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Dec. 27, 2019 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
23:36
Ron Paul Classic: Socialism & War Will Not Prevail

We hope you enjoy this 2016 speech that was delivered at a Mises Institute even held in Houston, TX.

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Time Text
End Of The Soviet Empire 00:07:03
One thing I think about when we think, you know, what is ahead for us and how can you predict what happens in the various civilizations over the many centuries.
And even in our lifetime, certainly in the 20th century, the most onerous of civilizations and empires was the Soviet Empire, and it came to an end.
Now, the important characteristic of the end of the Soviet Empire was the fact that we didn't need a nuclear exchange.
It disintegrated from within.
And I think this is basically true.
Outside forces have something to do with it all the way back to the Roman Empire, but basically empires, good or bad, disintegrate from within.
So I believe that that is what our contention has to be right now is what is happening to our country from within.
And actually it's very encouraging.
They're disintegrating.
It's giving us an opportunity.
We don't have to go to war with them.
They're going to stuff the structure is coming to an end.
All they have to do now is dictate to us that every bank has to give us, will be required to have negative interest and get rid of cash.
And I think finally the American people will wake up and maybe revolt against this insanity.
But you know, throughout history, and history is rather short, human history, recorded history is probably 5,000 years, and it's vaguely recorded back then.
I was trying to find out the exact date the Ten Commandments were written, and you really can't find.
You can't even get the date exactly when Moses brought down the tablets with the Ten Commandments.
But even then, when you go back, you'll find out that a lot of those principles were even known with the Assyrians 200 or 300 years before Moses issued the Ten Commandments.
But one thing that seems to have been the motivation there is to set some rules.
Civilization was coming about.
It was rather primitive, but they knew they had to have some rules for the people in order to survive.
And if you look at what the basic rules were and what they were trying to design, are very, very libertarian.
And they're basically, you know, don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal, and don't murder.
You know, and it's found in most of the great religions.
And it was designed, of course, to limit the hostilities and the violence of individuals to bring about civilization.
And of course, the government was supposed to be very much involved in this.
And that is where we come up short because the government hasn't done a very good job in doing this.
We've seen maybe the reversal of that.
But, you know, we had the Ten Commandments established.
And the move on generally over the many centuries was to see if we could develop, the human race could develop a set of standards for tranquility and peace and try to curtail the power of government.
So a major event occurred in 1215 with the Magna Carta, establishing, you know, that we, you know, have, that governments can't hold us and governments should be held responsible to the same laws.
And this was a significant event.
It wasn't the event of all history, but it suggested that the kings had to live under the same laws that the people lived under.
And the British followed this to some degree and tried to improve on that over the many years.
Now, another significant date from my viewpoint occurred when the people who got disgusted for various reasons what was going on in Europe and in Britain and the different places.
So they heard about America and they wanted to come to America.
And the one particular settlement that I think stands out in history that we should pay attention to was the Plymouth Colony in 1620.
And it was a bad deal.
I mean, they came over and the percentage of people that died was horrendous even after they got here.
But they developed a system of pure socialism, collectivism.
Everybody worked together and whoever needed to eat, they would take the food.
And lo and behold, the people weren't working very well and they weren't doing well.
So Bradford finally comes along and he has this brilliant idea.
It had been floating around a bit about that time.
He said, let's give up on this.
Let's not have socialism.
This is a new country.
What we want to do is allot property rights to certain people and you're on your own.
Go what you want and raise what you want.
And lo and behold, to their tremendous surprise, there was great productivity.
People produced more than they needed.
And then they automatically started taking care of the people who weren't capable of raising their own crops.
And it was in many ways burying in our early history the concept of socialism.
And of course, in our early history, there was much more individualism and there was much more incentives built into it.
And we were moving into an age of thinking about capitalism and Adam Smith and these other events.
And that actually went pretty well.
But it was really established in 1776, another bold move on the part of our ancestors to put together and make a declaration of independence for the individuals, emphasize the individual.
And this was one thing that Murray Rothbard had pointed out, that one of the reasons why individuals were considered important, and he gave credit to Christianity and the importance of the individual.
And in that sense, Christianity did have an influence, you know, on our culture and our society.
But this was a major event, and we did benefit for a long time in that manner, up to where I think the progressive era started in 1898.
Then all of a sudden, the progressive moved in and set the stage for the 20th century, which did not go well.
And people capitulated to progressivism, and they forgot about Plymouth, and they went down, and they had a more sophisticated method of promoting socialism.
And in the 20th century, you know, brought together two groups, the conservative warmongers as well as the liberals to brought them together the use of force.
And we ended up with socialism, welfarism, special interests, and a concept where, especially under Woodrow Wilson, that we had a responsibility to make the world safe for democracy.
Economic Policies and False Ideas 00:15:31
Well, guess what?
The world didn't become safe, and it didn't become, in their terms, democratic.
It was a disaster.
So if we could do one thing, maybe we could repeal Woodrow Wilson, including the income tax in the Federal Reserve System.
But the 20th century I see as downhill, and the Communism ended.
That's the good part.
