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June 6, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
25:48
Can Liberty Beat The House? With Guest Stewart Jones

US House candidate Stewart Jones joins today's Liberty Report to share his thoughts on how respect for liberty and the Constitution can be restored to the House of Representatives.

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Time Text
Why Run for Congress? 00:08:02
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, welcome to the program.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you?
Well, I'm doing very well, and we're ready to go because we have a special program today.
We do.
We have somebody running for the Congress, and you know, we don't talk a whole lot about politics.
We don't emphasize that, but we do emphasize individuals, certain individuals who are involved in politics and running for office, and we think it's worthwhile.
So, we have a candidate like that, and his name is Stuart Jones, and he's running for Congress, and we're looking forward to it because he has a tough primary coming up pretty soon.
You want to say hello to Stuart?
Welcome to the program, Stuart.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Hey, Dr. Paul and Daniel, thank you so much for having me today.
Good.
And this congressional seat you're talking about now, you've been in the state house, and you've been on the city or county council as well.
So, a lot of times I get asked the question, where should I start?
Should I start at Hove Little and work up?
Or should I start for running for president or something like that?
Well, you know, it's up to the individual, the circumstances, so it varies a lot.
So, you have followed a pattern that a lot of people do.
You get involved in local politics.
Of course, we know the importance of the federal government and local politics, but it's too bad that we don't have more transition away from Washington into the hands of the state officials and local politics.
So, we're very happy that you're running, and I think you're very much aware of the freedom movement and a libertarian idea.
And why don't you start off by telling us what you're doing right now and how you got involved and let the listeners know more about you?
Yes, sir.
Dr. Paul, well, number one, let me just thank you.
I mean, because in 2007, 2008, when I heard you speaking, you know, you sounded a lot like my grandpa.
My grandpa had been drafted into the Korean conflict, and he growing up taught me about the importance of a constitutional foreign policy.
You know, Korea was the first time that we got involved around the world based on a UN resolution outside of a declaration, a true declaration of war in the United States.
And so that was an important point to note.
You also emphasized the importance of gold and silver, legal tender, how that is the basis for what the founders gave us, you know, in the Constitution to be able to hold government accountable.
And so I just want to thank you for that, number one.
And that really inspired me to challenge my local officials going back to really, we all remember the 2012, the Indefinite Detention Acts of the NDAA.
You know, that was really bad.
It was a point they said they could indefinitely detain any U.S. citizen without trial or jury.
And so I went to my sheriff, my local officials.
My county councilman at the time, he told me that the Constitution didn't matter.
And so that fired me up.
And I knew I had to run, so I ran for local office and I beat him.
And I have enforced policies and ordinances saying that the Constitution does matter and we're going to uphold it.
Very good.
Daniel.
Well, thanks again for joining us.
It's a tight race.
Can you tell us a little bit about the race?
How many, it looks like it's a pretty solid red seat.
It was Jeff Duncan's seat from 2011.
Looks like he's retiring.
How many primary challenges do you have and what's the race look like?
And what are the big issues for the people of it's the what, the eighth district of South Carolina?
It's the third.
You can't read my writing.
Yeah, sorry.
Yeah, that's okay.
The major issue, the most major issue, let me tell you this, like I've been personally affected by the situation with our border, with our crisis at the border.
And, you know, so many politicians have funneled money into these welfare programs that are encouraging and enticing illegals to break into our country.
And so last year, my goddaughter, Maddie Hines, was actually killed by an illegal alien right here in South Carolina.
And so that motivated me to get involved and motivated me to run for this seat.
And so I would say securing our border is the number one issue.
You know, and there's a couple different ways we can do that.
But at the top of that list is stopping the federal government from giving out free stuff to illegals.
You know, I've been to the border, Brownsville, Texas, as an example, and I've seen firsthand, you know, what they're doing handing out cell phones and debit cards and all that kind of stuff.
So we've got to cut that off.
We've got to stop that.
And how many people are in the primaries?
Yeah, there's seven of us in the primary.
The top three of us, I will say this, my main opponent is a military-industrial complex person, a person who has funded people like Chuck Schumer and Jim Clyburn and politicians across the board.
And so they make money from the politicians through government contracts and then they fund the politicians.
So that's my biggest opponent.
That sounds not good.
But we saw a great video of someone that we know of that made a video endorsement of you.
I should have queued it up, but it's Senator Paul.
So that was a pretty neat video.
Yeah, it sure was.
I remember seeing him a few times doing that.
Somebody asked me once, did I give him a lot of instruction?
No, he was so interested.
He gives me instructions.
