe that it's almost could be a fight over who's controlling the drug traffic, whether it's going to be the Afghan government or Karzai's brother or the CIA.
But this is at a point where we need that exposure so the people know exactly what's going on.
I think we have achieved a whole lot in the last two years.
I think if we had a currency crisis right now, and these conditions get worse, and if we had not had the past two years to draw the attention to the Federal Reserve, it wouldn't be as easy to handle.
But the exciting thing that's happening is the Fed is getting properly blamed for a lot of this trouble.
And if we get into the currency crisis, then we have to continue to target the Federal Reserve.
This whole thing that bringing these issues up to Bernanke and he claiming that we have bizarre ideas is one thing, but that didn't sell.
That didn't sell.
I don't think so for a minute.
I think that has been turned around and they're on the defensive.
And therefore, we're getting closer to being in the driver's seat when the time, when push comes to shove and something has to be done.
It's not that it'll be smooth sailing and not that they're going to readily accept what we say, but out of necessity, they will have to pay attention.
But it really depends on the continuation of the educational work such as Lou's been doing with the Mises Institute to make sure these views are pervasive enough and the people understand what is happening and how important central banking is and how important the Federal Reserve is.
This whole concept is a challenge between two factions.
One who literally believe, religiously speaking, in authoritarianism.
And for all kinds of reasons, they just were born with authoritarian heart and they just love telling other people.
Others do it out of believing it is in the best interest of people.
People are dumb enough, they can't take care of themselves, so they need an authoritarian to take care of their positions.
I was dealing with an individual who wants to do it, was a consumer protector, and he came from the left.
But we had agreements under war and we would talk to each other and also he and I both agreed that we should lighten up on these drug laws, you know, let people make their own stupid mistakes and be responsible for it.
And also, with the urging of this other individual, I introduced a bill to legalize hemp.
You know, hemp is so dangerous to all of us.
And also, I was also asked, and I did it, and I was a little bit surprised at how popular this was, but it obviously made sense in a free society, and that was to allow you to drink raw milk if you wanted to.
Now, that's a real challenge.
But the odd thing is, is that this liberal who liked the idea of legalizing marijuana and hemp said, oh no, we can't let people drink raw milk.
That's too dangerous.
I would say he had not quite put the whole issue of liberty together yet.
And that is our goal.
That has certainly been my goal, is put the package together.
It's been chopped up.
It comes in bits and pieces.
Members, a lot of times people say, do you get along with anybody up there?
Economic Liberty Reigns 00:10:26
I said, no, I get along with everybody up there.
Just on one occasion here and one occasion over here.
Everybody has a little bit of a freedom idea, but most of them all have an instinct toward liberty.
It's just that it's either too risky or I can't sell it to my district and they make excuses or I get too much money from those people.
I can't do that.
But that is what has to be done.
And that's why I think the freedom movement, that's the biggest job of the freedom movement, is to get people to understand what it is.
You don't have to start with the Federal Reserve and the government and what the government should do here or there.
You have to start with where our rights come from.
I mean, what do rights mean?
Do we have rights because we have the Constitution and the Ten Amendments?
No.
Our rights come from us in a natural way or a God-given way.
We have a natural right to our life and our liberty.
And the natural consequence should be, if you have a right to your life and your liberty, you ought to have a right to keep the fruits of your labor.
And it comes down, and policies then are very easy.
If you start with that, you know, well, we wouldn't have, we would have just canceled out in 1913.
We just wouldn't have had that year.
We wouldn't have had the Fed and we wouldn't have had the 16th Amendment.
We wouldn't have had the change in foreign policy and we wouldn't have had the change in the way we elect our senators and we would have had a much smaller government.
But unfortunately, the others think of the authoritarian approach because they have this idea that people have to be taken care of and otherwise there'll be blood in the streets and people could become unemployed and have inflation if they didn't take care of it.
And lo and behold, all those do-gooters, look at what they're giving us.
So our job intellectually is to make sure the blame is placed on the proper place.
I think we're ahead of where we were in 1929 because they very successfully throughout the 30s really buried free markets and they buried the gold standard and then gave more power to the executive branch and to the Federal Reserve.
But today, I don't think it's going to be the same.
And it's the only thing that we have to really be concerned about in economics is who's going to get blamed for this mess.
And that's why we have to target the Federal Reserve, make sure they are blamed at fault.
We have to target those individuals in Congress who believe the purpose of Congress is to spend money and take care of people and undermine liberty.
And the victory has to go to those of us who believe in personal liberty and believe that balanced budgets are important and small governments important and come around to the belief that minding our own business and not telling other countries what to do is very important if our survival if we're going to survive.
The opposition is limited, and fortunately for us, they're limited because truth is not on their side and truth is on our side.
And truth wins out in the end, even though there can be a lot of hardship and a lot of suffering.
In a way the Soviet system broke down because of the truth that Mises said.
Socialism doesn't work and it can't work and it will fail.
And we didn't have to fight him.
We didn't have to fight him with a nuclear war.
It failed.
Truth won out in the end.
And there's always somebody there to hold it together.
And I think of individuals like Solsenitsyn.
He was born with the Russian Revolution and yet he got through life.
He was well educated.
He knew, he somehow got hold of books and beliefs, had religious beliefs and all this in spite of it.
And there's always somebody that's going to be there to hold it together because you can't squelch it.
You can't stamp out forever the truth.
Economic laws are on our side.
