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Dec. 28, 2020 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
20:42
Silver Linings: Looking For Positives In A Very Challenging Year

Even in the most dire circumstances, optimism and belief in the cause of Liberty must be maintained. This show focuses on positive developments for Liberty, in a year filled with authoritarianism.

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Time Text
Big Deal Elections 00:05:10
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning into the Liberty Report.
Today, the report is coming to you audio only because staff is out due to the holidays, and we don't have a big staff, but we're coming to you by audio.
But we do have Chris Rossini as a co-host, as he often participates in.
And Chris, welcome to the program.
It's great to be with you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
But there's a lot in the news.
You know, in the last few weeks, there's been the election.
That's been a big deal.
And honesty in elections, that's a big deal.
The virus is always a big deal.
Lockdown's a big deal.
And everybody's now at the end of the year to anticipate and sort of make predictions about what will happen.
We'll talk about what we think about in the future and what next year will be like.
But I never like to think that this is a prediction of things to come because, you know, I think there's a limit to what you can do.
But we can't speculate and talk about it because everybody has to do that to make plans.
Our biggest job, Chris, the way I see it is we have to sort of figure out what's the government going to do to us and for us, supposedly for us, but it's usually doing something to us.
Because right now there's a lot of pessimism out there.
We could do even a long, long program, you know, on just the difficulties that people are facing, the unemployment and the downside of lockdown and all these things.
We do a lot of that.
But today, Chris, I want to talk a little bit about, is there any light at the end of the tunnel?
And sometimes that's a struggle.
But you know, one thing when that becomes difficult for me to find that spark and start talking about, well, it's not that bad.
It can end is I think about 1989, 1990, when nobody essentially was predicting the disappearance of the Soviet empire and it disappeared.
It wasn't a perfect replacement, but it was a lot better than the nukes facing each other.
And we didn't have to, you know, have the end of the Soviet system with any nuclear exchange.
And that was a surprise by a lot of people.
A lot of good came from it.
A lot more could have come from it.
It's not to say that it was just a perfect thing.
So that's the reason I look at it.
I said, you know, this is terrible.
When you look at the judicial system and the, you know, the integrity of our election process, the integrity of getting information about COVID.
I mean, it's really, really bad.
And in some sense, it's good that people now are questioning a government.
So it isn't easy, but I still think there's room for optimism.
And we're going to talk a little bit, you know, about this today because, you know, the process is working and there are a lot of problems ahead.
I saw, I heard one person today said, boy, things just are wonderful right now because we'll be back to the roaring 20s.
Well, he's hoping.
And yet I don't happen to share that, but I think that there's something to talk about of the benefits.
Because in general, Chris, what I think is people are waking up and there's a growing number of people who are starting to agree with us and others who have expressed this reluctance to say, well, you know, the CDC and WHO are giving us good information.
We have a vaccine and everything is good.
So when we come down and say, be careful, then we have to say, well, how can you be optimistic if you're criticizing everything they do?
But, you know, to have good expectations, I think you have to be honest with oneself and we have to be realistic.
And that's what I'd like to try to do today.
So I'm sure you have some ideas about where you see a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel.
Yeah, I hope so, Dr. Paul.
We may be the only two people that are looking for silver linings to this very, very challenging year.
But it is important because we do believe in the ideas that we talk about.
And in order for those ideas to win and thrive, you have to be optimistic that they will win and thrive.
So, you know, when I was looking for positives, I found a few that we'll mention today.
The first one that I'd like to mention, I saw a chart on Lou Rockwell's site, and it showed the election results by county.
And it was a stunning chart because this is audio only.
We can't put it up.
But it was a sea of red.
You know, President Trump won 3,006 counties and Biden won 477.
Red Sea Victory 00:04:32
And that's not necessarily because everybody's in love with Trump.
He's only been around for four years.
But what it shows to me is that there is great resistance to the anti-liberty agenda that is being forced on everyone.
And if the map that I was looking at was in the reverse and the vast majority was in the far leftist blue, it would be very daunting for us.
It would be a much bigger uphill battle.
But because it is what it is and the American people still have that, even though they don't fully understand the ideas of liberty, it's still percolating under there.
This is a huge opportunity, I believe, for our ideas to pull these many individuals further into the ideas of liberty.
So I think that that is one of the positives.
Very good.
You know, when I look at what's happening in our cities, it can get discouraging very easily when you look at the violence and how they're being handled in the judicial system.
It just seems like we're on the verge of anarchy.
And although I've never been a fan of New York City, I just don't like a lot of crowds and traffic.