He's pretty good at this system.
So I'm certainly glad he has endorsed you, Sora.
So, well, you know, I find it a little bit fascinating about you mentioning your grandfather.
And all of a sudden, there were more similarities than I expected because he was involved in war activity and he was drafted and something happened to me.
But I'm not old enough to be your grandfather.
So it's great.
But it is from a different generation.
And I'm sure, is your grandfather still living?
No, he actually passed away early, let's see, 2004 around there.
So, yeah, he passed away then.
But what you're witnessing now is the politicians of today and what's happening in our Department of Justice and what's happening on the foreign policy and the whole works, where he definitely was from a different generation.
And, you know, politics invites a lot of corruptions and lying and all this maneuvering, money and power.
But even as I remember back in those early years, I don't think it was anything as bad.
Even if I just compare what's happening right now to the 20 years I was in the Congress, I think that things have deteriorated.
So there's a job, really a big job, and that's why we're looking for people and wanting to encourage people like yourself who at least have an interest in the principles.
And I think that we live in an age of dishonesty and people lie and it's just common and they don't know the difference between lying and telling the truth.
Battle for Liberty 00:02:42
And things can't go well when this whole society, you know, accepts a notion that to get ahead, you have to lie.
And there's a lot of that going on.
Yeah, that's absolutely a fact, Dr. Paul.
And, you know, in my time in the state legislature, the last five years that I've served in the South Carolina House of Representatives, you know, we've had some incredible victories from constitutional carry, which I was a sponsor of, which we passed, pro-life legislation, you know, which ultimately would help to challenge the Roe v. Wade decision.
And then probably the most incredible, impactful thing I've been able to lead on was a bill nullifying, stopping the federal vaccine mandate at the state level in South Carolina.
Excellent.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, Stuart, I have to ask you this question.
I've been to South Carolina.
We had a conference in Charleston.
It's a beautiful, beautiful city.
But it's also the home of some people that are not big fans of liberty.
I'm talking, I don't want you to, you don't want to trash talk anyone, but I'm just going to put it out there.
Nikki Haley, Lindsey Graham, a lot of people who like freedom and liberty are scratching their heads.
What's up with South Carolina?
Yeah, in so many ways, so many of them are exemplary of the military-industrial complex.
They've been co-opted and they're neocons, frankly.
At the end of the day, I mean, they want more wars and more spending and all these things.
The truth is, and I'm an eighth-generation South Carolinian, you know, reading a lot of Rothbard and Ron Paul too.
Rothbard liked to talk about John C. Calhoun, who was an incredible South Carolinian.
Rothbard actually called him one of America's most brilliant political theorists because of the principle of nullification and the concurrent majority and so forth.
And this is an interesting fact that the district, the third congressional district, actually covers the counties that John C. Calhoun represented in 1810 when he was elected to Congress.
And so for me, this is a battle of states' rights.
It's a battle of individual liberty.
And we've got to take back our money.
We've got to get out of these foreign conflicts that we're involved in.
Calhoun, Rothbard, Ron Paul, and the founders, they all knew of what happened to the Roman Empire.
And so if we don't return to our founding principles soon, then I'm afraid we've crossed the Rubicon.
Battle of Individual Liberty 00:04:44
But I'm optimistic.
I'll say that.
One thing that keeps me optimistic about this is people like Thomas Massey and Rand Paul, and you had TJ Roberts on the show one day.
You know, everybody that's gotten involved and getting involved around the country to take back our country from the ground up.
Well, we always like to hear people speak of optimists.
And you come across as optimistic because, yes, we can talk about all the bad things, and I do.
I spend a lot of time talking about all the things deteriorating, which I talked to, you know, the presidential campaign.
And I was always impressed.
And you might notice this as time goes along that even if I talk for an hour, about 45 minutes at least, I was telling an audience, a young audience, we're in trouble, and you're inheriting.
This is a mess.
But I finish it off with a lot of what you just got done saying.
There's a reason for optimism there.
And I was surprised that they didn't say, why are you so pessimistic at all?
But they'd come up and say, why?
It's just wonderful that you're so optimistic.
And yet, most of the time, I was telling them about the days.
And I think what happens there, when we get out there, including you, we get out there and tell them how bad things things are.
You come across as being truthful.
And that breaks the ice and the people want to listen.
So I think it's that truth factor that sets the stage for us offering things and say, yes, this is a big problem.
And to correct this inflation problem and bringing all our troops on, it's not duck soup.
You know, it takes a while.
But if they just hear and say, it isn't too complicated, and I've always liked that, and that is that our policies, our freedom philosophy is not complex.
