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Nov. 25, 2022 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
37:21
'Cancel Culture And Cultural Marxism' - Ron Paul at RPI Lake Jackson Conference, 11/2022

What are the greatest threats to liberty today? Attacks on freedom of speech and expression. Watch Ron Paul's speech at the Ron Paul Institute Conference - 'Shut Up! Cancel Culture and the War on Speech' - earlier this month.

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Time Text
Constitutional Principles Matter 00:14:34
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Is my mic on?
Can you hear me?
Did you hear Dale?
I heard him.
And there is a strong message there.
And I think I've heard the message before too.
Del, you did a great job, as all of you have done, because I think our energy comes from the people who come and say, we want to, you know, forward and advance our understanding of what liberty is all about.
But actually, you come, you participate just by being here because all of us need a little bit of help, a little bit of encouragement.
So I want to thank all our speakers and all our people who have been involved and all our guests today.
I know there's some new guests here, and that's wonderful too.
But one thing I'm not going to try to do is Todd Dell.
You know, I think he had it.
But it will be the same, it'll be the same challenge, maybe worded slightly differently.
But the points he has made on this using an example of the vaccines and the lockdowns and all the baloney that has gone on, I think it's very important because I think I can make two points specifically on this.
Because the marching orders are for us to go and continue to tell the truth and energize people and change things.
And I think that's good.
But on the principle that I look at on something like this, people will ask when we've described we've had problems and they'll come up and say, well, what am I going to do?
I agree with everything you say.
So exactly what should I do?
And, well, I said, you know, it does seem very complex.
It seems to be overwhelming.
Where do you start?
And I said, well, it is tough.
There's a lot of problems out there and mostly, you know, created by the government.
I said, but if you have trouble on figuring out where to start, why don't you start with the Constitution?
You know, if we have a problem, why don't we start with the Constitution?
Now, the one thing that this whole thing about the pandemic has brought attention to me and so many others is the destruction of the medical care in this country, the total destruction of the doctor-patient relationship and how that should be the responsible way of trying to figure out, well, should I do this or do that?
And you say, yeah, but that doctor might make a mistake.
If you have all that responsibility, you might make a mistake.
That's why you need government to help you make these decisions.
And we'll do this and we'll have a lot of research done.
And we'll have the drug companies help us and all these wonderful things they'll do.
The big problem with there is that is a corrupt system.
And let's say they purposely do something or they do it by accident, like they make a mistake.
In anything that we talk about, when you turn it over to the government, the individual who has the most power and clout, when they make a mistake, everybody suffers.
The citizens have to live under it.
But if you have the responsibility of your own medical care and responsibility for your own life and what you read and what your habits are and all these other things, then if you do something wrong, it is true.
And some people don't like this about a free society.
It affects you and you'll suffer the consequences.
If you don't take a job and you don't work and it hurts you because you won't work, well, that's your responsibility.
It's not your responsibility or your right to go and steal from somebody else.
So I think the one way to handle that in a technical way or a constitutional way is we talk a lot about the First Amendment, and we've heard a lot about the First Amendment this last day, and we have to continue language and talking and reaching out to people.
But the whole thing is, is the Constitution is written in Article 1, Section 8.
I think we neglect Article 1, Section 8 a whole lot because they're trying to design something, putting the responsibility on the people, and then they say, well, be specific, that there will be some explicit things that you cannot do, and some that you can do.
Very, very explicit.
But what happens is instead of looking to Article 1, Section 8, what the left does, they do it constantly.
You hear it every day on the television.
They say, oh, you're a constitutional, big deal.
But tell me where it tells me I'm not allowed to do this.
Because their interpretation is that anything the Constitution doesn't explicitly say you cannot have government medicine and explicitly say it, then you can do it.
So anything that hasn't been denied by the Constitution, and that means everything else is what they do, what they want to do, they're able to do it.
So I think that's one rule that would have to be changed.
We can't say that.
And that's why the courts are helpful at times, and we still have to hope we get some support there.
But that's why the courts can go in the wrong direction all the time because they misinterpret either because of total ignorance or because they want to do it on purpose to redesign the system.
