The parallels between the fall of the Roman Empire and the current state of the American Empire are many — overextended military, crushing debt, endless wars, debased money, a cornucopia of corruption, delusions of grandeur, bread & circuses, and a downward spiral in morality. Today on the Liberty Report we discuss another parallel with Rome, the invasions of the “barbarians.” Also, on the upside, after the fall of Rome, there was a great decentralization. With the centralized boot of empire removed from the necks of the people, society could breathe again.
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.
Very good.
We'll be talking about a couple things today.
One thing we want to do is assess in broad terms, you know, our economy and what's happening in this country, and maybe even related to what a lot of people have already done, relating it to the downfall of an empire centuries ago.
We're talking about the Roman Empire because people find there are similarities, and we have found a couple.
So we'll see what that turns out.
But before we do this, I want to comment on the marketplace because this is the day we talk a little bit about birch gold and why we'd like to get people to, you know, get in touch with them if they're interested in knowing more about how and why you should invest in gold if you haven't done that before.
But, you know, that is something that is more significant today than yesterday, although it's been very significant in my mind since 1971 when they got rid of the link of gold to the dollar.
And that, of course, has ushered in an age of inflation, which is getting more serious every day.
But one thing I noticed yesterday, and I think a lot of our viewers would have noticed, gold was up a bunch, you know, at times 30, 40, up even up to $50 an ounce.
And that's happened before.
And then the next day, I've said, well, there probably won't be too much momentum on that.
And almost always you'd see a significant correction.
Not huge, but you know, a tamping down like this wasn't an opening salvo.
Today, I don't know what it means long term because the long term we know that as long as they print money and run up debt, the dollar is going to weaken and gold will go up in dollar price.
So this is something that happened.
But today, gold held pretty good, and silver is over $30 an ounce.
So to me, without being an analyst who advises exactly the time to buy and sell and trade metals, it's just a general observation I make that I think it looks stronger than usual.
But only time will tell.
There's a lot of people involved, people who like to fix the price of gold versus also the people in government now, more so than ever.
For literally several decades, the central banks were getting rid of gold.
And now there's a lot of activity.
And there's a lot of individual buyers of gold.
A lot of advertising on television and more people getting involved in the purchase of gold for personal savings.
But that is one reason why I want people to pay attention to the fact that you can get some more information from Birch Gold, who partners with us in the issue of gold.
And if you text Ron at 989898, they will send you some material to introduce or expand your horizon on gold because they have plans.
If somebody has a lot of regular stocks and want to put it into a gold IRA, they happen to know the details because the laws get a little bit complicated more, which I resent a bit, of course.
But there's not many things to do because it's a tough thing knowing exactly what the future will bring.
Because although I believe that gold is the best hedge, just think of what they did to our parents and our grandparents.
The government just said, you can't own gold in tough times.
But that means it introduces a whole idea of what liberty is all about and what we're all about in this station.
So, Chris, we're going to be talking more about what's going on.
And the title I picked for this, are the barbarians already here?
And that's pretty strong.
Who are the barbarians?
Not everybody becomes a barbarian, but the evidence is there.
And people say, the saying has gone now for a decade or two.
Who ruined?
Who stole Western civilization?
Things are collapsing.
And when you look at the American empire that we have and that it's dwindling, and most people agree that something serious is happening to it, if you're pro-empire, you better be quite concerned because that empire is not going to last.
But in the meantime, a lot of pain and suffering could occur.
And, you know, the most famous of all collapses of civilization was the one in the Roman Empire.
And I got one quote off the internet just to describe this, what was going on in Rome at the time the collapse came.
Now, this is something that is a hint to what's going to happen.
But let me just read this.
The fall of the Roman Empire was significantly impacted by a cycle of, guess what, debt and inflation, primarily caused by Roman emperors devaluing their currency by adding cheaper metals like copper to fund military expenditures and other government costs,
leading to a drastic increase in the value, a drastic decrease in the value of money and a crippling inflation that ultimately crippled the economy and continued the empire's decline.
This practice of debasement further exacerbated the issue of eroding trust in the currency and hindering trade.
It was a big event.
You know, before I read the major book on the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, I thought, oh, you know, it came along, the barbarians moved in, they took over, and there wasn't a revolution.
It wasn't like that.
One thing I learned in that book, it was a gradual design.
It took a long time.
But the biggest event of it all that history talks about was when Rome got weaker, the outsiders who had been mistreated by the Roman Empire decided they would start invading Rome.
And then there were the barbarians.
Of course, they found out that Rome had already been weakened to a great deal and the doors were open.
And This is what's going on now, but there's so much evidence that there have been problems in this country because of our own fault.
And that is something we have more control of.
I want to emphasize as we go along with this program: is so much of this creation, you take what has happened to the borders.
It wasn't just the people who want to came in here.
It wasn't a military invasion.
