Who Turned “The American Dream” Into “The American Nightmare”?
There used to be something called “The American Dream.” Words like “independence,” “sovereignty,” and “limited government,” were extremely important to the American citizen. Today, all of these have been flipped upside down. "The American Nightmare" can accurately describe modern times. This nightmare is composed of “dependence,” “hegemony,” and a U.S. federal government that is the biggest and most indebted government in the history of the world!
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today we have Chris Rossini, our co-host.
Chris, good to see you today.
It's great to be with you, Dr. Paul.
Good.
And we're going to talk about something very important as far as I'm concerned.
It's going to involve economics.
It's going to cause a lot of tough things about social order in this country.
But it also is going to involve a lot of people who have contributed to this.
But I see it as a danger, an economic danger, a moral danger of what's happening in this country.
And also it could lead to some additional violence.
We already have too much violence and dissension in this country is rather large.
And it has to do with the bankruptcy we're dealing with.
It's something I've talked about for a couple years, that we have a financial bankruptcy, but we also have a moral bankruptcy.
And now we are seeing the consequence and people are saying, where did all this come from?
And it looks like they're lining up to take advantage of it rather than saying where it really came from.
And that's what we hope to do today to put together an explanation of sorts on what has happened to the American dream.
Why are people unhappy?
And why are some people thriving?
I think there are more trillionaires and billionaires than ever before.
And there are more poor people living at home and can't buy a house and are really very worried.
And I don't think it's complicated when you look at it in a unique way of just what is going on and what caused it.
But it is difficult for people to understand that things, if things had gone pretty well for a while, then all of a sudden somebody loses a job or grocery prices go too high or they have a bill they can't pay and then you come up with all these crazy ideas.
Well, prices are too high.
What we need to do is put the government, put regulation and tell them how much they're allowed to charge and not blink an eye.
Introduce a little communism and socialism and it's going to solve these problems.
But the big thing is people are concerned about, especially the young people who are still living at home, is the American Dream alive and well or is it dying or just what's going on with it?
But there's a lot of people worried about it in spite of the fact the country remains very, very rich.
But I don't think there's much argument now, Chris, that there's a distortion of this.
There are some getting richer and some are getting poorer and there's all kinds of explanations.
Too much capitalism, too much freedom, and they're gouging the public and therefore we have to get more socialism, more spending.
People don't have enough money to buy groceries.
What else can you do but give them more money?
Those Those are the kind of things that are prevailing.
You're hearing it in the campaign.
It's obviously a lot worse on one side than the other.
But there's a lot of ignorance out there to think of, well, maybe the idea is tariffs and we'll cut down on the competition and whatever.
But it shouldn't be that complicated.
Chris, I think this problem has been unique in history.
I mean, known throughout history, that especially when the government gets control of the money, and they can get and monopolize of it, and then they can distribute it.
Essentially, you know, there are a lot of friends that line up and are political friends, people who are willing to lie, cheat, and steal to get the benefits.
And all of a sudden, the moral fiber and the level of morality for a country also sinks.
Constitutions don't mean so much.
So that's part of the problem, Chris.
But I know you have an opinion of this subject because you have witnessed it and you have seen some of this happening.
And I know you have a good understanding of economic policy.
Well, thank you, Dr. Paul.
Yes, I would say the American dream is terminally sick, and it better get well.
Otherwise, it'll be a total memory.
And if you think about in our early history, the words that were important to the American citizens, independence, is number one, sovereignty.
You're the king of your own little castle of limited government.
Those words are gone, you know, and the American dream has turned into the American nightmare.
But if you look at the dominating ideas, it makes sense.
It's not independence anymore.
Now it's dependence.
It's hegemony, not sovereignty.
It's you go get your orders from the government.
And you go to them for everything.
You want something?
You tell them to go get it for you.
You feel you have a right to something?
Let them go rob someone else or take someone else's freedom for you.
And that's why everything has been flipped on its head.
And we have not a limited government, not even close, but the biggest, the most indebted government in the history of the world.
So this is how it has gone.
It didn't have to go this way, but it did.
And our political campaigns are so embarrassing.
It's been simplified to the other side is weird and we bring joy.