But there's another principle that we could apply for problems like we have faced and how do you do it.
Of course, I and many others, everybody in this audience, and even you who come, and that is through the educational system to know and understand.
And I have a strong believer in that.
And Jeff is here with us today from the Mises Institute.
I praise the Mises Institute highly because that has given us a place to go to get the explanations we need.
I do believe that a lot of people out there, they might be careless and they might be lackadaisical, but when they get a problem, they do want to know the truth.
And there's a lot of truth in an organization like the Mises Institute.
But there's the principle, I can take that and apply that principle to something that I think is very valuable to us.
And that's what I call the Basiat principle.
And most people in this audience have heard of the law.
And it's not complicated.
It's a little bit easier to read than human action.
But the law is very simple.
It says merely that basically if you and I can't do it, and the government has a lot of rules on us, and they've been there a long time, all the way back to the Sumerian Code and Hammurabi and the Ten Commandments, recognize the fact that you're not supposed to kill people.
You're not supposed to lie.
It existed originally.
As soon as man started recording some of this, it seemed like there was a perception of what a higher law was all about, and they had these rules in there.
But today, and Vastya wrote it in the 19th century, in the 18th century, I mean, and when he wrote this book, he said, it's very simple.
If the rules and your conscience tell you that you're not supposed to do something, if you need some stuff, if you don't have a car and your neighbor has two or three, and you think, he has too much, you know, I think I'll just go take one.
But, you know, most people, even the ones who are very corrupt in their thinking, and they have another way of doing that.
No, most people still recognize, fortunately, that you're not supposed to do that, and that's the wrong thing to do.
Even though I think that general rule that I usually say, most people know this, this last year or two, I've been wondering if anybody knows that's true.
It looks like they still do a lot of robbing and killing.
But I say, if you recognize that, just apply that to the government.
If we can't steal a car, we can't steal food, we can't tell people what to do, we can't, you know, everything that we can't do with our neighbor, why in the world do we allow the government to get involved and then play games with us for financial reasons and for the fact that the corporations benefit from this, the companies that make all the vaccines, that is a real crime.
But the military-industrial complex is the very same.
But I would say that we might do a lot to cancel the military-industrial complex by changing our foreign policy to that of non-intervention and not occupying, and telling people about the we don't, we don't need an empire, and a simple look at history shows that big empires uh, you know, all the way back to Roman times it,
uh when they usually fail, and some of them last a long time.
But they, it usually fails when they fail in a couple ways.
One, they get careless, they get greedy and uh, they decide to inflate the currency, and that makes a difference, inflation.
And also, as they inflate and undermine an economy, they're more aggressive and they spread their uh influence around the world.
I mean, can you think of?
Uh, I i'm?
My guess is that uh, this room would be uh, pretty well informed about where we might be.
You know, some people, some people in this country are still figuring out what's this Ukraine business, and they'll come up with a good solution and say, why are we worried about the borders in Ukraine?
I thought maybe we ought to deal with our borders here at home, you know.
So the uh the the, the people, the people know, know this, and this is this is to me, I think it's wonderful, the people waking up, Uh Dale, that last conclusion, which was the outbeat one, don't, don't give up.
I think it's so important too, because it's very easy to get, get despondent, and i'm always pleased when I go to the college campuses because there's been a good response from the very, very beginning.
But young people, very seriously, will come up.
Okay i've I Joe, I agree With you, this is what I believe in.
So tell me what I have to do.
And my answer is simply, do whatever you want.
You know, but you have to do something.
And, of course, the two hints I give them is one is education, because I think, and I imagine others in this room have experienced this, but I certainly did, because I was exposed to conventional wisdom of not TV so much as a young person as radio and papers and schools and everything else.
And the education in our government schools.
I was in 12 years of government school.
I was in a private college, but it was also influenced by government money at time.
And I would say that if you look at that, I said it took me a while because I had a glimpse of what was happening.
And I got interested in monetary policy, especially.
So I was looking for information.
And by bits and pieces and discovering Austrian economics, I said it took me a while.
