Why Is It "Empire First," Instead of "America First"?
America wasn't meant to be an empire, but a land of individual liberty. Empires destroy liberty. Why must our money be taken from us for weapons and endless war? Our money shouldn't be taken from us at all, let alone for that! Why not use our money to fix our deteriorating country? Why do our politicians constantly complain about our deteriorating country, yet constantly vote for weapons and war? Why do politicians speak "America First," but vote "Empire First"? Why do they complain about our poor, but vote to make more of us poor? Since Empires always go bankrupt, why are our politicians pushing us to that extreme? Are they that terrified of us being free?
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning into the Liberty Report.
With us today, Chris Rossini, our co-host.
Chris, good to see you this morning.
Great to be back with you again, Dr. Paul.
Good.
No problems in the world, so maybe we should just talk about Thanksgiving and think only positive, wonderful things, which we will do.
We should talk about that and be thankful for what we have.
But if you're in the business of trying to improve the financial and the political conditions of this country, you've got to pay attention because there are lots of problems and they're not going away.
You know, there was an election not too long ago at the Congress and they elected a new speaker and we were excited yesterday, you know, about the new speaker released all those files from the so-called insurrection on January 6th of last year.
That, to me, was great and I think a lot of people were pleased.
But today, you know, I can't get as excited about it because relying on our usual sources and some very good sources at anti-war.com and the great work that Dave DeCamp does, we have a couple things we want to point out, and that is they're not really acting like fiscal conservatives.
You know, they're talking about, you know, spending their money in the formation and the continuation and expansion of our empire and not dealing with what is truly American needs.
You know, there's somebody a long time ago coined the word America first.
You know, if you're going to have a government, the government's supposed to at least look toward the area that they're responsible for.
Keeping America out of wars, maybe giving the people of this country a sound dollar, living within our means and setting standards that other people would want to emulate us and stay out of the internal affairs of others.
So that doesn't happen.
And this is what we end up with today.
What we're going to talk about is, you know, have they cut back on some spending?
Maybe they have, you know, the people are cutting back on support for the war in Ukraine.
And people haven't even thought yet, oh, this, now we have to deal with Taiwan.
We have to go and talk about sending more weapons there, preparing.
They literally say preparing for war, you know, because those Chinese are about ready to take over Taiwan.
So that is the atmosphere.
And they grab hold of this and the media supports it.
It says not to scare you.
And it scares me, too, because I'm afraid too many people pay attention.
And it fits into the scenario about bashing China.
It's China's fault.
Every economic problem there ever was, and China has its problems.
But all I can remember was the Cold War with the Soviets.
And yes, we had to worry about it and deal with it.
But even dealing with the aggressiveness of the Soviet system, which was much, much worse than what I think China's doing right now, we really overworried because people should have said, settle down.
It's okay.
Yes, there's a problem there.
But it's self-destructive.
And sure enough, it dissipated and that changed.
And we saw the end of the Cold War.
So I wished we were there, but we're not quite there according to these headlines that we're looking at today.
And one I want to concentrate to begin with about what are they doing about China on money.
Well, the first item by Dave de Camp is Republican China hawks want $12 billion added to Biden's $105 billion request, you know, for all military.
So it never seems to end.
I look at this and I say, these people have to be delusional.
And then they mention even in this article, David knows about this.
He says, it is not like we take the money and tax people and the people know their taxes just went up.
No, we tax them through inflation, print them money.
And then we don't really just give the money unless it's conditions that if we give you money for military, you will buy the weapons from the United States.
You will do this and you will do this.
We buy the influence.
That's the way empires work.
And that's exactly what is going on right now.
They're talking about more money going into Taiwan and more aggravation.
And we're over there with our Navy.
I think every time we hear about a confrontation or a near-confrontation between American military vessels and the Chinese, I say, you know, what would we do if the Chinese had about 10 of their military vessels in the Gulf of Mexico?
But nobody asked that question.
Oh, we wouldn't be, we wouldn't allow that.
But we go over there and just provoke and technically maybe we're on some international waters just seeing what they're doing and testing waters.
But I don't think it's worth the effort of risking a real hot war.
And some people really want that because that's what they're preaching there.
And it's surprising.
Some people finally came around and said, you know, we didn't listen to those guys, you know, like that liberty report coming out against that war in Ukraine.
