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Feb. 8, 2023 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
32:45
Idiocracy? Congress Turns Into Madhouse For Biden's SOTU

Like the scene in the (prophetic?) film Idiocracy, the US Congress became a madhouse during Biden's State of the Union speech last night. Jeers, foul language, etc., marked an event that once took place under proper decorum. How did we get to this point? Also today: US mainstream media narrative on Ukraine is shifting...big time! What does it mean?

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Tenseness and Back-and-Forth 00:04:23
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to be back today.
How are you doing, Dr. Paul?
We had a nice little trip.
Yeah, we got to go and meet some libertarian friends.
Yeah.
And some anarchist friends.
We're doing real well.
So, no, we're glad to be back, and we're going to make another trip.
You know, we want to go to this rally.
They're trying to bring progressives and libertarians together.
And conservatives.
And that's like a bunch of cats out there.
Exactly.
Yeah, it's rough.
Bring them together.
It's rough.
But I don't know if that's, you know, we announce these things like, oh, my goodness, what's happening?
But, you know, there were times when things were much worse, you know, but still it deserves announcing and talking about it and striving to make it a little bit more dignified.
But I'll tell you one thing.
I didn't watch.
I have to confess.
I didn't watch last night to the speech.
And that means that I miss the fact that I would have never complained about missing the former Speaker of the House, you know, being at the State of the Union message.
But there were other things.
So we did some reading and studying about what went on.
And it was described by the media that it was maybe pretty conventional, but there was a lot more tenseness and shouting and a little bit of crudeness that goes on more than the tradition was.
In the past, there was always bipartisanship, but it was a little bit more dignified.
But now it's getting worse.
And I think we shouldn't be surprised about that because once individuals or corporations or countries or cities, they get in trouble financially and they're not telling everybody the truth all the time.
You have to sort of modify what you say.
It causes tenseness because you're trying to avoid the truth.
And I think the tenseness, they're running out of the unlimited amount of credit they can create.
And they did it with COVID, and they do it with the war.
They're trying to do it with Ukraine, but there's a limit.
And I think that's the tenseness.
And they know they're bankrupt, but they won't talk about it.
So what do they do?
They go back and forth.
Oh, you want to kill Social Security and do that kind of talk.
But I think a lot of the tenseness and the fighting goes on is because the bankruptcy, which I think is twofold.
One is a memorial bankruptcy, which leads to the financial bankruptcy.
And they're arguing on issues, but I don't think they're touching on the real problems.
Yeah.
And just to follow up on your one point, it's the Rage Against the War Machine rally on February 19th, Washington, D.C. Lincoln Memorial.
Organizers are Angela McArdle of the Libertarian Party, Nick Branagh of the People's Party.
They're doing unbelievable work.
They're getting battered from both sides because the special interests do not want this war to end.
So hats off to them.
We'll be there.
It's going to be a great event.
But you know, Dr. Paul was watching the State of the Union, and it was interesting.
I've got a clip, you know, an opening clip of the State of the Union.
Pretty interesting.
Things have changed a lot since we've been in Congress.
Let's play that opening clip because things have really changed since we've been in the House.
I tell you what, if we can get that thing up, here we go.
The opening, the video clip of, this is a clip of the opening.
Yeah, this is.
I guess we don't have it here.
Anyway, so let's just go ahead and put that first clip on then.
This is the article we're talking about, if we have it.
This is from Politico.
State of the Union with GOP Congress.
It's tense.
As you point out, it's tense.
There were people.
There were people yelling.
There were people being aggressive.
Some of the members of Congress even yelled out a curse word.
And it's, you know, as much, as low as the opinion of Congress is, I have to say, Dr. Paul, I was a little bit disappointed.
But this isn't the first time we've seen bad behavior at the State of the Union address.
And that's pretty sure, right?
Lying About Budget Defaults 00:05:20
Yeah, you know, the accusations that go back and forth is liar, liar, you're a liar.
You wonder, who's telling the biggest lies?
The people who get away with the biggest lies and has the most mainstream media, you know, pumping it out there, generally, they have a big influence on the election.