And I'm still working at it.
But it took me a while to unlearn all the nonsense that has pumped into our heads, whether it's television, that is still there.
So you have to get to the point where you work to understand things in order to eliminate in your mind why you have to say, oh, yeah, I believe everything you say, but I couldn't challenge Social Security.
That would be, you know, the greatest sin in the world.
You can't do that because if people need something, you have to help them.
No, you have to be able to understand that from a moral viewpoint and an economic viewpoint.
It's very easy.
If you are arguing for less government, if you find out that, yes, it's unconstitutional, that's a pretty good argument.
What about the idea that it doesn't work?
And the reason we have trouble there is the foolishness has a delay to be fully felt.
It takes a while.
I mean, the inflation that we're dealing with, you could date it back to 1913 if you'd like.
So we could cancel 1913.
It would be a lot better off.
get rid of the Fed and the IRS totally, completely.
But it takes a while, you know, to transition.
And it is true.
I think it is definitely, there is an opportunity because people are waking up.
I just love the stuff that occurred, and we covered it on our program on the Liberty Report.
And that has to do with the true positive awakening of parental responsibilities.
And I think that's natural.
As bad as it may seem, you think that, and there are times I have to work at it.
There are times when I think, well, how can a wild-eyed socialist, you know, maintain and still feel like they have responsibility and a major responsibility for their children?
But it's the failure, the failure of the economic system, the failure of the social system, the failure of the foreign policy.
And when it becomes apparent, people wake up.
I was influenced a lot, politically speaking, in the 1960s because I had just finished two years.
Drafted vs. Volunteer 00:02:35
I was in my last month of a two-year residency in internal medicine, and that was in October of 1962.
And I'm sure somebody here remembers 1962, and there were a few missiles about to fly.
So I got my draft notice.
But I want to tell you, when I campaigned around the area, and I'm supportive of the principle that you defend the country, but I would go to some veterans groups, and I would talk about what's going on.
And I said, well, I think that it's very important that we do follow and have national defense.
But I'll tell you, it was difficult to say that, you know, and I would throw this in.
This was a little bit of politics.
And I would say, oh, because there is this undeclared value in a veteran going campaigning.
Oh, he's, you know, dedicated.
The only thing I resented the most was thanking me for my service.
I said, no, you don't have to thank me.
I tell you, it was coercive.
I was drafted.
So I told him, yep, if you're drafted.
So at the veterans meeting, I would say, you know, my introduction dealt with, you know, I was in the military and I actually ended up in the Air Force for five years of reserve status and active status.
And I said, you know, I said, but I have to confess, I said, you know, I was drafted.
And I got my draft notice.
I remember it very clearly, the draft notice.
I was still in Detroit, Henry Ford Hospital.
And the notice said, you are, I'm ad libbing a bit.
You are hereby drafted into the Army as a buck private.
Wow, that caught my attention.
So I read a little bit more and checked out, unless you volunteer.
And if you volunteer, then you can get a captain.
You can be a captain and you can practice medicine.
I said, well, if they're going to drag me off, I might as well capitulate.
So I said, I always told him, I said, I immediately became a volunteer.
Volunteer.
And I did.
War, Market, Vote 00:15:26
I mean, it was a period of time all through the 60s.
That was a process leading up to the 70s where I really got fascinated with the economics and the monetary system.
But it was something that I thought was, it turned out because I didn't fight it.
And I had a lot of responsibility as a flight surgeon, had a responsibility of flying around the world and watching what happened.
But I also had visualization of where we were and what we were doing.
You can't believe.
And back then, we were still in airplanes that were built in World War II.
And I rarely went on the trips around the world in jets.
Matter of fact, I don't remember it back then.
And so they were slow.
But we were delivering product parts for nuclear weaponry and all of this.
I mean, the Vietnam War was going on.
So I went to these places, but it was sort of stop and unload and that sort of thing.
So there was some value to it and a travel value and some images that I have.
I remember one image that I always thought was a little bit entertaining.
We were bosom buddies with the Pakistanis, but we didn't like the Afghans even back then.
