Ron Paul concludes his Lake Jackson 2026 event by emphasizing that true reform requires studying the Constitution rather than relying on emotional big crowds. He critiques government-controlled economics and pure democracy, identifying the August 15, 1971 collapse of Bretton Woods as the start of monetary bankruptcy followed by moral theft via inflation. Paul argues wealthy elites exploit the state to steal from people, contrasting this with voluntary exchange, while urging listeners to embrace natural law and remain optimistic about youth receptiveness to liberty amidst an empire of lies. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Building Serious Movements00:13:54
Thanks very much, Joe.
That was great.
I'm not going to come up again after this.
I just will say one thing that we are recording this.
We'll have it up on the Ron Paul's YouTube page as soon as we can process it and put all the titles and things in.
I will email you through Eventbrite and those that aren't on there when it's available so you can have a look at the videos.
So, my final thank you to all of you for showing up.
We really appreciate it.
You know, we've done about 20 conferences at the Ron Paul Institute.
That's a lot.
And for most of them, I've had the honor.
Of introducing my great mentor, and that's Ron Paul.
Hello.
Somebody told me we would have a friendly crowd here today, and it looks like we're friends here.
Thank you very much to be here and to support our cause because it is pretty important what we're doing, and I consider these conferences very valuable to us.
Because we get to meet a lot more people.
I want to especially thank our two new supporters, just so I better be careful.
Our new, both Marjorie and Bill, that I think that their coming here is wonderful.
I look at what they have done is shifting gears, you know, because basically they have been with us.
So I want to thank them especially for coming out.
To our event.
But I think it's a wonderful thing.
You know, I understand that this is a 250 year anniversary of our Declaration of Independence.
And it's pretty neat to read that every once in a while.
But, you know, a lot of people ask me when I'm out campaigning, and people will come up and they'll say, Ron, what should I do?
And I said, well, you could start by, if people want real reform, they could start by reading the Constitution and then.
Following it.
But I also want to recognize Daniel.
He's been up at this podium for a few times and he has put a good program together.
And let me tell you, he's worked very hard on this.
So I'd like to say thank you, Daniel, for the wonderful job.
But you know, the effort that we're making is tedious, it's difficult, and people try to figure out.
We heard a lot of details from two individuals who have spent time there and they're shifting their gears and moving about.
But I don't think they're going to all of a sudden, you know, become less friendly to us.
I think they're going to be more friendly.
And you know what I think?
I think they're going to bring a lot of people into a serious movement that we're trying to promote and serious enough to study and understand.
What true liberty is all about.
You know, when they passed the Constitution and the Declaration, they did some polling of sorts, I guess.
But the one thing that most individuals agree is that it wasn't like 78% of the people said, let's go and throw the British out.
It wasn't like that, it was a small group.
And probably a lot of people just wish the problem would go away.
And some, you know, wanted to stay with the British.
And so I think it's pretty important that the small groups have their say to have the influence.
And I've been taught over the years by experience and by others who have given advice that, yes, it's good to have big crowds.
Accidentally, I guess I had a couple big crowds, but, you know, it's a big crowds.
You know, are maybe a little bit of fun, but that's not where it happens.
It's in the area of ideas because we've been brought to this point by the loss of control, by the sentiments of our founders, by our university system.
And if we want to really do something, we need to throw the government out of our educational system and rebuild our colleges.
Because it is pretty important.
I think the philosophy is the key to it.
There's a lot of emotions in politics, but I was so impressed, you know, running for the president to see the response of young people.
That gets me excited about it.
So I think this is something that is very much available, very necessary to understand what liberty is all about.
Because I've always said, if I go out, I say, freedom is popular.
And I really believed it.
The thing of it is, though, sometimes they never hear about it.
I felt like when I left 12 years of government schooling, that I had to, and then got introduced to true free market economics and Austrian economics, that I had to spend a lot of time unlearning the things that I learned in government school.
And we need to reverse that.
We need, thank goodness it's still legal to have homeschooling and private schooling.
And they say, oh, they're not a big number.
Their numbers are growing.
The people are getting educated out of the school system.
And I think that's very encouraging.
And, uh, reason, yes, I complain all the time about the negatives, but we need to now understand what has to be positive because guess what?