You have the social media, which was supposed to help, but so far there's some help with social media, but it also, you know, participates in the distortion because they can't get up and admit everything they've done wrong and why we have problems and why we have deceived each other.
It's almost like, well, the people know there's a lot of lying going on, but you're worse liars than we are.
You know, that's about all they have.
But the whole system is based on a lie, like that our freedom and our safety and our security and our economic prosperity comes from fighting wars.
That's ingrained in our system.
Because some people believe you get out of a depression, you know, with a war because of a misinterpretation of the Second World War and the Depression.
And they have this misconception.
And yet I think what they do, they're lying to themselves.
They come along to believing it.
But they cite who are their authorities just as Austrian economics.
We have our authority, people that have been around a long time beating the bushes out and trying to present the best they can on how markets work.
But what did the others do?
I bet you didn't, while you were in Washington trying to protect me against the monsters, I bet you didn't meet many staffers that say, oh, you probably had a couple friends that say, yeah, I understand Austrian economics.
Non-intervention.
Oh, yeah, that's different.
They never taught me that in political science.
I was studying at political science.
They were going to teach us all this.
They never taught you about liberty.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, I was in grad school in international relations, and the word non-intervention never came up.
Could not say that word.
You're either a realist or an interventionist or whatever.
But you know, the funny part, we talked about this before the show started, how the jeers started, says everything you need to know about Washington because Biden got out there and said, oh, these Republicans, they want to cut off your Medicare and your Social Security.
And the Republicans flipped out, no, we don't.
We want more.
And then Biden had to back off a little bit.
Because he's supposed to be the individuals that bring people together, but he wasn't doing so well.
So they said he went off script, which I found that really interesting.
Because if you're looking for flaws, maybe there'll be more of them.
But you know what?
In spite of the reputation he has, I think he gets away pretty well with these speeches for conventional reasons because the opposition that make him look so bad, there's some lack of dignity on both sides of the aisles.
So it's a battle there on who looks best.
But the whole thing about the Social Security is they both fib on it And they accuse each other, but they both are ruining it because there's a default going on.
And they say, oh, no, we have this built-in protection.
As the inflation goes up, the price inflation is going up, it's automatic.
You get more money from your Social Security.
You do, but you don't get more wealth.
They can't ever keep up.
It's sort of like having wage laws to keep up with the inflation, but they never keep up.
The laborer, the workers cannot keep up.
It's only the ones that are on the inside track of what the Fed policy is going to be.
They sometimes can beat the whole system.
They really can't keep up.
But then on Social Security, they're both guilty because it is on the default.
It's gradual and steady, and it's going to get much worse.
And it can be climactic and quick.
You know, they might have inflation next year, a lot worse than this past year, which I think is a strong possibility.
And that's a default.
But you don't use those words that we're in the middle of default?
What are you talking about?
You know, I'm still getting my check.
Yeah.
You know, the whole thing that they worry about lockdown of government.
Like, the government's going to quit printing the checks or printing the money or running the digits out there.
There are only digits on a computer and it's unlimited.
And this whole thing, oh, but there's a debt limit, which I think is a farce also, because I think they have too many methods of getting support for the financial markets from the Federal Reserve off the record.
You know, it's not in budget.
They create all this money and support so many things, but it's not in the budget.
The whole thing they're doing is not in the budget.
It's not in the Constitution.
Yeah, and you know, we've said some things about Marjorie Taylor Greene we've admired.
She's a bit of a maverick.
She speaks out.
I think in this situation, you know, she yelled out liar.
She used the word BS, but she gives the whole word.
You know, I just, I get her passion or whatever it is, but I just, there's something about it I just think demeans everything.
Maybe I'm just old-fashioned.
But it's kind of funny, though, because of all the things that Biden said, and they say he delivered it pretty well.
China's Expansion Ambitions 00:14:24
I did not watch it.
I've only seen clips from it.
He delivered it pretty well, so you got to hand it to him on that part.
But the funny thing is, I mean, think about people like Chuck Schumer.
Here was Chuck Schumer's reaction.
I mean, he's talking about being out of touch.
He said, Americans thought he's talking right to me, Schumer said.
My needs, my dreams, my hopes.