So we had a base in Pakistan, and I remember us making this hopping all through the Mediterranean.
We got into Turkey.
Then We went to Pakistan and then going from Pakistan, the more senior officers who had been there a couple of free times, he said, oh, the one thing we like to do when we're here in Peshawar, Pesharwar, I think it was called, we like to drive up to the Khyber Pass.
Of course, Khyber Pass, I've never been there.
So maybe it was about an hour or so drive up through some mountains and all.
And I can remember going through all these really rugged mountains.
And this was an experience like this.
But the more experienced officer says, you see that?
See those mountains?
They look barren, don't they?
Yeah.
He says, there's a lot of tribes up there.
And there's a lot of people up there, believe it or not.
And he said, and you know what?
He says, they've never been conquered.
And I could understand why.
But anyway, we got to the Khyber Pass, and they had like an exchange there.
It was a secret exchange.
It was an underground cave.
And it was there sort of East Met West.
They got together and they brought their products together.
And the Americans would bring things that they knew they could sell to the East.
And the East brought, you know, they might find vodka or something like that.
We'll buy that.
But there was a lot of exchange.
It was sort of like a department store.
So just going there was interesting.
And then I got to thinking, I said, we're out there and the Cold War was going on and we were hauling nuclear weapons around.
But it's sort of typical about the inconsistencies of all this warmongering.
So I said, we're down here and they're trading, doing what normal people would do, but they had to hide in a cave.
And up above, they're up there shooting and killing each other.
But there was always, and I think that exists all the time.
There's always, there's always the black market, you know, and it gets around it.
So there's a strong urge for people to trade and get along.
And there's too much of a willingness to go along with those who are much more aggressive and will invest more time and energy in getting into the government to be richer and more powerful and all the different reasons.
And some who are just scared to death.
How do these pandemics and all this nonsense from our government have to scare people?
Fear is the thing that they use.
So I saw that, of course, all through the Vietnam War and how they get people scared to just go along.
But I remember so clearly, though, when things finally shifted on Vietnam.
And that was what we like to see and do and encourage is the people have to speak out.
It were rough times in the 60s because there were demonstrations here at home and the people finally said, we've had enough of this war.
And back then, there was only one thing that was slightly better than now is that there were progressives back then that were anti-big corporations and they were anti-war and militarism.
But back then they would help organize.
So it was a little more difficult if you were labeled conservative or constitutionalist and how can you deal with those people who are anti-war.
But that's why we have a better deal going on right now.
They've weakened.
The progressive movement has definitely weakened.
They're not anti-war like we'd like to see them.
But I think there's such a mess and such a mix-up that we have, one of my personal goals is always to work toward building the coalition, bringing people together, those who still might call themselves progressive, those are people who say, I'm strictly a constitutionalist, so I'm a conservative and this sort of thing.
But they're coming around.
I meet them more.
They're getting a little bit sick and tired of it.
So they got finally got sick and tired of Vietnam, and they demonstrated here, and the war ended.
And that is how COVID ended too.
The people finally, you know, got sick and tired of it and started.
And there was one time that toward as it was breaking up, as the mob was losing a little bit of their power, was the football game.
And I don't follow football games, but I bet you somebody remembers it.
There was a football game, and I think 100,000 people showed up.
It was the first time they said, you know, they were still supposed to be wearing masks and things, but everybody went and didn't have a mask on.
And I thought, boy, this is just great.
This is what, you know, democracy has the word democracy has to be used carefully.
But I would say, if you're going to use democracy, that was good democracy.
Boy, they showed their ways.
Of course, the other part of democracy that I'll defend, because there is the people speaking out about democracy, and that, of course, is the democracy in the marketplace.
I mean, the whole idea of people living in a marketplace, even when there are wage and price controls and all this government, there's always the market.
And people make, but in a free market where things are going well, the people who are voting in a democratic way is, I'm going to buy this, I'm not going to buy that.
And if you make profit, you get rewarded for this.
But we have so much intervention now that it's just a big mess.
And I'm pretty amazed about what's happened in the last 20, 30 years because there was a time in my lifetime that I thought both parties didn't preach and beg and plead for protectionism.
