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May 13, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
31:06
The Illusion of American Generosity

In The American Conservative magazine, George O'Neill, Jr. perfectly captures all that is wrong with not only our foreign policy but also our domestic policy. We discuss in today's Liberty Report.

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Why Generosity Isn't Free 00:07:16
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you today.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Good.
I feel good today.
And anxious to do a program and hope we get people excited about our favorite subject, peace and prosperity.
That's right.
That's absolutely.
How can they be against it?
You do what?
Why there's such a split is some people think you can get it for free.
Yeah.
And somebody will give it to you and you can pass it out.
People who don't even want it, we'll just give it to them and they will be peaceful and prosperous and loving and kind and the world will have no wars and there will be no depressions.
But we have an article, a neat little article written by a friend of George O'Neill that's very interesting.
And he talks about lies of American generosity.
Everybody wants to be generous.
We're for that.
Matter of fact, that's the option if it's voluntary.
But I think he has a different spin on this, that there's some people who want to pretend they're very generous by stealing from one group and giving it to another and solving all the problems and solving the problems of the world.
We can have peace by just running the world and will be the peacemakers.
Well, for some reason, I think reality is on our side arguing that, you know, better be careful before you declare victory on what you're trying to achieve because I think most people want it, but there's a lot of people who are deceived into taking advantage of it and getting their own benefits.
But also, a lot of people do want peace and prosperity, but they're naive enough to go along with the people who say, we'll hand it to you on a platter and you don't have any responsibilities.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, George O'Neill is on the board of the organization that publishes the American Conservative.
He's also a supporter of the Ron Paul Institute and a good friend of ours.
We had a wonderful lunch with him a few weeks ago and a terrific guy.
But that notwithstanding, even if we had never heard of him, I think this is one of the most consequential publications that the American Conservative has done.
This reminds me, if you remember back in 2002, 2003, when Pat Buchanan started the magazine, he wrote that article, Who's War?
And that article had everyone talking about it because he really laid it out.
This is George O'Neill laying it out just like it was.
And in fact, this morning, my inbox was lit up because our friend Winslow Wheeler sent it around to his big group.
And Martin Seif commented and Doug McGregor commented.
Everyone was talking about the article this morning.
So it was the biggest thing this morning.
It's an amazing article.
Put on that first clip because this is what it looks like.
And it's a captivating title, The Illusion of American Generosity.
And people don't want to hear this, but American generosity is an illusion.
Go to that next clip, and I'll just introduce it and then kick it back over to you, Dr. Paul, because this is what George writes.
Because of our strong Christian heritage, most Americans innately believe in being generous to their neighbors.
Good neighborliness was central to our country's founding ethos.
Locally and nationally, there are a myriad of groups and organizations that provide support and assistance to people in need.
This tradition is an important component of our culture.
Consequently, and I highlight this part, much of our populace believes the United States government is a force for good around the world and an important contributor to world stability.
This is a myth.
It's this pretense of America being generous and doing good.
And a lot of people are naive and they go along with this, but they're spending a lot of money doing so.
I mean, as George points out, you know, we're doing so much good around the world.
And I think most people know I've been involved in that debate for a while, all this good stuff that they're doing around the world.
And that's based on a lot of lies, innuendos, and a desire to have an empire.
But it desires, but their efforts always use up money.
And we see it as being detrimental.
And whether it's peace or the prosperity, they don't achieve anything.
Because, first off, where did the money come from?
Well, it comes from stealing, stealing from innocent people, either direct taxation or the indirect cessation of inflation.
And the theory is it's their moral duty, and they convince a lot of people that the moral duty is to make it, you know, work for peace and prosperity.
And therefore, they have to manage the economy so everybody's prosperous.
And also, in a foreign policy, you know, I always think about Wilson.
We're going to make the world safe for democracy.
The first thing is, is, you know, the pure term of democracy isn't exactly what we're working on.
We're working for liberty.
And there's a difference between that.
But they have to endorse lying.
They have to endorse stealing.
They have to endorse this deceitfulness of they think they know what's best.
And just like people did not want to wake up on COVID, but eventually people did with more information.
A lot of people realize now the lies that were told.
But we're talking about a bigger lie, the bigger lie of how the country is run.
Because I think most people want to be generous.