It wasn't highfalutin.
It wasn't high up in the stratosphere.
It was aimed right at them.
It's a little bit different than when Trump first got in office or was campaigning and what he told Trump, you better be careful of this.
CIA is around and they don't like what you're saying.
And what happened?
He was predicting right, because when you look at what the FBI and CIA has done to distort the information and all that Russia gate and everything else, and the FBI was certainly very much involved in the election process.
Yeah.
Well, the one thing that was interesting is that there was not a lot of time spent on foreign affairs and foreign policy in this.
And I'm wondering because, as we'll talk about in our second segment, that the scene is shifting when it comes to foreign policy.
You know, there was a little talk about China, and we talked about it before the show.
I think this is another classic example of projection, because let's put up that second clip.
And this is thanks to our friends at antiwar.com.
And here's Biden in his speech.
Before I came to office, the story was about how the People's Republic of China was increasing its power and America was falling in the world.
Not anymore, he said.
And he insisted that he made clear to President Xi Jinping that he seeks, quote, competition, not conflict.
But he makes no apologies for the fact that U.S. is investing in industries that will define the future and that China's government is intent on dominating.
And then in the next part, he describes, we're investing in the future and they're just trying to dominate.
And then part of the president's strategy to compete with China is through harsh sanctions that intend to cripple China's industry.
So we're not being mean.
We're just trying to compete.
But we're going to sanction you and destroy your industry.
Do you think there's a bit of hypocrisy there or inconsistency or confusion or just don't know what's going on?
You know, another thing that, and I think there was some shouting out about this, about the drug war, especially fentanyl.
And that is a problem.
It's a medical problem.
It's a political problem.
It's a liberty problem.
And it's not easy to solve.
But to shout out and say, well, there probably is some sincerity on even some Democrats.
That drug is evil.
It's bad.
People die from this.
But they don't understand exactly how it gets distributed.
It's China.
China does it.
But I think the biggest market is probably in the United States.
The consumer is in China.
That's where that occurs.
But no, it's different.
So I think that dangerous things are dangerous.
It would not be easy to deal with fentanyl and shift to it.
But certainly the drug war that we have softened a little bit has in the past has been always worse.
You can figure it out.
It's always worse than the drugs themselves.
And yet fentanyl is a real monster.
But it's also been managed closely by government.
But to just say that this is this China-bashing thing.
Oh, fentanyl is a problem.
It's made in China.
How about these cars are coming in?
And the cars are being made.
Did you know they're making a lot of our cars in China out there?
But who's buying them?
We're buying them.
Well, the next thing we want to talk about is interesting, and we've discussed it before the show, is there really appears to be in the mainstream media a shift in the narrative when it comes to Ukraine.
And let's put up this next, because this is really a surprising article yesterday, not on anti-war.com and not on Lon Paul Institute, New York Times.
Russia and Ukraine have incentives to negotiate.
The U.S. has other plans.
That sounds like something we were saying almost a year ago when this started.
I think one of your first columns was that this is a proxy war between NATO and Russia.
And this is not written by a peacenick.
This is actually written by Christopher Caldwell, who is a neoconservative.
He was senior editor of the Weekly Standard.
That tells you a lot about his intellectual pedigree.
And then one of the things that we do know about the neocons is when things start shifting and when their plans start going awry, they immediately jump off the sinking ship.
And I think that's to a degree what Caldwell is doing here.
He's trying to protect the idea as the idea is dying.
Let's put up a couple of clips from this article because I think it tells a lot.
Now, this is shocking.
You're reading this in the same New York Times that has been telling us for months that Ukraine is winning.
If we just send more troops, more weapons, they'll win immediately.
So here's Caldwell in the New York Times.
The United States' recent promise to ship advanced M1 Abrams battle tanks to Ukraine was a swift response to a serious problem.
The problem is that Ukraine is losing the war.
That sentence is like an earthquake, I should say, an avalanche.
To have someone admit that in the New York Times.
You know, there has to be distortion for the American people to go along with this.
And the first distortion is they don't want to hear the word, well, especially, maybe this is just part of the Cold War.
Maybe it's U.S. versus Russia.