And both parties sort of agreed with that.
And the economists were more in agreement.
Now it's a race on.
You know, you can't take them off.
And you just, they might have 20 sanctions on already.
We think, oh, we're going to solve this whole problem over Ukraine.
If we just put one more sanction on Russia and it's going to solve the whole problem.
So the sanction business and the free market, and the reason I talk about that is I think it's such a solution.
I still think of the cave at Khyber Pass.
People were, I never saw a gun done there.
They were just there exchanging.
And that's what we need.
We just need this right to live in a free society.
That's what the founders wanted.
But there's been a lot of talk.
And right now, though, I think the people because they're getting very, very concerned that there is going to be a lot more interest in it.
And, you know, I've never joined in the chorus when it says when the people would say there's an election coming up.
And over the years, people say, this is the most important election ever in the history of the country.
So get out and vote.
And I think, you know, they say they didn't care what, but just vote, just vote.
And you know, they're not saying that.
They only want the people that are going to vote for them.
We'll bribe you to go out and vote for us.
But they never do that.
They just say, just get out and vote.
But the voting and what's going on, I generally don't believe elections solve nothing a miracle about it.
Certainly, I am very hopeful that things can improve and maybe back off.
But right now, I can't be very optimistic about a turnover of political parties that will have a more sensible foreign policy.
Because I don't have any confidence that that's going to happen.
Are the two parties going to get together?
Even with major changes in all leadership, even changing the president.
Does that mean they're getting rid of the Federal Reserve?
I see.
I know better than to think that's going to happen.
You know, somebody asked me once, how do you in the world did you ever stand it being up there in Washington for all those years?
I just had low expectations.
I didn't think I was going to save the world.
And I tolerated it all because I was in a different place.
I was still thinking about reading human action and why there are economic answers to our problems, and it's tied into personal liberty.
So you could deal with it.
Mises was keen on developing his whole system around economic policy, but you could do it just on a moral principle that you can't commit aggression against people.
So I really believe strongly in the libertarian message and the emphasis you can't commit aggression against anybody else.
And that's the reason governments can't commit aggression to the people.
And believe me, things would work better.
And the people who worry about it, oh, no, everybody would be out in the street.
Where are they now?
The streets are getting crowded.
You know, homelessness are out there.
And that doesn't solve it.
And it's going to get a lot worse.
That's why hearing the message out there, not only in the medical sense, which was helpful and beneficial, but in all of it, they have to get this message.
And I think, though, that eventually we have to challenge the government schools, which we do.
I have a homeschooling program, helps a little bit.
The homeschooling and private schooling is very, very important because they have to become dependent on getting information some ways, someplace else, other than the propagandists who are already in the government.
I mean, why would they promote something else?
That's their livelihood.
And that is a big problem because it's an indoctrination that's been going on long to go from an interventionist system that we have today.
I see it as what I call a corporatist, corporatism, because people sometimes do get caught off and say, well, everybody's a fascist, everybody's a socialist, and everybody's a communist.
Well, they have tendencies.
And I think corporatism is the way the corporations run things.
And, you know, this whole thing of censorship, this has brought this out so clearly about the collusion of big government and corporations.
And the clincher has been, and fortunately, they've been punished in the market and they need to be put out of business by the market.
And that is that corporations like Facebook are in the business of servicing the government.
You know, they're an arm of the government.
But now it isn't like the government says, here, we're going to give you the upteen billion dollars here to collect some information.
You have it.
Will you send it to it?
Now they collect the information.
I think it was Facebook or somebody like that that collected the information and they sent it to the government, sent it to those law-abiding citizens over there at the FBI and say, you ought to investigate these people and take care, you know, look into it because we've suspected.
Now, that's a form.
That's a form that, because I think I had to work at it, and I think a lot of people have with libertarian viewpoints about how do you deal with a company like Twitter or Facebook or whatever, deal with them, because it's a private company.
We're not that anxious just to regulate the private company.
But in my mind, it's not really a private company.
Once they get separated totally and completely from benefits of any sort from the government, then that's a different story.
