The government cannot protect our freedom by taking away our freedom. It cannot shield us from harm (real or imagined) by censoring the truth and ripping away our privacy. It cannot “battle” communists by acting just like the communists. It cannot protect us from corporate fraud by mandating the use of their fraudulent products. The government is supposed to follow the law, which is the U.S. Constitution, not ignore it and give it lip service only when it's politically convenient. The Bill of Rights is not a joke. Those rights precede the government itself, and do not come from them. The primary job of every good citizen is make sure that those rights remain uninhibited.
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today we have Chris Rossini, our co-host.
Chris, welcome to the program.
Great to be with you again, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
On Fridays we generally, and Chris is on a lot of Fridays, but he helps us out whenever we need help and he's been a great help to our session here.
But I want to also make a point that today, usually we do talk about economics more so, but we're going to do something we don't usually do and that's concentrate on sort of a social issue.
But it could fit in anywhere because we're going to talk about TikTok.
Not like Daniel and I haven't talked about it.
This might be a record for bringing up the same subject almost every day for two or three days.
So anyway, Chris, we're going to get Chris's take on this thing and what all this TikTok business is about.
And actually, I can really work in the whole concept of TikTok as being a social matter, an economic matter, a foreign policy matter, and also a budget matter.
So anyway, we're going to do that.
But before I do that, to emphasize Friday, I'd like to talk a little bit about gold, where we are and what we're doing, and why the gold company is always helpful to us.
Birch Gold has been with us for quite a few years and they're with us right now.
And I want to make the point that they have some information on gold.
If you're so inclined, if you're not invested in gold and want to get some information, experience about how to best invest in gold, they will send out information and it's free.
And they'll respond if you go to Ron 98989A and they will send you that material.
But you say, well, you talk about gold all the time.
Everybody talks about gold.
Everybody knows gold's going to go up.
No, not always, but making the move sometimes is difficult because when I first started looking at gold as a protection haven, you know, back in the 70s, we weren't even allowed to own gold.
So we had to look around on how you do it.
And there's different ways you can do it.
And that's where Birch Gold comes in.
And they have some suggestions for that.
But to think about gold, the statistic that I look at, of course, I look at the price of gold and think it answers a lot of questions about domestic affairs and foreign affairs and budgetary affairs.
And long term, it's very good.
Short term, if it goes up $100 tomorrow, that doesn't prove anything.
So it is the trend.
And so the trend is very definite for me looking at gold.
It was $35 an ounce in 1971 when it was finally released from the dollar, a new restraint on the dollar.
But we were still weren't allowed to own gold for four years after that.
So it's something that is important.
But right now, if you look at the statistics, it's astronomical.
Our national debt is $34.5 trillion.
So I'd say that's a lot of dollars they put out there.
And gold is always coming into the market, the world market, not so much our markets, because sometimes it's hidden from us on exactly what we have.
But sometimes we sell gold when I think we should be buying gold to protect the dollar.
And if you take that debt and look at it to find out just how much it is, if you divide that up by taxpayers, it's a little sum, you know, theoretical.
It's just a game you play because it's not going to happen.
That if every individual had to pay their share of the debt, it would be $266,000 for every individual that pays taxes.
So that just tells you how big it is.
And it's growing.
The deficit this year is $1.7 or $1.9, depending how you measure it.
But it's almost $2 trillion, just the deficit.
And spending this year is geared up to be $6.6 trillion.
If we get through our fiscal year with them living up to that planned budget, it'll surprise a lot of people.
Money Printing Crisis00:15:22
And then it gets to the point where it's irrelevant.
People know that the Fed is there, and the Fed's going to print money.
And so far, they've held it in a way together.
They only have one little problem.
They've printed too many, and they passed these dollars out to the people who suffer the most, and that's the middle class and the poor.
And that's why their inflation of things they buy has gone up.
So there's a limit, and that's another signal that things are coming to an end when you just look at cost of living.
And it's much higher than what they report on TV because the government reports so often are biased one way or other.
So I would expect that to continue.