I sort of very much lament when I see the pictures of a city like New York getting closed down, you know, literally.
And yet what it has caused is maybe a very positive reaction that people aren't totally complacent and just go along with everything the government does to them.
People, guess what?
It's gotten so bad in some of these big cities, New York in particular, they're fleeing the cities.
They're acting.
There is enough freedom for people to leave.
That was more or less one of the arguments for the individual states.
If one state really abused their citizens, you go to another state.
And so in spite of all the promises, all the money spent, all of the bailouts and everything, people know they have to do something else.
One thing when you hear people talk about this, I'm always impressed.
And I believe a lot of them, although there's the other kind that just have their hands out, but there's a lot of, just leave me alone, especially the small shopkeepers, small business, just leave me alone.
Let me go back to work.
Let me make a living.
I don't want to hand out.
And I think that's healthy.
One, because people, there are still people who are self-reliant.
Also, they've lost confidence that the government's not going to take care of them.
So what they're telling the government and us is just leave me alone.
Let me be free.
Let me take care of myself.
And they're voting with their feet.
And it isn't just New York.
I mean, it's the California cities.
And there's also that has caused a shift in the population, which may be a benefit to those of us who believe in less government.
And that remains to be seen.
So we may see that later on.
Right.
And to follow up on that, Dr. Paul, we did see some pockets of freedom during this whole COVID fiasco.
And the two states that come to my mind are Florida and South Dakota.
Those governors, they buck the tide and they chose freedom.
And they're reaping the rewards.
They look like heroes.
People are moving to their states.
Their economies are booming.
And they may not get good establishment press for succeeding.
We shouldn't expect that they would.
But the people themselves know.
I've heard multiple times that just if you go to Florida, you'd never know that there's some COVID fiasco going on.
They're living normal lives for the most part.
And the flip side of that is, as Dr. Paul mentioned, the governors and the officials that chose tyrannical ideas, the people are leaving.
They want freedom.
So what this shows us is that bad ideas are not popular.
We'd be in a much worse position if they were popular, if people were fleeing to go live into New York City instead of leaving there for greener pastures.
So again, this is a way to look for the positive in a very challenging situation.
Challenging the Government Curriculum 00:03:20
You know, one huge problem that we have faced for many, many years, decades, has been the undermining of a good classical education with the government schools.
And they've deteriorated.
They have taught some of the radical ideas.
Our universities are a mess.
And they have converted a lot of people in Congress.
I met a lot of people and a lot of them were, you know, I could socialize with them and talk to them as long as I, you know, didn't have to try to convert them because they were, you know, locked in.
They had all been taught, you know, one form of economics.
I happened to have learned economics from the Austrian school, so I had different opinions.
And at the beginning, it was like nobody ever heard of them.
But that generally changed.
But the Austrian school is becoming more popular.
But I still think one of the biggest hurdles right now is overcoming the indoctrination in the government schools that are pressured by special interest groups and unions to do the things and teach the kids and keep the schools closed.
That is one of the most atrocious things that ever happened.
Now you say, well, how can you find any good out of that?
Well, in a narrow sense, in a small sense, it did something with the Ron Paul curriculum because I've been sort of quietly but subtly and steadily promoting homeschooling, a special type of intense study in homes.
And it's hell, we've done well, but not to the tune of tens of thousands or anything like that.
But a lot of people have liked it.
But in this past year, I think our numbers have more than doubled, you know, our students.
And yeah, doubled for a month, like a couple thousand to more thousand.
And it's not millions, but it's the quality that we look for.
And that is not, that's just my experience personally.
But there's a lot other ones like this too.
There's other homeschooling groups that are good, and they're starting to recognize that the school system is the problem.
And I say this, you know, with caution and try to be as objective as possible because we've had a lot of individuals in my family that ended up teaching in public government schools with good intentions and doing a good job, and others have too.
But overall, the control of the curriculum has been by other individuals.
And I think that we're at this point because we have accepted that for a long time.
And I think hopefully that this will change, that there will be more people getting their education elsewhere.
And I think the challenge right now is to keep the internet open enough that people can express themselves and their views so that these messages of liberty can be disseminated throughout the country.
Yes, good points, Dr. Paul.
I'll finish up our short little program here.
There is no sugarcoating if you've lost your job, if you've lost loved ones, if you've lost your career because of lockdowns, there's, you know, nothing good can be said of that.
More Freedom for Individuals 00:07:35
We're focused on the big picture of liberty versus power.
And it is here that we try to remain optimistic because in the end, as Dr. Paul has said over and over, the truth really does prevail.