I mean, this is the system that is from the Enlightenment that we're going to go force on the rest of the world.
It's an embarrassment.
So what can we gather from this?
Well, number one, it's not the land that you live on.
There's nothing special about the land that we have our feet on right now.
And there's nothing special about us as human beings.
We're human beings like everyone else in history and then everybody that's going to come after us.
We're all equal in dignity under God.
So what is it?
What was it about America?
And I would say that it's the ideas.
It's the ideas that were embraced before, the beliefs that people had, versus the ideas and beliefs that people had today.
If you went back a couple hundred years and spoke to those people, they would sound very different than today, to where if you go to a person and they tell you they don't know what a woman is.
I mean, an early American would be, whoa, what happened to you guys?
Well, a lot has happened.
So that's where we're at.
But we can turn this around if the desire is there.
Very good.
You know, the major part of all this is economic policies of both political parties and the demands of the special interests.
But there's an economic theory also that fits into this that's been around, especially since the Depression, the Keynesian type of approach, where government should be there.
They should be running the economy and regulating.
They should be in charge of a Federal Reserve system, which wasn't part of that more productive era before we had the Federal Reserve and the income tax.
So economic policy and the political policy, it is very important.
But if I had to narrow it down to one thing that you could put their hand on, to saying this is the item you better deal with.
And I would say it's debt.
You know, what is it, $35 trillion now that we owe ourselves and owe the world, which is a burden.
And there's no way that you can defy the nature of wealth by saying, well, yes, if you borrowed $100, you either pay it or there will be a consequence.
If a debt gets too big for a country, it will be liquidated.
So we're in the process of liquidating that debt.
And who benefited when we were building up this debt?
Tragically, it was a special interest.
It was a military-industrial complex, pharmaceutical industry, the social welfare state, and deficits didn't matter.
And the educational system, the medical system, all consumed, and debt didn't mean anything.
Now, there's so much momentum, it can't be stopped.
And we're at a point that we have to inflate to pay for the interest that we have to pay because we had already run up too much debt and borrowed the money, and we have to continue it.
And what the problem is now is people getting very skittish, and they should.
Because the current system that our country was blessed with in the past, but it's been eroding for a long time.
It's been eroding in the last 10 years, but it's been eroding, I think, since the progressive era.
But we were so wealthy, and we continue to have wealth right now.
But what has happened?
There's a maldistribution of the wealth.
It does gravitate to those who are in a position of political power and in the position of being able to lobby the Congress.
This is rich and poor do this.
But I tell you what, when the debt liquidation comes, somebody has to be stuck with the bigger part of the bill.
It's not like if two individuals borrowed money for a business and it failed, those two individuals have to do something.
They have to declare bankruptcy.
That debt has to be liquidated.
Either that business has to be successful or they have to get another business.
But the debt has to be removed in order to get a fresh start.
And that's what the process is now, the liquidation of the debt.
And they're trying to do it with the same philosophy.
They created the debt.
Oh, let's just print more money.
And that will work.
And this is leading to big problems because it isn't, you know, deep down, this economy is not anything like the politicians claim because they lie and scheme and say everything is okay.
And they all go after more spending.
You just don't have the right bureaucrats running this show.
We need more socialism, all this stuff.
And that is not going to work.
It's just going to hasten the day that something has to be done.
But the debt, the federal debt, we can look at that.
And the way there's only two ways you can liquidate it.
The people work harder, get more jobs, become more productive, and more money can be used to buy up that debt and take care of the federal debt.
And I'll tell you what, if there's any one thing that I learned in Washington is that it's not going to happen.
I'm not expecting that in the next week, two years, or decades or ever, that there will be enough people elected to Congress that will be able to do it because there's so many people who are on the dull.
And It'd be what's happening now.
There's going to be a breakout in violence.
So that's not going to happen.
So there's only one thing left, and that is you have to destroy the value of the dollar.
All the debt will be paid.
The Social Security bills will be paid, but it will be paid with money that has a lot less value.
And that's what people don't understand.
That when they go to the grocery store, they're paying a tax.
And that tax falls on the burden of the middle class and the poor more so than the rich who have been able to protect themselves and even benefit from it.