But once again, if you want to get some more information on how and what you might do in protecting yourself with gold, just text Ron 989898 and he will send you some material.
Chris, now we're going to go back to what we have to talk about on a regular program.
I mentioned in the opening that we're going to even talk about TikTok again, even though Daniel and I talked it through, and I predict we're going to be talking about TikTok for a long time because it's a big issue.
And that, of course, you know, I don't voluntarily or often go to talking about a certain senator because he could take care of himself and I don't have to.
But I am going to mention Rand today because he's really been outspoken on this issue of TikTok.
You say, well, what does he know about that?
And people are furious because he's the only one that probably intends to even vote against it.
But it passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives.
But he was looked at that way because he looks at things like, I'm sort of satisfied that he is because he thought what Fauci was doing was unconstitutional, immoral, and wrong and bad and all these things.
Everybody was bowing to him.
And at this point, I think the image of Fauci has changed dramatically.
And Rand did so much work there.
But now he's in the middle of this contest about the TikTok.
And TikTok now is in the middle of a scandal because the American people, generally speaking, and the bias, both Democrats and Republicans, but especially Republicans, boy, it's dangerous.
China is coming in here.
They're about to take over.
Our empire is going to be broken up.
And their scare tactics and they say, boy, we have to get rid of them.
So we're going to put a ban on it.
We don't let you use it.
Now, Rand's position is, well, when they're putting the ban and say that the millions of people who use it here, they're actually putting a ban on everybody's internet servers, everybody's website.
So his claim is it's much bigger than it's even led out to be.
And I tend to think that's generally the way most things in Washington work.
They inch their way in and then they make them gigantic.
Just think of the Liberty, the Freedom Report after 9-11.
You know, the Liberty Report, and that freedom report, the legislation passed was atrocious.
It's still there.
And that's the way these things are.
So he's very strongly opposed to this.
And the ducks are lining up.
I happen to simplify my position.
I think it's all about money.
I think people will eventually want to buy this company at discount.
I think that what they're doing, what our position is, because what they claim it is, is all for national security.
China is ready to take us over.
And China has to be watched.
And I've been watching China since I remember very clearly when we went into war unnecessarily against China when I was in high school.
So that is nothing new.
But I think we're much better off now because we've had a lot of trade with China.
I think that's the attack.
I think there's a lot of jealousy in this company, in this country, because the Chinese are doing better a commercial thing.
And we wouldn't want to ever admit that because they're communists.
Well, yeah, they have a lot of communist ideas, but we in this country have a lot of fascist ideas that I don't like, where government and big business work together.
That's dangerous too.
So I think people should look to their own house before they think they can clean up somebody else's house.
But I just think that this is an attack on freedom of expression because I think the system that we've had here now has allowed the people who have been lobbying for Gaza and for Hamas.
They sort of won this.
And even the, it has split, you know, Israelis and the Jews in many places and split this away because it's such a big, you know, foreign policy issue.
So this is a big deal.
I think my main concern would be if the Congress and others supported a strict interpretation of the Constitution and the First Amendment, and they weren't so careless to be conned into supporting this.
It always reminds me of a book that I cite quite often because I think it's so often the case.
The book, Exceptional Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Baket.
He wrote it in the 1840s, I believe.
And we all know what happens when there's a delusional spread and the madness of crowds.
And the best recent other example would be COVID.
Think of that.
And even the people who promoted it are finally backing down.
So this, I think, is an example of the madness of crowds.
And they're misled.
They may be well-intended, but they may be ill-intended too, because the one that had control.
The thing that has amazed me the most about this is the rapidity of what they've done there.
They got a bill up in a couple days and fast, 100%.
Yeah, and all Republicans will vote for that in the House.
So this is a big issue that's going to be around.
And Chris, I know you have some good ideas about this subject.
Well, thank you, Dr. Paul.
And you should be a very proud father because Senator Rand Paul really is a champion of our civil liberties, the Bill of Rights.
When it's the big stuff, when the rubber hits the road, he is always there, even by himself, defending us.
