Freedom Doesn't Come From Government | Ron Paul

our final speaker this afternoon likely needs little introduction to most of you hopefully during the course of his two presidential campaigns in 2008 in 2012 many of you got to know at least at a distance Ron and Carol Paul and he's with us here today a longtime supporter of the Mises Institute dr. Ron Paul thank you Jeff thank you very much and thank you for that nice welcome you know when Luke called and asked me about coming over and visiting with this nice group I told him it'd be only one condition I said you know I like to go and talk to the young people and ice as long as you get a group where everybody's under 35 I'll come and it looks like it looks like he's fulfilled his promise you know over the years I've been introduced different ways but sometimes I get introduced that I am the husband of Carol Paul so that is what I am today husband Carol Paul well also I we have some special friends with us today and that's what this program depends on the Mises Institute depends on friends and the things that I've done politically or educationally that's been friends like you who have supported us in in many many different ways but we came over from Houston on Thursday with very close friends who have been friends of ours for 40 years I'm sorry it had to mention all those years was about 45 40 years they've been helping and supporting me and the Mises Institute and that's Carl and Louis Davis I'm delighted that you were with us today you know the frequently in the last week people haven't been asked me about the election or did you think about the election was there an election did anything change oh yeah yeah we have Republicans in charge now of the Senate and that's wonderful everything is going to be okay now I said well how many did they elect any more neo-cons in the Senate oh yeah a few but that's not too bad because someday we'll change all that so I guess there was an election I guess there was a turnover and one neat thing is that one group of power-monger out and a groups move in but at least we can find some encouragement there because if you disrupt power I think there is definitely a benefit from this but but overall elections aren't all that exciting you know in the sense of have we seen the changes it's so often over the years I've heard the saying goes this is the most important election in our lifetime and and I used to think oh well boy this is gonna be a big thing all the way back to 1964 and earlier on you know what was gonna happen but it never seems it's quite that dramatic but I think because there hasn't been too much competition and they keep asking well what can we do to get allow a third party and getting competition I said I've been waiting for a second party but then again people say well you heard it incessantly before the election that I ignored and they would say we have to get the vote out everybody has to vote why well because the best examples for everybody voting is in the Soviet system 98% of the people voted and there was a monopoly control over those votes but they're always saying but it's irrelevant how many people vote it's what you're voting for you know if you're voting to endorse the status quo what difference does it really made and actually in the practical sense I thought you know the number of people voting is very interesting so if you're involved in active politics this plays a role in it the first election I was involved in was in in nineteen in 1976 I had to get there was a special election I had to get into the runoff in order to have you know to to have to have a chance and I remember getting into the runoff in a district that had five hundred fifty thousand people I needed thirteen thousand votes so it was very good that a few people came out we got our people and got into the runoff and quite frankly if that had not happened I I doubt very much if I'd be here today talking to you because that's the way events go but it is it is something that people have to make a choice about I get a lot of a lot of questions from young people but being involved in politics and I think it's very important to be involved but also to realize that it's the ideas that that really count and I on a farewell speech to Congress which I'm sure there's copies around here I try to make the point of the difference of being involved in politics and being involved in political activities for special reasons and that makes all the difference in the world but we do face you know a lot of lot of problems there is no doubt about it and like I mentioned in my opening statement I do like to talk to young people as far as I'm concerned everybody is a young person because you have to have young idea to think about liberty and in this sense Liberty is a young idea I think it's only starting of course from people's what do you mean it started back there in 1215 didn't it and yeah it's very interesting but that's only a short time ago when you look at the history of man as conditions on the earth we're talking about millions of years of history and yet just a such short period of time and really the most important changes occur probably over the last two hundred forty years sure we had the Magna Carta and there was some gradually gradual improvements and interest in the cause of Liberty and also it was something that comes you know goes back and forth you get some and you lose some but certainly the founding of this country and the Constitution in spite of its many shortcomings there was a serious attempt to try to advance you know the cause of Liberty and unfortunately though there were some though some of those improvements made it seem like since 1913 they've been rather undermined wholesale so I'd like to repeal 1913 and everything that was passed in that year now the title of my talk that I was him is to talk about why freedom it doesn't come from our government but the judge has handled that subject so well and I couldn't improve on this this is a disadvantage to follow somebody you know as great as the judge in has both his ability and his understanding of the law so I will talk a little a bit about that but he certainly understands what natural rights are about and and I talked about that frequently and I usually have afraid something well where the rights come from in order to include people I believe in in natural rights and I believe in God given rights and some people just call it natural rights and and they don't want to invoke as Jefferson did they create her but it is something natural to us and their individual I've so often talked about one of the problems we face today in this country is there's too much thinking of rights as a collective and it always annoys me that it's so casual is all the time and and the pundits on