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Aug. 19, 2023 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
22:08
The Rise of State Corporate Censorship

How did it all get started? RPI Director Daniel McAdams addresses this year's Houston Conference on the origins of the evil anti-speech public private partnerships. Don't miss the next RPI Conference! Get your tickets to the Ron Paul Institute Sept. 2nd DC Conference: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/which-way-america-tickets-665436647927

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Jokes and Jesters 00:01:39
First of all, can I get a show of hands for people who this is their first Ron Paul Institute conference?
All right, that's great.
A lot of you guys.
Makes me very happy to see that, and I really appreciate you coming out.
I want to start with a couple of jokes.
Who doesn't want to hear jokes on Saturday morning?
So Donald Blinken, Anthony Blinken, his son.
That's the joke.
No, I'm just kidding.
He was in Helsinki yesterday, and here's what he had to say.
Today, Russia's economy is a shadow of what it was and a fraction of what it could have become had Putin invested in technology and innovation rather than weapons and war.
And the funny part, of course, is if you've been following the debt ceiling and the fact that we're going to add $4 trillion to the debt and the fact that Congress was walking hand in hand to approve an $886 billion military budget for next year.
We've already given $100 billion to Ukraine.
And according to The Economist, Russia has spent only $67 billion on the war in Ukraine.
And here's the second joke.
Our illustrious Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, was in Singapore.
And here's what he had to say.
The U.S. is doubling down on encircling China's military because there's no room for intimidation, bullying, or coercion.
So.
Look Around, Embrace Liberty 00:06:28
So look around, everyone.
Look around at your neighbors.
Look around at people you're sitting with, people across the room.
You're the remnant that Dr. Paul talks about.
You're making time on a busy Saturday and busy lives to come out and see us in Houston because you care about peace and prosperity and liberty and freedom.
You making the time, you're the remnant.
Now, I selfishly choose speakers for these conferences because they're people who I want to hear, and I hope that you want to hear as well.
And that's extremely important.
But perhaps at least as important is for all of us to get together and get to know each other.
And in just fact, happened over at our table.
I said, oh, you know that?
Of course we do.
So this is what it's all about, in addition to hopefully learning a thing or two, is getting to know each other.
And that's why we, of course, have a half an hour coffee break later.
Everyone needs a little bit of pick-me-up, but it's also a chance to share notes and visit with people.
So let me start with a couple of introductory remarks in terms of housekeeping.
I want to thank our sponsors for this conference.
You'll see them, they have a little tag that says sponsors, and they're sitting up in front.
These are the people who help us with the very difficult and expensive task of putting an event like this on.
And they are enormously appreciated.
We cannot have a conference without them being part of it.
And so I do want to give them a round of applause.
Future potential sponsors, please get in touch with me and we can talk about sponsoring your next conference.
The sponsors do, of course, after this conference, have a special reception, and that will be at the Plaza Ballroom at 1 p.m. for the sponsors.
And you'll see that you have a tag that says that.
There's a special elevator on the left.
It is not the great glass elevator, but it is a special elevator on the left to go to that event.
And also, another thing, if you are here for the day and you day parked, you can get a reduced rate if you go to the front desk.
So they won't take all of your money for parking.
I want to thank our speakers.
As always, the speakers come here on their own.
They donate their time to us to help educate us and enlighten us.
And we are extremely, extremely appreciative of our speakers.
I'd like to point out my colleague Adam Dick over here.
Adam is the heavy who deals with the hotel and makes sure everything goes perfectly.
And he's very much appreciated, and we could not do it without him.
I do want to thank my family, who again is with us helping us out.
My children were little like this when we first started, and now they're all grown.
My son is taking some time off one of his rare days off in his new job.
Ask him what he does.
I won't say it up here, but I'm proud of him as well.
And of course, mostly, most importantly, is all of you, and I've thanked you before, but thank you, all of you who've come out to visit us today and hear what we have to say.
So give yourselves a round of applause.
Now, some of you know this.
This is the 10th year of the Ron Paul Institute.
This is our 10th anniversary year.
Dr. Paul and I can hardly believe it.
I know.
They said we wouldn't last a year.
They said we wouldn't last two years.
But how we did it is slow, steady progress and the support of all of you.
It's hard to raise, it's easy to raise money for a political campaign.