We're going to get a chance to really, you know, play a part in rebuilding this country and rebuilding it.
And it has to be ideological.
And I think that's where we're doing a lot of good work because a lot of people say, Rod, you're telling us about all these problems.
How can you be so optimistic?
It's because this group is very important to me personally because I've encouraged it.
And I think this is very good.
But we're not alone.
There's a lot.
And one thing is when we have an introduction, and I can guarantee you there are some people in here that understand the message well enough to have talked to other people and start their little clubs.
And I think we are, in a way, the petitioners.
We don't have.
We don't have control of the major media.
But guess what we have, which is, I think, in a way, miraculous, because I never understood computers and all that.
But I do know that the internet and what you can get off the computers is very, very exciting.
You know, there's a lot of trash here, but that's your job.
We're supposed to figure out what's good and bad.
And that's why I like the small groups getting together.
And we do talk about the serious things.
And when I would go to the campuses when I was campaigning for the presidency, I'd have people come up.
And one person really stuck with me because he came up and said, Dr. Paul, this is great.
He says, I really like this.
And he said, What I really like is you're such an optimist.
And I had just talked for 45 minutes and tell him, Watch out, the Fed's.
Still after you, and the IRS is after you, and they want to draft you and send you off to a war.
I said, and you know what he said?
Yeah, but the 45 minutes or 50 minutes, I won't go that long if you don't want me to.
But they had this time where they would, at the time, they would come in, and then they said, I would go into that last pitch, is the positive stuff.
And there is a lot of it.
And besides, it's so boring.
It's so boring to not have crowds like this where you don't have to yell and scream at each other.
I think debate is wonderful.
And there's a few left.
And even in Congress, I found a few that would talk sensibly.
But I think that is so important.
And that's where, when I got interested in economics, Austrian economics was very, very minor.
And I can remember the first tour I had in Washington in the 70s.
And somebody would come up and say, Well, you know, Democrats too, as well as Republicans, what are you doing?
Your votes don't make any sense.
You know, you're not always voting with Republicans and you're not voting always with the Democrats, but sometimes you vote with Republicans and sometimes you vote with the Democrats.
I said, Well, that's good news because both sides are goofy on a lot of issues.
Why don't we bring the good people together for this so called third party and not bring them together on all the bad things?
Come together to start the wars, come together to support the Fed, come together to ignore the debt.
And that's what they do.
The coalitions are there.
One of the dangers I have built over the years has been the admiration, the admiring of the Democrat, the Democrat system, not the Democratic Party per se, but democracy.
Democracy is.
Very, very dangerous.
And I think the whole system that we have today, that we have with voting, has encouraged it because 51% can vote anything they want, and they do.
And sometimes the people get so brainwashed, they don't even look for 51%.
They just do it, and nobody complains that much.
That's a lot of what's going on right now.
How many wars have we fought since World War II, and we never even asked the people?
They didn't ask the people, well, why don't you have a debate?
And Daniel and I, especially in the Iraq situation, we spent a lot of time up there in Washington, and you just couldn't get the votes or even people interested.
Even now, when When they try to get a vote and say, not to pass out detailed information militarily, but just say, why don't we get proper permission from the Congress?
Can you imagine how little and few wars we would have had if they had to have declared war since World War II?
Millions of lives that could have been paid, trillions of dollars would have been saved just by doing one thing.
Obey the Constitution.
So it is rather tragic in one way because people say, well, the media is controlled.
But like I say, the internet and other things, the messages have passed around.
The educational system is there outside of the regular government system.
And that's where the encouragement should be.
And that's why I'm delighted, you know, to see you come and give support for this.
And I think this is just really exciting.
I would ask people who shift their gears and come a little bit more enthusiastic about this demand on it to follow the rules and stay out of these wars, if they could do that, I'll tell you.
You know, they'd never have to take a sleeping pill again because they would sleep better at night if they would do the right thing.
You know, I think we're putting up right now, we're in chaos.
And the chaos is that this system of pure democracy where they band together and get 51% and then vote all the special interests, it encourages, you know, all the monetary system.
In Washington, you have to have money and power.
And that is what is necessary.
So, what I think is happening is we're at the end stage.