TV do it endlessly you know what hot in one group vote I think I think it's really you know a very bigoted way to treat recovery children ohad the Blackfeet will vote how do white people oh how do Hispanics vote how do women vote how did the gay people vote and go on and on and look at all this stuff and I think that just undermines steadily this whole concept that our rights are individual we're important because we have those rights and of course have to protect it so it's very easy to decide what the role of government ought to be the government's role is not to provide safety and security the role of government is there to protect our liberties no more than that and that's a pretty clear-cut responsibility too often they want perfect safety and they want perfect security and perfect you you know economic security and how do they do that they do that by taking away Liberty and that of course is what they've been doing constantly so we're where are we today in this effort it doesn't look good but it looks so much better since I left Washington because I spent a lot of time up there and I gave a speech or two but nobody came to listen so when I come to a group like this then I get encouraged and if I go to a college campus and see so many young people coming out I really get encouraged and I think that's where it's all about and I think the work of the Mises Institute has been fantastic and I think what's going on today is not a national thing I always claim that if we're going to make progress it's not a Republican thing it has to be much broader ideas have consequences and we have to infiltrate all the parties and the thought processes and I keep remembering Nixon's statement in 1971 we're all Keynesian now he was right we're all Keynesian and we've been living with that and believe me about 99 percent are still Keynesian in Washington DC but I think things are changing and that that makes all the difference in the world and we are certainly in this transition so there's there's much I think to be optimistic about not only has the Mises Institute been around I would say 30-some years now in early 1980s that I think Lou and I talked about the organization but today there's been an explosion of interest there's been a lot of interest all along and I sensed that during the presidential campaigns that all of a sudden in a college crowd they would say they spontaneously before I even got to the line about the Federal Reserve's they'd end the Fed and the Fed and I said hey wait I haven't gotten to that line yet so that came about because the educational effort and I do know that this is not something going on in United States it's going on around the world and it has to be the world isn't golf with fiat money interventionism economic planning central banking militarism corporatism communism has been defeated I mean who wants to get up and say I'm a communist now the the very vicious entities of the 20th century have been demolished I just think it tragically took hundreds of millions of deaths to prove the total failure of those authoritarian regimes but but today we have we have a tremendous opportunity because in the area of ideas these ideas are spreading because quite frankly I get emails and phone calls all the time from around the world and not too long ago I went to Brazil and I was talking to the individual down there that wanted to have me down there and I said well you know I want to find out what he was all about and it was a well-to-do businessman and he explained to me he said well I said well you know so often we ask when did you get interested in Liberty and Wendy who influenced you as always ask him a few of these questions he said well he was a will to do businessman and doing very well until the crash came and he lost everything and then he came across the Mises Institute and Austrian economics and he was influenced by that not only did he start his own Austrian school down there and a Mises Institute down there he recovered financially so it was a wonderful thing that happened and now and I've been to Chile but there's numerous invitations throughout Europe Eastern Bloc nations that used to belong to the Soviet system so I I wished I couldn't make all the business but it tells you that that these ideas are alive and well and they're spreading and they can't stop them you know as Victor Hugo said you know if we see an arm coming in armies can stop another army physically it's it's possible to do this but on ideas if an idea whose time has come they cannot be stopped by an army and they will invade the entire world I think what is wonderful now and why there's so much opportunity is we now live at a point time in history where it's end of an era yes maybe the early stages of Liberty were talked about the very first time you know to some citizens of England where a were able to make King John sign the Magna Carta but we now have a period of time which is I think so different we had a type of an advancement with the revolution in our Constitution we've had a setback though for a hundred years but I think that's more on a surface and not and not intellectually speaking because I think the last 30 years there has been a tremendous growth on the ideas of Liberty which was opposite of what was happening in the 1930s in the 1930s you know Roosevelt you could look at his platform it wasn't all that bad he was still on the gold standards and balanced budget and limited government and stay out of wars and all these things but guess what the intellectual community was exactly the opposite and once the predictable Depression hit and the problems that we had of course they came to light and Keynes won out in that argument today it is different I believe the undercurrent is freedom and Austrian economics and free markets and property rights and it's spreading like a wildfire and this is the reason why an institution like the Mises Institute and others like this that they deserve the support and people like you make all the difference because a lot of people come up and thank me for doing this and that but the truth is is I can't do anything without support and without help and that's the way it is with an organization like this so we we should be very glad that our numbers are growing and some people get discouraged and they say yeah but we're still so small and we can't take over the government we can't do this but you know what you only need about seven percent of the population to turn it there very few people percentage-wise endorse the American Revolution and I think we're getting to those numbers where there's a great number of the people who are influencing the ideas but then again you still have to have an endorsement or at least an acceptance of these ideas by 51% you 7 7% or 8% won't carry the