And this week he said, you know, regarding this TikTok, great quote: emulating Chinese communism is not the way to combat Chinese communism.
What a radical idea.
Yeah, don't be a commie yourself.
Now, personally, I don't think Chinese communism has to be battled at all.
What do I care?
I'm 6,000 miles away.
I'm an American.
What do I care what kind of government they have all the way across the world?
Let each nation choose their own form of government.
I definitely don't want our government to be communist.
And, you know, thank goodness, even though they're leaning in that direction, they're not communists.
And I don't really care if San Francisco or New York City, if they want to live the way they live, knock yourself out.
And so this whole battling communism is not really necessary.
And if you look, like Dr. Paul said, if you look at China, they're pretty much communist in name only.
They are some of the biggest, most powerful capitalists in the world.
Now, we Americans, oh, we're the capitalists, we're the capitalists.
That's pretty much in name only.
We're some of the biggest socialists in the world.
But the point that Rand is making, and it's a wonderful point, is you're not going to defeat this bad ideology by adopting it yourself.
You're going to censor people.
You're going to give the president this terrible power of saying they're foreign influence.
That's it.
Censor them.
Even though 100 million Americans use their service, and this whole idea that China is coming to get us, when you look at a map, China is surrounded by U.S. military bases.
Are we surrounded by Chinese military bases?
Not at all.
If anybody should be worried, it's them.
And we say over and over, bring our troops home, bring our troops home.
But the American people are so propagandized, so propagandized that this is a very tough battle to fight, to advocate for freedom.
That's why Rand is largely alone, because the propaganda is so effective on the American people that they think that they have the right to go tell people all the way around the world how they should live.
You know, if you believe, or a lot of people do sincerely and even mistakenly, that, you know, Israel's losing this PR fight here, you know, what's going on.
And the Palestinians have gained.
They have larger crowds coming out, and it is an issue.
It's not going to be silenced easily.
So they are saying, well, what do we do?
We have to silence them.
That's not dealing with the problem.
Why has there been this war going on in the Middle East for decades, if not years, many years?
And it's going to continue because outsiders are trying to settle it instead of the people that live there.
But that is a big problem.
But when Rand got into that thing last night with Fox, it was interesting to know that one person I happened to listen to, I didn't listen to everything that was on the internet this morning, but Sink Wieger, who's a commentator, he happens to be a progressive.
And I've been interviewed by him.
And I always believe he was fair in his interview.
But he came to Rand's defense.
So because he admitted, he said, well, tactics might be off a little bit.
I wouldn't have done it the same way.
But he said, Rand's absolutely correct on this.
And it's a First Amendment issue.
So that's worth looking at because it gives a lot of information.
And that's in a video that's on the TV today.
But I think the people are lining up and they have to demonize somebody.
And right now, they have been working very hard at it to demonize China, of course, Russia.
And this will add fuel to the fire and make it even worse.
But if you ever look at one of Rand's points was, he had a lot of trouble with Kill Me, Don Fox.
He says, who do you think owns it?
It ran out a list of the stockholders that owned, and they weren't all, and none of them were Chinese officials.
You know, even Americans own some of this stock.
So that's really what counts.
So this is a game they play because they have to demonize people both for the money, because right now they're arguing, will they get money for the Middle East war?
Are they going to get money for Ukraine?
Are they going to get money for our border security here?
Well, so far, the two foreign benefits seem to have more strength and more likely to get it.
But my guess is they're going to get into this.
It's just a wild guess that they're going to get into this final stage and they know they have to have this money passed.
And I think they'll give it to the whole thing.
They'll throw a token, a token of it to the United States as if we're the losers.
The other two three countries, Taiwan will get money and all, but we don't want to fund the wall.
And that's where the real conflict is.
But I just sort of think the way they do things up there is they'll at least give you the image that they took care of everybody and everybody's happy.
But the more difficult we difficulties that we get into because of the bankruptcy we have and the bankruptcy of our ideas, the less likely it will be to just paper it over, give them more money, give everybody money.