But now, instead of taking advantage and getting a peace dividend in the 1990, As the Soviet system collapsed, the world was enthralled with interventionism, Keynesianism, inflationism, and all the nonsense that had been going on.
But we're now at the point where it is recognized that it's doomed.
It can't work.
It's not going to work.
And something has to replace it.
That's what the Mises Institute is all about and the many other groups that we have now is to provide the answers to what is the replacement going to be.
We don't have to think about how many tanks are we going to have to invade Washington, D.C.
They have more tanks.
They have bombs and drones and everything else.
But believe me, ideas are much more powerful than those tanks that they don't even know how to run and won't even have the fuel to run eventually.
So I would say stick with the ideas of liberty to combat the disaster of the 20th century.
I think the opening salvo of this event came in the year 2000 in the financial markets.
It was the NASDAQ bubble, which was predicted by the Austrian economist.
It was way out of proportion.
And the crash came.
And most people thought, well, you know, it came, but haven't we been doing quite well since?
I don't believe so.
I think it's been a disaster ever since.
And the jobs leave the country.
The inflation is still there.
Liberties are being reduced.
So I believe that that event led into, you know, the perpetuation and the desire to have even more and more bubbles.
And of course, they think the bubble is the correction to the bubble phenomenon when the bubble bursts, which we all know can't work and won't work.
If you have a problem of debt and too much spending and too much government, you can't correct that by just expanding government regulations and government printing in more debt.
So we're facing that today.
And the American people, you know, are really, really in a quandary.
There's a lot of anger out there.
This election is different than the other elections.
It's a lot worse because I think there's more confusion than ever.
But everybody is angry.
The people who aren't getting enough are angry.
And the people who are sick and tired of paying for it are angry.
And sometimes they're very confused as to who is the real cause.
And I think it's demonstrated.
All you have to do is listen to those debates.
But when I talk about the debates and the candidates, I do have one exception.
I'm not accusing them all of misunderstanding economic policy.
So the people are confused and looking for it, but I think the politicians look for scapegoats.
If we can just blame somebody, this would do the trick.
So it's the immigrants.
The immigrants are coming.
And indeed, it is a problem.
But it is a consequence so often of economic policies.
You know, it's the economic problems that we face in this country where there is a disintegration of the middle class.
And there's individuals who are on the dole.
There's too much welfareism, too much rewards for not working.
And then too many rewards for people who come illegally.
And why are they leaving?
Are they leaving because of being bombed?
Some.
Certainly that's true in Europe.
But they're coming from South America and Central America because they have lousy stinking economic policies.
And they're just begging and pleading and looking for an answer.
So, I think that the message of liberty and the message of free markets and the message of sound money, there's a universal need for this.
And to me, it's the only answer.
I don't for a minute think building fences will do it.
I think there has to be more interchange between those of us who understand economic policies and those others who are struggling.
So, a lot of people who are migrating and immigrating come as economic consequences, a bad economic problem, then it's compounded by our bad economic problems, and people get angry and upset, and jobs go overseas, and they say, Well, the solution to that is terrorists, that's phrase terrorists, and do all this nonsense.
So, it's an opening.
But the Austrian School of Economics, groups like the Mises Institute, can provide the answer, and it's crucial because it's who puts it back together that counts.
I think we're in a good position because nobody else has anything worthwhile.
What we have to worry about is how violent and chaotic is this going to get.
And that's what's really dangerous because there could well end up with riots not only in our streets.
We see the pictures already in Europe, but it's even worse in Europe because they are suffering the consequences of our foreign policy.
It is true there's a lot of people leaving these countries.
Yes, you could say, well, some of them are coming in there to undermine the culture of Europe, and they certainly seem to be achieving that, but some of them are coming to escape bombs.
You know, if they had good economic policies and we weren't bombing them, believe there would be a lot less immigration from the Middle East into Europe or even into this country.
So the answer to this, of course, is to have sound economic policies, but we have to have a sound foreign policy as well.
And foreign policy, for those of us who believe in the non-aggression principle, is that we don't have military forces spread around the world.
Not only does it cause more trouble, it distracts from defense of a country, costs a lot of money.
We create a lot of enemies, and what does it do?
It adds on more costs.
So, it's a bad cycle that we're on.
But Europe, I believe, is in a real mess.
The whole world is in a financial situation that could come down on our heads just any time.
And yet, we have the answers with the issue of liberty, free markets, property rights, and a lot less government.
That is what I think would come a long way to solving our problems.
But in order for people to make use of this out of ignorance or deliberately in order to advance the power of the state, there's a lot of demagoguery that has to go around and a lot of fears.
People act because they get scared.
They get scared economically.
Who's going to take care of me?
And they get fearful that we're going to be attacked.
And yet, it's very, very difficult to get a people to look at themselves.
It's hard for individuals to look at oneself to improve one's person and one's character.
But this is what is very, very difficult because, of course, I've experienced that.
Any suggestion that we may have had a flawed policy in foreign policy and I did not support this endless warmongering going on.
I was considered un-American and unconcerned about our troops and literally get booed by Christian communities because the only answer to this is to drop a carpet bomb, drop more bombs.