You don't have to be a genius to understand what it's like to live in a free society.
And I think I note that in your statements that you're having now.
But, you know, back to something that happened in 1962 was the month I found out that I'd be going to the military.
And I had to do with the missiles in Cuba, Khrushchev there, and with Kennedy as our president.
That was a big crisis.
That was major.
And I did get drafted.
By the time I was sworn in in January of the next year, that particular crisis was over.
But today, one of the top headlines on the news, and I want you to comment on this because it suggests a problem, a foreign policy problem.
And one headline said, Russian ships steam for the Caribbean as Ukraine tensions go global.
And if you were at a political meeting and you have serious people that are willing to look for information and somebody asked, what do you think we should do to reserve this or take care of this problem, resolve this problem?
What would be the general way you would approach that?
Yeah, I think the founders and specifically Thomas Jefferson, he told us, I think in 1801, that peace, commerce, and honest friendship was the best foreign policy, entangling alliances with none.
And what we're facing right now is for many, many years of an expansionist foreign policy, a foreign policy that promotes welfarism and dependency and not a diplomatic foreign policy that wants to work and trade with others and so forth.
And so, you know, I think about all the money that we've spent.
Take Ukraine just as an example.
I think we've spent around like $165 billion in Ukraine in recent years that we've sent over there.
You think of how many times we could have secured our own border.
We're so concerned with securing everybody else's borders and fixing their problems.
We can't fix our own problems.
And so if we don't return to what the founders told us to do, which is a constitutional foreign policy soon, then I'm afraid we're not going to be able to defend ourselves.
And so that's what we got to do, Dr. Paul.
Good.
You know, already just the interest payments on our debt is the second largest expense we have over the military.
I wanted to do something a little different, Stuart.
I wanted to go to some of our live viewers.
We've got a very lively crowd that's always watching the show, and I'm watching them speak right now.
Budget Battles 00:04:24
And earlier on, I asked them if they had any questions for you.
And one of our regulars, Gypsy Magic, had an interesting question.
He said, Should the J-6 prisoners be released?
Yes, yeah, absolutely.
You know, like I said, the whole reason I got involved in this was for due process.
You know, it was defending those principles that really you can go back to the Magna Carta of 1215.
And if we don't have due process, then we don't have a constitution.
We don't have a Bill of Rights.
And so, absolutely, I would work to help get the J-6 prisoners out release.
Anyone who didn't have any kind of violent offense, anything like that, they're being held as political prisoners, and we got to stop this.
So, and really, it alludes to the entire justice and the injustice system has been taken over by these government bureaucrats who are using it politically.
You know, I got into it with one of my opponents the other night during a debate, and we were talking about reforming and abolishing various departments.
I think the CIA has done a lot of damage.
I think the FBI has been used against the American people.
You know, the Department, the Department of Education has even been, you know, I want to abolish the Department of Education.
They've been targeted against parents and so forth.
And so, yeah, absolutely.
Right now, our Constitution has been flipped on its head, and we've got to restore our Bill of Rights.
Stuart, one subject that motivated me to run for office was, you know, the breakdown of the Bretton Woods and the rejection of the gold standard.
And I started talking about the Fed.
And I was interviewed, and you may have seen this with Tucker.
Tucker interviewed me, and I was surprised by how he introduced himself.
He says, I went out on a campaign trip with Ron back in 07 or 08.
And he says, and he admitted, he says, I didn't know too much about this Federal Reserve and all this money.
How's he going to handle this?
And he admitted he was a bit shocked that there were crowds that already knew about it, and it was an exciting issue.
So I'm sure by now the subject of the Fed and monetary policy has come up along your current campaign trail.
If it has, tell us how it happened.
And how do you sense the people?
Is it one of these things?
Hey, let's talk about something else.
We don't want to hear this.
Or they say, or do they nod their head and say, maybe there is something to this monetary issue?
Yeah.
Yeah.
The inflation, the inflation tax used to be an invisible tax, so to speak.
But what is going on, you know, it really gets back to the core ideas of money.
You know, what is sound monetary policy and gold and silver, legal tender, and so forth.
I was in a state house budget meeting recently, and there was one of the legislators standing at the podium talking about why they wanted to spend even more tax dollars.
And someone asked the legislator, sir, where do you think this money comes from?
Where do you think all these tax dollars come from?
And their response is it comes from our budget.
That was their response.
So the lack of understanding, people in government, especially have no understanding of sound economics.
They don't understand that when the Federal Reserve prints the money, it actually steals buying power.
It steals monetary power from individuals who have saved and so forth.