And then also, it might just be NATO versus Russia.
And if you look at history, you have some arguments there.
But maybe our incentive to get involved like this, and now they're getting a little bit confused because it's not going well, is the fact that our motivation is to preserve and expand, always expand the empire.
And we've done well, especially since World War II.
We've had the currencies, we've had the weaponry, and we've had the ability to convince people deficits don't matter until they matter.
And now they do matter.
But in order to preserve the empire, we have to be in Europe.
We have to be moving the weapons up toward Russia.
But it does matter, just like Russia has to react to.
They look at their history and they say, you know, how many times have we been invaluated?
You know, what percent difference in the amount of Russians have been killed versus Americans.
You know, it's so disaster.
But our notion that we deserve morally and we have this responsibility because we are the best and we will spread our goodness by force, make the world safe for democracy for everybody, and everybody's going to have self-determination hasn't worked out so well.
And that was started with the progressive era with Woodrow Wilson.
And they continue with the same thing.
They don't stop and think, well, maybe this is not the right track.
And you said a minute ago, you never did hear much in school about non-intervention.
Why should they think about it?
But what I like about going to some of our rallies and things with young people, they seem to be a little bit open-minded about saying, hey, we've heard a little bit about that.
That's what we want.
Why should we have to go to war?
And sometimes the young people are the ones that end wars.
Too bad they can't help us prevent them.
But they end wars because it's the young people getting killed.
On both sides.
Exactly.
Well, here's Caldwell continuing in this piece.
And if we can put that next clip up.
He says, both sides have, go back one if you don't mind.
Thanks.
Both sides have incentives to come to the negotiating table, but the Biden administration has other plans.
It's betting that by providing tanks, it can improve Ukraine's chances of winning the war.
In a sense, the idea is to fast forward history from World War I's battles of position to World War II's battles of movement.
And do the next one because it goes on.
He says this Biden strategy has a bad name, escalation.
And I have highlighted this part because this is, I think, the operative sentence in the piece.
Beyond a certain point, the United States is no longer helping or advising or supplying the Ukrainians the way it did, say, the Afghan Mujahideen during the Cold War.
It is replacing Ukraine as Russia's main battlefield adversary.
Occasionally, the neocons do speak the truth.
It's hard to know what reason and what motivation, but in this case, he is.
And I think we may have talked about it, but there was this blockbuster interview with Natalie Bennett, the former Israeli prime minister, who said that in March he was mediating between Russia and Ukraine, and they had come to an agreement.
Russia agreed to give up a few of its demands.
Ukraine agreed to make some concessions, and the U.S. came in and put the kibosh on the whole thing and said, no, end these talks, and it ended.
So I think it's reflected in what he's saying.
And I want to just bring it back to one other thing, if we can put that next one up, because this is Caldwell again, and he says, Abrams tanks required experienced technicians for training and repair.
Will these technicians be brought into the battlefield from the U.S.?
And this is going to resonate with you, Dr. Paul.
If so, then we will have a situation analogous to the introduction of advisors into Vietnam in the 1960s.
That is interesting.
You know, this refusal for us to take any opportunity to maybe move toward peace, and it's totally rejected.
And it reminds me, and we've talked about it before, about how FDR didn't help the world back in the 1930s and 40s in refusal to talk to the Japanese.
I mean, if it's inevitable that we were going to be invaded and all that, yeah, that's one thing.
But the refusal, because there was an offer there by both Japanese and American leaders just to get the two leaders of the two countries, just talk one day, you know, and we've refused to do it.
And that's what they're doing here.
And not removing these sanctions.
That's sort of insane.
You know, there's an earthquake.
You know what?
I didn't get the answer, but we have been a good country in sending money over when there are natural disasters.
But sometimes there's politics involved there, and sometimes it never goes to the right people.
But we do respond to this, and at the same time, we find out that it doesn't really help.
I wanted to mention, you know, before I said the motivation is so much of the is the empire.
But just like it was in COVID, you know, when you have a war going on, medical or whatever, but when the wars go on, it's also, not only are there some of the hawks who love our empire and just love it because, you know, it sounds pretty new, but it's the profiteering, you know, whether it's pharmaceuticals or the military-industrial complex.