If it didn't, we wouldn't be here discussing this right now.
Power and tyranny are not new.
The ideas of liberty were not invented by either of us.
They are not new either.
But we are here having this conversation because two plus two is always four, and economic laws are absolute.
There will be no wiping out of supply and demand.
Sound money is superior to fiat money, and free markets are superior to central planning.
So it's important to, on a personal level, always believe that the truth and that liberty will win out in the end.
Because if you believe otherwise, if you believe the empire of lies, you know, the truth won't lose, but you will lose.
You defeat yourself.
So hopefully we help people remain optimistic that liberty will win in the end.
And if we just learn, understand it, and hang on, then it'll be a good thing.
You know, one other thing, Chris, that I've noticed that I hope is a real positive thing: that some of the candidates and some of the new members of Congress, especially young women that came in on the Republican side, and they're counteracting the almost automatic impression that if you have women, especially in the Democrat Party, you can assume that they're going to be welfare.
And that's a general statement that I think is safe to make.
But all of a sudden, you've seen some, I've seen them on TV.
This doesn't mean we know exactly what they'll do, but it seemed to be a shift.
And there's been a couple who one of their biggest issues has been the gun issue, the Second Amendment, and have made the right kind of points.
And right now, there's a lot of people in this society being very concerned.
And mothers and conservatives and liberals and everybody else should be very concerned.
And if the government can't protect us, and just think of the terrible image that had come out of our cities when people were tearing the cities up and burning down and smashing buildings.
And the authorities in many of the big cities, the authorities, the mayors, and the police actually were with the thugs.
And now I think that's shifting a little bit.
There's a different atmosphere now because if the government can't handle it, they have to be prepared to take care of themselves.
And also, people have been, you know, very, very annoyed by the judicial system.
And that's been the case for a long time because the laws against drug usage have always been enforced unfairly.
And minorities did end up getting punished more than others.
So if people would put this together, maybe they would realize what we need is honest and fair judicial system.
And when you look at what's happening in the election, once you say, well, it was a perfect election and there's no reason to have any suspicion there was any kind of fraud going on, I guess there's a lot we don't know about it, but people are skeptical of it and they are questioning that I think is good because, you know, for the most part, most Americans want to say, well, we have to at least have integrity in our election.
Well, I think the interest in that now has suddenly been boosted.
The one other thing that I noticed that I think is good, but very, very risky, is that there's more people, even those who have had a different position, are growing skeptical of the automatic authoritarian approach to using the vaccines.
And I'm not an anti-vaccine person, and I think that that's right.
But I do believe very strongly that ultimately in a free society, the people are supposed to, the individual is supposed to be able to tell you what to put in their body.
And if there's a child underage, it should be the parent.
But this whole thing about the authoritarian approach to using vaccines, that to me is just really horrible.
And if it's good, people will do it.
And the same way with the lockdown efforts, as this has been going on, I believe more and more people have started and they will continue to just walk away and just quit participating in this insanity that goes with lockdown.
And I think that once the support is gone, the thing is just going to dissipate.
So I'm hoping that this next year we'll see a lot less intrusion by the thugs who love to write regulations and edicts and writing the rules that they're not even supposed to, executive orders.
So hopefully we'll see that disappear because I don't think we need a magic program.
We don't need more bailouts and more printed money and all this stuff.
What we need is more freedom.
If we have more freedom of so many of these problems, whether it's protection of their families at home with their right to defend their families or whether it's going to work and earning a living rather than begging and pleading or waiting for the government to come in and bail them out and send them more checks.
So how in the world they think that these people, that the unemployment problem, which has hurt the minorities and the middle class the most, how that's going to happen if there are all these prohibitions against going to work?
Don't you know you're not allowed to go to work or go to work?
And it is so ridiculous.
You have to say, do they are just unaware?
Can't they understand what they're doing?
Or do they have an ulterior motive?
And I think the conditions actually introduces that question.
What in the world is the motivation for this?
The only thing that we can do is work hard at explaining why authoritarianism and control of everything that we do is not the way to bring about peace and prosperity in a society.
So in spite of the fact, Chris, that we can't promise and say next year is going to be perfect and the problem has been solved, I think there's reasons if we can keep the momentum in these certain areas and that if we can get people to feel comfortable about challenging some of these rules and regulations, it's just great when you see a governor of Florida just saying, enough is enough.
Let's just get rid of all this.
And he gets some grief, but he also gets a better economy.
So logic should win out and show that we as a people would do much better if we had our freedoms and that would be a worthy goal.
I do want to thank everybody for tuning in today to our audio report.
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