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Feb. 22, 2023 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
19:25
Freedom Brings People Together - Force Leads to "National Divorce"

Everyone has their own beliefs and opinions. But when government is used as a tool to force one's own beliefs and opinions onto others, a conflict immediately occurs. No one wants to be on the receiving of a forced ideology. Freedom is the antidote to this. People with different ideologies can voluntarily live side by side. Government's proper role is to protect freedom; not force ideology.

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Divorce and Unity 00:08:17
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.
Hey, it's great to be with you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
We're going to talk about divorce.
The divorce was in the news this week.
Congresswoman Green has mentioned that.
But it's not the routine divorce that goes on in the world, and I'm sure she wasn't promoting the divorce of men and wife, you know.
But before we start into that, I want to mention that, you know, in the last couple days, the president has been emphasizing the fact that we have to, today especially, mention the fact that it's one year since the Russians invaded Ukraine, and that's a big, big anniversary that everybody should be aware of.
Those Russians were at it.
But what they didn't mention was exactly nine years ago to the day, the coup against the Yanukovych administration in Ukraine was carried out by the United States and also NATO, and the war between NATO and Russia was started.
But that's not the way they paint it.
It was the Russians that did this.
They don't talk about, you know, maybe some incentives for the Russians to be a little more aggressive has been the bombing of the pipeline, you know, as well as bombing the bridge.
So there's been lots of violence going on, but I think we don't have clean hands on this.
But we've talked about that a lot, and we will be later.
But today we want to emphasize more, Chris, is this whole idea of the suggestion of Marjorie Greene.
You know, I think she got a lot of attention from this.
A lot of people wanted to know about this divorce that she's proposing.
And her divorce is interesting to talk about, and it tells us something.
She thinks there should be a divorce in this country between the reds and the blues, because we can't get along and we can't come together, and therefore there's only one thing left, you know, that we just separate ourselves.
But, you know, like in the real world of divorce, you're not supposed to jump at this and not figure out what else you might do.
And I keep thinking the division that exists between, you know, the radical left and the conservative Republicans is, you know, something that we haven't really tested.
So basically, Chris, my argument is why don't we try freedom?
You know, a non-violent society where governments aren't allowed to steal from one group and plunder one group for the benefit of another group and always regulate our personal lives, our financial lives, our international lives.
And we really haven't covered that.
So maybe the divisiveness is deciding how to divvy up the loot and divvy up the power.
And it's not going well.
But there's not very many people that expect tomorrow, all of a sudden, the governor of California is going to get along with the governor of Florida.
So there's a problem there, but I think they're looking in the wrong place.
And a lot of people are saying, yes, divorce is what we need, but it's not going to be solved if we don't have some coming together.
What brings people together is the principles of liberty.
Freedom is very popular.
Instead of being divisive, as we have a country now, it really brings people together.
So that's been my suggestion for a long time.
I thought it was an appropriate time to remind people that freedom does work.
Chris.
Right, Dr. Paul.
And you know, the very existence of the United States is due to secession.
13 states seceded from England in 1783.
And, you know, we call it American Revolution, but it was not a revolution.
It's misnamed.
The Americans did not seek to overthrow the crown and take over the British government.
They wanted secession.
And that's what they got when the British government was there.
So it wasn't a revolution, but that's, you know, this is semantics.
So Marjorie Taylor Greene suggests this idea, and all of a sudden the entire left wing, they turn into King George.
No way.
Where do you think you're going?
You're not going anywhere.
You know, there's a big difference, though, between King George and our government.
We have the biggest, brokest government in the history of the world.
King George, he was like a radical libertarian compared to our empire that we live in.
I mean, I think they revolted and seceded for over a 3% tax.
I mean, a 3% tax.
Can you imagine?
It's unimaginable today.
But this idea of separating yourself and getting out of an abusive relationship is very American.
It's as American as it gets.
I mean, read the Declaration of Independence.
It's right in there, the very first document.
So it's just, it's interesting to see, you know, things don't change.
People in power, they call you traitor and treasonous if you want to leave.
You know, that's how it was with the British.
That's how it is today.
And it's, you know, it's amusing to see and talk about.
Very good.
You know, I think in a way the founders were maybe overly optimistic because they didn't really deal with the subject.
But I think it would have been really pretty neat if they had put in the Constitution the right of the states to secede.
But I think that was assumed.
You know, they were coming together, you know, voluntarily.
Why wouldn't they be able to leave voluntarily?
But it was not explicit.
And we all know the tragedies under Lincoln, what happened, and the killing of 800,000 Americans possibly for the Civil War, because there was not that understanding that people ought to be able to leave.