It was something that we did to ourselves.
Barbarians at the Gates00:09:03
And that, I think, is very important.
So, this is something we have to be aware of because it has definitely changed.
And people are wondering what's going to happen.
And, you know, just this week, there was this whole thing about Springfield.
And this, I still have a lot of trouble believing in it.
20,000 Haitians overwhelmed the city.
And it goes on and on.
And they had somebody from Springfield on the TV this morning quizzing him.
He was like an official.
And they said, the commentators, could this be true?
Well, it's not exactly true.
A lot of people think it's 30,000.
Well, that's crazy.
And we have to deal with this.
And one thing is, I don't think if this woman, we call her a woman, we have that privilege.
Harris campaign, if she and her crowd happens to win, it says Harris campaign has no time to think about certain things, why certain things have happened in the past four years.
Well, I'm looking back several centuries, and I think it's very important.
We look at the past, and I've been criticizing campaigns that the commentator who's interviewing me said, quit it.
We don't want to hear about history.
We want to hear about what's happening right now.
So, Chris, what should happen?
Are these things serious, and what can we do about it?
No, it's a shame.
This invasion, a lot of people they like to just write it off.
Oh, that's just for votes, you know, and that's it.
And that's the extent of it.
No, they could fix votes millions of different ways without changing the makeup of our nation.
And in this area, I am in agreement with President Trump.
He said, says our country is being lost.
He is right about that.
This is not about votes only.
I'm sure that's an aspect.
But we are meant to, as human beings, to live in community.
In fact, we're all born into a community.
Every one of us is born into a family.
That's a community we don't have a choice in.
We're born into it.
But after that, there's choices involved.
Families with similar values form tribes and towns and states and nations, but there's similarity in beliefs, in language, in, okay, we believe this way.
We're going to live peacefully with one another.
Once you start messing with similarity in community, now you're going to create big problems.
And it's not rocket science to figure out.
If you took my neighbor right there, I'm looking at his house, and you took that family and implanted them into my house with my family.
It's not going to be long until we're all at each other's throats.
They have all different habits.
They maybe stay up late.
Their kid wants to be a rock star.
Now I have a drummer in my house.
So before too long, there's going to be conflict, and we're going to be like, you know what?
We have to separate.
We don't have enough similarities to live together like this.
And it doesn't have to be strangers like my neighbor.
I love my in-laws.
I love my parents, but I don't want to live with them because, you know, we're going to have conflict.
Okay?
So what they're doing with our nation is just importing people.
We're not talking about, well, they're a land of immigrants.
Yeah, my grandparents came here.
They had to have a sponsor.
They had to have a job.
Who is going to be responsible for them?
There's no welfare state for you.
And they became an American.
You know, they left.
They were no longer Polish or Italian.
They were now Americans.
What we're doing today is nothing like that.
It's just come walk in.
We're going to put you up in hotels and give you down payments for a house.
And, you know, we see all the other ramifications.
So you can't forcefully combine people to live in a community.
But there are some delusional people up at the top that this is what they want to do.
And I'll go into that later on why they want to do this.
Very good.
And you put the word force to do something.
And that's such a crucial word.
Some people talk about non-aggression, but force is part of it all.
And the force is being used.
But force in defense, that's quite a bit different than using force to manipulate people, manipulate their lives, manipulate the economy, manipulate the world, and get all this involved because that violates all sense of fairness and all sense of what liberty is all about.
But the first time I thought about this issue was on 9-11.
You know, I can remember so clearly, as most people can, is, you know, seeing those planes going into our building, then finding out that the probable pilots that were committing suicide were involved in this.
And I thought, that's barbaric.
And that's when I started thinking, could this be an opening salvo of the barbarians coming here?
But, you know, nothing will be exactly the same.
I think what's happening to us, if you're going to say, well, was it those bad people that had come across the border?
Or was it the weakening of our economic system?
And I think it's so much greater and we have more responsibility of weakening of our empire, our republic, and having this invitation to people coming in.
So that, I think, is a big difference because I do think it's a weakening, you know, of our moral standards, the moral standards, the financial standards.
You know, in 9-11, even then, and even today, our military power is so huge.
I think we spend more money than the next 10 countries they spend on their militarism.
But that's shifting because, you know, as that quote from about Rome, gradually they get poorer and poorer and fashion eats their lunch and that's why it is shifting.
But I tell you, it's an internal affair as much as anything.
But it's something that we should really pay a lot of attention to.
And I think there's another symbol that is in the media right now that would tell us that we're in serious trouble.
And that was the statistic that came out yesterday that showed that we are now spending $1 trillion.
Well, we spend a trillion.
I know that sounds like a lot, but we're spending $35 trillion in debt.
So that's no big deal.
But $1 trillion just to pay the interest on the debt.
And so do you think something could pyramid there?