We need to show them how tough we are, not realizing that's the cause of the problem.
You say, well, aren't there a lot of those bad guys?
That's the argument we always hear.
There's a lot of bad guys out there.
Don't we have to get rid of them?
I say, no, we don't.
Did we have to do that with the Soviets?
No, we ended up probably being much too close to them rather than saying that we had to go in and do anything about it.
And that's just a distraction because you look at the alliance that we have with Saudi Arabia, and they're not exactly the champions of civil liberties.
And yet at the same time, we're yelling and screaming because we hear something and we don't want to deal with Saddam Hussein and the other dictators or China.
Oh, they violate civil liberties.
Well, what do you think they think of us?
What do you think the people from the Middle East think of us when they see us torturing people and rounding up kids and bringing them here and keeping them for 20 years without charges being made?
But we should be able to look at ourselves.
But of course, what we have to do is get people to accept some basic principles.
You know, the trend over those many centuries that I talk about, it was always there to give more freedom to the individual.
And the government was sort of there.
And their job was to enforce laws.
But I think what has happened now is we had a pretty good code over those many centuries developed on how we as individuals should act in a very non-aggressive way.
Don't lie, cheat, steal, or kill.
Murder, not to do it.
What do we have today?
We have a government that lies, cheats, steals, counterfeits, murders people around the world, puts our people in prison without charges and have it become legal.
At the same time, we see proposals today introduced by the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate to say that, well, what we must do is give more power to the president so he never has to bother coming and being annoyed with the Congress.
He needs more war powers that he can go anyplace, anytime around the world and use the military if he doesn't like what's going on, including in the United States as well.
I would say it's time for the American people to get this information and realize that our greatest threat is coming from within by the doctrinaires of individuals who don't have the vaguest idea of sound economics.
And if they do, they fear it because they'll lose their power.
They don't understand what real liberty is all about.
And so therefore they become fearful.
And they claim the sole and most important responsibility of government is to make us safe.
You can't even find that in the Constitution.
They didn't say, hereby we declare the United States, the whole purpose of the federal government is to make sure that everyone is safe and they have a safety net and free education, free medical care, and the whole works.
No, it's not there.
The whole purpose there was to write a bunch of rules trying to restrict the government and trying to restrain the government and to make sure they live within the laws of the land.
But here today, we have the government doing exactly what took centuries to try to get the people of the world to act responsibly to advance civilization.
Now, in spite of all this, I think civilization has done quite well over these many years in spite of all the shortcomings.
But my disappointment has been that with all the intelligence, and this is such a short period of time, the ideas of freedom, so short, just hundreds of years, really, when it was really since the Industrial Revolutions.
It's not like centuries on centuries, just hints have occurred.
And so much advancement has occurred.
I mean, the universe, billions and billions of years old, and nobody knows exactly the age.
It's not brand new.
But the ideas of mankind advancing to the stage where they even have the concept of liberty and the importance of the individuals, very, very short.
The advancement, and now the movement is so much more rapid with the advancement of the exchange of information on the internet.
We have it moving quickly.
I mean, the ideas of liberty over the many centuries, starting all the way back with the Ten Commandments and the Magna Carta, that was very slow and tedious.
But there's no reason why ideas can't move faster.
Now, in the industrial age, Industrial Revolution, tremendous progress.
Just think of our standard of living in spite of the government.
You know, our standard of living keeps going up.
But why haven't we had some advancement in the social affairs, getting along with people and trying to take our intelligence and saying, why do we have to resort to war?
I think most people want peace.
I think most people still today, nobody says, nobody would admit, at least, that, oh, yeah, we got to get rid of that stupid law that says you shouldn't lie, cheat, or steal, or murder.
No, they still believe in that, but they are too careless about it and they allow the government to do it.
So the only way I can see progress for humankind as well as us here in the United States is to take our intelligence and take this ability to spread information, show the importance of the individuals, and take what was given to us even early on with the libertarian principle of no aggression.
Now, is that so much to ask from people?
All we want you to do is say, I'm never going to initiate violence against another person or property, and I promise to do what I say.
I will do exactly as I promise.
And that is not too overwhelming, yet people are intimidated because of false ideas.
They make them scared, and the people just roll over and say the solution is more government.
And we have to really make the case for not only the American people, but for the world, why we can't take this advanced step and take the intelligence of the human race and the ability to communicate, you know, worldwide.
Advancing Human Communication 00:01:00
I don't want closed borders, but I want ideas and people to exchange views and go back and forth.
And this is happening.
You know, I get so many calls and emails.
I mean, this past week, I think Daniel and I got a receipt of somebody took one of my books and translated it into Chinese and somebody else translated another book into German.
And they said, well, is there going to be a charge?
And no, the more the merrier.
Print it, spread the message.
I mean, this is what's going on today.
And, you know, there was a time when you wouldn't even know about it.
Well, we don't know about it.
This is activity.
So I think there's certainly a room for a revolution, but not the revolution of Bernie Sanders.
He's going back to Plymouth Colony, and we don't need that.
We need to look forward to the days when liberty will thrive and that prosperity will exist and we will have peace in the world.
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