But we figured it out after a couple years and hundreds of billion dollars.
We finally said, that's all a waste.
We better quit doing that.
But that hasn't ceased.
And now we want to have addition to this.
And they think they're going to grab the well if you deal in wealth and not Federal Reserve notes.
And we are going to get involved.
To me, it's sad.
It's too bad they can't come around a basic principle that allowed them to go ahead and make sure that they expose the lies about insurrection, what went through there since January 6th, and go pursue that, doing something that is in the real interest of Americans.
And one thing would be, if we have real interest and concern about America, we would need to have a major overhaul of our foreign policy, both by Republicans and Democrats.
That's right, Dr. Paul.
They're both guilty, and they both have been for 100 years.
And American people, you know, have fallen for it for 100 years.
But it's going to have to stop at some point, this empire-first mentality.
And, you know, we are libertarians.
You know, prior to 1913, there was no income tax.
Americans kept their earnings.
Imagine that.
You can't even imagine it today.
Because, you know, we absolutely know better.
I know better how to spend my own money than Nancy Pelosi does, you know, or Lindsey Graham.
We know how to take care of our needs, our families' needs, our communities' needs.
And that's how it was until 1913.
But once they got their hands in our pockets, off to empire they went.
And, you know, and people today, they love the income tax.
Imagine that.
But I'll even make a concession.
Okay, if you're going to take our money from us, then use it for something here.
Build something here.
Fix something here.
Yes, I realize it's going to cost 10 times more than it should when the government does it and take 10 times longer than it should, but at least it'll be used here.
Instead, it's weapons and war, weapons and war.
And our politicians, they're very good.
They go on television, they complain about how things are bad here and how the poor and this, and they're right.
But what do they do?
You watch their votes, weapons of war, weapons of war.
And on the other side, America first, we're going to take care of our country, you'll see.
And, nope, gone.
Weapons and war.
So this is the fate of empire.
Once you start down this road, it's always empire first.
Your own country goes to hell.
And it's a shame because we get nothing, absolutely nothing from these wars besides the bills, the debts, and God forbid, our troops are out there.
You get the PTSD, you get the death, you get the injuries.
That's all we get as the American people.
And it's a rotten system.
We should ditch this idea of empire.
Very good.
You know, the amount of money is staggering because it's tough just keeping up with these proposals.
The efforts in Taiwan and China, they already have in a $15 billion bill, they already have $7.5 billion for protecting the security of Taiwan and America needs that, that sort of thing.
So they already have $7.4 billion.
And then this committee, their special committee, the House China Committee, they have to have a committee if you have a serious problem.
How do you get into war without a committee?
I mean, how do you prevent war without a committee?
So that's the purpose.
They always want to prevent something.
So they have a committee.
There are seven representatives, and they're the ones that came out this week and said, no, that $7.4 billion that's in the bill already isn't enough.
We need $12 billion more.
And then, by the way, after we get that, we need another $10 billion.
It's so astounding.
I just can't imagine how the American people can put up with this because eventually we'll have to pay for it, Chris.
Yeah, that's right, Dr. Paul.
And I feel for these countries that get all mixed up with our empire.
Because, you know, we're told, you know, we have to be told who our enemies are because we obviously don't know ourselves.
We're told that it's today, it's Russia, Iran, and China.
And it's always changing.
Go back to George L.B. Bush.
They always have their carousel of enemies that they say, here's your enemy.
So I feel bad for the people who live there.
Look, I feel bad for the Ukrainians.
Their country was destroyed.
And the whole time we're saying, none of this is necessary.
We're going to fight to the last Ukrainian.
And I think a half a million of them died and their country was destroyed.
And we've moved on.
And now it's Israel.
If I was an Israeli, I'd be concerned.
The Americans are all fired up about us.
That's not good.
We don't have a good history.
We have a terrible history of bringing freedom or defending freedom, whatever you want to call it.
And the Taiwanese, too.
If they turn on their internets and see Lindsey Graham is talking about war with China and even DeSantis and everybody else, they should be worried.
Because if we come over there and intervene, it's not going to be good for you.
So, you know, they should be telling their governments, you know, leave us alone.
While we tell our government, leave those people alone.
That's enough.
So, this is a very, but, you know, it's like a rabbit dog that's on the loose, and it's got to come under control at some point.
You know, you mentioned 100 years or plus ago when we didn't have an income tax, things were much different.