And like he starts off with this article, that's a principle people do it, but they fall into the trap of saying, well, if I send my hundred dollars there, I've played my part.
So, but there's a different way of handling, you know, the economic matters.
There's different ways of handling foreign policy, other than assuming that our government, especially, he's talking about, it has this ability and the enthusiasm to go about and make things better by the use of force and not telling the truth with the people.
Because right now, and I think the times we live in, to me, I see as an advantage, that stuff doesn't work anymore.
Foreign policy is not working.
The monetary policy isn't working.
Running up a debt at $26 trillion, that's not working.
So this is ripe for looking at this.
And I think he touches on that, especially he concentrates on the stupidity and the general idea that we should sacrifice and make the world safe for democracy and all that as a continuation of the progressive era and the Wilsonian ideas because it's always the people have to go along with it.
They have to send their kids off to war.
And then it's disgusting to say they send them off to war.
Foreign Policy Failures 00:02:13
And then I cringe and so sad about it.
And then they come and they put they have to put the military up on a pedestal.
And, you know, it doesn't please me, even though I was drafted and in the service and handled it the best way I could.
They do this by saying, oh, thank you for your service.
And when you think, when I see the ads and the needs to try to get people to be generous, to help the people who have suffered from this, to me, it's just sadness because so much could have been prevented.
And I'm in the business, I believe, in medicine and prevention as much as treatment and cures.
And I think we hopefully we can encourage prevention when it comes to the real evil, and that is the promotion of an empire and the moral justification for these ugly, needless wars.
Yes.
You know, there's always been a kind of an epistemological challenge about non-interventionism because there is a school of interventionism, there's the neocon school, there are all plenty of schools.
If you want to go to grad school and study international relations like I did, you'll learn all these things and they're not very useful.
But, you know, non-interventionism is sort of the absence of a theory.
And that presents literally a challenge philosophically because, well, what are you for?
Well, I'm against all of these things.
And so, I mean, I've struggled in RPI and even when I was working for you, somehow, you know, settle on a school of thought, settle on a body of work, a body of knowledge that would present this sort of explanation of our school of thought.
And it's not easy.
But I think what George does here is he simply takes a survey of all interventionisms that we've had since World War II and demonstrates what disasters they are.
So maybe we have to just settle for that.
We're not going to get this grand theory of non-interventionism that we would like to have.
We're going to have to just settle for pointing out the disasters of the other side.
You know, a lot of people donate.
Strength to Criticize 00:11:51
They're very sincere, but they've been misled.
And a lot of people involved are probably sympathetic to trying to help people.
But the principle that is followed and the people who have special benefits sent to them with a program like this is the real problem.
And they, well, why would they do it?
I think there's some people who are born to live for being powerful people.
You know, they want to run other people's lives and they're convinced that they know best.
And they've admitted this.
A lot of liberals have told me that people won't take care of themselves.
You guys are naive.
You know, to think that the world would be better off without us helping the poor people and feeding the people and making the world safe.
And it's to their benefit for us to be in 120 countries or more, always promoting coups here and there.
I mean, the most recent one, of course, is the coup that we participated in in Ukraine.
And think, oh, you could go all the way back easily.
And I think George mentioned all the way back to Iran in 5053.
You know, it's on and on.
It's the same thing.
But it's always for good reasons.
And the people are lulled to sleep and they buy into it.
And then the people who participate and commit these activities that end up in killing innocent people, the ones who used to drop these bombs, they go and do it.
And they're taught to be, that they're heroic.
And we have to give them muddles and say, you're a good soldier.
You're following the orders of this whole idea of we'll make you a very generous person and people will admire you and we will make the world a better place.
And that's where the lie comes in.
And I know you've talked about this and it's controversial, but you look at the high suicide rates of people who have done that in the military.
And we always, we even have over here, I think every spring, they have a special walk to prevent veteran suicide.
And you've always said that, and it sounds harsh, but it's true.
When you participate in unjust wars and you kill people unjustly, it weighs on your conscience.
And sadly, I think that drives a lot of the suicides in the military.
And, you know, whether it's domestic economic or this foreign policy, it takes the money.
People, even though they say, yeah, I support this, but they, even when they say, they grin and say, yeah, this is okay.
This is food stamps for the rich and all this.
And they go along with it.
And there's not a rebellion against it.
But they still don't have enough money.
So then they have to rely on the big economic laws.
