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May 25, 2020 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
16:06
Liberty Report Classic: Against The Left Authoritarians -- With Lew Rockwell

We hope that you enjoy this classic interview from 2019 with Lew Rockwell on the great dangers of left authoritarianism. Get your copy of 'Against The Left' on Amazon: https://amzn.com/099046315X Be sure to visit https://www.lewrockwell.com every day!

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Violence and Guns at Universities 00:09:58
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
We have a special guest today in studio, a good friend of ours, and a good friend of Liberty, visiting here in Lake Jackson, Lou Rockwell.
Lou, good to have you with me.
Great to be with you, sir.
It's an honor.
Very good.
You know, I hear that you have another book out just a short time ago, right?
And it's available on LewRockwell.com.
Tell us about that book.
It's called Against the Left, and it's got an introduction by Hans Hermann Hoppe.
And in there, I talk about the ideas of Mises and Rothbard, their cultural ideas.
I mean, for example, both of them were very much in favor of traditional families, whereas the left, of course, hates the traditional family.
Marx wanted to abolish it, and he's certainly not the only one.
I talk about egalitarianism.
The left, of course, wants everybody to be forcibly made equal.
That's actually impossible, but because it is impossible, it gives them sort of a carte blanche for to do whatever they want to do.
And, you know, I talk about the fact that in human history, the left has been the most violent, the most evil, far more so than the right.
Just take the 20th century, communism, national socialism.
These organizations and these ideas were responsible for the most deaths ever.
Maybe, you know, Genghis Khan or whatever, I guess, was pretty bad too, but he wasn't either a heritist or a leftist in our terms.
But the left, beginning, say, in the French Revolution, which was extremely violent, very bloodthirsty, and had a lot to do with spreading leftist ideas.
And I think it's important to realize they are our enemy.
They're the most violent, the most nasty bunch that we have to face.
And we see it right now with Antifa.
And I think a lot of these democratic political candidates are very pro-violence.
They would, of course, claim they're not.
But as you pointed out, a guy like Bernie Sanders is a very violent guy.
I mean, he's not a peaceful guy.
He's no Ron Paul.
People try to compare the two of you.
But he's no Ron Paul.
So I think it's important to understand why the left is our enemy.
My last book was called Against the State.
And of course, the state is the ultimate enemy, but the left are the people who promote the state the most.
And it's the most destructive force in human society.
Now, I understand the LewRockwell.com has been around a while, 20 years now.
20 years.
And that when I see as being more directed to political things and current events.
Whereas the Mises Institute, which is 37 years old, in the early 80s, you started that.
With your help?
Well, a little bit, but it was something I believed in and still do because I believe that changing people's minds are important, as you agree, and you have done it.
You've reached a lot of people.
But, you know, if I ask you how many people you have reached and talked to, I know you can't give the answer because you have no idea.
You could pick and choose, and well, this many people went through.
But we don't really know how many people get influenced.
So I think that the Mises Institute has played a significant role and will continue because although we know the country's in dire trouble and could get much worse, there's going to be a rebuilding.
And that's why people, the more people we can find that has an understanding and agreement with some of these ideas of liberty, the better chance we and our families will have in surviving it in a meaningful way.
You know, as you pointed out when the Great Depression happened, there were relatively few people who understood what the heck was going on.
Relatively few people who knew what to oppose, the evil of Roosevelt and so forth.
But today, thanks to you, thanks to the Mises Institute, there are many, many more people.
I think that if we count everybody on our webpage, we've reached millions, millions of people, not only in this country, but all around the world, Latin America, Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia.
So I think we have a much better chance.
Many more people understand the free market.
They understand the evil of the government.
So when this crash happens, and I'm afraid I think as you do that it's going to happen, we have a better chance.
You know, it was said back during the Depression and as the stock market crashed and all, Roosevelt ran on a very conservative platform.
Balance the budget, the gold standard, and all these things.
Yeah, going to cut the number of bureaucrats.
And he knew what he was doing because the people superficially still identified with that and had to do it.
But others, and I think you have pointed out, the universities were full of lefties already.
So the ideological fight was being fought in a silent way.
And Roosevelt was influenced and others were.
And actually that's where policy came from.
But hopefully we're seeing the reverse of that.
But it has to be modified a little bit because we can't sit back and say, oh, yes, the universities are producing sound economic thinkers.
But fortunately, we have access to people through the internet.
That's right.
And so therefore, a lot of people can be exposed and they're sort of anonymous.
You know, we don't know where they are.
But one question I want to ask you about this, you might have a feel for it, is, you know, basically libertarians don't like the state and the state universities and they have all these problems and going on.
But we have some who are good libertarians that have actually gotten involved in a government school.
Is that just a couple people or are there more people involved there than we realize?
And would that necessarily be anything bad?
It seems to me like if they're able to survive it, maybe they can influence somebody even in a government school.
Well, I think that's right.
And I think there are many of them in public schools and junior colleges and four-year colleges, universities.
There are a lot.
So that's a good thing.
And why leave that to just the communists?
Why shouldn't our people be involved?
But on the other hand, there are a lot of colleges and universities that are just entirely left-wing, and they will punish anybody with our ideas.
They're not just satisfied to shut you up and give you a bad grade, but they would do other things to students.
You already mentioned the subject of how Antifa and the left are very violent.
And right now, there's a big contest.
Some people are still trying to decide who won the last election.
Did Trump really win?
Well, for some people, like Hillary, no, he didn't win, and we have to put the rifle president in place again.
But if conditions get worse, and let's say things really go bad for Trump, and it's equivalent to an impeachment or a coup and this type of thing, which nobody knows exactly what would happen.
That is a little bit frightening because I think the left are capable of committing a lot more violence.
