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April 2, 2021 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
24:06
Fear: The Tool of Tyranny

How successful would the political classes be in expanding their powers if they had to deal with a population of individuals that were unafraid and who guarded their liberty with their lives? Liberty requires eternal vigilance. Be wary of the fear peddlers. The emotion of fear is the tool of tyranny.

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Fear-Mongering's Role 00:10:52
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Chris Rossini, our co-host.
Chris, welcome to the program.
Good morning.
Great to be with you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
We want to talk about a sort of a subject not necessarily in the news, but we'd like to make people think about this a little bit more.
And that has to do with how fear plays a role in political activity, in economics, in foreign policy.
The whole works because fear-mongering goes around and is a major factor.
When you think about how coronavirus has gone and all the people in charge of coronavirus, the doctors and the scientists and the politicians and the whole works, it's a lot of fear-mongering has happened, trying to get the people to go along, and that's what they do.
They have to get the people to obey.
So this is a subject that plays a role in all governments, and it's a human factor that people become fearful.
And a lot of times it's very, very justifiable to be fearful.
And sometimes it provides a defensive mechanism that if you get into a dangerous situation and you become fearful and you get a charge of adrenaline, it helps you.
But the fear that we're going to talk about today is the fear that politicians sometimes manufacture, scare the people, make them obedient, do as we tell you.
And they sometimes have to exaggerate it in order to get the people stirred up and ready to obey and participate.
Otherwise, the people might be resistant to the regulations and the rules and going to war and all these things.
So fear is a substitute for, I think, knowledge and understanding that could be used to persuade people to do certain things.
So even though fear sometimes can be very natural and helpful, the fear that we're going to be talking about today is the fear that sometimes is beat into us and it's deliberate.
It has a purpose.
It has a purpose of making the people more obedient.
And that if not, there may be a consequence.
And if you look at this in general, you find out that there's this tool of using fear is much more prevalent the larger the government is.
So if you have a totally authoritarian government, such as a Soviet system, fear is there constantly.
And so the authoritarian governments, fear is a tremendously violent tool because the people have to obey and they have to know the consequences.
So it's the opposite of what liberty is all about.
And it's very, very damaging.
And sometimes we wonder why people get so fearful so easily.
And they sometimes do it without too much of a worry of a consequence.
But basically, when they need, when governments need fear, they also produce the fear and the compliance with the threat of what might happen if you don't obey.
So there's usually a punishment for not obeying.
And what this does, though, it makes it difficult for people of honesty, whether they're in or out of government, to persuade and do people Purposefully.
They have to resort if the people aren't behaving correctly.
They will use this fear.
I think it's wholesale.
I think it's very characteristic of authoritarian governments.
Chris?
Right, Dr. Paul.
Fear is, I believe, the number one tool of people in power because it disarms you.
Now, we're all familiar with the Second Amendment that protects us.
We could arm ourselves physically.
So power obviously wants to disarm you from protecting yourself physically, but fear disarms you mentally.
It disarms you from thinking clearly.
You know, power cannot take hold when the people are armed, number one, physically, and number two, when they guard their liberty.
And we were warned by our founders to guard your liberty, be vigilant, because the fear will disarm you.
And power can't take liberty when you're not afraid.
So they have to knock you around a little bit.
They have to get you panicking, feeling vulnerable.
And then once that opening is there, and we just saw a great example for the billionth time over the last year, power expands like a virus, pun intended.
So the number one thing that we can propose, try to do ourselves is to think, number one, because they want you to feel.
They definitely do not want you to think, especially about the truth, and always be suspicious of anything that comes from government, people affiliated with government, people in any way connected financially, because you're going to see, like we see today, one message, one message.
Everywhere you look, it's the same message, same message.
And it's to make you afraid.
So we have to be as vigilant as we can to protect our liberties.
There's one condition that is usually created to make this tool more useful, and that is to get the people to be more dependent, more to be dependent on government.
And therefore, the most ruthless of dictators don't start off with the maximum dictatorship.
They start with an erosion.
And so many of us have talked to people who have come to this country, and they escape communism and other places.
And they'll come, for years, they've been mentioning it to me, well, this is the way it started.