And a lot of us do date back to that period of time, the turn of the last century.
1913 was certainly a bad year because that's when the income tax in the Federal Reserve started.
But I date this in a slightly different way because I believe that was the onset of the disintegration of the American Republic.
And that was ongoing.
I believe that there was such a thing as a coup that came across, a philosophic coup, that lasted a long time.
And that's when our universities changed and our whole system, the Republic changed.
And we've gotten to this point where we ended up, if you lose the republic, and at the same time you substitute it with an empire, problems persist.
And that's what has happened.
We do have this empire.
And of course, to maintain an empire and to finance it, you have to sacrifice liberty.
And that's where we are today.
The American people are aware of the problems, but they wished it would go away.
And there may be enough changes that we can become more optimistic next year.
But I'll tell you what, the problems are so great.
The big problem is, yes, there may be serious motivation.
There may be some that understand exactly what's going on.
But the problem that is difficult to address and get through is all the debt and all the mismanagement and the malinvestment that is caused by artificial interest rates and the inflation of the fiat currency.
And so there's a lot of built-in excesses at the same time the interest rates are controlled by that.
But the big thing is the buildup of the debt.
And so how do you do this?
Well, we've had over the years of the development of this empire, there were times when the Fed would give us a depression and recession, and it would last five to ten years and we'd get over it, we'd liquidate some debt and go back.
But there's so much debt this time.
And the liquidation of debt, people worry, oh, we're bankrupt.
They're talking right now about the government closing down and people will go back to worrying, which they should, and they're going to get a check.
They'll never stop sending the welfare checks or the Social Security check.
They're going to come.
What they need to worry about is whether those checks are going to buy anything.
And that is to go by that hurdle is a big deal.
It is not very easy because somebody immediately notices their check went down in size or they're not doing it and somebody's going to have to get a job that never had a job before.
So that is a major problem.
Challenging The Status Quo00:08:14
But we still have to state what is necessary.
And it is what we have lost, the good principles that we were given and advised to use from the Constitution.
There's not much left to that.
And there is an effort to revive this.
And there are people out there.
There's a lot of good people.
But believe me, it's the transition.
People better understand it.
Individuals sometimes know it, and they go through it.
They get in spending over their head.
They have this debt.
They need to do something.
And they haven't been working very hard.
They know they have to quit the excessive spending and get a job and work and pay down the debt so that they can go back to a more normal living.
A country is a lot different because they cannot resist the temptation that once you have monopoly power over the currency.
And that's why, you know, at the same time, we say this all this mess started 100 and something years ago.
They had to have taxing authority, put you in jail if you didn't cough up some money, and you had to accept the money, the fiat money, if you want to continue with it.
And so that's why you had to have a Federal Reserve.
So this is a major contest, but believe me, there is a revival of an understanding, and we know the people, and there's been people working on that.
So the ideas are out there.
We're just working hard to make sure people get exposed to these ideas and make sure they realize an idea that is correct.
It can come.
A good idea can't be stopped with all this nonsense.
But unfortunately, there's a lot of pain and suffering done by those who will do almost anything.
And we've witnessed that these last several years.
Anything politically to maintain that grasp on the people and tell the people how to live and maintain and expand the empire.
That's what all this stuff is all about.
Ukraine, the Middle East, Taiwan, 120 countries we're in.
And we don't have any money.
It's totally delusional.
And I hope we can shake them loose and say, look, live within reality and come down.
We might be able to save the good parts of the republic that we once enjoyed.
Chris.
Excellent, Dr. Paul.
I'll finish up.
Yeah, in all likelihood, as great a case as we can make for non-intervention and getting rid of this empire, in all likelihood, it will come to what Dr. Paul is saying, the financial crisis and bankruptcy.
That's what normally happens.
What we're up against is very powerful in the sense that people still believe the government and the media.
So they get all fired up.
Putin was taking over the world a few weeks ago, and I guess that's all done.
But they'll foam at the mouth to perpetuate this stuff.
Americans still believe.
And that's a very big hurdle to overcome.
But we have to continue to speak these ideas because even if we can't stop the financial bankruptcy, our ideas need to be strong for when it comes because all this stuff is going to have to be rebuilt on new ideas, on fresh ideas, like a new plant coming from the soil.
So we have to speak regardless of whether we could head this thing off or not.