And sometimes people will make the case from that.
That's probably number one because I think they have a vote in the deep state.
Yeah, big vote.
They vote with their money.
Well, we'll finish up with Caldwell here because I think there's still, and I'm sorry to have so many long quotes, but this is such an interesting article because of where it came from and because of who wrote it.
If you put that next one up again, he's committing the ultimate sin of trying to see the world how your adversary might see it.
If we can find, here we go back one if you can.
So many Americans cannot resist describing Mr. Putin as a barbarian and his invasion of Ukraine as a war of aggression.
For their part, Russians say this is a war in which Russia is fighting for its survival and against the United States in an unfair global order in which the U.S. enjoys unearned privileges.
He's not making a values of it.
He's a recognized reality.
But this is the part, Dr. Paul, and this is kind of a warning, a cautionary tale as he ends his editorial in the New York Times.
We should not forget that whatever values each side may bring to the war, this war is not at heart a clash of values.
It's a classic interstate war over territory and power occurring at a border between empires.
In this confrontation, Mr. Putin and his Russia have fewer good options for backing down than American policymakers seem to realize and more incentives to follow the United States all the way up the ladder of escalation.
You know, I certainly think that argument is in the realistic area because just wake up and this is what it's doing.
And we can't start from scratch, but we can describe this as being realistic, and that's why there is a shift.
And hopefully it multiplies, and we see a little bit of that.
But there's been some awakening on this, and at least there's talking about this.
I guess sort of like a shock to us is the fact that it isn't a libertarian-leaning organization.
These are the people who pumped it up without any discussion.
And it was a noble cause, but now it's not so noble.
And I don't know all their motivations behind it, but sometimes, keep it going.
Sometimes when we blow up, something says, ah, we can make some more.
Well, the neocons have convinced a lot of Americans that, hey, the Russians will blink.
The question, I think Colwell does a good job of saying, well, they're not going to blink.
And what if they don't?
Blowing Up Without Discussion 00:08:12
What will happen?
So that's a good point.
We're going to go on to our next one if you're ready, Dr. Paul.
And it's just very similar.
It's from the Washington Post.
It's the same kind of theme, and it's very striking.
It came out, I think, yesterday or the day before.
GOP base warms to giving Russia some of Ukraine's territory.
Now, that's a stupid headline because I think that's really erroneous.
However, when you look into it, he's talking about some very, very shocking polls.
Put this next one on if you can, because this is just ahead of the State of the Union.
A couple of polls were done.
He said a new batch of polls ahead of Biden's speech confirms the evolution of what was once a very bipartisan issue.
A Washington Post ABC news poll, for instance, shows half of Republicans think we're doing too much for Ukraine.
That's up from 18% in April.
And do the next one more strikingly.
Watch this one, Doctor.
Put that back up.
Yeah, thanks.
Watch this one.
More strikingly, an NBC news poll last week showed that 63% of Republicans opposed providing more funding and weapons to Ukraine, while only 32% were in support.
That's perhaps the most severe GOP rebuke of funding Ukraine on record.
And the GOP leadership had better pay attention.
Maybe we shouldn't have been surprised, like others were, that I actually won an election with this argument.
But no, I think it's great.
Ideas are important, pervasive ideas.
Some people have, I sort of agitate over this, but I tend to believe it's true that no government exists without the support of the people.
But the problem is the timing.
Sometimes a dictator is so powerful, it does a lot of killing trying to maintain it.
But once the people lost support in the Soviet system, it was miraculous as far as I'm concerned that there was no nuclear exchange.
But the pervasive attitude changed, too much killing.
And this is the whole thing when they, you know, we talk about history.
Why don't they look at what happened there?
And I think that is a big problem.
They don't want to look at that and apply it to what's going on now.
Sometimes on some issues, I don't think you have to have a historical thing to prove your point as much as if you have the moral principle behind it.
You shouldn't be an aggressor.
You shouldn't be going out and looking for a war.
I try to mock this whole idea of wars.
The older generation, the people who've been around a long time, the politicians, they don't get the wars.
And I think, well, who has to fight them?
