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Nov. 26, 2020 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
29:17
Ron Paul: Do Elections Matter?

Presented at the Mises Institute's "Symposium with Ron Paul" on November 7, 2020, in Angleton, Texas.

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Time Text
Why Becoming a Congressman Might Be Foolish 00:09:29
I want to thank everybody for being here today, and I thank for so many that have been supportive of not only my viewpoints and what I've tried to do, but also supportive for the philosophy of liberty.
That is what counts.
Ideas have consequences, and the politicians really aren't worth that much if their goal is to just be in office.
I have so many young people come, and I'll be talking in a crowd, many college kids will come, and they'll sort of grasp and say, This is great, this is great.
I think I'd like to be a congressman like you.
What do I do?
I say, don't do it.
Don't do it at all because I said, unless you're going there for the right reason.
But if you're going there to be a congressman, what they're generally thinking about is, what should I run for first?
How am I going to raise the money?
How am I going to organize?
Where do I do the advertising?
What am I going to do on the internet?
They want the technical part.
And that I never gave one minute's worth of thought to because the only thing I was looking for in the 1970s was a forum to talk about something.
When I first ran for Congress in 1974, it was in the midst of the Watergate crisis.
We had three Republican congressmen in Texas, and nobody was going to file for a congressional seat in 1974.
And so when I was hinting to somebody that I, because I was very motivated and aggravated by the stupidity of Nixon's monetary policy, so I indicated to a few people that I might do it.
And how do you do it as an independent?
Because I don't want to join a party.
But the Republicans then were really desperate.
This guy might be foolish enough to run him.
We'll have a name on the ballot.
So I did that, and it turned out to be much more than I expected.
But the goal was very clearly talking about the issues of liberty and talking about monetary policy.
And that took not too long a time to realize that it was a difficult task.
But I did that.
And to my surprise, the incumbent Democrat resigned from office, and there was a special election.
And the special election is special.
Its difference is completely different.
And it's sort of one of those things, you couldn't plan it.
There was no way this could be planned.
I never, never had it or never could have had that.
When I was 18 years old, I knew I was going to go to Congress.
Nothing like that.
When I was 18, I was barely thinking about maybe I'd like to become a doctor and do something positive.
So that happened.
And lo and behold, the special election turned out differently.
But my wife Carol's with me today.
And I think she's sitting back there.
You might say hello to her.
And she doesn't want to hear this story.
She's heard it too many times.
But, you know, I'm thinking about what I thought the consequence of the breakdown of the Bretton Woods Agreement would mean.
And it has meant a whole lot.
A lot of people, that is a big date in monetary history, no doubt.
So I told her, I said, I think I'm going to run for Congress.
And she said, what?
What are you going to do that for?
She says, you have a medical practice here and you're doing this.
And, well, I said, you don't have to worry about that because she says, the big problem with it is that it's dangerous.
I said, how could running for Congress be dangerous?
Back then, we weren't even worrying about the danger that you might be worried about now, the dangers that our son Rand has faced up to already.
So, no, we said, she says, it's dangerous.
I said, why?
How could it be dangerous?
She says, you can get elected.
Matter of fact, she said, you will get elected.
I said, there's no way.
I said, there's no way a person like myself because I've already made my decision on all my votes.
And it was not going to be complicated.
And I don't think they're going to vote against Santa Claus.
They want a Santa Claus in there.
So I was surprised that it ever happened.
But I also had this freedom.
I had this freedom because the desire wasn't to get 51% and become a congressman, this sort of thing.
I had the total freedom of doing what I thought was important.
My goals then at that time were to try to set a standard, set a record, make a record, because I always assumed that maybe there would be a time down the road, because I certainly wouldn't be in Washington very long, down the road, somebody might take it and put it together and look at individual votes and say, oh, this makes sense.
This comes together.
He votes against war.
He votes against violation of civil liberties.
He votes for voluntarism in a free market.
And maybe they'll put it together and see a picture, which many of you have already seen.
We come together so often.
We discover these things, how a few basic principles bring the picture all together, and it makes sense.
I know in the last day, I met a couple people say, yeah, it was always, boy, that just like turning on a switch, that it makes most sense by doing one thing, defending your right to your liberty and assuming responsibility for it.
So that is not complicated at all.
And that is something people can understand.
Certainly, in the campaigning that I went through, I found out that people in a younger age or older people who are young at heart will be acceptable to new ideas and look at things differently.
So there were many times I was impressed when the teenagers, matter of fact, there's somebody in this audience today, they said they were influenced by the campaign when they were still teenagers.
And I always marveled at that.
I always was fascinated with the idea when a teenager would bring their parents to the office and insist they come in and meet me.
In the old days, they'd have the parents bringing the kids.