If you're using up all that so-called income just to pay the interest on the debt, expanding the debt, and then we're in for, and we've already seen the initial stages of the long-term interest rates rising with bonds.
So The price the government's going to have to pay on interest is going to continue to go up, even though right now there's a little dip.
But I think that the bond and the payment for this debt, because the dollar is going to keep weaker.
So, if right back to my opening statement, what we saw yesterday and today, and the significance of maybe this, because the business news wasn't that alarming, I didn't think.
So, if that is true, that there's sort of things going on, that means that trillion dollars.
I would say that we're not going to solve the problem soon.
We're not going to solve the problem with the election.
Some things may improve, but I think that you know, at this rate, next year, it could be two trillion dollars.
Now, that's outrageous.
So, I'm not betting my income on that, but I'll tell you what, sometimes I've always been surprised that I've been trying to tamper down some of these things.
And I think that I think that payment, because that significance is so symbolic, you have to pay more interest to pay on your debt, and we're becoming less productive.
We're losing, you know, the ability to manage our empire.
So, this is why I think that we have to deal with the whole idea of where are the barbarians, who are the barbarians.
And I think it's the people in this country so much that are the people who are striving desperately to promote chaos in our streets and to make sure that the lying can continue.
Mold, Rules, and Compassion00:11:32
Department of Justice can continue to this situation where there is no definition of value.
We lost the definition of the monetary unit, and we lost the definition and the practice of telling the truth.
Chris, very good, Dr. Paul.
Yes.
Understandably, many people are wondering what on earth is going on.
Why would we do this to ourselves?
We, I mean, why would the government open the borders?
This is the exact opposite of what they should be doing.
And, you know, for most people, they don't really understand you.
When you deal with regular people like yourself, you don't understand some of the sick people that are out there, the ones that hold power, that think that they're meant to rule the world.
They don't see individual people like we do.
You know, when I go to the store, I see another individual, and we deal with them like they see people as human clay, as cattle, you know, in another way to put it.
And their great enemy is any type of unity.
So, if there's unity, that's their enemy.
So, when you import all these people, you're destroying unity, and you're just creating a mishmash of humanity.
But to them, they want to then use an iron fist, the totalitarian state, to then mold this human clay into what they want.
They'll mold the human clay into LGBT, and everyone is going to listen to our experts.
If you need a religion, we'll give you climate change.
That's going to be your religion.
And that's what they're doing here.
And the same exact thing is happening in Europe.
There's no more France and Germany.
You're European now.
Well, what is that supposed to mean, European?
Well, we're going to tell you from the top.
This is what it means.
It's not you're French or German anymore.
We're going to mold you, you human clay, into what we want for everyone.
And notice who the enemies are of this agenda.
In Europe, it's places like Poland, places like Hungary, where they're like, yo, we're not doing this.
You know, we'll be in the European Union, but you're not going to mold us into some mishmash, you know, of humanity.
And then look at the real big enemies of this: China, Iran, Russia.
They're on the global scale saying, you're not going to do this to us.
And these are the enemies.
And that's why Trump, who wants to put a stop to this, who wants to stop this invasion, is the enemy.
So it's not hard to figure all this stuff out.
You're not going to find this on the evening news, but that's what people that want this chaos that Dr. Paul just alluded to.
This is what they want it for.
You know, if you subsidize something, you get more of it.
That's a well-known fact.
And there's been immigration in this country for a long time, and there's tremendous benefits from it.
But, you know, early on in our history, there were conditions.
There were some regulations because it was looked at as a property right.
The people here, you know, was in charge of our land.
And, you know, even now, just think of all the investments that taxpayers have.
So it's a property thing as well.
And yet today, immigration is so much different.
There are no rules other than the fact that they get special favors.
They get treated better than our citizen.
And you see that and hear it on television.
And I think more people are waking up to this because they've been protected from that information because of the major networks.
And if you say some of these truths on the internet, you may be canceled.
So we have this struggle to protect our First Amendment rights in order to tell people what's going on.
But we do subsidize more and more as it gets along.
You know, the immigrations come in.
I mean, we hear all the stories where they get free medical care, free education, they all have clothing when they get here.
And there's a purpose behind that.
You know, the one thing I've concluded, I don't know all the inner thoughts of the people who really promote this, but I tell you one thing.
I am not convinced that it's all motivated by compassion.
You know, I can't help but look at these crowds that come in, and I can't, you know, say, what a tragedy.
This is a human tragedy.
So I empathize tremendously with what has happened.
But if you don't look at really what caused it and why this has gone on and why we didn't have that in our first 150 years of our history, because we handled immigration a lot differently.
And immigrants, as long as they came in under our rules, they were welcomed here.
There aren't very many people in this country that you meet and say, oh, I didn't have any immigrants that ever came from a foreign country.
It just isn't that way.