We're at the end of the stage because, yes, I think most people, you know, just a tiny bit honest with themselves.
Chaos in the Monetary System00:13:17
I think, you know, $39 or $40 trillion, maybe we should reassess that.
Maybe it's too high.
And more and more people are saying that before it used to only be 12%.
Now it's 13%.
People, no, I'm serious.
That is the thing of it.
They've, they've, they've done that and they've run up this debt and, uh, and, and there's a specific cause and a specific reason, uh, for this.
But I think the, the, uh, the bankruptcy is here.
The first, the first major step in, uh, declaring bankruptcy, it was monetary and that was on August 15th, 1971.
That's when the, when the Bretton Woods system collapsed.
That's when we, We were dishonoring but pretending we were honoring the gold standard ever since the Depression.
Because in the Depression, you know, the first week, Roosevelt took the gold, stole the gold from the people.
And it took 42 years to get legalization done, which we were able to do and help move that along to where we could actually own gold again.
That's a major and it's a good move because that wakes up the people, and it wakes up the financial people.
So they artificially held gold at $35 an ounce for all those years.
And There was some guy called de Gaulle, something like that from France, and he said, We have way too many of these fake notes and we want our gold.
Because the foreigners could put their Federal Reserve notes that we were passing out and building our empire, and they decided they wanted cash in.
And so they started cashing in, and that brought it back.
A lot of gold was sold or it was given because we had printed those notes and lied to.
The system.
So the gold was going down, down until Nixon, you know, all of a sudden on Sunday night, I remember it so clearly.
On August 15th at 8 o'clock, it interrupted all TV sets, and this announcement lasted 15 minutes.
And it was big.
It was a big event.
And it was the closing of the gold window.
No more gold would be to leave, but the American people still weren't allowed to own the gold.
And I think the Constitution says something.
About that.
I think it says something like only gold and silver will be legal tender.
You know, that is what the founders believed.
So that was the first big step of bankruptcy.
So we were saying we printed the money, the American people, they don't own it and they don't seem to care.
And foreigners didn't care until now.
And now they want reimbursement.
And in the 70s, I'm sure there's a few people in here that might have been in business in the 70s.
It was rough times because, you know, it was.
A lot of adjusting to do for a 10 year period.
So this is, that was the first step.
But amazingly, after it settled down, they patched it together and they went back and they established another pseudo gold standard because the American people were allowed to own the gold.
But prices went up.
Surprisingly, prices went up.
But I think I'm convinced I could teach somebody.
Matter of fact, I'll lower the age all the time.
I, I think I could teach a 10-year-old, and I'll bet you have some kids that can understand money, you know, that, that money lose value and prices go up, and maybe it has to do with the fact that we run these deficits,
and then we, uh, no, there's a limit to how much, uh, will be loaned to the people, how many people will buy these, uh, the Federal Reserve notes, and what, what they, what they do is, uh, they, they just print the money.
And so the value goes down, the prices go up, and people say, oh no, the prices go up because labor costs are too high.
Oh no, the business people are gouging us.
We got to deal with that.
Oh, it has nothing to do with spending, nothing to do with debt.
And that is one problem.
That's why education is so important.
And because I remember when I started running for the presidency, and that was just a lark, by the way.
I was running, and they.
They wanted to, you know, they were asking me, why are you doing this?
What are you doing?
What are you talking about, this Federal Reserve?
Nobody opened them.
And I think back to the early 70s and 70s and Nixon and the Enlightenment that has occurred since then.
And now, boy, it's right out every day you hear something about the feds who's cheating who?
And they do this and they are still trying to figure this out.
But the Fed now has an argument, a big argument.
It looks like the current chairman of the Fed's going out and, uh, they're going to have to, have to get a new one pretty soon.
And, uh, they're, they're really, really working hard about it.
But the whole argument is between the president, even though all presidents do it, but it seems like our president's a little bit more bossy and he gets everybody's tension.
So they're arguing over what they want to make the, what the interest rates are.
Well, It used to be that people were against automatically Democrats and Republicans against wage and price controls because they're so miserable, especially price controls.
So, but here it is.
The most important price in the country to have to keep an economy going is the price of money.
What's out of the interest rate?