So that's the political process that is bad.
And that is why people should right now pay a lot more attention to their own debt and what are they going to do about it.
But as a country and as a free nation, we have to decide how did we get here?
And was it the lack of freedom or was there just too much freedom?
People took advantage of their freedom and they made all these mistakes.
The problem of sorting this out and finding out why there's too much spending is not difficult.
The one big one I would say is this obsession with democracy.
We have to be democrats and pass things out in equity.
Everybody has to get a share of it.
Well, democracy is not something we were given or emphasized in our Constitution.
We were emphasized to have liberty and a Republican form of government.
And there's a big difference.
But this is being ironed out, and there is a struggle.
It has to be an ideological struggle to go on because the people there who worked with the bureaucrats and the Federal Reserve and all, they're not going to solve the problem.
But the one good thing about it, it's calling attention to the important subject of understanding this.
And more and more people are starting to understand what free market economics and sound money is all about and also why it's important that we look into the Federal Reserve.
So we have a big job ahead of us, Chris.
That's right, Dr. Paul.
Excellent points.
Yes, that I'd like to actually give a very quick history on why we got into this crazy debt, this unprecedented debt.
And it's because the philosophy of our country changed from freedom to empire.
So our problems did not start with Biden or Trump or Obama or Bush.
They definitely didn't help.
But this is a long, long time coming.
And I would, for me, in my mind, a good starting point of when things started to go sour was the Civil War and the results of it.
And not getting rid of slavery, that's obviously good.
Keep the Union together.
But one thing that did not have to happen that happened was that power was consolidated in Washington, D.C. Washington became the dictator of the country.
That did not have to happen as a result of the Civil War.
And this dictator did not, it was not content with just dictating to 50 states.
By the time 1900 comes along, they figure, let's dictate to the entire world.
And then you have Wilson and FDR and the world wars.
And then after FDR, you have this massive Pentagon, this huge military establishment that's being built.
And anybody at that time that was thinking about, you know, this doesn't look like a country that's about to mind its own business.
And boy, did it not mind its own business.
We have been at war ever since.
Constant, never-ending, endless war somewhere in the world.
And ultimately, when you get to, again, in my mind, 9-11, that war was turned inward.
Now, all of a sudden, it's not just all those people out there that are a problem.
Now, apparently, we're the problem.
9-11 happens, and now we're all treated like we're criminals.
We all have to be surveilled.
We all have everything.
All of us now have to give up our freedom because of what happened on 9-11.
And then COVID, we definitely know how we are in the eyes of our government, okay?
All the stuff that they did to us then.
So this is a long time coming.
This is not something that just happened with Biden and he's the worst president, blah, blah, blah.
This is a long time.
Now, the positive is the momentum is fading for all this.
Freedom's Sacrifice00:02:56
The morality is in the sewer in this country.
We don't manufacture anything.
We have unpayable debts.
And other nations are very powerful on the other side of the world, and they're teaming up.
And so this idea of dictating to the world is not going as planned, but it has bankrupted us.
And that's how we got into this situation.
You'd wonder how they can sell this message to the masses.
And it isn't difficult to figure this out because whether it's to go to war that makes no sense and we have no business doing it, or whether we go to war on poverty and bad education and forget to look at who really caused it, it was probably the government itself that gave all these problems.
But the way they sell this is to sell it as a humanitarian thing.
Nobody wants to not be a humanitarian.
We want to take care of the poor and the sick, and we want to have peace in the world.
And if it's our responsibility to be the peacemakers and to police the world, we're going to do it.
And our presidents generally have been blunt.
It's up to us to keep the peace and take care of things.
But the reason I believe that so many people in the masses accept this, because the promoters grab hold of the moral high ground.
See, capitalism, free markets, profits, that is terrible, ugly people, and they'll do terrible things.
And yet it's the salvation of mankind is to have voluntarism in the productions of goods and services.
So they do this.
So people do flock and they buy into this.
And you hear it all the time.
It's a selfishness and whatever is going on.
So we have to eliminate that.
Only our government can tell us how to divide these services up and who's going to buy under what rules.
The rules are the DEI.
