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July 19, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
23:07
Unity” Is Only Achieved With Voluntarism, Not By The Force of Empire

“Unity” is complementary with limited government, not interventionist government and empire. An interventionist government creates victims, and no one wants to be a victim. Politicians use the word “unity” to blunt opposition to their interventions. Wars are easier to wage when there’s “unity” rather than mass protests. America’s problem is not lack of unity, but a government that believes, and acts, as if it has not limits.

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Voluntary Unity? 00:15:31
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.
Happy Friday.
Great to be with you, Dr. Paul.
Oh, this is Friday.
That's good.
And our weather is still the same.
We still have equipment problems.
It comes and goes.
And one thing that we here in Lake Jackson complain about right now are the mosquitoes.
I guess they came with the hurricane.
But nevertheless, things are doing well.
And I was just wondering, Chris, I imagine you watch television a little bit, but if you didn't watch it, I don't blame you last night.
I watched some of it.
But I can tell you, Chris, the main theme that I got from the program last night was unity.
If we all just together and do the same thing, that we all become robots and act out in a uniform manner, everything will be okay.
The exact opposite of what liberty is all about.
You know, I think that's the goal of the worst systems of the world.
When you think about fascism and communism and all, they want unity, and they have marching orders.
And if somebody said, well, where do you get your information?
How do you define what is right and wrong?
Oh, the party tells us that.
The party leadership.
Well, our parties are pretty strong, and sometimes they would like to tell us exactly what to do.
But I think that the principles of liberty are alive and well, and that's what we want to continue with.
But this whole idea of unity is a misdirected effort because if you think you can unify people by bringing them together and tell them what they should do, it really is the opposite of liberty because in liberty, everything is voluntary.
You don't have people.
You don't have people.
You don't have a unity in deciding what the government should do in its response to protecting personal liberty and punish and take care of anybody that says there's an infraction.
It isn't the individual makes up their mind as long as there's no violence and force being used.
Then what about the marketplace?
Can you use the unity angle there?
Well, they try to.
They want us all unified.
They want us all to know that there's a savior group of people called the Federal Reserve Board because we couldn't possibly know, the people couldn't possibly figure it out if all individuals participated in deciding what the interest rate should be.
No, we have to have unity on that.
And that means we have to have unity on the definition of the currency.
You know, the account is very important.
But another place that did come up in the debate during the program last night and all the speeches is foreign policy.
And it was recognized that they want unity.
You have to hate China for sure.
You have to not even talk or wink at the Iranians.
You have to really give deep consideration on the foolishness and the billions of dollars we spent in Ukraine.
After all that mess, we have to start thinking about it.
But that's what we've been doing for decades, getting involved and never thinking about it until it gets very, very painful.
And then they want us to have unity on the Middle East problems, which have been around with outsiders and international organizations, you know, decided we know what's best for all the boundaries of the world.
And now the boundaries of Europe are being redesigned.
And that all started in a serious manner, all the way back to 1917 and 1918.
We will divide Europe so that we can have peace forever.
Well, I tell you, I think that's the wrong course.
And I think, you know, I listened to some of the program last night, but I think that there's a lot of things said there that was very sincere and very beneficial.
They talk about less taxes and a few things like that.
But from my viewpoint, they don't touch on some of the important issues.
Like an esoteric idea, estimated by other people, but not to us, is, can you define the unit of account that we should use?
The currency of you using?
Wasn't it used to be defined as a weight out of a precious metal and things were different?
And then it's 1971.
No, we have to have unity.
Some people don't like that method.
Some people like inflation.
And they go on and on and they excuse themselves for introducing the political factor of making these determinations.
So in some ways, I think we can say that we heard some good ideas, a lot of emotion involved.
But I'll tell you what, I think we have to look at the big picture, and that is personal liberty and voluntarism, rather than saying, who will be the director of this unity?
How are we going to get people to be unified?
And quite frankly, it's impossible and not even a positive thought.
Other than making it understood that when people come together voluntarily, that excuses nobody, not the government or individuals to use force to say, you're my way.
If you don't do it my way, I am going to punish you.
And unfortunately, the government's had the upper hand in that thing.
So there's been maybe a pretty good argument to say there's been too much unity between both parties when it comes to monetary policy and foreign policy and also intervention in our personal lives.
So I would say we should be very cautious about the use of the word and the efforts of providing unity in this country.
Chris?
That's right, Dr. Paul.
And yeah, we hate to break anybody's bubble, but unity is not possible when you have a government like ours.
Government in its limited functions, protecting against force, against fraud, and maximum freedom.
There, people can be unified, but government intervention, what we have, a hyper-interventionist government, it's constantly creating victims.
And nobody wants to be a victim.
And that's why Washington, D.C. is always buzzing with lobbyists.
They want to be the beneficiaries.
They don't want to be the victims.
And that's why elections are about money and mega donors and public servants.
Here's another thing.
Politicians love money.
We hear about how corporations are greedy.
Well, guess what?
Politicians are very, very greedy.
They go to Washington and they come out rich and they call it public service.
You're not going to get any type of unity in this environment.