To order, in order to go back to a halfway normal system, Volcker took the interest rates up to 21%.
And, and then there was a, there was a correction.
It settled down.
But, uh, The big argument now is between Powell and Trump, even though that has to change.
The players have to change.
They argue like they know what's the best interest rate.
Trump says, down here.
Powell says, well, it's a secret.
We're not going to tell you, but it has to go up.
You know, that kind of stuff.
They just go on and on.
But, you know, secrecy is a big deal to the Fed.
That's the main thing they want is secrecy.
What they call it.
Is independence.
If they're independence, all they're doing is they don't want you to know.
And of course, Pyle's idea if you're totally independent, Congress certainly doesn't have a right to know.
And the president, he shouldn't be meddling with it.
He doesn't know anything.
And so they do this and they argue back and forth.
The truth is, somebody asked me once, well, if we put you in charge of the Fed, what would you do with interest rates?
I said, I would fire the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve, they call it independence, but you'll see that day in and day out.
You have to have an independent Fed.
But just always say to yourself, that means secret.
And I am a bit of a cynic, as you might guess, but they tell you that.
The interest rates are settled by detailed.
They have a lot of economists.
They have hundreds, if not thousands, of economists providing this information.
But they don't know.
If I'm in charge of the Fed, I don't know what the proper interest rate is, but the proper interest rate is very, very important.
So that's messed it up.
And that's brought about the continuation of this monetary crisis.
The second phase of the bankruptcy.
More and more people, I think, are becoming known that there is a financial problem.
And that's especially the housewives who go to the store and prices, they notice prices have gone up a little bit here and there.
But that is the biggest issue, I think.
But we have another bankruptcy which probably supersedes the monetary issue and the monetary bankruptcy.
And that's the moral bankruptcy because people don't see the monetary system as a moral problem.
And And it is because, you know, there's a big thing going on right now.
You read in the paper, we got to crack down on, on fraud.
There's a lot of fraud out there.
People are stealing money from Social Security into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
We got to stop the fraud.
And, you know, that really is a joke.
I mean, no, to the point is some of it is just, just stealing that most people still recognize as, as stealing.
You should steal from the government.
And, you know, my little sign on my desk said, don't steal.
The government hates competition.
So, even the money issue is a moral issue.
It's what we're supposed to do.
And they are stealing when they print up money and counterfeit the money.
They devalue the currency and they tax us to death.
They send the IRS after us, and the IRS is pounding on the doors.
But they don't have to get enough money.
They don't have to march in with a gun and take the money from you.
And they don't say, send a note.
They do enough of that and everybody has to pay a lot of taxes.
But what they, what they do is they just print the money.
So if you have a thousand dollars in the bank and a year later it's worth $500, you paid a tax of $500.
That's a tax.
And, uh, people who love spending are sometimes the people who need help and are sympathetic.
And you say, we understand why people need to be fed and clothed.
And, uh, and other people though, They, they establish that principle, but then what do they do, do with the principle?
Guess what?
Wealthy people do the same thing.
They want largesse too.
They want benefits.
So corporate, uh, uh, participation is a problem too, contributing to this immorality that has, uh, has evolved.
And that's, that's where the real problem is.
And I, I think the, uh, the whole, the whole issue of the monetary system, when I, uh, had that enlightenment, Uh, or a confirmation on August 15th of 71.
I said, the Austrian School of Economics is right.
I feel like talking out about it.
I want to speak out about it.
It sounds interesting.
It looks like it could be fun talking about it.
And, uh, I, I, uh, you know, purposely look for places where I could talk about that issue.
And that, uh, that was, uh, you know, something I thought was very, very important.
But, uh, No, it, it's more talked about now, but they still have a long, a long way to go because that, that is the big issue.
Because if, if you have spending, you can't vote against food stamps for poor people who are hungry.
How were they made hungry?
By stupid government policies.
What they're going to do is too.
Well, we'll steal a little bit more money and we'll feed the poor.
But then you have, then you have a system of government where, uh, becomes corporatism because we have this pure democracy.
And the corporate, corporation, they're the ones who really run the show.
And then the people who run the corporations, that's secret too.
We don't know exactly who runs all these corporations, but they, they get, they're a gang and they get together.
