The government & the country are not the same thing. When our representatives refuse to follow the law of the land, the U.S. Constitution, is it patriotic to support the breaking of these laws? When government gets the country into endless wars, without Congressional declaration, is it patriotic to support this behavior? When they take our money, and shower it across the world, is it patriotic to support it? The government (and many people) would answer all of these questions with a resounding "Yes!" But are they right?
The government & the country are not the same thing. When our representatives refuse to follow the law of the land, the U.S. Constitution, is it patriotic to support the breaking of these laws? When government gets the country into endless wars, without Congressional declaration, is it patriotic to support this behavior? When they take our money, and shower it across the world, is it patriotic to support it? The government (and many people) would answer all of these questions with a resounding "Yes!" But are they right?
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Ron Paul 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're going to talk about a very serious subject today.
We're going to find out who the good guys and the bad guys are because, you know, we want to work with patriotic people.
But all through my political career, I've often wondered about, you know, patriotism.
I often remember Samuel Johnson's definition.
He says, watch out.
The last refuge of a scoundrel is patriotism.
So that's a fair warning.
And he did that about the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1775.
But we've been dealing with insincere patriotism for a long time.
And there's a lot of examples that we can use on this.
And I think it's difficult because there's abuse.
And I think a lot of us, you know, seek to find the truth of things and what people are telling, whether it's true or not.
And I guess if there's any one thing that you have to be careful with, if somebody's playing up patriotism, you better think quietly about this to decide, are they leveling with you?
Because I noticed over the years, and you may have also, that over the years, some people are saying one thing, then all of a sudden they get into a little trouble or they want to move on or they want to appease their opponents.
And all of a sudden, they change their position.
They act like non-patriotic people.
Then all of a sudden they start bragging, you got to be a patriot and you got to do this.
And they use it.
And I think, from my experience, there's been a lot of that.
But we also, I believe, we can find some examples of people who are patriotic in the true sense of the word and that they're interested in making sure that people do it for an issue such as, you know, belief in the Constitution.
That might qualify you for being a patriot.
So I think what we ought to try to do, Chris, is try to sort that out and help people think about it because it's a pretty important word.
Right, Dr. Paul.
And we were inspired by the show by Jeff Tucker's article.
He was pointing out how faith in government and family and society itself is just spiraling downward.
So we wanted to address this.
And I'll start with the government part of it.
There's a difference between government and the country.
They are not the same, but government has made it to think that the government itself is the country.
And unfortunately, the government as it is today, A, they don't follow the law themselves, and they haven't for a very long time, the Constitution.
We obviously have a two-tiered legal system.
And it's not just one instance.
This is decade after decade.
We're seeing that some people are above the law, and laws are enforced merely against your political opponents.
So laws are used when they're convenient.
And it's not just government that's involved in this.
It's not just the politicians where you can corner them off and say they're the problem.
Everyone connected with them is also a part of this.
We saw during COVID, the corporations, the media, the censorship with the tech companies.
So it's not just politicians that are the problem here.
And obviously, all the people that just blindly follow whatever they're told.
So if they're told that the Constitution matters in this moment so that we can stop our opponents, then it matters now.
But if the Constitution doesn't matter because we want to go to war, then you just ignore it.
So, this is a big problem.
But the point I want to reiterate is the country and the government are two different things.
And right now, the problem stems from the government.
But that is a good summary, and that is the important issue.
And that helps people, they think in those terms, they might be able to sort out who's telling the truth or not.
But that's not easy because, you know, politicians learn to fake a lot.
They say one thing and do another.
And the way the mainstream media puts it out there, they put a lot of pressure.
I've been in Washington a few years when they were in the midst of, should we go to war?
These were certain, you know, in the early part of this century about the Mideast wars.
But it was always used, patriotism was always used as an excuse.
If you opposed it, you're unpatriotic.
And that means you should change your mind.
You don't want to be unpatriotic.
Nobody wants to be unpatriotic, but we also insist that we have a definition of it.
You know, sometimes we play out the role of whistleblowers, that they are true patriots and they're patriotic and that they know something and they pass laws to try to protect the whistleblowers.
And that's fine and dandy until they say something the establishment doesn't want them to say.
And then they all of a sudden become enemies and they put these people in prison and they talk about the danger that they pose.
But the whistleblower who may end up in prison might be one of the best patriotics we know.
And that is awful frustrating.
But patriotism and that tone has been used for so long.
And certainly I remember a lot of the wars that I wasn't directly involved in, like World War II and Korea War, I was involved in the 60s.
And that's when I started thinking about this, that this noise that they get from the government, they're always justifying the war.
And then it's not unusual here to say, boy, you're not patriotic.
And during some of my campaigns, I would say, none of these wars are illegal and they're not going well.
And we've been there for 10 years.
Why don't we bring the troops home?
And then they say, Ron Paul's unpatriotic.
Oh, okay.
But one of my definitions for me personally is a patriotic person is somebody who's willing to criticize one's own government.