The kids.
You know, my way of mocking is, oh, yeah, the American people get together and the kids feel bored.
So, oh, I wonder if we could get some Germans to have a little skirmish over there.
We'll call it World War I and World War II.
And the kids threw it, but they are the victims.
They don't organize.
There's somebody else that does that for various incentives.
Yeah, send the warmongers over first.
Well, I want to finish up on this article in the Washington Post because this is fascinating.
If we put this up again, and this is explaining why he thinks that the GOP is going south on supporting this Ukraine war.
If you can go to the next one, there we go.
So, here's the Washington Post of all places.
Here's their editorial.
But then there's the question of why.
It's not just about the financial cost.
And it's not really a matter of Republicans siding with Russia over Ukraine, as Fox News host Tucker Carlson once said he did.
And I highlighted this part.
It's mostly because Republicans are having less faith in Ukraine's war effort and growing skepticism that Russia's invasion poses a threat to the United States.
Something that you've said from the beginning.
This is a border war thousands of miles away.
It has nothing to do with us.
The GOP is waking up.
It's interesting because despite people like McCall and others in leadership, it seems like the GOP is slowly becoming the anti-war party, and that's encouraging.
But you know, this other half of this that has converted a lot of people, we talk about the billions, hundreds of billions of dollars on the death and destruction.
And they're worrying about the border over there, you know, between Europe and Russia, Ukraine and Russia, you know, the whole thing, the border.
People are really, this might be a message about how disgusted the people are about our own borders because a lot of people are saying now you're over there worrying about those borders, but it seems like you have no concern.
Not only is it tolerance, it's so aggressive to permit it and to pay and reward people, you know, to come over.
Come over and we'll treat you like a king.
We'll have places for you to live.
We'll give you food.
We're going to give you education.
You have free medical care.
We'll have less for the American people, but we're a generous nation.
People are tired of that.
And then when they see another umpteen billion, $100 billion going to Ukraine, and most people sort of know where it is a little bit more now than before.
But most people don't have a good sense of exactly where they are.
They have a better sense of where Mexico is.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I'm going to close with one thing that I think is really nauseating.
This is from, this is written up by friends at antiwar.com, David Camp.
And you alluded to it earlier on the show.
There's been a horrific earthquake in Turkey and Syria.
And right now, I think it's 10,000 dead.
They fear it may be many, many more because people are trapped underneath the rubble.
It's just horrific.
Put up this next clip if you can.
Syrian Arab Red Crescent calls for lifting of sanctions on Syria after the earthquake.
The head of the Syrian Arab Reg Crescent on Tuesday called for the lifting of U.S. and other Western economic sanctions on Syria following a massive earthquake.
And go to the next one.
So they want, they say, lift the sanctions.
We're dying here with this earthquake.
Despite the calls, the U.S. has shown no interest in easing the sanctions.
In comments to anti-war.com, a State Department spokesman claimed that our sanction programs do not target humanitarian assistance.
But the New York Times reported on Tuesday that Syria is not able to receive direct aid from many countries because of the sanctions.
So the borders are closed with other countries, so you can't bring in aid and assistance because the U.S. insists on maintaining these horrible, horrible sanctions, even in light of this massive tragedy.
You know, I argued from the beginning, as you know, that sanctions are acts of war.
And the principle ought to be that people make up their mind where how to spend their money.
And unless there's a real war going on or something, you want as much free trade as possible, believing that free trade and movement across borders is a way to prevent the fighting.
And so getting rid of the sanctions is looking for a greater influence of the marketplace to solve these problems.
And, you know, the people who want to donate, private individuals, other countries, if they want to send the money, and then we punish them.
So we literally punish the people who want to help.
And I think your point is absolutely made.
And I think it's once again a battle between free markets and individualism and collectivism.
The collectivism is that we have to still show how powerful we are, and we're not going to back down just with a little old earthquake.
And we are true believers in the collectivism.
Oh, no, no, we're the constitutionalists.
We really believe in that.
And sometimes there's a conservative war hawk that's for the sanctions as well.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So I want to make sure everybody knows that we deeply appreciate all your support and tuning into our program.
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