And, uh, I don't think for a minute there's a difference in control.
Even you, we, even with the arguments we hear today about, uh, or who's going to be chairman of the Fed.
I, I don't think it has any merit.
I think that's just all fanfare for the people because I think, uh, you know, and, and Powell is really, Really good when it comes to, you know, trying to fool us.
Wealth Transfer and Truth00:07:48
And he said, Oh, I just want independence.
We shouldn't have outsiders interfering.
And then he should have followed.
We have them well hidden.
And so now I think we're going through the moral bankruptcy.
And I think there's a collision there because I think the collision is a contest that has lasted for a long time.
I think it's lasted from the beginning of time, and I think it started with the first comments trying to be written down in ancient history.
3,000 years ago.
And in that document, they started early, you know, at describing right and wrong.
You know, even then, very early on, there's a recognition that they didn't punish people who stole things or, you know, killed people and hurt people.
And it was messy for thousands of years, but it finally comes together where there are two factions.
There's one faction.
That doesn't like that because they want to, they're philosophically not attuned to telling the truth and they don't have any religious, uh, uh, you know, persuasion that you should.
So they, they go, they go and, uh, what they do is, uh, they become nihilists.
And we have nihilists.
You'll see them.
They're, and a nihilist, you know, makes it easy.
Oh, this is no problem.
We can do what we want because there's no way you know what truth is.
And they really believe this, that you cannot approach truth.
And they say, Ron, do you know exactly where perfect truth is?
No, I don't know.
Nobody knows.
But everybody knows if you're doing things, if you're shooting and killing people and stealing from people, I think 95% of the people that ever lived had the instinct to know that was wrong.
But the nihilists said nobody can understand what truth is.
So they don't believe in truth, but then the others, you know, are working hard.
And that's where I think a lot of us would be put that we might not have access to the perfect truth, but at least, at least we know which way we're going.
And I would say that we're going the wrong way.
I would say the moral influence of the people in government allows this lie and stealing to affect a monetary system.
You know, the founders believed in natural law.
And if we're talking about natural law, that people knew naturally that you weren't supposed to lie, cheat, steal, or kill.
Really complicated.
You know, people don't.
They've been doing this for a long time, but now it's building up because there's two factions, and the results of the bankruptcy, the financial bankruptcy, and the moral bankruptcy, has led us to this constant wars, constant spending, and yet still a lot of wealth.
There's a lot of wealth, but maybe that wealth is being transferred, you know, because I don't like it when people come up and say, Right now, we have the, uh, uh, the, the, uh, the, the, the socialists.
They're taking advantage of this.
We got to, you know, New York City is a good example of insanity.
They said what we should do is tax the rich.
Tax the rich.
Yeah.
That's really going to help the poor people there.
What if they're a rich company, uh, a big company, and they're going to raise the taxes on this rich company, and they have a thousand workers, and they move to Florida.
That's really helping the poor people, isn't it?
So it's insane.
But the socialist knows what's happening.
There's a void out there.
There's going to be a void.
And that's what we have to recognize.
And we have to recognize where we stand on it.
And it doesn't have to, you don't have to get discouraged and say, well, I think, Ron, you could get 10% of the people who agree with you or some number.
But don't you have to have 51%?
No, you don't.
You don't.
The founders didn't believe it, and the founders were small in number, and it was leadership that could persuade and get the large majority to go along with it.
A good example of it that we just had, I think, on COVID, you know, that thing went pretty fast.
Boy, did they jump on using COVID to, you know, pour more controls and authoritarianism over us.
And that, as people woke up on that, they started going to meetings and standing out.
It's not back to.
Where it should be, you know, hands off, but it's returned to, you know, a little bit more, a little better system than it was when they were just doing regulation.
So, this is something that we, as people who believe in liberty, we have a job because the socialists are really, really heading up, you know, they're really on to think something because they're into these politics and they can play on it.
They say, It's those rich people.
One issue that one would have to teach and get people to understand is that rich people aren't the problem.
It's the rich people that are part of the corporatist system that rubs through the government system who steals the money from the people.
You and I can't go to our neighbors and steal what we want.
Oh, but we call the congressman.
We'll send a congressman over there, you know, and steal.