It's harder for an educational organization that's pushing for peace and prosperity.
The Ron Paul Liberty Report.
Has anyone watched that or listened to it?
I can't believe Dr. Paul, we started that eight years ago, doing it every day.
And in fact, the person who's behind there is someone who you don't see who's behind the scenes, and that's Sir Khan Ash.
He is our man in the studio.
He pushes the buttons and turns the dials and makes the magic happen.
And we're proud of that.
So for us at the Liberty Report, COVID was a baptism of fire.
We had been cruising along on YouTube just fine.
Everything was good.
And then COVID hit, and all of a sudden, we hit a brick wall of things you couldn't say.
And every day going in the studio, instead of a pure joy, for me at least, Dr. Paul was unphased.
But for me, it was a nightmare.
I wondered, is this the day we're going to get canceled?
Is this the day it was going to be the end?
We're going to get three strikes.
You're out.
You can't say that.
They'll never say what you can't say.
But if you say it, well, you're going to be toast.
So it was very, very stressful for us.
But we worked hard to build up the show.
And the show was kind of the flagship of the Institute, aside from our conferences.
And last year, I think our hard work was rewarded because we were approached by Rumble, and they offered us a contract for exclusive content.
And they said, we won't censor you.
You don't have to worry about being cut off.
So I think that was a really positive and a good move, at least for me psychologically and for the show at least.
And last year, the Liberty Report was seen or heard by nearly 30 million people.
So that's, I'm pretty happy about that.
I think we've held at least 12 conferences and they've all been packed like this.
So we're very happy about that as well.
As many of you know, the Beltway organizations are a little bit different.
They're all self-referential.
Everyone is in a circle.
They speak to each other only.
Even those that are outside the mainstream are hilarious.
I may be going out on a limb here, I read recently from someone I respect in a way, but I won't say who it is.
But I believe that what we're hearing about Ukraine may not be completely right.
That's the Beltway mentality.
And in fact, our good friend Ted Carpenter spent 37 years at the Cato Institute in the belly of the beast doing pretty good work, but he stepped on the third rail because he wrote something about Ukraine that didn't put a halo around their president's head.
And he was fired after 37 years of PhD, I think 17 books or something he's written.
So that just shows you how it works in the Beltway, and that's why we're down here in Texas, because we don't play that way.
We don't answer to Charles Koch, we don't answer to George Soros, we don't answer to Daddy Warbucks.
We answer to you, really, to be honest.
Lies That We're Being Told 00:13:58
That's what it's all about.
So, if you look at your program, you will see a QR code if you do want to help us with a tax-deductible donation.
We certainly appreciate it.
Now, this conference, I was racking my brain thinking of what's the theme, and this is while I was working with Dr. Paul, putting his new mini book in production.
And the theme of this was inspired by his book, because his book is, and I won't give it away because we're still in production, but it's about lies and it's about a great coup and it's about the destruction of the American Republic.
And it really felt like this is what we need to talk about: the lies that we're being told.
So, that was what inspired the theme of this.
And we'll explore through the speakers different aspects of that theme.
Pilate asked Jesus, what is truth?
And I think that's one of the most monumental, it's the most consequential interrogation of all time.
And that, I think, is true whether you are a believer and believe that Jesus Christ came as our Savior, or whether you look at the Bible as a very, very important piece of historic literature.
However, you view the Bible that is most consequential.
What is truth?
Now, of course, the mission of Jesus, whether you believe him to be an historic figure or whether you believe it to be literature, was to come to earth and restate truth and reassert truth in a world of lies.
So, whatever your religious views, the importance of this being recorded for all history, I think, is self-evident.
Truth is the basis of trust, it's the basis of our relationships with each other, whether it's man and wife or friends or even in the commercial sector.
Truth is the basis of everything that we do.
Truth is now being tortured.
Truth itself is on trial, and I think we all know that.
And I think authoritarian societies, the first thing, of course, they target is truth.
The ruling power maintains a monopoly on truth in authoritarian societies.
Think of the Orwell's 2 plus 2 equals 5.
That is what they enforce.
The new Soviet man, the Aryan Superman in a thousand-year Reich, they feel they have the monopoly on truth, and truth is not open for debate.
It's not open for the scientific method.
It's not welcome.
What is truth in these kinds of societies?
It's what the people with the power to crush you tell you is truth.