But there is a principle, and Woodrow Wilson abused this principle because he talked about it.
It sounded pretty good.
And that is what we want at the end of the war is self-determination.
People should be able to determine exactly where they want to live and what they should do, and outsiders shouldn't interfere.
Well, you know, that was just political propaganda.
And self-determination is a good principle.
But the other one we talk a lot about is the voluntarism.
You know, if people are going to live together with minimal government interference, like down to close to zero meddling in our lives and our economy, you have transaction.
I keep thinking, you know, how wonderful it would be if we honored this whole position of voluntarism.
Would our country be so divided?
Because everything would be done, all groups coming together, all people coming together, all economics coming together, all political beliefs and religious beliefs.
If you want to deal with it, if you don't like it or want to join, everything should be voluntary.
And people should come together and have this voluntary agreement.
But there should be some voluntarism in the separation, too.
But I think there would be less bitterness if we had a little better understanding of what liberty is all about.
Because if we honored liberty, I don't think that we would get to the place where we are today, because I think it's a natural result.
It should be predictable that there would be a time when this country would go broke, and the regulations would be overly burdensome, and there'll be too many wars, and it will continue, and we shouldn't be surprised at all.
That's why if we had a better understanding of how a free society could be maintained, we would have self-determination and voluntarism.
And also, those principles should be acceptable by the people.
You can't instill this in people.
You know, the government can't come along and go, all right, now we're going to have decency from everybody, and everybody's going to get along together.
It really doesn't work, and the founders worried about that.
They thought the Constitution was a pretty good deal, you know, for the country to get started with, but they also said ain't going to work if the people do not remain a moral people with moral standards and understanding about natural law and understanding that violence is not a solution.
Voluntarism Over Force 00:10:51
So we went in the opposite direction, and government grew out of proportion, and we end up with this divisiveness.
And I think it's going to get much sharper.
But the real trick here is there are factions now that are arbitrary.
They might take a position one time, since they don't accept the principle of truth, they can shift their gears.
One time they could be against the war, then the next week they could be for the war.
And that's why we saw some frustration in developing our working position with progressives against the war in Ukraine.
Because there was a time in, well, during the Vietnam and even a time in the early part of this century, it was much easier to work with progressives who were anti-war, but all of a sudden they flipped.
Now they're more aggressive than the Republicans.
But both sides have not gone to the point where we are, and that is non-intervention, minding our own business in our personal lives, our international lives, and our economic lives.
And that is what is necessary.
It has to be a principle that the people endorse.
Chris?
Yes, Dr. Paul.
And, you know, as we're looking at that Marjorie Taylor Greene tweet, it's not necessarily that we agree with her because I don't really know where she stands.
It was very, you know, red state, blue state.
And that honestly is, our country is not even like that.
If you look at the electoral map, you know, by counties, it's virtually all red.
And you have, you know, the coasts are blue and you have patches of blue here and there.
So it's not really as clean as red state blue state.
But, you know, just as a mental exercise and looking how people reacted to this, you know, the left went bananas, you know, that they're totally against such a thing.
How dare you even suggest it?
But you know what?
It's really interesting because the left hates MAGA so much.
They call them names.
They call them this deplorables.
Yet they insist that they must live with them.
You can't leave.
You must stay here.
And I wonder, you know what?
Where does this come from?
And it has to do with leftist ideology in general.
They're all about using government force to remake people.
So if there's no one around to remake, who will they tax?
Who will they censor?
Themselves?
Who are they going to remake?
Themselves?
So the leftists need people around that they can regulate with government force.
That's why they don't want you to leave.
It's an interesting, as an outsider, we're neither red or blue, to see how these dynamics work.
And somehow, and we suggest voluntarism, letting people live as they wish to live without using force against each other.
That's how people come together.
Somebody's going to have to give there, and there's going to have to be compromises in order for people to live peacefully with one another.
Good.
You know, in a way, the system has worked pretty well, and we should give credit where it has worked to some degree, but we also have to recognize exactly what she's talking about because they're seeing the end of a civil society.
It's going to get worse.
And I think that has to be realized as well.
But I think it's worked to a degree because the states had been given by the Constitution a lot of rights and obligations over the federal government.
You know, if we'd follow the law and the Constitution, the liberal believes that you can do anything that has not been prohibited in the Constitution.
But the Constitution said you can do only the things that we gave you explicit permission to do, and the rest you leave to the states and to the individual.
That's not the way they interpret it.
But in spite of all those shortcomings, you know, people have been able, you know, when they were getting disgusted with all the lockdown regulations, some states got bad.
Some states, you know, counteracted the federal government.
And guess what?
They were rewarded for it.
You know, and the ones who went nuts, they have suffered the consequence.