Well, we're going to teach you a civics lesson, how these laws are made, you know, this sort of thing.
But they would come in, and I always thought it was just so neat that the parents were so proud of their kids and disagreements, but that was irrelevant.
Their kids were thinking, you know, and many parents were converted to that.
And they say, boy, he has something.
And they would listen.
It might not happen one night, but there were many.
So it's sort of a flip, flip, in the opposite direction.
But it happened more times.
So anyway, that has worked out, I think, fairly well.
But I was never satisfied that that was my career because I was there for four terms from 76 up to 84.
And I missed medicine.
I didn't intend to do this.
And so I got out of Congress and went back and practiced medicine for 12 years.
But I still had that sort of gnawing thing.
I don't want to be in politics, but I still want to talk to some people because I still think the issues are important and war issue became more and more important.
So I, you know, accepted the encouragement and did it again.
So I'm always surprised that that happens, but I also really delight in the freedom that I feel because Daniel will confirm this, but so often he witnessed these other staffers with other congressmen.
They had to, well, there's a vote coming out.
Well, the staff's supposed to weigh these things.
Look at this special interest.
Look at this special interest.
Which special interests are we going to support?
And I remember the first month or two I was voting, and people would go over to the board where you find out exactly what's being voted on.
And I said, what is this here?
And they say, well, this list here says all these special interest lobbyists support the bill.
All these other people here oppose the bill.
And that's the way that was sometimes the maximum amount of information the congressmen were getting is just the number of people supporting them because that's the way it worked.
That's the way you raise money.
And raising money means how you get promoted and how you get to be a federal, a chairman of a committee.
Now, obviously, the goal for me to be a chairman had nothing to do with it.
Mises Function Encounter 00:03:43
It just sort of rubbed me the wrong way.
But I had the seniority.
I was there.
I ended up there in a long time.
But if the goal had been to be the chairman, it'd have been quite a bit different.
But all I can tell you is this approach, and I know so many of you follow the same thing.
It should make us feel good by defending something if you can get convinced, you know, that it's the right thing to do.
You know, and early on, I was influenced by reading Austrian economics before the Bretton Woods broke down.
I had read some of the things on Hayek and Mises.
But I remember there was one day back then, it would have been in the early 70s, before I had run for Congress, there was a little announcement in the probably Houston Chronicle, which doesn't exist, very exists, but doesn't publish anything.
It was about this big.
It was about this big.
And the announcement was that Ludwig von Mises, Professor Mises, would be speaking at the University of Houston on such and such day.
And hey, this sounds neat.
I'd sort of like to go hear him.
But there was only one other person in the whole town that I know would probably know who he was.
So I went and he said, oh, no, that sounds good.
So we both canceled our office hours for a few hours and drove to Houston to hear Mises give the lecture on socialism.
And this was pretty amazing for us to do that.
But you know, the interesting story about that was many, many years after that, that was in early 70s, 71, I believe.
It was one of Mises' last lectures.
And then maybe it could have been, well, it could have been 30 years afterwards.
I was giving this little spiel and it was at a Mises function.
And afterwards, the individual came up to me, and it was a doctor.
And he says, I know what you're talking about because you talked about going to hear Mises.
They gave him a room about this half the size, but it wasn't 10 or 15 people.
The room was jam-packed, even back then, when hardly anybody knew about Mises.
It was jam-packed.
And I thought, boy, they wouldn't even give him a decent room.
Of course, they never gave him a decent job in a university either.
So it was jam-packed.
And I mentioned, you know, I stood at the door there.
We got there late, didn't have a place to sit down.
But the individual in the audience at the Mises function came up and told me, he says, I remember that.
I remember seeing you there.
And he's a doctor in Pasadena, and somebody will know his name, I'm sure, because we still see him.
He said that he says, I remember you standing at the door.
I remember exactly what you told him because he was a student at the University of Houston, and he was the one that organized Mises.
He was probably the only student in the whole university that who Mises was, but he had organized and got Mises to come there.
It was just an interesting story about the coincidence about how that happened.
But one student had some effort, others did.
And I was impressed with the set with the whole notion that even then, people were interested.
It was known.
I mean, he was known well enough, but not the professors.
There probably weren't very many, many, many professors there.
So it was a very, very exciting time.
LBJ and Party Power 00:04:48
But, you know, on elections, I think that I think elections, are they necessary?
Should we have them?
And yes, I think there is a significance, but it has to be, you have to sort it out.
Is it significant?
Because you can sit back and say, we are such great Americans.
We believe in democracy and we're going to have fair elections and we're going to let the majority sort all these problems out.
But, you know, the one election that I remember and read a whole lot about that they are significant, many times in a very negative way.