So that system has to be understood.
And because right now it's really popular to say, you know, just look at how wealthy people are.
And some are very, very wealthy, but that is also a, uh, a consequence of maldistribution of wealth, uh, and on a fiat system.
That when you have a system of money like we have, the rich get richer because they have the first access to the money before the money is devalued as it circulates.
So they will get rich, but we should never Against rich people, we should applaud rich people if they honestly earned it.
How did they do it?
This is the true democracy that I believe in.
How do they get rich?
Because what they do is they want to produce a product that you and I want and we buy it.
It's voluntary.
We have to have a voluntary system.
We can't have wage and price controls and steal the money from the people and then go and spend it and pass out welfare for the poor and start a new war.
I'll tell you.
But the big one, The biggest waste of time and the most danger is this system that is breeding insanity, uh, of us being in so many wars.
That's going to bring us down.
That's what happened to the Roman Empire.
They stretched themselves way too thinly across Europe and all, and they finally couldn't manage it, and the system finally broke down.
So the monetary system, when it's not sound, will break down.
The Reagan Memoir Story00:03:42
But I do have one little story along this line, and this is a Ronald Reagan story.
You know, Jesse Helms and I introduced a bill.
Somebody said, Ron, you never had a bill pass, have you?
I had one.
You introduced.
And my opponents would always look at that.
Thousands of bills introduced, and you never get one passed.
And some of them were like, why do we need more bills?
Anyway, the bill was to establish the Gold Commission.
And that was the 70s, at the end of the 70s.
What a mess it was.
The bill was to study the relationship of gold to the monetary system, just any place, worldwide or whatever.
So that was introduced, and we had a commission that we met.
So the Treasury is where we met, and that was next to the White House.
And we had a political event scheduled, and Reagan was to fly to Houston with our Republican delegation.
And there was a conflict, and I said, Oh, it looks like I'm lucky to get a ride on Air Force once.
Go to the political function.
And there was somebody on my staff, must have been a very astute member of my staff.
He says, Wrong.
He says, Why don't you just go and ask the president if you can go with him?
I said, I'm not going to do that.
So he says, I'll do it.
So I said, Where are you?
So this staffer went and he called and he got me on Reagan's helicopter because it was just a ride.
I walked to the helicopter.
It was so close.
So we got down there and Reagan and I had a conversation.
On a helicopter flying out to Andrews, Arabia.
So he said two things that I remembered pretty well.
One, as we took off and flew out, it was a beautiful day and the monuments lit up.
And he said, Isn't that beautiful?
He says, Isn't it amazing how many terrible things come out of such a beautiful place?
And I thought that was pretty, pretty astute.
And then he also, He also did something in foreign policy that we need a lot more of.
And that had to do with Syria.
They're still in Syria.
We're still fighting and involvement and all this.
But it was in 82 or 83.
And that was when there was a war going on there.
And Reagan sent troops in there.
And this was a story most people know about the story the Marines being stationed in there.
And a terrorist blew up their station.
Their base and 243 American Marines were killed.
And he survived that politically.
But I always wondered what he would say in his memoirs.
And if you ever get hold of his memoirs, you ought to read it because he goes over it.
He says that was the worst thing I ever did, sending those Marines in there.
And what did he do?
When it was obvious failure of some of these.
Stupid wars to death.
What about Vietnam?
How long were we going to kill people?
And what he did was the opposite.
And what we need to do right now, probably all across the Middle East, we have 13 bases, I think that's the number right, around Iran because they're so powerful.
They're going to march into Texas next week.
Liquidating Debt and Lies00:07:30
Don't you know that?
So he said in his memoirs, It was the stupidest thing he ever did.
He regretted it.
And I keep thinking, well, you know, that's sort of like maybe I had read that a long time ago because when people would press me on what I should do if I were in charge, not the Fed this time, that would have stopped all this war, but what would you do if you had charge of the military?
And I said, I would just march home.
We just marched in.
Why can't we just march home?
And I think we will have to because we're going to run out of money.
And so, in a way, the bankruptcy is a cleansing.
And I think we deserve the cleansing.
And I think ultimately it has to be cleansed.
The markets are more powerful than the government.
And it'll have to be done.