We're doing something, and they'll say, this is what's happening.
It's gradualism.
It's getting people to be dependent.
And then there's a threat, usually because the dependency and the welfareism and the things that are promised run out of steam, and therefore the government has to get more ruthless.
So then they make use of this dependency by saying, if you don't do as we say, exactly as we say, you're going to lose your benefits.
In the worst systems, they don't really enforce all the laws in a totally totalitarian country.
They enforce the laws by saying, if you don't do what we tell you, you're going to lose your job.
You're going to use your food stance.
You won't be able to eat.
We're going to lose your apartment.
So they get you very, very dependent.
And people then know that they better be on their toes, which means they have to fear the government in a very negative fashion, but in a survival sense.
And governments can make use of that, but it builds a long time.
I don't think they snap their fingers and all of a sudden somebody gets out there and says, well, tomorrow this right of law, we're going to allow the people to be very fearful and they're going to be very dependent.
It's gradual.
It's been gradual in this country.
People are very, very dependent.
And the one thing that they use which is very tempting to accept, and that is governments and the politicians and the bureaucrats and the experts in our universities say that, and they imply, but they really believe it, that the purpose of government is to make you safe.
And that is used because then if you want to be safe, then you capitulate and you ask the government, help make me safe.
That's the important thing.
I'm always worried.
Are they going to invade us?
Are we going to get sick with a virus?
And how are we going to preserve our prosperity?
And they get conditioned this way to the point where they actually, so many people actually believe, and you hear the terms all the time, that the government provides for their liberty, which is absolutely wrong and contradicts our traditions because most Americans who understand the American system realize that rights don't come from the government.
You know, the rights come in a natural way from a God that presents these rights to us at birth.
And the founders believe this, and it's enshrined in our early document.
So this is something that I think people can witness.
It should be a warning to people as it is today.
There's a lot of people trying to warn the people, don't accept what government's doing because they say, I'm going to make you safe.
I'm going to make you secure.
I'm going to make sure you have food.
I'm going to make sure you have a job.
And we have to make it equitable.
And those are the terms.
Once they talk about equitableness, governments aren't very smart.
To make things equal, they can do it, but they can make us all equally poor and equally subject to the authority of the government.
But the phrases are wonderful.
And the people think, and the people especially who have had trouble may have been looking for some help when this is offered out, the demagoguery, the false promises are easy come for the politicians to do this.
And they do this.
They offer this wonderful thing, but it eventually turns into, if you don't do it, you better watch out.
And then the people wake up too often, too late.
And one thing we'd like to continue to do, Chris, is to continue to spread this message to warn people to know that these wonderful words and promises of largesse to the people to take care of them can eventually morph into fear mongers.
So if you go through a year or two of excessive fear driven by for reasons that are unexplainable, we ought to all be aware of what's happening to our country.
Right, Dr. Paul.
And the tactic that they use to get you afraid is their primary concern is to get you afraid right now.
The future does not matter.
The truth doesn't matter.
Truth lies.
It's all the same to them.
But right now, you have to be scared, and then they will implement their power grab.
Now, inevitably, in the future, people will find out, ah, they lied to us again, but it's too late then.
I mean, look at how many wars we could go back.
They lied here.
They lied here.
You go all the way back.
It's based on lies.
But in the future, after it's all said and done, who's going to report it?
The Next Fear Factor 00:04:51
Who's going to care?
It's ignored.
And if you try to bring it up, I mean, we could today say, you know, Fauci was saying you should not be wearing masks.
But say that, and people will be like, well, what are you worried about the past for?
Don't you understand that there's XYZ going on?
They're already on to the next fear.
And they'll tell you, stop living in the past.
But it was in the past that you were lied to, and that's when the power was expanded, and that's what created the problems of today.
So it's always in the present.
Right now, tomorrow, when you're in the present, you can't give in to the propaganda that is coming at you full steam ahead.
You have to be strong.
And it's very hard.
Only a few people can do it.
But those few people can change a lot of minds just by speaking the truth.
You know, it's been said that in a free society, or as free as you can get it, it's a condition where the government fears the people.