Well, you know, we can print money and we can tell people it's real money.
And for a while, it'll work.
And in the meantime, we can make a lot of money on this, you know, and people, and that is the military, like for the things George is talking about.
The military industrial complex benefited from all those wars.
It's almost like, you know, war is winding down in Ukraine.
Don't we need another one?
Oh, I bet we can stir up trouble.
Iranians are terrible people.
And we talked yesterday about we have a couple senators who just assume, you know, go to war against Iran, but they're willing to challenge China.
Yeah.
You know, doing things that could lead to it.
Let's hope not.
That's a profiteering effort.
And I think that's very real.
And sometimes I imagine some blind themselves to it.
We're doing this to save our country.
And we have to build these weapons and we have to drop these bombs because we want the world to be safe.
Yeah, that's the thought.
I want to thank Conrell 2020, who not only gave a donation of $20 for the show, and we appreciate that, but he also made a good point.
And I think you'll agree with what he had to say, Dr. Paul.
He says, William F. Buckley comes to mind when it comes to the belief that the American government is a force for good.
But he advocated a totalitarian welfare warfare state at home as a price to pay for it.
That may have been one of the, that may have been one of the most evil people of all time.
Yeah.
And people don't, they don't want to think badly.
You know, they want to think, they want to think well of our country and our leaders.
But the one thing is, there's a mixture on people understanding what the evil of governments do and the desires and the people who suffer the consequences and end up paying the bills.
That's why I still always go back to the educational system.
You have to brainwash generations of people to buy into this interventionism because the founders didn't create this type of a system.
They tried to prevent this.
They knew about this stuff.
They knew it from the very beginning.
They knew to a monetary system.
They said, stay out of entangling alliance, mind our own business, defend your country.
But that has been systematically.
And we're starting to realize, although we're nibbling away at that system, it's so ingrained.
There's still a lot of people out there in important places in the judicial system.
They're still there.
And yet we can't deny that there's been some effort to highlight these things with the new administration.
And we just want to encourage them to stick to their guns because they do want to point out some of these things.
But we can't do it by adding more wars and more bombs and more funding for the military industrial complex.
That will not work.
That won't work.
Well, let's go back to George's article, a couple of clips.
I mean, there's just, I started making clips.
I wanted to make like 50 of them.
Just do the whole article.
Just read it and have it our show.
And I encourage everyone, I will, it's not in there now, but I'll put a link in the description so you can find it easily.
But go to that next clip because this is how he starts the article.
And it reminds me of somebody who may or may not be in the room with me, but he says, since the Second World War, American ruling elites have called for numerous military interventions to save democracy, protecting some nation from communists, terrorists, fascists, or various reincarnations of Hitler, or worse.
These accusations are usually accompanied by shrill calls for the great and indispensable nation to act, to hold the line, or mete out harsh justice to the latest designated evildoer.
This nonsense is cheered on by mainstream media outlets.
Until recently, average Americans have not had access to any information which would expose the lies and hidden malfeasance behind these claims.
Fortunately, thanks to alternative media, that ignorance is rapidly receding.
That is the good news of this article, is that we are realizing and seeing not just people on the left, but now people on the right are looking and seeing that this is not a force for good.
Yes, and that is where the answer should be found.
And like you say, there's reason to be encouraged by this.
And I've often tried to get the point across to myself as well as others that the situation is bad.
The cities, there's a lot of chaos.
Oh, we're just playing into the hands of the Marxists.
They want chaos in the cities, and they're very able to achieve it.
But it gives you an opening also because we're not exactly happy with the current system.
So if there's chaos in the cities, it's not because they have too much freedom.
It's because we have too much government.
So it should give us an opportunity.
So I think it's a contest between authoritarianism and liberty and the Marxists versus the people who believe that government should be very limited to the protection of liberty.
You know, this statement that we hear use, and I use it, is, you know, Wilson in World War I said, we have this moral duty to make the world safe for democracy.
And I think, well, what did they end up doing?
They made it unsafe for the devotees of liberty.
It's unsafe for those who believe the opposite.
But they say, well, we're going to make it, but they use the word democracy, and everybody's supposed to bow to that, saying democracy is liberty.
And that just means that a majority can wield overpower.
You'd think the people who argue why we have to do more for the minorities, they would be against democracy.