But people say, oh, I better go out and change my investments.
It's going to happen next week.
Nobody knows when it's going to come because there's a subjective element to it.
How money moves and what people do and how the politics work.
Even though I may be right about this, you know, it could happen in two weeks.
It could happen in two months.
Some event happened.
Some, some stupid event that they might do.
But, uh, I, I don't, I don't believe that it's imminent.
But I believe it has to be done.
To get, to restore a sound economy, you have to liquidate two things.
You have to liquidate the debt.
And you have to liquidate the malinvestment.
The malinvestment is a consequence of artificial interest rates causing people to do dumb things, like build too many houses.
Really, they needed, uh, 10 condos there and they built 30 because interest rates were 2% instead of 8.
So the interest rates dictate to the consumer whether he's going to save or spend and what he's going to spend on.
So those events will have to occur.
And I can, this one I'm pretty sure of and I would guarantee it's not going to be done Slowly and deliberately with a few more members of Congress.
Does that mean I don't want people running for Congress?
No.
I would say let run get them.
The more voices you have.
But the voices right now, you know, the nihilists are in charge.
And I have a saying that I use a lot truth is treason in an empire of lies.
And we live in an empire of lies, and truth has become.
Treasonous.
So I think that should be one of our goals if you're pursuing liberty is realizing that truth is what we seek because that is what will improve our nation and there will be the full enjoyment of freedom.
And that, that is what I think we should look for in our responsibility in resisting that we see.
And I'm optimistic because how can we lose?
All I want to do is march the troops home and stop the killing and save the money.
And it's, it's a wonderful philosophy.
And I think if you put it up to a vote, everybody would want to have freedom.
Everyone would want to have freedom of choice and make a choice.
I like the word voluntarism.
Everything should be voluntary.
And we recognize that generally on economic policies.
If you go to a store, they have a price up and you have a desire.
And it's not done with a gun.
But there's so much other stuff done with guns.
And as I pointed out earlier, the guns are usually.
You know, pointed at the people, not helping the people and not protecting the people.
But they always go, the tyrants always use safety.
They want you to be safe and they want you to be secure and they lie, then they lie to us.
Does that mean that everybody up there is like that?
No.
I really thought that I, well, I don't know what the best word is.
I got along.
One thing is, they ignored me.
I never got these bills passed.
But the other thing is, I wasn't looking for a fight.
And I can't stand this arguing and yelling and screaming and what you have on television.
I want to discuss things with people.
And a few did.
I was taught by Leonard Reed.
He says, it's the way you present your case that makes a difference.
So if you say, this is right and this is what has to be done, and you have to believe me, my monetary policy is the best in the world.
He says, no.
He says, Just get informed and do your best.
And he said, You know what will happen if you do that?
People will come to you and ask a question.
I'll bet you, any money, there are many of you who have been asked because you've been recognized as somebody that has an understanding of free market economics.
People will ask you questions.
And you know what is really delightful is that this message that I've talked about, young people are very, very receptive to it.
I remember I had a huge crowd and I talked about this and this, uh, uh, whole thing went, uh, I don't know, it was, uh, you know, well received.
But when I told them what freedom, uh, was like, that you, you could do, you could do what you want.
It's your life.
You own your life.
You just can't hurt people.
And, but I said, but there's one thing.
If you have this freedom and you don't have an income tax and you invest it and you, and your company goes broke, You can't go crawling to the government and say, bail me out.
And the surprise to me is I got as much applause on that as saying, let's just let you be free.
So I think there will be people will be, and young people will understand it if we can present it to them in a decent way.
And to me, it's a softer approach.
And the one thing that I like to do is I like to enjoy it.
That's why I come to these conferences.
I don't know who does these conferences anyway, but these conferences are just great.
And I think, I hope.
But you make new friends.
And I think that we should have fun doing it because we don't know.
Maybe there'll be a bad tragedy in the economy tomorrow.
No, I think we should enjoy it.
And I enjoy it because I just think it's an interesting subject.
And I got interested in the monetary issue.
But I say the monetary issue is here, and now the big issue here war, welfareism, debt, all these other things.
I am convinced it's not complicated.
So I thank you very much for being here and giving us the encouraging that we really appreciate.