But in an authoritarian government, the people fear the government.
And the government should fear the people.
But right now, you know, it looks like the government is getting more authoritarian than ever, and they're getting fearful of the people, and they want more control of the people.
And one thing that I think about happening to us now, and so many people accepting it, is not the massive medical treatment for what I have considered, you know, an exaggeration of the danger of the coronavirus.
But that is sort of, has made it an opportunity for the government to make use of that, and that's why they're talking about passports.
The people, we have to watch and control the people because that's the way they're able to manage their government.
And the bigger the government and the more problems they have, the harder it is to manage.
And the more the people become fearful of the government, the more they want to change it.
But this whole thing about passport, and there's all kinds of suggestions, you know, vaccine passports, insert something into our bodies.
And they're for real.
There's a large number of people in this country that resist this, but I'll tell you what, there's a lot who say, well, it's going to be easy if I want to go to a football game.
No, it's really easy.
I'll have my little thing, my vaccination, and I can go in because, of course, I don't want to expose.
I don't want to be exposed and I don't want to make anybody else exposed to some illness.
And whether there's no coronavirus next week or not, there'll be another virus that they will be able to stir up the fear.
So they will use this whole principle of fear to get people to accommodate and go along with this, the passport.
It used to be said so often, you know, in the Soviet country, in the Nazi country, they had to show their papers.
They couldn't go where, go anyplace or do anything.
Well, it's getting pretty close to that.
And if they have something injected our body that will tell us where you can go, or even show your passport before you can go outside the house or get a job or go to school or all these things, you have to show that you've taken a certain amount of injections.
And, you know, the virus is questioned.
The severity of the virus is being questioned right now.
And it's going to get where they'll have to find another one.
They've already started that.
The variants.
There's five variants out there.
Get ready.
This one doesn't look so bad today, but next week it may have to.
So people want convenience and they want security and they want to be taken care of and they want dependency.
The government's in charge of making us safe.
That principle has to be challenged.
It isn't the purpose of government to make us safe.
And yet people say, what do you mean?
They have to make us safe.
But no, the government is there to preserve our liberties.
And when people, when our liberties are threatened, if there are troops on our borders and they're marching in, there may be a different justification there.
But the government isn't to make each and every one of us safe and secure because then they get control of everything that we do.
And therefore, there will always be abuse and misunderstanding.
And already we can see the confusion about how we pass out the free vaccines.
So there will always be questions.
And that's why the goal ultimately, I believe in my own mind, is the goal of many of the authoritarians who are already preaching it to us about the grave dangers that we face, and therefore we need more authority, and that if we have these implanted passports, it'll be much easier for the government.
I think that needs to be challenged.
Big Governments Win With Fear 00:02:19
Absolutely, Dr. Paul.
I think those vaccine passports are a totalitarian tyranny, and I hope everybody that watches us speaks out.
Do your part against it.
I'll finish up, Dr. Paul, with a big picture point of view, at least from my view.
The way I see it, both sides of the political spectrum are constantly supposed to be gripped by fear.
On the right, not only on the right, on the left too, it's foreign boogeyman is very common.
It's constantly rotating.
Iraq, Iran, Syria, Russia, China, North Korea.
There's always some foreign boogeyman that is put in your face that you're supposed to be afraid of, and it costs Americans trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars.
More on the left, you have that the world is going to end in X amount of years if you don't give government all this power.
And again, it's a constantly rotating thing from global warming to global cooling to now.
Let's just call it climate change.
And the right and the left are supposed to fight constantly.
This is the people now.
Are supposed to fight constantly with one another.
Which is the bigger fear?
Which is this?
And either way, the same people win.
Big government, big corporations, no matter what.
Think of it like a professional sports game.
It doesn't matter if the Eagles and the Patriots, who wins that game.
You know who wins?
The NFL.
It makes no difference to the NFL who wins the game.
And that's how it is with politics.
The big governments, big elites, the corporations, they win no matter which fear you're afraid of.
But our message is you don't have to choose.
You don't have to be in this boxing ring that has been set up for you to go fight with your neighbor about global warming.
You can take yourself out of the game.