Not when you have a debt of $34 trillion and playing havoc with our middle class and the poor.
That spells trouble and it's coming quickly.
Chris.
Right, Dr. Paul.
Yes.
Unfortunately, Dr. Paul, Americans, we have a bad habit of becoming that which we fight against.
So this new, you know, you don't battle communism with communism.
This is not something new.
You can go back to the Soviet era and you have the conservative, so-called some conservatives, not really conservative, Bill Buckley, National Review.
And during that time, he said, quote, we have got to accept a big government for the duration for neither an offensive nor defensive war can be waged except through the instrumentality of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores.
So this conservative, quote unquote, was calling for a totalitarian bureaucracy here in America in order to battle the Soviets.
And that's what we did.
We've got the FBI, the NSA, the CIA, we've got agencies galore.
And look, that's what we're stuck with now.
Not only are they used overseas, they're now turned inward on us.
Okay, that's what happens when you create this totalitarianism to battle totalitarianism out there.
The same with this war on terror.
Look who suffered as a result of it with the Patriot Act, with surveillance on us, with the ridiculous TSA where you stand for an hour to take your shoes off to get groped.
Meanwhile, look at the border, and people are walking in with their shoes on, as best as I can tell, bringing in whatever they want, and that's it.
And meanwhile, we're standing, taking our shoes off, and getting groped.
So, do you see how you do not battle wrong by doing the wrong things?
You don't battle tyranny by becoming a tyrant yourself.
That's right.
You would think by now that anybody who brags that they're constitutionalists who take oath for office, just say just about everybody takes that oath of office.
Nobody seems to have paid much attention to it up there.
But the Patriot has morphed into a monster.
It has changed its name.
It just crows.
And they always build in deadlines for some of the provisions, but then they always renew it.
It's always bipartisan.
That's why I never get too excited about elections.
But sometimes you can get to the point where one side is so bad you have to give it a little cheering.
But I tell you what, for fundamental changes in this country, you're not going to find it out of 90% of the people that are in Washington.
Can't Tolerate This Freedom00:05:40
There are some good ones up there, but most of the people who study and learning this about economics, about a non-intervention foreign policy, and what real civil liberties mean, that you have to tolerate other people's behavior, even if you totally disagree with it.
But the requirement is they can't hurt people.
You can't go in.
You can't go in and rob somebody and take stuff out of somebody's house.
So you send a government, and then they call that an orderly system.
But you know, this TikTok has fallen into place for the people who want to bash China because it's a China so-called organization and company, and that's all controversial.
But you put TikTok together, and the American people seem to have responded super much with attacking and going after TikTok.
And some of their arguments are flimsy, and yet they're doing that.
But it fits right into the panel.
It's China and TikTok.
And the two together means that, boy, we better do something about this.
We can't tolerate this much freedom.
You know, that's what it is.
They don't see it that way.
They wouldn't dare see it that way.
That we're intolerant to freedom and letting people make up their minds and write the rules so that people are strictly held to their responsibility.
Right now, we have a system that nobody gets blamed for what they do.
They can rob banks and walk out in the street and have a party, and nobody touches them.
So that doesn't exist in a free market society.
People don't get away with doing whatever they want.
They're not allowed to steal.
They're not allowed to enter wars that aren't declared and supported by the people.
And they're not allowed to interfere with the personal civil liberties of individuals.
A free market economy means free trade and not all this Mickey mouse around and saying and allowing the big corporations to fundamentally run it.
We have a system which is corporatism, and that is the corporations and the governments are in bed together, super much so.
And that means pharmaceuticals and drug companies and military companies.
And the one thing Mises said, that if you have interventionism and you mix business and government together, it eventually becomes, you know, corporatism becomes fascism.
Now, there's a lot of terms thrown around.
Who are the fascists?
Who are the fascists?
Everybody's a fascist.
But they never define it.
We don't have a fascist system here, but we're quickly moving in that direction.
And it seems to be more acceptable in this country because they like corporations making profits, and that is good.