And they borrow the money from China, of course, as you have highlighted.
Congress taxes and spends.
And so here's the optimistic part of all this.
We can actually balance the federal budget in five years.
And the way we could do that initially is to cut six pennies off of every federal dollar in that budget, go after all this money we're sending around the world initially.
We can reform programs as well and eliminate and abolish unconstitutional agencies and departments.
And so we can balance the federal budget.
There's a way to do it.
I got another question from our viewers.
And this one's from our friend Dennis Marburger, who's been on our, he actually was at our conference last time.
Bring Them Back 00:05:30
And he has a good question because a lot of people talk about the Defend the Guard Act.
I think that's really a good way of reining in our foreign policy.
Have you taken a position on that?
Are you active in that movement?
What's your view of it?
Yeah, so I actually was the first legislator in the state of South Carolina to file the Defend the Guard legislation.
And, you know, it's building momentum.
A lot of these bills, they can take years to get through.
But that critically, because people don't understand that all of our resources here at home are being sent overseas, you know, and our guardsmen are being sent into these oversea deployments very often.
And that's got to stop.
We've got to bring them back and defend our country.
Okay.
I know that it's easy to pick the three top issues of the day.
And I think you've already mentioned that in conversation.
You know, the border's a big deal.
You know, the war is Ukraine and Gaza.
This is a big deal.
The deficit, there's a lot of talk about that.
But in your campaigning, which you've been doing for a while and you've been in government, when you're out campaigning and maybe a new audience and these subjects are excluded just for debate purposes, what kind of surprises have you come up with?
Have you had any good surprises and say, boy, this group is well informed and they want to know more details about how does this work?
Or any of them come up with a surprise and gives you a little bit of disappointment.
Oh, I thought I was talking to this group.
I didn't realize, you know, how bad things are.
Have you had any of those experiences where you're either surprised to the positive or disappointed with the negative?
Yeah, I think like you said earlier, Dr. Paul, I mean, people want to hear the truth, number one.
And so I think in all these discussions, you know, people see that I am being honest, that I'm fighting for we the people and for our Constitution.
And so even if somebody has a disagreement, you know, often the way I look at our political debates and so forth, I'm going to try to bring people with me.
I think that's something that you have done, Dr. Paul, you know, as a happy warrior, you know, you've brought people with you.
And so if we can get a first down right now on an issue and bring them over, you know, to 50%, then we will take it and then we can keep going with that.
So one of the great moments in one of the debates we've had so far was when one of my opponents tried to corner me and say, you would abolish, he questioned, he said, so you're telling us you would abolish the CIA.
And I leaned into the microphone and I said yes.
And the crowd went wild.
I applauded and everything.
That's great.
That's great.
Never been started.
Right.
That's great.
Well, I'll just close out by thanking you for joining us, Stuart.
We wish you the best.
We hope that we'll keep in touch and let us know what happens on the 11th.
You know, and I too want to thank you very much, Stuart, for coming on.
We're looking forward to you progressing and getting in not only into the runoff, but getting a seat in Congress because that will be a big benefit.
So this is something that I think we look forward to because it is a change.
I know the realism of Congress.
You know, it would take an awful lot and a lot of time, and it won't be the real answer.
And that is getting 51% of the House and the Senate and a president-understood thing.
And you have a transition period of four years, and it's all going to come back together.
I'm not that optimistic, but I'm pessimistic that there's going to be a major crisis and there's going to be a vacuum out there.
And I already see that you're helping to fill that vacuum of ideas.
What are you going to replace it with?
And what do we get rid of?
So I think that this is very good, what's happening.
But I do want to give you a chance to make sure all our viewers today hear how they might help you.
If they're in South Carolina, maybe you can get somebody to knock on some doors.
And maybe politicians usually need a little bit of money.
So maybe they know where to call and correct.
What are the contact numbers that they can come to?
Thank you so much, Dr. Paul and Daniel, for having me on the show today.
And yes, we cannot do this on our own.
And we've got tremendous support across the third district of South Carolina.
If you would like to help and you can help, we appreciate it.
Please go to votestuartjones.com.
That's votestewartjones.com.
And you can sign up on there.
Donations are greatly needed right now because you know how much it costs, these commercials and so forth to get the word out over 11 counties.
It takes a lot of money.
So we can win this, though.
We're in the front right now.
It's probably going to go to a runoff, most likely, but we can win this thing.
So I appreciate it greatly, everybody.
Very good.
And it's great having you on the program today.
And I want to thank our viewers for tuning in today.
And whatever you can do to help the cause of liberty, please do it.
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