So you look at the states like California and New York, they've suffered.
But if you take Texas and Florida, there's been a plus, and people were able to move there, and there was freedom of movement.
But that just drives the left nuts because they don't want that.
And if you get too much of that, and already they'll do that, the numbers will show that the states that have abused the Constitution, they have more welfarism and more expense and more debt.
So they say, well, we're all a nation together.
Send the bills to Florida.
Send the bills to Texas.
Send the bills to the people who acted decently and made money, but we're in charge.
So they will.
So that'll continue.
But right now, there's been a certain adjustment that people voted by just leaving and going to another place.
But what we would like to do is move in that direction and make sure everybody have a freedom of choice and there would be more voluntarism.
Of course, the whole system of taxation and monetary policy and foreign policy, that would all have to be addressed.
But it can all be addressed by the one principle.
Freedom is popular.
Non-intervention is good.
Nonviolence is good.
Leave people alone.
Tolerate other people's views if there's no violence involved.
That's the hardest one I think people have.
Oh, they do this, this, they believe this, whatever.
I think that's one of the shortcomings of a free society because they want to be authoritarians and then they jump in and they figure, oh, there's some poverty out there.
We've got to cure it.
Where'd the poverty come?
Not from the government.
The government's never caused any trouble.
They didn't cause the people to have inflation rates at 10 and 15 percent.
Oh, no, that wouldn't be possible.
So they won't look at the reality of that and say, well, we can change a little bit of it.
But I see it as an opportunity, the mess that we have, and even the discussion we're having is an opportunity to try to get a message out, a message that the founders introduced to our country, and now it's sort of faded.
And for the last hundred years or so, we've had to put up with a momentum of George Soros with cultural Marxism.
And he has placed a lot of people in strategic places around the country.
And it is up to us if we believe strongly enough in voluntarism.
We have to spread that message.
Fantastic, Dr. Paul.
I'll give my closing thoughts now.
Yeah, we all have our own beliefs and opinions.
And the purpose of government is to protect our freedom and not to push and force a certain ideology.
And obviously, we are in the latter Today, where government is used as a tool to force ideology, not protect liberty.
And, you know, that's always been a leftist position.
That's how they see government as a tool to remake society.
You know, the Soviets were like that, and they wanted it to be global.
Our own government is like that in a global sense, too.
Now, they're not communists, where the government owns everything, but they're more corporatists, where they'll have rigged markets and corporations in bed with government.
So, that's how they're different than the Soviets, but they still want a global system that they can control.
And on a state level, it's the same thing.
California wants everybody to be like them.
I think the governor recently tweeted: as California goes, the world goes.
You know, fortunately, that's not true, but that's how they think.
They're very universalist.
Everyone must be like them.
Now, us, liberty, we also are universalists too.
But there is one major difference, not by force, not by using government to impose liberty on anyone.
The goal is for enough people to want liberty, to understand it, and want it on their own, and not have it forced on them.
And then and only then can you have a genuinely free society.
You know, we're in the minority of people that believe this kind of stuff, but you know, minorities move the world, so that's not necessarily a bad thing.
But that's the difference between universalism of people who believe that government is there as a tool of force that you go and beat people over the head with, or that you're like us, that we think government is there to only use force to protect people's freedom.
Very good.
You know, we read and study and talk about what Congresswoman Green wants, and in some ways, it might be very close to what we've been talking about because, under the circumstances, we have limits, and the amount of liberty that still exists has allowed us to move around.
And in a way, there's blue areas of the country and red areas of the other part of the country.
But the big question is, and I think you mentioned it in your opening statement, Chris, is the fact that we don't know exactly what she's advocating.
And I'm not sure either.
But if you decided you were going to have red and blue and declare separation and decide to do it by force and say you can't come over here and have new property lines, that's a different story.
But this whole idea that there is a division, it always exists.
I think she more or less was speaking out the truth, and it drove a few people nuts.
But I don't think, at least I didn't read into it, that she was calling for arms in order to separate and make a new country to redo it.
Because I think ideology is the real way that you have to deal with it.
And voluntarism and not force, but even all those things, if you want to give them a little bit of a pass on this, you have to realize that one of the most menacing parts of our society today, every day it gets worse, and that is the terrible stuff coming out of our government-run schools.
I mean, this is really the problem, and that's where Marxism comes from, and that's where cultural Marxism has come from.
That's where all the nonsense comes from.
Whether it's intervention in the foreign policy or corporatism, they tolerate that.
And then we end up with corporations running the media and the whole work.
So there's this idea that there is a separation.
What we should do is look at it why.
What can we do to move the transition along?
And my answer is not complex.
What we need is more freedom.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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