But once you use the government to do the bidding of the corporation, then they're in trouble and they should be.
But we're way too tolerant when you think of how we work with the pharmaceuticals, the medical industry, the educational industry, and on and on.
It's big government.
That's why government is the biggest menace we have right now.
And there's no reason why we couldn't cleanse this by simply getting the people to read a document, read the Constitution, and put an honest effort to trying to follow those rules.
And that would be non-intervention, and that would be nonviolence.
That is what I hope we get someday.
Chris?
What a great statement, Dr. Paul.
I will finish up with my closing statement.
Yes, it starts locally, individually.
You know, what we're talking about now is the federal government.
We really have no control over it whatsoever.
But it is important to speak out So that more and more people understand what's being done to us.
But as far as actions are concerned, there is nothing we can do.
But what we can do is we can act locally in our own lives.
Meaning, if you're a business owner, are you personally seeking regulations to stifle your competition?
Are you seeking to create barriers of entry to keep competitors out?
Are you looking for subsidies from the government?
You individually.
Are you looking for free welfare, health care, and everything else for free?
Yeah, the government, I hate that they're 34 trillion in debt, but I really would like free health care for myself.
Are you one of those people?
Because that you have control over.
You know, you can't control DC, but you can control your own passions for getting something for nothing.
You know, and we live in a disordered nation.
You know, it's sad to see.
It's sad to see our nation go down like this, but it is a reflection of disordered individuals.
COVID was a big wake-up call to see the types of people that we live around.
There's a lot of petty tyrants out there that were ready to stick a mask on you, weren't letting you in the house unless you took a shot that didn't work.
I mean, we have a lot of petty tyrants that live under this big disordered tyranny that lives in Washington.
So the place to start is on our own lives, get our own lives in order as best as we can.
And at best, you can set an example for other people to try to mimic you.
And that's what our nation should do.
At best, try to set an example for China and Vietnam and South Korea.
Set an example, and maybe they'll adopt what you're doing.
This idea of you being a busybody and you're going to try to control them is failing.
We're bankrupting ourselves.
So it's time to turn around and get back to first principles, like Dr. Paul said.
It's very simple.
It's in the U.S. Constitution and it's in the Bill of Rights.
Chris, very good.
I'm going to finish up by making a brief statement about Schumer.
Schumer's Democratic Dilemma00:02:25
I know his name has been thrown around because just yesterday or the day before, he made it known on the Senate floor that Israel's not running their country right and they ought to have a new election.
And Yahoo has to go type of policy.
And that seems strange.
I mean, he's belonged to the Israeli coalition for a long time.
He can't be more pro-Israel than he is.
So why would he do this at this time?
And it sort of seems like the division in the Democratic Party between the progressives and the progressives that support the Palestinians and the others who support Israel is getting to a big deal.
And even the president had to vacillate.
That's no big deal.
We know that all the time.
He flip-flopped.
So he had to say, well, maybe Israel's overdoing it, that sort of thing.
So I think Schumer is throwing out a fig leaf for a while to say that, yes, the prime minister of Israel, Yahoo, is in a little bit of trouble at home.
And he said, well, maybe he's too much for him.
So he wants to keep the door open and doesn't want to join on the bashing by the one half or more of the Democratic Party, the progressives that have a streak in them that they haven't fully gotten rid of, and that is an anti-war.
They're not anti-wars.
They just pick their factions on whom to support.
But anyway, he came on this side, but I think he's thinking that when push comes to shove and they have that final secret deal in the budget room where they split it up and pass some bill in the middle of the night, that he will be on the side of what the people want.
But it is interesting that all of a sudden he's...
But the first thing is, you could react and say, what business does he have?
That's like somebody coming telling us we ought to have an election.
It's not like they don't interfere in our elections.
And all the business people do.
So, anyway, I think we'll hear more about Schumer in a little bit, but we're going to hear more about the split in the Democratic Party.
But also, there's a decent, healthy split in the Republican Party, too, because there still are a few good conservatives there that would like to see some cutting made.