That doesn't mean you have to be a demagogue or make a lot of noise or try to provoke violence or anything like that.
But just to point it out, and there are a lot of people like a good journalist does that.
And in this day and age, with what's going on in the media, you know, a good journalist is hard to find.
It sort of came out of this COVID era.
So if they get, you know, they go out there and say these things, they get, you know, canceled and blackballed and lose their jobs.
Even physicians have lost their jobs because they're unpatriotic.
They're not going along with the government.
And you made that point so well in your first statement.
There has to be a difference between just what government is doing and what truth is all about.
And I think what we're talking about today is really trying to seek out the truth.
And I see that as an overwhelming project for all of us, probably it has been that way for many, many years, almost probably throughout history, is always trying to seek the truth out.
And this is what they do.
The people who use language to convince people and say you're anti-patriotic, that's demagoguery.
I think Most of the time, people can figure it out, but then there's other times they get influenced by, you know, the political party.
That is an interjection there.
So, country and government, and all the, then you have the people who are looking for the power, and that's the political party.
And that confuses things too.
Government Overreach and Family Responsibility00:06:34
And that is one thing that I think people pay attention to, but they sort of get confused on this because they're so often preached to that if you don't go along with them, you're going to be accused of being unpatriotic.
And when it's extreme accusation, they say that guy didn't go along with us.
He must be a terrorist, which is complete nonsense.
So, hopefully, that we can just inspire people to be a little bit more cautious to listen to what people say and try to separate the people who are telling the truth and the people who are trying to demagogue and force people to accept things because of patriotism.
Yes, very good, Dr. Paul.
And, you know, we are, whether we like it or not, or whether we know it or not, in a battle between power and we could say freedom, between the market.
But in order to at least make it through in this life, you have to understand what power is all about.
And one of the other things in the article was about Jeff's article: family and marriage.
You know, the marriages, there's less marriages.
I see it just in my life with the friends that I have and people not wanting to have kids.
And, you know, this works into the power mentality because power wants total control.
And family marriages, these are alternate loyalties.
So you will have loyalty to your husband or wife, to your children first before the state, before the government.
And government doesn't want that.
Government wants your total loyalty for themselves.
And when the family is broken up, now they've got you isolated.
And we see that with the less marriages.
Even when you have marriages, you have two incomes.
Now, there's nothing wrong with two incomes, but it's mandatory now.
It's not even optional.
You don't even think about it.
When you're dating or whatever, you're wondering: are we going to be able to survive with both of our incomes?
It's not one income anymore.
So, and this also feeds into another aspect: it's dependency.
It's you and the state, and the state wants you completely dependent on it.
And we see also within schools, they don't want parents having a say in the kids' education, which is amazing, but that's how it is today.
Or even, we'll go even further: the gender of your kids.
So, it's your kids and the state that are owned by the state.
You are owned by the state.
Now, these are big, these ideas go all the way back, too.
You know, it's just today we're seeing them play out.
You know, and with the destruction of the family unit, of even the belief in God, you know, the state tries to move in and play God, and it does a terrible job, but that's what they, that's what the nature of power is.
So, understanding this can at least help you to at least, in your minds, try to think of how to get out of the way or try to alternatively live so that you can go against this terrible trend that we're in.
You know, I think you make a perfect point pointing out about the family, because the family is the option in contrast to the demagogues.
And also, all dictatorship and Marxism in particular, and even the so-called weaker Marxism that we have that's today, cultural Marxism.
The laws, and you pointed out a few of these things, the laws are designed to break up the family.
Where does the responsibility go now?
It goes to the government, not to the parents.
When I was getting out of medical school, I was taught that you don't do anything in the emergency room.
You don't even put a stitch in without getting permission from the parents.
Even if it has to be a phone call, you've got to let them know it's their kids that you're dealing with.
But now they can go to the emergency room and say, well, you know, I'm confused and I have this problem and I don't know whether I'm a boy or a girl.
Okay, we'll do some surgery on you and make sure you know what you are.
You know, and you talk about major decisions going to a bureaucratic state, a government.
It's just horrible.
So the family has to be destroyed in that case.
So the answer to the many crises that we're facing today, which are going to get worse, whether they're economic or social or wars or whatever, the real answer is exactly what you said.
It has to be found in the family.
But most people say, you guys sound like a bunch of anarchists.
You don't want the government to do anything.
But I'll tell you what, it's the opposite of anarchy because the responsibility of the government is self-government and family government, which is the thing that's been around for as long as we've had history that the family has been known.
And there's always been this contest with government because people have this certain people have this burning desire to be authoritarians and the boss and run things and tell others.
So to me, it's an issue of good and evil.
And I see that one side's a voluntary group.
It's family and decent.
Oh, does that mean the family is going to be perfect and parents are always perfect?
No.
But my answer to that is, yes, some of the families might not do well.
Some might deserve some help and some protection and all this.
But when you take these monsters and you put them at the head of the government, when they mess up and say, you do this and this, and you don't need these laws and you don't need to do anything, it means that everybody's affected by these laws.