Believe in liberty, individual liberty.
Government is there, as Dr. Paul mentioned, to protect that liberty.
And that is the worst thing you could possibly do to this colossal big government, big corporation thing that rules over us today.
Well said, Chris.
I'm going to follow up on that a bit because I want to talk about the main vehicle right now that instills a lot of fear in the people.
Cancel Culture's Grip 00:05:49
And the main vehicle now, the social, cultural, educational, philosophic movement right now that is just undermining just about everything that we do.
And that is this cultural Marxism, this whole thing about cancel culture.
It just amazes to me how effective they have been because they can destroy a person's life, a person's business.
And I just wonder how these judges out there decide so-and-so said something 20 years ago and therefore he's guilty of such and such and therefore we have to cancel him.
And it's this wokeism.
Wake up and you join the crowd that endorses this and obeys.
Corporatism, unfortunately, has accepted this nonsense.
So if somebody oversteps their bounds and they do something that is unsuccessful and they said something or had a picture made or who knows what, it just seems to be incidental, had been incidental, that they have to be punished.
And therefore, what they do is once they send the message out, and this is to me is astounding, that they can penalize that person.
And if it's in television or newspapers or jobs, they may lose their job and never get another job because they have misstated it and they have endorsed ideas that are not acceptable.
And this is total control of language and understanding.
But I am amazed at how many corporations go along with this.
They participate in it.
So if there is a corporation, they're so anxious to do that.
We saw this, when the lockdowns have been, you know, at the sporting events, the corporations wouldn't dare challenge that.
And they speak out for it because we have to keep the people under control.
And this, to me, I think, is our greatest threat that we face today is the intellectual control of what people say and do.
And that to me is what we have to contend with.
And, you know, the saying goes that truth is treason in an empire of lies.
So if we have an empire of lies, which we're approaching, because everything is based on a lie, so much of it, because they disobey the things that we're supposed to obey.
I remember one time when I was preaching the gospel about the Constitution, try to stop on a war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
When I brought it up, I was talking to the people on the international committee.
I said, if you want to go there and you want to give the authority to the president, why don't you declare war?
That's what you're supposed to do.
But it was explained to me by the chairman of the committee of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
He says, oh, that idea of declaring war, that's anachronistic.
We don't follow that anymore.
And they don't.
The truth now is established by somebody else, not by an oath of office or the conditions that we had when we established the country, the rule of law, and having still accepted this idea of right and wrong.
Now, right and wrong is designed by the authoritarians who say that if you don't do what we tell you, that's wrong and we're going to punish you for it.
And we will cancel you.
And that attitude is, I'll tell you what, very, very dangerous.
What they're canceling is liberty.
And they're saying that liberty is not something that you have.
Liberty is something that only government can give you if you obey what the government tells us.
So we have our work cut out for us.
I think conditions are going to get worse.
But we have a growing number of people who understand this message exactly and they would like to see it straightened out.
But the message has to be spread because governments ultimately are reflections of the attitude of the people and their willingness to accept it.
They may not be preaching it and say they do, but even complacency means let them do what they want and making excuses.
A lot of that is going on.
That people will accept it.
In the past, vicious dictators that were taken over were usually accepted by the people early on.
But then when the controls come, it's a different story, and a lot of people lost their lives.
All you have to do is look at the history of the 20th century.
It's pretty sad on what authoritarianism did and what fear-mongering did.
Scare the people to death, and then look at the sacrifice that happened.
First, they sacrificed liberty, and all the other sacrifices follow on.
And governments cannot be our savior in that taking care of us by just we saying, take care of us.
We're dependent on you.
You have to help us, feed us, clothe us, destroy our enemies.
No, we have to be willing to accept the principles of liberty and also the responsibilities of liberty.
It's the second part that's the hardest for a lot of people.
And it's certainly the case in many of our corporations now who practice the principles of corporatism because they don't accept those factors, even the free market.
It's ironic that you'd think the corporations were there for the free market.
No, they're there for a corporatist attitude and benefits coming from the Federal Reserve, expenditures coming from that are lobbying in Washington.
So we're a long way.
way from the principles of liberty that we were first given many years ago.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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