Most people say, well, it's always those right-wingers that cause the violence.
But statistically, it's not there.
You know, the left is quite capable because they endorse the principle of authoritarianism, you know, in all functions that they do, whether it's redistribution of wealth.
Everything they do is with guns.
See, those are the things.
And they want to take our guns too, of course.
Those are the guns we need to regulate.
The bureaucrats shouldn't exist, and they shouldn't exist with the guns.
But we have hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats.
And of course, if you add up some of the guns in the military and some of the police departments that get a little bit more violent than they should be, you're talking about a lot of gunpower against them.
And that the left sees those as individuals, I mean, allies.
And they use them, of course.
You know, let's take Hillary, for example.
I mean, think of what she did in Libya and Syria and the consequence still going on.
She was laughing about it too.
That's criminal.
She's like a witch or a devil or something.
Yeah.
But do you think there's much chance?
This is what I worry about, and I want you to say not possible, of the whole thing really getting violent on the streets because I think if it looks like they really, really did something equivalent to a coup, Trump's supporters aren't going to go away softly.
Well, you know, you pointed out when you were still in Congress that a lot of government agencies that might surprise people were being armed to the teeth with weapons.
The Social Security Administration, for example, and millions of bullets and tens of thousands of rifles.
So why is that?
I mean, nobody's going to attack the Social Security Administration.
But of course, they could very well attack us.
So I think this is, you know, it's something to be very concerned about.
There could actually be a civil war.
We hope not.
But.
You know, I still go to conferences and talk about gold as a haven when things come apart.
I look carefully at the whole concept of currencies, the crypto technology as a possibility of helping people survive.
People Leave, War Looms 00:04:12
And a lot of people are in the survival mode.
A lot of people leave the country.
I was never tempted to do that.
But there are attempts to provide.
But when I talk to them, I usually conclude by saying, you know, I think you should do it and think about it.
What's best for you?
And some people leave the country, whatever you think is best for you.
But the big question is, why would you or how are you going to be able to defend oneself if that happens?
Because I get down the bottom line for me gets back to what we do, what you do, and more and more people are doing.
That ultimately, you know, you can have a gun, you can have your gold, you can have a piece of land, you can have a thing.
But what did that mean to the thugs that take over?
I mean, what if Warren takes over?
I mean, property, the only property is being important for some of those people, the property they have and how they're going to control it.
But it seems to me like I believe in human nature well enough that if they have the have liberty and they're putting responsibility on themselves, that will do quite well.
That's right.
But without it, it's just going to get worse and the antagonisms will get worse.
But I think that there's been so many examples.
And, you know, in our early history was basic like this.
It was opportunity and a work ethic and a lot of other things.
But unfortunately, that's where the real challenge is, and that's where you have spent a lot of time trying to educate people to understanding.
And I think Murray was good at it, narrowing things down to property, even whether it's the First Amendment or not.
You can defend the First Amendment with property, you know, because people get very confused about that.
So I think that type of education is important because the demagogues are out there.
99% of the ordinary media support all that mess and they're part of it.
And the deep state is, although they say the deep state is becoming more apparent and we're understanding it.
No, they just have a deeper state, the buried state.
But there's always their people there at least trying to pull strings.
But I believe ideas are very, very powerful and they can be counteracted.
And if they're based in challenges in a nonviolent manner, I think it's a powerful weapon.
And I still am convinced that most people don't like war.
You know, and I think peace candidates generally do pretty well.
And that my analogy is: how many times did it happen where the young people of the United States, the 18 to 24-year-olds, got together and they had their organization.
They say, you know, things have been pretty quiet here for a couple decades.
We've never had a chance to go to war.
And they call up some people in Iran.
They say, How often have you guys had a fight?
Oh, well, we have a club here.
They're 18 to 24 and they'd like to have a war too.
So the young people communicate and they say, well, let's fight over religion or something.
We'll fight over something.
Never.
Obviously, it's a ridiculous thing to say.
It always comes from top down.
And the victims and the ones who now, one of the worst groups of people are the chicken hawks.
And I ran into a lot of those in Washington, you know, who got five deferments.
And did they become peace-loving people, which we would be very happy to join us?
No.
What they do is they send somebody else's kids off to war.
That's the kind of thing that people should respond to, the immorality of a system like that.
Well, it's true, and it's why, of course, you've spent so much time teaching Austrian economics.
The Mises Institute has too.
And that's one of the aspects of Austrian economics teaches you that social cooperation is the greatest thing that comes out of the free market.
That people are able to help each other to profit by helping each other.
Austrian Economics Triumph 00:01:32
And it's a tremendous, it's a tremendous thing.
Whereas, you know, Franklin Roosevelt, we were talking about a little bit before, brought a horrible socialist, fascist system in.
And I think it was no coincidence that when Keynes published his general theory in German, that he praised Hitler for putting his own theory, for putting Keynes' theories into practice.
So that those are the kinds of people that we face.
They're the enemies that we face.
But we've got the truth on our side.
So that's in the end the far more valuable thing.
I think your point of cooperation, that's what solves so many problems.
And to me, the problems aren't that difficult if you're responsible for figuring out an answer rather than saying I'm entitled to somebody taking care of me.
But that also brings up the term that a lot of people use and I like, and that's voluntarism.
Everything should be voluntary.
I mean, what a peaceful world it would be if nobody can do anything to anybody else, they can't take their property.
It has to be voluntary.
And a lot of problems would be solved.
We will need to close now, Lou, but just tell the audience one more time about your book and where to go to buy your new book.
It's called Against the Left.
You can go to, I hope for too much longer it'll be on Amazon.
But right now you can go to LewRockwell.com and look at the store, and it's available right there.
Very good.
Lou, it's been great having you on this program.
It's great having our audience with us.
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