Truth is malleable in the hands of ambitious, amoral, power-hungry individuals.
So, we've been in a constant war, and it's been accelerating for at least the past six years.
It's intensifying.
Over and over, we're being told that two plus two equals five, and you better believe it.
Each battle is no sooner, each lie is no sooner defunct, than another more monstrous lie emerges.
And let's look through a couple of the most important ones.
Of course, we started with Russia Gate in 2015 and 2016.
We were told that none, no less than Vladimir Putin himself, decided that he wanted to have Donald Trump elected, and he did everything he could to make that happen.
Well, many of us didn't believe it at the time, regardless of how we feel about Russia or Vladimir Putin, because it just sounded dumb.
Why would they do that?
It didn't make any sense.
And of course, we fought back, and we fought back, and we were called Trump supporters and right-wingers, whatever you want to call us.
That's what we were called.
And then it's been definitively debunked.
Now, most of us in this room didn't believe it from the beginning, whatever your views, but the Durham Report told us, and we'll hear more from Peter Van Buren on that as well.
It proved to us step by step that this was an FBI operation in collusion with another candidate, Hillary Clinton at the time, to get Hillary Clinton elected.
The election was stolen, but it wasn't by Trump and Putin.
It was by someone else.
So it was an absolute massive lie.
This is insane.
And then came COVID.
In 2020, you're all going to die.
Don't take anything for it, but remdesivir an event.
That's your ticket out of here.
And get your shot, especially the kids.
That's what we were told.
Well, of course, that was debunked as a lie, and many of us at the time saw it as such.
And let me just show you something from a couple of items on that that have come out just recently.
And Dr. Paul and I were going to talk about this on the show.
Maybe we will next week.
Researchers retract over 300 COVID-era medical papers for scientific errors and ethical concerns.
And now I'd like to say that every one of those was retracted because it pushed the fear factor, but that's not true.
But many of them did.
Many of them, they were rushing and racing to put out these reports and these scientific studies that were nothing of the sort.
And here's another one that's very, very interesting, especially when they came for your kids with the jab.
This is from the Israel national news, which unfortunately the Israelis found themselves to be the guinea pigs of the world on this shot.
But this is from Israel.
Israel's health ministry, no young adults without pre-existing conditions died of COVID.
And this just came out from the last couple of weeks.
Former member of the Knesset, Moisha Fegin, published on Twitter a health ministry response to queries regarding various coronavirus statistics.
And the document, the health ministry clarified that no adults without, no adults without pre-existing conditions who are between the ages of 18 and 49 at the time of their death died of coronavirus.
So debunked.
But then we came to January 6th.
Of course, the Great Insurrection.
The election being stolen by Trump and Putin and his cronies.
Well, the video surveillance has been released.
We've seen some of it.
And from what we've seen so far, we haven't seen who planted those pipe bombs.
I wonder why.
But from what we have seen, it looks a lot more like Nancy Pelosi colluding with the Capitol Hill cops to do a cookup, to do a fake insurrection, to settle once and for all any doubts about why when we went to bed on the night of the election, Trump was ahead by a landslide.
And when we woke up, gosh, he lost, regardless of what you think about Trump.
So that was all cooked up.
But I think the biggest one we're facing now, the biggest lie, of course, is Ukraine.
And this biggest, I think primarily because the others were horrible.
But now we're facing World War III.
We're facing a real possibility of World War III.
So the lies about Ukraine, a plucky democracy, we've got to support them because of the domino theory, ironically, that's a long discredited idea that if we don't go into Vietnam, well, those commies are going to take over Southeast Asia.
And they're not going to stop till they get to Kansas or something.
If we don't stop Putin in Kiev, he's going to be knocking at our back door.
You better believe it.
I don't know what he would want with New York because nobody else seems to want it.
But that's how it is.
So the idea, of course, is a neocon, and I use that term broadly, meaning neoliberals and neocons, the warmongers, to overthrow Russia, which is what they've wanted to do for decades.
And now they think they've gotten their chance, but as always, they botched it.
Botching it when it comes to Iraq was bad.
You know, a million innocent people died.
Botching it when it comes to taking on Russia and overthrowing their government is orders of magnitude worse because they have nuclear weapons.
So, of course, we know that Ukraine was no plucky democracy.
The church is outlawed, opposition media is outlawed, the opposition party is outlawed.