And in all likelihood, we probably won't.
But also, in the meantime, we have to get our own financial houses in order.
We have to get out of debt as best as we can.
You know, we live in a debt-saturated society, whether it's the government, corporations, individuals, businesses.
And personally, for our own families, we have to get out of it as much as possible and learn to rely on the government as much as possible financially because at some point it will have to shrink and they will not have a choice.
And it won't matter how mad Americans are.
You can go and complain, but you promise, you promise.
They'll be like, sorry.
Can't happen anymore.
You know, and I don't know whether we're going to live to see that, but somebody's going to, whether it be our kids or grandkids.
So whoever is going to have to do it, better be prepared.
So that's the best we can do, speak the ideas of liberty and do our best to get our own houses in order.
Very good.
You know, the one excuse they always use for it, especially the aid going to China, is we have to deter China from invading Taiwan.
But the more we do, the more we're aggravating it, the more anxious they get about doing exactly the same thing.
But it's always a fancy excuse because they'll say, well, we're really defending America, you know, by this, because right now we have a lot of bases around the world, and especially in the Middle East, they're getting bombed and attacked over the anger about, you know, the war against the Israel-Palestinian war.
So they're bombing our bases.
And then the American people say, we need to do something about that.
They're bombing our bases.
6,000 miles from our border, we have bases all over the place, and they're sick and tired of us being in our country.
And we have to do something about that.
So they turn it around and flip it and say, well, if you're not for this, you're not much of an American.
You don't really care.
Of course, we see it in a slightly different way.
But that's what they do.
They flip it around and say, you're unpatriotic.
And right now, though, over in the Far East, things are conditioned changing.
Just think how much effort has been made since Japan suffered from the unneeded bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
They wanted to avoid all this stuff and avoid war, but that's gradually changing right now.
And right now, we're talking about making use and storing more weapons because we have to deal with China right now.
That is not a good sign.
And right now, there's opposition in the Philippines, but we're expanding our militarism in the Philippines.
So all this activity going on, like if we don't do it soon, they're going to be on our borders.
But just remember, the Russians, the Soviets did not march in and take over.
They did, you know, their ideas failed because they didn't work.
And that's what will happen to us.
If we lose everything, it won't be so much that the soldiers marched in.
Right now, I think we're having an invasion.
And we don't even resist it.
We just say, oh, you're going to invade our country and take over.
Well, we'll give you free room and board.
And so we have no borders.
It's almost masochistic.
It's almost self-suicide.
And yet, once again, they say, well, if you're not that, you're not a very nice person if you won't take care of people's needs.
So that is a big problem, too.
So to me, it's a shame.
And, you know, so often when I get a little bit frustrated with this, I think about the libertarian pledge and just common sense that says, you know, if everybody would take the pledge that you're not allowed to use force and violence to have your own way, just think, the more people, there'd be not many wars going on.
But nobody, some people, a lot of people take the oath.
A lot of people take the oath of the Constitution, but that's why, you know, they fail because they don't follow through.
You know, they want to throw some people out and they might do it because maybe the lying gets a little too blunt and it's in their face.
So we don't want people lying.
But what if you were technical about taking your oath of honest seriously?
And whenever you broke that oath, technically you've lied.
No, that's different.
That's just politics.
And the Constitution is old-fashioned.
You know, they always come up with an excuse.
Oath of Honesty00:01:24
But it's not living within the truth that makes a big difference.
And there is something known as a natural law, a higher law.
The people from the beginning of time was very much aware of the natural law, that you don't kill people and you don't use violence to have your way.
And also, when that happens and throughout history, it's also been known that the people who fill a void will be those who say, well, don't sweat it.
You have to get what you can because there is no such thing as truth.
Nobody knows what that is.
It doesn't exist.
So get what you can.
And I've had people tell that to my face, you know, say, Ron, we realize what you're trying to do, but your job should be to get the stuff for us as quickly as it can before it falls apart.
Well, I think the information is available.
The one thing I know is there's a growing number of people who are concerned about our conditions, and they know something about how freedom and individual liberty is a key to solving some of these problems.
And that's what we have to promote, and that's what we're going to continue to promote at the Campaign for Liberty.
You know, so I would say that there's reason to be hopeful, and we will look quickly for the next couple days and reasons to be thankful because we still have a lot to be thankful.