And the one I'm thinking about is 1948.
And that was when LBJ, you know, orchestrated one of the worst thefts in history by stealing the Senate seat.
And so he gets elected and he has a career afterwards.
He gets in there and he was just determined to have political power.
And he ended up getting it.
He ended up becoming president.
And he, of course, then inherited the Vietnam War.
And he was a terrible, terrible warmonger.
But he did this, and he ended up with this tremendous power.
But come in 1968, you know, 20 years after that, he was first elected.
I mean, he was in big political trouble.
You know, it was discovered the first primary in New Hampshire that he has been, you know, hurt.
He was politically weak.
And he dropped out of the race suddenly.
It was a big event when LBJ dropped out of the race.
And then, of course, it wasn't long after that.
He went back to Texas.
And he spent all the time.
He got exactly what he was aiming for.
And he died a miserable death.
I mean, he was one, but didn't take care of his health.
And I guess he gets to that point, he has all that power, but he had nothing.
So within a year or so, he died of just bad health.
But it was something I always thought about.
Spent a lifetime with a goal of getting power.
But people said, people use that term a whole lot.
You know, Ron, if you become a chairman, chairman of the bank, I mean, you're going to have a lot of power.
I don't want power, but I don't shy away from the fact that if I can have a little bit of influence on the issues of the day, I'm willing to participate in that.
But they deal in power.
Everything is power.
That's what's going on.
Because I claim these elections are a farce because when it comes to the process that we're going to have fair election, they're a farce because in one way they're fighting tooth and nails to find out whether LBJ types are going to win or somebody else with some different views.
But they fight over that, but they never stop and think that what is going to come of all this.
So they do this, and there's no stopping it.
It just continues for forever and ever.
And the LBJ case was a typical example of that, but they really want the power of it.
And that is what they're doing today.
It's power.
Because when you think about it, if you want to deal in the area of philosophy, should you pick the Democrats, pick the Republicans, or even sometimes the Libertarian Party, and think that you're going to have a crystal clear position of saying what we believe in?
Well, it's very easy to mock the two big parties, the two major parties, because, you know, which party is going to end the Fed?
All the special interests have control of both parties.
Which one, well, I have to say that, you know, I mentioned that the 20 years in this century was a little bit better than some of the other 20 years.
But foreign policy, if you look at it, really doesn't change.
Daniel had pointed out earlier that sometimes he'll say one thing, the president will say one thing, but not really do it.
Cannot Solve Ideological Problems 00:11:15
The troops are still out there.
The military-industrial complex is going to remain very, very powerful.
Are we going to repeal the whole principles of the welfare state?
Are we going to all of a sudden have a majority vote that's going to systematically every year cut the budget 3% a year or 1% a year?
Sometimes a member will do that.
They'll say, cut this program 10%, and they wouldn't vote for it.
5%, they wouldn't vote for it.
1%, they wouldn't vote for that either.
No.
The spending is going to continue.
The deficits are going to continue to explode.
The attack on civil liberties are going to be horrendous.
And this whole thing, and I think one of the biggest threats to us right now is the whole issue of the social media being nothing more than an arm of the government.
And I think that has really played, done great harm to our First Amendment.
Our First Amendment, when I left Congress this last go-around, the one thing I put on the top of the list is if we lose the First Amendment, we lose the chance to talk here and do it.
And we are.
Daniel mentioned it.
Others have mentioned it.
We read stories about it.
Well, you will get can.
Oh, yeah.
And then they hide behind.
Well, we can do that because we're a private company.
We heard the lecture today.
There's nothing very private about it.
It's crony capitalism what it is at its worst.
And the real downside of all that is that the Marxists who are marching in, not with armies, they're not invading us, but they have invaded our universities for over 100 years.
And they have become a structure here because the Marxists are there, you know, with the great deal of influence.
And that is where the real problem is.
And yet, we cannot say, well, we can't do anything.
We're still in this room.
We're still talking.
I know people get cut off on the internet, but we have to expose people.
And more and more people are recognizing this now.
But back to where we started.
The internet, the internet can be our best friend.
You know, in spite of all this, and because I wasn't really into technology, I saw the internet as a real blessing in many ways.
It was competing, even though it's very, very weak competition because of their control that it's used against us.
But that is something that I think we still have a chance with because we still can reach more people.
And we can do the pamphleteering one way or the other.
And that's what really is important: the pamphleteering.
These problems that we face are ideological.
They're not lack of military.
Look at the military power we have.
We can blow up the world two or three times.
And oh, yeah, but every president wants to rebuild, build up the military, more and more and more weapons.
And it's all part of the military-industrial complex to do it.
So to me, it's all ideological.
And that's the reason that we have the Mises Institute.