Now, this may be an ideal democracy for Washington, right?
Where all opposition is outlawed, but for those of us who are normal, that's not really the great democracy, especially as the recipients of 100 billion of our dollars to prosecute this war.
So, none of this is new.
None of these lies are new.
We've been lied to all along.
It goes back to the founding of this country in some ways.
All wars are cooked up and based on lies, except for wars of defense.
But something new has happened here.
And I think that's what's so important.
We do talk about it on the Liberal report.
But all of a sudden, at least as far as we can tell, the state has partnered with the private sector to bypass the Constitution.
You know, the state is not in because we have the Bill of Rights, thank God.
The state can't say, hey, you can't say that.
So, what do they do?
They go to Google, they go to Twitter, they go to Facebook and Instagram and say, Hey, you tell them they can't say that.
Well, we don't want to do that.
Well, you're going to be in trouble.
We're going to drag you up before Congress again, and someone's going to yell at you, and you're going to have all sorts of other problems.
So, this is how they've been able to bypass the Constitution, and that's an enormous danger to all of us.
Because, yes, lockdowns, mask mandates are horrible, but you can protest them.
There's something concrete, right?
And we did up in Lake Jackson when they had it.
My kids and I went and protested the stupid mask mandates on the street.
But you can't protest this because it takes away your very ability to express your thoughts, right?
You disappear, you literally disappear.
Nobody can hear you if you think something's wrong, if you think Ukraine is not a plucky democracy, if you think putting a vent down your throat is not a good idea, right?
You can't, you disappear, and that's what's different.
And that's why you have a phrase coined by Mike Schellenberger, who was involved with Matt Taibbi in the Twitter files releases.
He calls it the censorship industrial complex.
And I think it's a terrific, terrific way of expressing what we're talking about.
And in fact, Schellenberger was before Congress a little while ago, and he had a couple of sentences that I think encapsulate it much better than I could.
And if you will indulge me, I'll read a couple of these things because I think it is so important.
This is his congressional testimony.
He said, in his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military-industrial complex.
That was a quote.
Eisenhower feared that the size and power of the complex or cluster of government contractors and the Department of Defense would, quote, endanger our liberties or democratic processes, end quote.
How?
Through quote, domination of the nation's scholars by federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money, end quote.
He feared public policy would, quote, become the captive of a scientific technological elite, end quote.
Eisenhower's fears were well-founded.
Today, American taxpayers are unwittingly financing the growth and power of a censorship industrial complex run by America's scientific and technological elite, which endangers our liberties and democracy.
I'm grateful for the opportunity to offer this testimony, et cetera.
That captures perfectly the danger and what we're facing here about this.
So, that is why I think that the Twitter files is probably the most significant victory for truth.
I would say, definitely since Snowden, but maybe at least since the Pentagon Papers.
The fact that they dove in, they showed us what was happening, the man behind the screen, and what he was doing, it was unbelievable.
It was absolutely remarkable.
And thanks to people like Matt Taibbi and Schullenberger and Ari Weiss and many others who worked on it, we know that things like Hamilton 68 was supposed to be a dashboard to figure out who was passing on misinformation.
Well, that was funded by the U.S. government, who didn't want you to say things, certain things, and so they funded a NGO to create a dashboard.
And we know now from the Twitter files that even Twitter's employees, even the guy who was not a great guy, said, This is all BS, there's nothing in this.
You know, when they were told, so we know that.
We know that the FBI was involved in Twitter and all the social media trying to, you know, giving lists of people who should be banned.
The CIA was involved in getting people banned.
So we know how much the government has been colluding with the private sector to silence Americans who held views that they don't like.
And I'm going to close with another great quote from Schullenberger.
And I think this explains the trajectory that we've been on.
And I think it's good to understand this: what's happening and what the implications are.
And I don't have any answers of how to fight successfully against it, but I think the first step is to understand what it's all about.
And this is Schullenberger from his congressional testimony.
Importantly, the bar for bringing in military-grade government monitoring and speech countering techniques has moved from countering terrorism, remember that, to countering extremism, to countering simple misinformation.
The government no longer needs a predicate of calling you a terrorist or extremist to deploy government resources to counter your political activity.
The only predicate it needs is simply the assertion that the opinion you expressed on social media is wrong.
That's the danger we face.
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