But if an individual goes astray, yes, it's a serious thing.
But the persuasion still has to come from our spiritual values, you know, our beliefs, our local communities.
And so that's still government.
And to me, a much more efficient government when you think about this.
But to get labeled, you know, unpatriotic is really the tool that is so frequently used.
And that's what we have to be cautious about.
We don't have to say, well, we'll crumble.
Oh, I don't like to be called unpatriotic.
Maybe being unpatriotic in this day and age very often could be exactly the opposite.
Maybe those are the people who are the patriotic people.
Patriotism Reversed00:06:49
Like I mentioned, the whistleblowers, they might be the greater patriots.
And so many of them have ends up in prison.
Yeah, it's a shame, but true.
And I'll finish with my closing statement, Dr. Paul.
The great enemy of the state, at least the state as it is today, is the truth.
And as can be expected, when the state is so massive, the truth is treated as misinformation.
So whenever anybody tells the truth, they are misinforming the public.
And lies, the other side of the coin, are the facts.
They're fact checkers.
The fact checkers will give you the lies.
It's an upside-down situation.
And, you know, it goes even further to where they will even contradict themselves on purpose.
You know, we saw that in COVID over and over, to where, you know, they'll say one thing, wear one mask, three masks, four masks, this many shots, that many.
They just bombard you with contradictory information so that you give up and think that I don't even know what the truth is, and you just obey.
And that's really all they want is just obey.
They say something, and you obey.
And don't question, don't come up with, you know, what if this is true, just obey.
And they'll just keep throwing, you know, as many, you know, contradictions at you until you submit.
So that's, you know, but being able to see this, you know, because a lot of people don't see it.
They don't see that this is what's the weapon that's used against them.
But being able to see this obvious is like a gift.
You're able to see something that can help you that, you know, hey, this is what they're trying to do to me.
So as dark as some of this stuff is, we do have to end up with positivity because, you know, obviously we don't choose when we show up in this world.
If we did, we would probably all choose to show up when it's nice and easy.
Who would choose to show up when you're being bombarded with this kind of stuff?
So we are here when we're here, and we got to, you know, do our best to find out what the enemy is throwing at us and do our best to counter it with the truth.
And, you know, you can end up thriving if you do well enough.
But even if you don't, even if just you survive and be able to live a good life, that too is an accomplishment in itself.
So hopefully we help with that.
We do our best in our own personal lives with that.
And, you know, I just want to say thank you for listening to us each day, each week, and have a great spring or Easter vacation.
Wonderful.
Wonderful, Chris.
You know, and we have to realize that we're talking about a problem that's not exactly new.
It comes and goes, and sometimes it gets much worse.
But I like to use the little saying to explain this: that truth becomes treasonous in an empire, an empire of lies.
So when the empire is threatened, they may have gotten into power by telling lies and promises and all this.
But then as things go awry, they have to tell more and more lies.
And so that becomes the treason.
Telling the truth is treasonous.
And then they use the word patriotism involved.
But there's one thing that happens that we hear on television all the time that sort of annoys me because people don't use the word patriotism in this sense, but they'll see somebody that's in the military or they know of a story.
There's a sad story or they were wounded or they gave up a life.
And people are very, very anxious and they're almost embarrassed.
I want to thank you for your service.
And, you know, that's probably well motivated, but it's also annoying that going off to war and accepting these wars so casually and not working hard to stop the wars that we shouldn't have to sacrifice.
I mean, freedom and understanding truth has nothing to do with sacrificing.
But this puts it into the category of patriotism because if you're not, because you sacrifice, that makes you a patriotic person.
And that I think you have to be careful with because so many of the wars that I have opposed are not very patriotic to get involved in them because we all follow the Constitution.
I'd much rather have a system that says patriotism should maybe be more measured by their loyalty to the higher law and the laws that represent this higher law in our Constitution.
And that to me would describe what a true patriot is.
But I think, unfortunately, the use of the word and image of patriotism is more often to do harm than good.
And that I think we just have to be careful with.
If you use it, it has to be defined.
And you started off the program, Chris, by talking about the difference between government and the people.
And that, I think, describes it real well because most of the time, people in government who are working to maintain their powers are the ones that accuses people of being unpatriotic.
And they even go to the next step that you're supporting the terrorists.
You're nothing more than a terrorist.
And certainly in this day and age of the ugliness in our political system, it's going on all the time.
The demagoguing and the twisting and the breaking of law.
And when they break the laws and defy all legal precedents in the Constitution, they do it with a tone of a superior attitude that you are the people that are traitors and you're not patriotic.
So I hope we contribute a little bit to get people to think about this because I think it's so important for people to think of values that they defend.
And hopefully the idea that I have that one of the tests would be you should be willing to criticize your own government when they're wrong.
And that is a real challenge because then you have to have a system of values.
And some of us have this system of higher law values.
And matter of fact, we could use the Constitution as well.
That might give us a guide.
Fifth, I want to thank you for being on today.
I want to thank all our viewers for tuning in to the Liberty Report.