Yes, they may well be rigging the price of gold and they did that in the 60s.
They kept it at $35 an ounce.
But eventually the truth wins out.
You just can't keep printing money forever and think that prices won't go up including the price of gold and everything else.
Economic laws win out even though we're not smart enough and don't pretend that we know what month it's going to happen.
But economic laws are reliable and we know that if we understand those and how the economic laws affect the undermining of our liberty.
We are in a position where endurance is really crucial.
If we give up too soon, that is going to be a tragedy.
But as long as we persevere, I believe we can win this.
Those individuals who hold the system together, those few who cling to it, and one gentleman that influenced me a lot, I believe he participated in this, was with Leonard Reed.
And I don't believe you can.
I don't believe the authoritarians can ever put out the spark of liberty.
I think it's in everybody.
Even though most of them set it aside and are convinced it doesn't work and they ignore it, I think there is a spark of love for liberty in everybody.
But I think in a group like this, this spark is alive and well.
And what we have to do is ignite that into a flame.
And I see that happening here in the last couple years.
This thing, this spark of liberty has hardly been noticed.
But I think we have a flame going now.
And there certainly is a necessity for this.
There is a growing need for these views to become the prevailing attitude.
If not, we don't survive.
I mean, what has been great about America is going to be put into hibernation.
Something serious will happen.
There'll be more authoritarianism and more poverty and more war.
One of the most detestable arguments that I hear, and Mises talks about in human action, and that is this notion that war can be of an economic value.
I think that is the worst idea for moral reasons, even if it were.
It's horrible to think about it, but it is not.
And yet I hear it on the House floor.
Well, you know, if there's war, that might help the economy.
Oh, sure.
You know, take a billion dollars out of the pockets of the taxpayer and build more missiles and blow them up and kill people and create more people who hate us and more likely to attack us and say that, oh, yeah, a billion dollars.
The GDP just went up, a billion dollars.
They measure that.
You build trucks and tanks, and they call that increase in the GDP.
It's total nonsense.
I think when the government spends money like that, you should subtract it, not add it.
I've seen tremendous growth in these views in the last few years.
I've been encouraged, as I said, especially on the college campuses and with the young people.
Our views have broad appeal, and I see that more people are coming together.
I'm always delighted.
There may be one or two even in this room that came from the left and said, I was a raving liberal Democrat, but I saw the light and I saw the light, the flame of liberty, and I've come over, I've come over.
And they can distinguish the difference between what a conservative, typical conservative Republican is talking about, and what we're talking about.
And of course, there's a great deal of difference.
So I love the idea that we work with the progressives and try to nudge them over.
They'll come over.
I was very pleased after the CPAC vote.
There were a couple articles by progressives who talked about our civil liberties position as well as our war position.
And they said, you know, we need to pay more attention to what Ron Paul is saying because we're not getting anything from Obama on these issues.
and it may be the libertarians will give us some answers.
So the big challenge, though, is when they do come over, that they will be hard critics of us not being compassionate enough to endorse the welfare state.
But when they see if we can turn it around and when we see the impoverishment of our country and the world as this financial crisis unwinds, how can they defend the welfare state when we have 20% of underemployment and defend it?
I mean, they have to come around to looking at we're talking about for compassionate reasons, if nothing else, if they care about their fellow man, even for personal reasons of our rights to practice our religion and freedom of speech and personal habits.
But what about the economic consequence of liberty?
I mean, It seems to me like we should never lose these arguments.
I've always been baffled over the years.
How can something be so magnificent and us be so clumsy in presenting these views?
And over those decades, we have been clumsy.
But thanks to the Mises Institute and others' efforts, I think we're getting the point across that if you do care about your fellow man, that freedom works a lot better than if you trust in your government man.
I mean, those government officials will put all your trust in the government.
One time, somebody on TV, when I was arguing the case for free market medicine and argued that, you know, some of these things could be handled in the marketplace, and the other doctor that was on, he says, Ron, I know he's sincere, but I think he has too much faith in the goodness of man.
And I thought, well, you know, man is not perfect, and the free market will never be perfect.
President's Faith in Government 00:02:37
But I didn't get the chance to answer.
But the real answer to that is he has too much faith in the goodness of government.
And government is run by other men, and it's only a few.
It is, yes, it is true that individuals can make mistakes.
And every one of us have different opinions and different tastes.
But that's the defense of liberty.
Yes, we can make mistakes.
But if we're doing them for ourselves, it's limited.
But if you put me in power to make all the decisions and I make the mistake, you know, it's so painful.
And this is so much different.
We make mistakes and we can't know what other people want.
You know, I don't want to bring up that recent campaign in any way, but one thing I did say during the campaign that sort of is my strong sentiment is that I really wasn't, I was not anxious to be president for the things I want to do.
I would be president for the things I don't want to do.
I don't want to run your life.
I don't want to run the economy.
And I don't want to tell the rest of the world how to live.
Thank you very much.
I want to thank everyone who came, especially our donors.
We have many very significant donors here.
I want to thank them.
They're the people who make all of this happen.
So if we could have a big round of applause for them.
I want to thank our speakers and especially Ron Paul.
Another round of applause for Ron.
As always, I want to thank the staff.
It all begins with Pat Barnett putting this together.
Christy Holmes, Will Seitz, Chad Parrish, James Fogel, they're the ones that make this happen.
So thank you.
Good night, it's been a very exciting weekend.
Let's keep the flame of liberty alive, turn it into a bonfire.
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