Politicians also, so why do they bother?
Why do they use the word unity?
Well, because they want unity to blunt any opposition to what they want, you know, to whatever intervention they want.
So if they want a war, they want unity.
They don't want mass protests.
You're going to mess up their war by protesting and throwing sand in the gears.
So that's why they want to unify everybody.
We are all going to be together and let's go destroy.
You know, so there can be no unity.
It's either unity or interventionist government.
You cannot have both.
Right now, we have the biggest government in the history of the world.
It intervenes in every single aspect of our lives.
So we are so far from even thinking about unity before rolling back this monster that has gotten so big.
And you know, there seems to be a running desire.
There's a noble desire in unity as always for the benefit for people.
And it is something you have to recognize that when there is a problem and there's lobbying going on and we want to have an argument, but they want unity.
It's really, and Chris brought this out too.
There are people who want it for special interests who just want money.
So they're not competing in the marketplace.
They're competing for the club of government control.
So which lobbying group is going to win out?
But all the unity is based on cooperation and love and peace and all this.
And there are worthy goals.
But I think our argument is you can't achieve that with the weapon of force.
It's saying, yes, we know how unity should be.
We think it should be voluntary.
We think there should be unity in a family, a neighborhood, churches and all that, but it would all be voluntary, which is quite a bit different than having unity.
And I was just thinking about the many things that they didn't really discuss on how unity is going to be automatically beneficial in all these areas.
What about Syria?
They didn't talk about Syria.
We were involved in Syria for years, and we're still involved there, but we're only involved where the oil is.
You know, this kind of stuff.
So there's unity, though, because now it's quiet.
And also, the handling of the Palestinians has been going on for decades.
And there are people getting annoyed by that here in this country and demonstrating against the balance in the Middle East.
And also, there's getting to be unity.
And I think we heard it in the convention speeches.
And that is, you've got to hate China.
Let's be all unified because China stole all our secrets.
They don't say, well, China's competing with us, and they get all their money and their power and how they invest.
It's because we buy their stuff.
We are not competing with them.
So that is something that is accepted.
But right now, there's more and more of that.
If you have somebody to baste, it was even said at the convention, you know, we need to slow up on all this stuff we're doing in Ukraine because we have to concentrate on hitting hard, hitting China real hard.
So that doesn't make any sense to me.
And right now, it looks like there's no real resistance on either party to the tariffs.
And, you know, currently the Republicans are endorsing tariffs.
You know, they were notoriously the champions of tariffs 120 years ago.
And right now, it looks like the use of tariffs to patch up all the problems we have now from an interventionist foreign policy and a fiat monetary system.
There are problems.
And there's a maldistribution of wealth.
Well, we need more rules and regulations to correct that problem.
And instead of looking to the real problem, and that is the monetary system.
And that we haven't been doing.
And of course, the notorious example for this is eventually, if we want to have a voluntary society and not somebody who demands unity in a correction of the problem that the Federal Reserve creates for the special interest.
Now, that's a bigger picture, but we don't really hear that discussion with either of the big parties, Chris?
Absolutely, Dr. Paul.
Yes, unity happens with decentralization, small groups.
That's where you'll get your unity, families primarily, because we're social beings.
We weren't meant to live alone.
So people form communities based on common interests.
We're having a conference next month.
People unified around our ideas.
There'll be hundreds of people there.
Nobody's forcing them to go.
Nobody's forcing anybody to watch this show, all the people that watch this show.
It's all done voluntarily.
So if groups want to get together and practice communism, socialism, any ism that they want on their own, then fine.
You know, we as libertarians have no problem with that.
Just don't try to force it on anyone else.
Look at the Amish people.
They don't bother anybody and nobody bothers them.
Now, what if they changed their philosophy and said, you know what, we are exceptional and we are going to take our form of life and go rampage across the country and make everybody be Amish.
That would cause a big problem.
That is what the United States has done.
They filled their heads with we are exceptional and we're going to rampage across the world and make everybody like us.
First of all, they can't make 300 million Americans all unified and living one way.
They want to make 7 billion people.
This is why this project is the stupidest thing in the world and it's going to, it is failing.
We're watching it every single day, but it's the philosophy.
They don't want unity in small groups.
They want the world for themselves.
They're not going to get it.
But in the meantime, they're going to make this country, you know, desolate.
That's what they're doing.
You know, poor, immoral.
Check off all the boxes.
It's all happening because of these dumb ideas of trying to force everyone to live how they believe they should live.
Right.
You know, I think the one thing that motivates a lot of people who have been involved in trying to take care of themselves and looking at what's going on with the government and all these things.
And right now we have a distribution of wealth which is not fair.
And they say, see, it's a free enterprise and freedom has done that, which is not true.
It isn't.
We have too much intervention.
We have a monetary system that is rotting away.
And so that is something that we get blamed for, but it's not right.
But our argument is that we should have peaceful distribution of wealth.
And to me, it's the best thing.
Morally, I think it's a correct thing to do.
And I believe that we have an obligation to present our case for this because if the individuals are involved, I think there's, matter of fact, I'm very convinced.
