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Jan. 1, 2021 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
08:56
Troops Are Meant To Protect Liberty...Not Empire --- Bring Them All Home!

The best way to support our troops is to bring them all home as quickly as possible.

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Time Text
Presidential War Powers? 00:06:00
Mr. Speaker, it is currently an accepted cliché to say foreign policy is a presidential matter and Congress should not meddle.
Frequently we hear the pleading it remained bipartisan with no dissent, especially when troops are placed in harm's way.
Yet no place in the Constitution do we find any such explicit instruction.
Instead, we find no mention of foreign policy.
To the contrary, we find strict prohibitions placed on the President when it comes to dealing with foreign nations.
The Constitution is clear.
No treaties can be entered into without the consent of the Senate.
No war may be fought without the declaration of war by the Congress.
No money shall be spent overseas without Congress first raising the money, then authorizing it and appropriating these funds for specific purposes.
Since the Constitution does not even assume a standing army, let alone stationing troops in peacetime in over 100 countries with CIA clandestine activities and even more, the current foreign policy that has evolved over the past hundred years would surely be unrecognizable by the authors of that document.
The founders of this country were opposed to standing armings for fear they would be carelessly used.
They were right.
The United States record of foreign intervention and its failures have not yet prompted a serious discussion of the need for an overall reassessment of this dangerous and out-of-control policy.
Not only has Congress failed in its responsibilities to restrain our adventurous presidents in pursuing war, spying, and imposing America's will on other nations by installing leaders and at times eliminating others throughout the world these past 50 years.
We now, by default, have allowed our foreign policy to be commandeered by international bodies like NATO and the United Nations.
This can only lead to trouble for the United States and further threaten our liberties.
And we have already seen plenty of that in this century.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The last nail is being driven into the coffin of the American Republic.
Yet Congress remains in total denial as our liberties are rapidly fading before our eyes.
The process is propelled by unwarranted fear and ignorance as to the true meaning of liberty.
It is driven by economic myths, fallacies, and irrational good intentions.
The rule of law is constantly rejected, and authoritarian answers are offered as panaceas for all our problems.
Runaway welfareism is used to benefit the rich at the expense of the middle class.
Who would have ever thought that the current generation and Congress would stand idly by and watch such a rapid disintegration of the American Republic?
Characteristic of this epic event is the casual acceptance by the people and the political leaders of the unitary presidency, which is equivalent to granting dictatorial powers to the president.
Our presidents can now, on their own, order assassinations, including American citizens, operate secret military tribunals, engage in torture, enforce indefinite imprisonments without due process, order searches and seizures without proper warrants, gutting the Fourth Amendment, ignore the 60-day rule for reporting to the Congress the nature of any military operation as required by the War Power Resolution, continue the Patriot Act abuses without oversight,
wage war at will, treat all Americans as suspected terrorists at airports with TSA groping and nude X-raying.
And the Federal Reserve accommodates by counterfeiting the funds needed and not paid for by taxation and borrowing, permitting runaway spending, endless debt, and special interest bailouts.
And all of this is not enough.
Congress is planning to massively increase the war power of the President.
Though an opportunity presents itself to end the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, Congress, with bipartisan support, obsesses on how to expand the unconstitutional war power of the president he already holds.
The current proposal would allow a president to pursue war anytime, any place, for any reason, without congressional approval.
Many believe this would even permit military activity against American suspects here at home.
The proposed authority does not reference the 9-11 attacks.
It would be expanded to include the Taliban and associated forces, a dangerously vague and expansive definition of our potential enemies.
There is no denial that the changes in Section 1034 totally eliminate the hard-fought for restraint on presidential authority to go to war without congressional approval achieved at the Constitutional Convention.
Congress's war authority has been severely undermined since World War II, beginning with the advent of the Korean War, which was fought solely under a UN resolution.
Even today, we're waging war in Libya without even consulting with the Congress, similar to how we went to war in Bosnia in the 1990s under President Clinton.
The three major reasons for our constitutional conventions were to guarantee free trade and travel among the states, make gold and silver legal tender and abolish paper money, and strictly limit the executive branch's authority to pursue war without congressional approval.
But today, Federal Reserve notes are legal tender, gold and silver are illegal.
The Interstate Commerce Clause is used to regulate all commerce at the expense of the free trade among the states.
And now, the final nail is placed in the coffin of congressional responsibility for the war power, delivering this power completely to the president, a sharp and huge blow to the concept of our republic.
In my view, it appears that the fate of the American Republic is now sealed, unless these recent trends are quickly reversed.
The saddest part of this tragedy is that all these horrible changes are being done in the name of patriotism and protecting freedom.
I'd Bring Them Home 00:02:52
They are justified by good intentions while believing the sacrifice of liberty is required for our safety.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
More sadly is the conviction that our enemies are driven to attack us for our freedoms and prosperity and not because of our deeply flawed foreign policy that has generated justifiable grievances and has inspired the radical violence against us.
Without this understanding, our endless, unnamed, and undeclared wars will continue and our wonderful experiment with liberty will end.
They don't want our troops on the Arabian Peninsula.
We have no need for our national security to have troops on the Arabian Peninsula.
And going into Iraq and Afghanistan and threatening Iran is the worst thing we can do for our national security.
I am less safe.
The American people are less safe for this.
It's the policy that is wrong.
Tactical movements and shifting troops around and taking in 30 more and reducing by five, totally irrelevant.
We need a new foreign policy that said we ought to mind our own business, bring our troops home, defend this country, defend our borders.
I'm saying we should take our marching orders from our Constitution.
We should not go to war.
We should not go to war without a declaration.
We should not go to war when it's an aggressive war.
This is an aggressive invasion.
We've committed the invasion of this war.
You know, the South Koreans have about, what, 10, 20 times the GDP of North Korea.
What are they doing over there?
Why don't we have those military personnel back here spending their money here in this country?
No, I'd bring them home from South Korea.
I'd bring them home from Japan.
I'd bring them home from Germany and the Middle East.
And we'd be stronger for it.
Because great nations don't get defeated usually militarily.
They get defeated for bad economic policies.
And matter of fact, liberties are more destroyed by people's own governments more so than somebody invading.
I fear the loss of my personal liberty more by the government than I do by somebody invading our country and all of a sudden starting to regulate it.
So, you know, I bring them home.
The sooner the better.
We should not have long faces.
We do not know exactly what tomorrow will bring, but I do know that the effort is worthwhile.
And I do know that you can have a lot of fun defending liberty.
And believe me, if you understand liberty and realize it's the only humanitarian system that existed ever on mankind, I tell you what, if you learn about it, study it, promote free market economics, and fight for this, I can guarantee you you will sleep better at night, you will enjoy your life, and you will feel like you're doing something worthwhile.
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