Because if you have 51% of the people who aren't for that, they can vote against the minority.
And in a way, that's happened.
Who pays the inflation tax?
Why under these conditions?
Who dies in the wars?
It's the middle-class and low-income people that end up losing their lives and losing their livelihood.
So I think that if people understand what the effort should be, to me, it's a matter of truth-telling.
And some are confused, and it's an education problem, but it's also truth-telling because people, the propaganda, all these wars that George talks about, how did we do it?
We were closely involved in the propagandizing, trying to stop it about the second go at Iraq.
But the demagogues in the media, they win so often.
So that, of course, is what George tries to do is wake up people to realize that this stuff doesn't work.
This is tragic.
You know, the neocons expropriated Reagan's idea of peace through strength.
They didn't want the peace part, but they used it because it was a cover for them.
And unfortunately, a lot of people in the Trump administration who do not share our views will also adopt that slogan.
But, you know, I know what you've always said is strength is an interesting word because strength also means restraint.
The strength to not do something as a president, as a member of Congress, the strength of restraint to say no.
And I think, unfortunately, that may be viewed, and maybe less so today, but may be viewed as unpatriotic.
And people may, and the Neocon certainly will view George's article as unpatriotic.
You just hate America.
You're just criticizing America.
But I think it represents a certain type of strength, the strength to actually love your country enough to criticize what its government does.
And I think that's the brilliance of the piece.
Patriotism comes through, not because he's criticizing what the government has done, but he's criticizing the fact that they've lied to Americans to do things that shouldn't have been done in the first place.
So, with this article, obviously, dealt mostly with foreign policy, but the whole principle is important on economic policy as well, because there's this motivation: you know, take care of the poor.
Who could be against that?
But what they don't talk about is when the government takes over and gives out food stamps and they diminish the benefits of a free market, there's not nothing for the poor people.
So, that to me is a pure deception.
Government Generosity Debates 00:05:12
And it's also done, you know, it's done because we're generous and people can't do it.
And even I make the point that if you're really serious about cutting spending, it's going to be a lot easier, should be a lot easier, it should be beneficial in the short run to stop the stupid wars.
And then maybe we wouldn't have to start with taking food stamps away from poor people.
But ultimately, though, in a period of liberty, the government's out of that business.
But here at home, you know, for the last several couple decades now, it's assumed that the government has to do more.
It hasn't worked so well.
So, we need a few more, so a few more rules on business people.
And because we take care of their needs, and there's this combination of the government and big business.
And in these last decades, what has developed is this management thing with the DEI and the ESG.
All those rules and regulations, were they designed to hurt people?
But it didn't take long for the businessman to sort of benefit from it somehow or another and help regulate.
And some businesses go out of business.
But that finally, right now, I think people, I think the campaign and Trump has helped people.
Maybe this stuff isn't necessary.
What about the social engineering?
You know, that's economic engineering and social engineering.
That is insane.
But at least people are waking up now.
You know, they're talking about a big issue.
Should this male who had his castration and one and one day is he's the champion, should he get the medal or should we take the medal away from him?
Because he has his civil liberties that need protected.
The other 98% or whatever it is, they don't have it.
They have to sacrifice their liberties for this nonsense.
But I think people are waking up to that.
So hopefully they'll key into it because what we're talking about is not complex.
Just leave the people alone and they can do what they want.
It's their life.
It's their money.
And they should be able to spend it the way they want.
It just can't hurt people.
Exactly.
And that's really hard to understand.
Yeah.
I'm looking at the comments, and Conrell made a good comment as well.
This is the Conrell Day.
He said churches and other institutions do a far better job of protecting, caring for the poor and sick than governments do.
And it reminded me, especially my old church in Vienna, Virginia, St. Athanasius, there was a poor box in the vestibule.
And when you left church, you put some money in the poor box.
And when someone was fired from the job, they lost a job, or they had financial challenges, the priest would announce, obviously not the name.
He would say, there is a family in need in our parish.
So please, we're going to take up a second collection, what have you.
And it worked very well.
The government wasn't there to take its cut out of the money.
You know, it worked very well, you know, and it still does.
You know, one rule that was established at the time of the founding of this country, and I think it might have been written on 1776, and that was Adam Smith.
And he had a thing he called the invisible hand.