Somebody would have to try to convince me otherwise.
Individualism and freedom of choice in private property, I think that is the most important way to have the best distribution of wealth and the greatest amount of prosperity.
It's when you go in the opposite direction where we are today.
That's when the distribution of wealth is hindered and it also decreases the amount of wealth that is created.
And right now, in the last decade or two, or especially since 1971, we have lived on consumption, consumption of wealth that we've had accumulated.
Price Controls Controversy 00:05:14
And that is the problem that we have.
But I think not only would we have more prosperity, I think we'd have more diversity.
People want to have diversity.
But that's the way volunteerism works.
You come together in a voluntary way.
But once you get an antagonizing people and tell them, you'll do it this way, and Chris pointed that out rather quickly, the Amish, if they used force to make us all live that way, we would object.
And the other thing is the wealth of the nation will depend on incentives, private property.
And right now, there's a large segment of our economy because we are designed.
And I think in a way, it's this factor of unity.
We want people to have this.
We give them benefits.
It seems to help in the short run.
We base it on debt.
And then if you now want to correct it, you say, well, we have to take away this benefit from you because we're in trouble.
Well, they've been conditioned for 100 years that they're entitled to it.
It's called an entitlement.
And so it's a big deal to try to shift gears and go from a society that demands unity no matter what to one which is volunteerism and accept the responsibility that goes along with it.
Very good, Dr. Paul.
That's all I had on unity.
We did have another subject.
I'll let you prepare for that.
And I did mention our conference that's going to be August 31st near Washington, D.C., outside.
Please, if you can join us, we'd love to meet you and see you there.
We're going to have some great speakers.
I'll put a link at the end of this program.
And please think about it.
We'd love to have you there.
So, Dr. Paul, what's our second topic?
Okay.
It's the principle of price controls.
We've had this distortion of the distribution of wealth, and prices are going up.
Well, they're gouging us.
Labor unions want more money, and that's terrible.
And the businessman wants more profits, and the prices are going up.
So let's have price controls.
And I remember two examples where price controls were running roughshod office during World War II and also during the Korean War.
But there's still a lot of price controls now through the monetary system.
And the price controls are very, very detrimental.
And the article that we came across this week was the current president, and I understand he might be leaving pretty soon.
Biden has introduced the idea that rents are too high and poor people can't pay for it.
Oh, we don't want total control, but we won't allow anybody to increase their rents.
That sounds like a simple little answer.
He wants to limit.
He wants to interfere because the rents are too high.
But why are they too high?
He never says, we have to quit printing money.
It's the valuation of the dollar that is the problem.
So we're going to have price controls.
Fortunately, I'm hoping that won't pass because although the Republicans have leaned toward tariffs and other ways of manipulating prices, I hope they don't endorse the idea of price controls.
And that to me is just a net detriment.
It's an interference.
It's an involvement.
And they want unity.
If you don't want to do it, you have to accept this.
It'll be the law of the land.
We're going to use the force of government to make people understand that we're doing it for the good of the people because who would be wanting to raise interest rates?
I want to tell one little story.
When I came to practice in Texas, it was in the early 1970s, and there were still some price controls involved with Vietnam and all.
And at that time, believe it or not, doctors were charging between $3 and $5 for office calls.
But there were price controls on, and nobody could raise the fee to see a doctor.
Well, finally, they figured out that was under Nixon.
Finally, that was banned, and they took the price controls off, except for doctors.
You know, the doctors were the bad people, and they charged way too much for a visit.
And I remember, I think my fee was between $5 and $7 to come to my office.
But for years, I wasn't allowed to change it.
So it was a personal attack just on doctors.
That was the manipulation.
Fortunately, that ended, but they still haven't learned the lesson.
They're still talking about that, and they're still refusing to look at really the thing.
And all that we're talking about, whether this unity or how to run an economy, is the whole thing about defining the unit of account.
Defining Truth's Unit of Account 00:02:05
What is true and what is wrong and what is something that we should avoid.
And that is you have to have a unit of account.
You have to have a definition or you will have a chaos and you'd have runaway inflation.
And we're in a real mess right now because we do not have a definition of the unit of account.
And that has been since the case of 1971.
We don't have it.
We should also have a unit of account dealing with where do we find out how to understand the system.
And that to me is where does the truth come from?
It doesn't come from a political system with a politician.
And I think that truth is available to all of us.
And if I even seeking a vague amount of truth, they can find it out there.
There's a difference between truth.
Right now, I see the evil that has invaded this country, whether it's our judicial system, our foreign policy, or interference in personal liberty.
I think what they have accepted is the fact that you don't know the truth.
Why worry about it?
And there's people known as nihilists.
They say, you can't know it.
And the more radical the system is, the more adamant they are about that.
You cannot know what the truth is.
And I argue the case that from the earliest times of history, it was made known to mankind that there is a difference between truth and just lying.
And so I think that it's available to us.
I think we need a continued awakening of the people seeking truth.
And hopefully that would mean that we don't need so many people in Washington.
And the truth could be done by individuals voluntarily, which would provide a lot more prosperity and a lot more freedom for all of us.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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