That's the reason that you're here.
Because ideas do have consequences.
And it's such a, as far as I'm concerned, a wonderful idea.
Personal liberty.
You know, and how do you define personal liberty?
No violence.
You can't commit any violence against anybody else.
Pretty simple rule.
No lying, no cheating, no stealing, no killing.
Well, that'd be pretty neat, wouldn't it?
And would that mean you're un-American?
To some people, that's un-American.
But no, that is really part of the American early spirit is that we shouldn't be killing each other.
And we should think of voluntarism and participation in a free market.
And also, if we were moving in this direction, you know, the founders thought counterfeiting was one of the worst things you do.
They actually had established the death penalty for counterfeiting the money.
So here we are.
We have the counterfeiters.
There's more counterfeiting done by our government and the governments of the world and the monetary issue than any private organization.
So private people finally get caught at it.
But it seems like the free, this attitude that it's something for free and the people get tempted by this and saying, yes, we have to participate.
Just think of what's happened this year.
I can't even keep up with the trillions.
It's at least $3 trillion.
And this is supposed to solve the whole problem.
The crack up boom, I think we must be about that close to it because last week was a horrendous week when you saw the stock market doing this, gold doing this, crypto doing this, debt doing this.
I mean, how much longer can that go?
And probably longer than we think it should, that's for sure.
But the one place where I think we're way ahead of where we were even 100 years ago is the crispness that we can define what we believe in.
Because I think liberty is more understandable.
When I first went to Congress, Most of them never even heard the word libertarian.
And the other thing is, is I never dreamed that people would galvanize Iran and the Fed, and they have.
So that's a major, that's a big thing to happen.
But the people who want it, though, want it for very special reasons.
And this sets the stage to open up the door to the mob, the mob that, you know, the Marxists that have gotten into Congress because they tear us down because of capitalism, but they're describing and they can attack us because it's crony capitalism.
They're not attacking us.
They don't even understand what we want.
But yes, it sets the stage for identifying something where we can understand.
They're getting a lot of points for this.
The Marxists get a lot of points for this.
But I think the views are better.
I think there's a better understanding on monetary policy in spite of modern monetary theory, which is pretty old.
People are more understanding on this.
And I think that the big thing that we have to wonder about is when will we overcome moving in the direction of Venezuela.
You know, they've gone through this for four or five years and they get a little blip of, I guess the underground economy gives them a blip and they go back to printing money and all.
But it's this effort.
That's why numbers aren't totally the answer to the issue.
It isn't like 51%.
You want people's support and you want support by a majority of people because the government we have can only exist with support from the people.
When the support is diminished by the people, then it just goes away.
I think the most miraculous thing of the 20th century was the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism, the Soviet communism, because there were no nuclear weapons.
I was drafted in the 60s.
I was in the military, and there was a Cold War going on there, and there was a lot of legitimate concerns of who's going to drop a nuclear weapon.
But all of a sudden, it just was gone.
And even at that time, I was delighted, but I was concerned that they weren't going to quite come to us completely to the libertarian view, but they would probably end up being modified Republicans or something.
And it didn't work.
But it ended without a nuclear Holocaust.
So things can, and it was just sort of a walking way.
Khrushchev, it's just amazing.
He just walked away.
He sent no tanks into Europe, and it was done.
So we need another miracle like that.
And that's a miracle or a consequence of just reality.
And the reality is that there's no reason why we can't win because what we're challenged by are a bunch of people who have no idea what liberty is about, no idea how to create prosperity, no idea what monetary policy is, no idea about how we should have peace.
Because even though the warmongers are out there and they stir up these wars, that the people really don't want wars.
I always say, you know, the wars don't start by the teenagers getting together in one country and going to another country and getting their teenagers because they're the ones who had to fight the war and get killed.
So the teenagers get together.
They say, let's have a war.
It sounds like a lot of fun.
It's insane.
But it happens over and over and over again because of the propaganda.
Not because the majority of the people start off by saying they like peace, because the majority of the people like peace.
But they end up being complacent and listening to the demagogue.
Just think how badly the demagogues have been winning this whole nonsense on the propaganda over the coronavirus.
The Soviets aren't the enemy.
We're masochistic.
We make ourselves the enemy and create things to be fearful of.
And that is something to do with human nature.
But the only thing I can see is continuing to preach the truth, the truth about what liberty is all about.
It's been experimented with with many, many years, hundreds, if not thousands of years.
There's been bits and pieces of what liberty is all about.
And there's no reason to think that we can't continue to improve on that.
That is why I like to come to organizations and meetings like this.
And that's why I compliment the Mises Institute to continue to do what they do.
And I want to thank all of you for supporting the Mises Institute and also because of your encouragement that you give me.
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