You know, diversity and equity and inclusiveness.
If we follow those moral reasons, that's the moral high ground.
And people, business people who should be responsible for understanding productivity, getting jobs and good products and compete, go bankrupt if you don't do it.
That is put aside because what they have to do is sign up or you'll get canceled.
So the business people, I often wondered over the years, because as I was growing up, World War II was giving up, they said, why did the business people support Hitler?
Well, we have some people now in the business community that do a lot of supporting because they make a lot of money.
You know, it is the military-industrial complex.
They're always contriving how to have another skirmish, keep the wars going.
Oh, we don't want to kill anybody.
Why Truth Matters00:05:15
We want peace.
Yeah, sure.
So that to me is the big problem to realize that.
But if you want to be a true humanitarian and care about people, what your devotion to will be to the cause of peace, and we will then get prosperity, Chris?
Absolutely, Dr. Paul.
I will finish up with my closing statement.
This will be our last live show this week, as everyone knows, I'm sure, that watches us daily.
We have our conference this weekend in Dulles, Virginia.
I'm very excited to go to meet everybody again.
We always have a great time.
I will put a link in the description if you would like to make it.
I texted Daniel before the show, and we could get you in if you can make it this week.
So check out that link at the bottom of the show.
And I'll close by saying that if ideas are the hinge to our either prosperity and our problems, then we need a renaissance in the ideas of liberty.
We don't need to reinvent the ideas of liberty.
Dr. Paul and I and Daniel, we don't come on and say, look what we've discovered.
No, we're repeating old and tried and true ideas.
So we don't have to reinvent the wheel in order to fix the problems in this country.
And one thing that we have that no one has had before us is the internet, the ability to reach people instantly and for people to share with their circle of influences.
That has not existed before.
I mean, we have such a, that is such a bonus for us, such a gift, that if we don't use it, then we have nothing to blame but ourselves because ideas can now spread faster than they ever could before.
So we have this tool available to us.
Let's use it to the best of our ability.
Let's share these ideas so at least people, even if they disagree with them at first and think it's crazy, at least they hear it.
At least it goes into their brain and perhaps someday something will click.
So that's what we try to do with the Liberty Report every single day and hopefully it'll bear good fruit.
People who are in charge, and there's plenty in all the political parties and in our universities and everywhere around, it shows us that they're involved in a battle between something that's been around since the beginning of time, and that is, should we tell the truth?
Is truth the right thing to do?
Should we seek truth?
Even if we admit we can't find perfect truth, we know the basics of natural law.
You don't kill, lie, cheat, and steal.
And all of a sudden, that's been present for a long, long time, even before the books were written.
And now because there's a blank game going on, you know, there's a contest between the people who seek truth and try to tell people that you have to be truthful about what's going on.
You have to go back to work, maybe.
But there's also an understanding that there's a growing number of people that belong to the nihilist group.
You don't tell the truth.
There is no truth.
It confuses people.
So it is proper if you can devise.
They work as much time on perfecting their lies as they do having a decent understanding of liberty.
So they do this.
And what has it led to?
We're in the middle of this bankruptcy.
The bankruptcy, really, the day I discovered or decided that it was a bell went off, and that was August 15th, 1971, when they say, we've lied to the people, we've destroyed the money, we don't have a moral standard for value, and it's going to lead to trouble.
And just look at what's happened to the monetary system.
And it's led to the system.
The political difficulty is the political inequality.
Because if the main group of people don't understand why, they're not going to be on our side to fight for liberty.
They're going to say, well, there's inequality, and we have to use force.
We don't believe this nonsense about there's a truth out there, and we have to have people smart to define the truth.
And all you have to do is look at our campaigns.
And we've sure been living with a lot of lost truth that has given us this thing.
And like Chris points out, it just didn't happen the last five or ten years.
It's been around, I think of it accelerating.
Civil War was a big day in our country's life, but I say in modern history in this century, last century, of course, that the fact that there's a financial bankruptcy mixed in with a moral bankruptcy, it's not hard to identify.
It's not hard to understand.
And I still believe the majority of the people in this country and probably the world, if they have an honest choice, they would choose peace and prosperity and personal liberty.