But private property, I think that's one thing that they don't emphasize enough for solving some of our problems, especially on civil liberties, is the private property.
It solves a lot of problems because everybody knows, at least they're supposed to know, that in this country, and the tradition has been for centuries, that people should have a right to practice their own religion.
And there's a freedom of speech.
But freedom of speech doesn't mean that if we're in a church gathering, that somebody walks in the door and said, oh, I don't believe anything you say.
I want equal time.
Well, people would laugh at them on that.
I'm going to have equal time.
It's the property that protects it.
So I don't think you can solve that problem unless you emphasize property.
And that's been difficult.
They confuse the whole principle of property with the social medias and even our broadcast networks, you know, licensed and controlled and had to follow the rules.
But they would be monitored, and that would be monitored by the marketplace because they shouldn't be forced.
They should have the ability to remove their pornography.
And I thought, I keep thinking, yeah, that pornography doesn't do them much good.
But what about political pornography?
Could they eliminate that too?
But it has to be done with property rights and volunteerism and contract.
Some of the things that aren't complicated, they've been around for so long.
Growing Sentiment for Freedom 00:04:05
And yet we seem to forget that.
We don't have the enthusiasm for it.
But I think there's a growing sentiment that people would rather live in a free society than in a slave society.
And our society in our country is getting much poorer.
So I think that being able to spread that message, and anybody who agrees with this message, I think you have a moral responsibility.
That's my opinion.
Moral responsibility is spreading the message.
By coming here, you're helping us, certainly, and helping yourselves to have further understanding.
And I think that is so important because changing people's mind, pretty darn important.
Ideas do have consequences.
And that is our goal with our Liberty Report is dealing in those issues where we change people's mind and using the daily activities and the events of the day to show that these are a consequence of government mistakes.
And that's what we have to curtail and separate it out.
But I happen to be very pessimistic on the short run, but pretty optimistic that there's a freedom movement out there and it's going to grow and it's going to continue to grow and have an influence.
If you think back about what percentage at the time of our revolution and Declaration of Independence, you know, it was a small percentage.
It wasn't like 51%.
I don't think it has anything magic about that.
It has to deal with what the leadership is talking about.
That's why we key in on people who have something.
And I've been just so amazed at over the years since I left Congress meeting people who might have started looking at this 10 years ago or so.
And they have their own programs, you know, way ahead of anything I thought about.
And so my admonition is do whatever you want to do, whatever you think you can do, whatever you have fun doing.
And that's one thing that I try to emphasize, and I think I've noticed it.
You're guilty.
Some of you actually have fun coming and being at our events.
And I think that's very important.
Especially since we don't have a crystal ball, we know exactly what will happen.
Maybe we'll have a total victory tomorrow and we can all take a rest.
But that's not going to happen.
It's going to be around for a long time, the problems of human nature.
I happen to have a strong belief in a higher law and that people are capable of understanding the higher law.
And they have, even before the Ten Commandments and before Hammurabi, there was an understanding of something above, you know, the mere individual who wants to control other people's lives.
And I think it's very clear, and it's been throughout history.
So I think that there are people out there, and sometimes they're just waiting for what was exciting moments when we would see some irate parents finally get off their duffs and go into a parent and teachers meeting and somebody stands up and gives them what for?
That is what we like to see because that is a tremendous benefit.
And I think we all have an opportunity to do that.
We all have an obligation to do it.
And I think the one super superior type of thing that I think about for my own behavior is I think we should always seek virtue and work for excellence.
So whether I'm in medicine or politics or whatever, we know everybody knows right and wrong.
I really believe if they have a lick of sense.
And excellence.
I just think that the idea of excellence really gives people a sense of well-being.
Seeking Excellence 00:00:30
And that's why I ask a lot of my grandchildren, if I come in and the kids are there, I say, what did you do productive today?
So they know I ask that question.
Productivity and accomplishing thing is very good.
So I hope you enjoyed our conference and I hope you felt like it was a productive effort because we believe very sincerely in your participation and what we're doing is very productive and we each have that obligation.
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