But I think this is a farce because it elicits, in my thinking, a bit of compassion because what a tragedy this is.
And yet, so once again, they get you behind there.
It's sort of like if you don't support the war, you're not very patriotic.
Well, if you don't support all this nonsense going on, which is making everything worse, then you have no compassion.
You have no Christian values.
And therefore, you're the bad people.
And I think most of the time you can solve these problems by saying everything should be voluntary.
People don't have a right to come in, march in, and be able to move into your house.
And I thought that was such an extreme idea.
But literally, they do it indirectly.
Usually the government takes the houses from the people and they put them in.
But they literally, you know, go into these houses and they don't get punished.
They don't have to live under the laws.
So this ends up in anarchy, and that's what we're moving toward.
And I still think it looks barbaric.
And the other thing is that in the last year or two, I have come to try to explain this.
And of course, it's chaos.
It's chaos.
Is it deliberate?
Or is it just stupid stupidity?
And I have come down to the conclusion that there are some people who just want it because they think they can get more political power.
They don't believe in liberty.
They don't believe in natural law.
They don't believe in telling the truth.
So they have their own God, and that's what they want.
They want to steal their system.
How are they going to impose this Marxist type of system?
It is going to be bring down chaos.
Out of the chaos, they will grab hold of a political power.
So it's a contest who's going to pick up the pieces.
And of course, we're in the business of trying to organize a lot of people in the understanding that it's not complicated and we want to participate in the rebuilding of our republic where freedom is the emphasis.
Chris?
I think you froze, Dr. Paul.
Hello, Chris.
I guess we had sort of lost Chris.
He'll probably be back.
So, as I was saying, you know, I think people are becoming aware of this.
And, you know, the big question is, is the Internet going to be helpful to us?
And at first, I was really excited, believed it would be.
And then I got a little bit hesitant because I thought it was going to turn against us, and it has.
But I still think that you don't solve that problem by the government taking over the internet and regulating it, because that's what they are doing.
And that's how they're attacking our freedom of speech, is through this whole thing of controlling who gets to use the internet, and that is endless.
And it's turned into a vicious battle going on.
And the winners are going to be the ones who have not the power, but the influence to describe what kind of a society that we want to live with.
And that, of course, will be decided soon on.
I don't know if Chris is there or not, but oh, okay, Chris, do you have a statement?
Between the fall of the Roman Empire and our empire, there are many of them.
We put them in a description of today's show: overextended military, crushing debt, endless wars, debased money, corruption, delusions of grandeur.
Look at all the wars that we did thinking we could remake the world.
We remade nothing.
Bretton circuses, morality in a downward spiral.
So we track very well with the fall of the Roman Empire.
Now, after the fall of the Roman Empire, there was a massive decentralization, and that was a good thing.
No longer was this massive government that they had their boot on everyone's neck, and there was a lot more freedom.
People left Rome.
They spread out into their own communities, and we got the word suburbium from that, suburbs.
And Christianity flourished in that time.
Now, of course, people later on would call this the dark ages, but look at what we're living in now.
I would say this is pretty dark.
So, you know, who knows what the future is going to look like, but decentralization should definitely be on the menu.
You know, Chris, that's a great point, a good point for us to finish because there's optimism there.
And it sounds like it's a daydream what you're talking about.
All of a sudden, things will move in the right direction.
But I think things have already started in that direction.
One, you could say, the principles out on the table in this campaign about who should be making the very, very difficult decisions and how to handle the problems associated with abortion.
And guess what?
They came up with a solution that the founders said, that's what we wanted you to do from the beginning.
And yet, look at look at, and Trump is talking about this.
You know, it's difficult to handle these kinds of things.
But the issue of violence has always been a state issue.
So now when they put it in the center of the federal government to do it, one mistake means that that's for the whole country.
And right now, we're starting to see that some states do it this way or that way, and it will not be perfect.
But I'll tell you what, just turning it over to the federal government and having Harris or somebody like that become in charge of it, you'll go back to something a lot worse than Roe versus Wade, I'll tell you.
It would be tyrannical and it would be a mess.
States Take Charge00:01:05
So I think that there's more of those things.
Other states now have picked up and I've encouraged, and that is when the states decide, you know, what does the Constitution say about money?
Well, states can't use anything other than gold and silver for legal tender.
So they've been getting engaged in making sure you don't tax money.
And so that is becoming more of a state issue.
And when we get rid of the Fed, at least we'll audit the Fed.
No, once the Fed collapses on its own, I think what they're doing at the state levels, and I think it will be automatic, that it can work and people would do it by voluntarism and cooperation because that's the way it worked before we had the Federal Reserve.
There was a lot more cooperation.
So there's a lot of things that could become more disseminated throughout the country.
And hopefully we would apply that internationally and find out that volunteerism and trade and travel is the road to more peace and prosperity.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.