And I think I misunderstood that for a long time because I just thought, well, if people get busy together, there'll be some indirect benefits from it.
But his point is that the market works as long as you follow the rules, sound money and no stealing and no violence and that sort of thing.
His argument was it was self-interest.
He was defending self-interest because the self-interest.
And some people who hate the rich ought to start thinking about, you know, self-interest.
It filtrates.
They have to hire people to make their money.
How many jobs do some of these rich people have?
They say, well, we don't want rich people.
What do you do with their jobs?
Maybe they're fulfilling an obligation and people don't see it as an obligation.
But the whole thing about understanding the invisible hand is that if you do the self-interest for a self-interest, it's going to help a lot of people.
You don't even have to be a guesser for it.
And then, guess what?
If you live in a free country, you can make generosity voluntary.
Can you imagine that?
The wonderful story that is about, it's called Not Yours to Give.
And the point is, I think I was in a Crockett store at David Crockett.
They used to give that out to the young people.
It is, yes, that's good to do that, but it's not your money to give.
So it's not generosity.
If they have to steal it from somebody, and the tragedy is they steal it from the people they're pretending to help.
They steal it mostly from the middle class and the poor by printing up money.
Exactly.
Not Yours to Give 00:04:31
Well, I'm going to close out with just a couple more quotes from the article, if you don't mind, Dr. Paul, if you'll indulge me, and then I'll turn it back over to you.
But there's just a couple more things that I picked out.
If you can go to the next one, this is just a couple of things in the article, and I will put a link, and it's worth reading.
Americans are now beginning to grasp the fact that most of what we've been told about American foreign policy is materially not true and that this policy is not benevolent.
Contrary to popular imagination, the U.S. has spent decades directly supporting jihadi groups or condoning the support of terrorist groups by our friends, quote unquote.
The global war on terror serves as a convenient excuse for these interventions.
It has been particularly useful in the Middle East to destroy obstacles to an expansionist Israel.
Now go to the next one.
How is this generosity?
Where is the benevolence?
If you can put that next one up, thank you.
The beneficiaries are special interest groups and military contractors.
Certainly not the suffering citizens of the debilitated countries, nor the average American saddled with trillions of dollars of ever-increasing war debt.
None of these countries are functioning democracies as promised.
None of the interventions turned out as promised.
As usual, the result is death and destruction.
And now the final one, I think this is his closing couple of sentences.
If we can read, if you'll indulge me for this, our leaders talk about credibility and honor.
The rest of the world, he's a heartless bully that breaks its agreements and spreads devastation and suffering.
We as a nation have allowed ourselves to be fooled.
The truth is, many of our leaders are completely indifferent to the suffering they have caused.
For example, United States Secretary of State Madeline Albright thought that the deaths of perhaps as many as 500,000 Iraqi children starved by a U.S. blockade was quote worth it.
Our leaders are also indifferent to the starvation and death we support in Gaza.
Lindsey Graham believes that the deaths in Ukraine are quote a great deal for America.
Almost none of the American political leaders will make a genuine effort to stop enabling this daily slaughter.
Good, good, good peace.
Good ending.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm done.
It's over to you, Dr. Paul.
Okay.
And I want to finish by first thanking George O'Neill for this article and for his efforts over the years and his work with the American Conservative, because it's talking about the real essence of it.
It's the philosophy behind it.
And I think this is so important to understand.
And this article, I think, brings it out so well.
And I want to, I have always encouraged people to try and get to understand the system.
The basic moral principles are not complex.
Like I said, you know, it's your life.
You can lead it as you choose.
You can mess it up.
But if you have problems, you can't cry to your government to go to your neighbor and steal.
And it's based on very simple rules.
You can't steal.
You can't hurt people.
And you can't be part of a system that goes to war for very special interest reasons.
And we have been a nation.
Just if you read this article, you'll realize how big a deal it is with the war issue.
But the economic issues are very important too because they blend together.
It's spending money we don't have.
It involves economic policy.
And it involves economic injury to so many people.
And to me, the big issue is, you know, is this whole principle of nihilism?
You can't tell the truth.
You can't do it.
You don't know the truth.
You have to do what's best for yourself and a pretense that you're helping other people.
And that's going to substitute for the benefits that come from a free society.
And I, Daniel, I'm sure, we endorse the whole idea that freedom is the way to go if you're interested in peace and prosperity.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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