day you have to finally get a majority of people saying it's in their best interest to go along with a new system and they did that for a long time they did that with socialism and welfarism and they they've accepted that believing it was in their best interest but the opportunity today is so tremendous because the 20th century gave us such a revelation of the failure of so many of these systems for instance I think fiat currencies are on their last legs we were eventually going to get rid of the Federal Reserve System I think the militarism of big government is coming to an end just think right now we have nuclear missiles all over the Middle East and armies and tanks and all the military power and of course we're the we're the largest power and we throw our weight around and we intimidate people and we say you do it too our way and we'll give you a lot of money if you don't we're gonna bomb you and guess what with all that power and might right now what is the greatest concern in the whole world for peace there are like 20 25,000 individuals they joined the group called Isis and we're supposed to hide under our beds because they're about to invade us so I would think if you put it into a proper spectrum that doesn't mean I'm belittling and it's not dangerous it's very very dangerous but it also means that the numbers are smaller and even a government that has all these nuclear weapons all these powers they don't even know what to do you know what do we do now who's gonna fight not us let somebody else fight and you know and they go on and on and then when they do do it they they don't have any any moral support for what they're doing they have no constitutional support from our side from our government we don't declare the wars we don't have a moral standard for it we have the Bush Doctrine which is says well it's important that we start wars now before they before they come and hit us it's the pre-emptive doctors doctrine I would say one easy way to get started on correcting this and when we just pay attention to the Constitution and don't let our government go to war unless it's a declared war but we we have this opportunity I think the Keynesian economics will fail and central banking is going to fail this foreign policy of intervention ISM and big and big armies it will fail but the big question is out there is what's it going to replace it will will the world succumb to accepting total dictatorial powers as always a threat there's always going to be a threat of violence but I I think big government's going to shrink isn't it wonderful now that we have introduced the notion it's being practiced this whole idea of nullification and secession these are great idea so independence you know if people have been critical of me because I sort of taken see on that emphasizes those point and what they want to do is say oh you're on America or that means you wouldn't freed the slaves you know a few things like that so but what about the secession of the colonies from the British Empire I would think that would have been a pretty good Declaration of Independence and what about the breaking up of the Soviet system that's not a bad idea and it isn't like we don't still in this world have an example that we could look at and maybe give a little study to it you know the more I look at it the more I admire at least the intent and really the way it's working Switzerland why don't we have a national defense policy like Switzerland but how many people in this room know the name of the president of Switzerland nobody knows who it is and I was talking to a Swiss citizen the other day and he says I said I fascinating that nobody knows the name of your president he says well there's actually seven precedents yeah you know there are seven elected to the Commission and they vote on somebody who's the president for one year and there's no State Department they have no executive branch and guess what they have no Wars and I am convinced the people don't want the war the government's want the war for various reasons and they control the media and they build up the war propaganda and we've been living with that for so long early on whatever there's a talk of war the people are against it that was the way it was with Iraq and then the propagandists come out and talk people into it and they're lied to and are convinced Saddam Hussein is about to drop a nuclear weapon on us and then a year or so ago our president said you know that gotta wonder Nobel Peace Prize he said now that the an Iraq war has gone so well we can leave there and they will the good war though that we really have to fight is in Afghanistan and that's been going real well too so he says where where where should we go now oh Syria is a neat place why don't we just go into Syria I we never liked Assad he's a bad guy and he doesn't have a good reputation we got to help the people of Syria so of course of course we march in there and drop bombs and that didn't get do do so well and it's getting out of control and and this group Isis they end up with all the weapons so now that we're going back into bombing I just think this is so so dramatic yeah it makes it makes the points so dramatically and that is we decided to go back in and start bombing an instruction to our bomb our pilot says first go and destroy all the American weapons because they roll in the hands of the enemy so so we did that and guess what this week they're going to vote for another six billion dollars for more weapons when I saw that they did that the instructions were to destroy American weapons I thought bet the military-industrial complex are very pleased today so they can keep building weapons so what do we do with this perpetual war and all these problems and it it's not easy I think I think the state the powerful States will be diminished in power and the people have to speak out and and this whole idea of secession and nullification I think that's that's coming along fine I think it's worth the attempt to have a piece of paper that tries to restrain the government that's what the Constitution try to do but in way it didn't work you know it has failed should you give up then there and totally well know what if you had individuals who went into the government with the idea that they had some moral principles that the thrust of the Constitution that you shouldn't you know practice aggression and you should follow the rules so if you had moral principle individuals didn't believe in the Bush Doctrine and that you would try your best not to get involved that would help a whole lot but that hasn't worked yeah there has not been a spontaneous effort it seems like it's the people who love power and love war or the ones who positions themselves in in in this area of influence but then what do what is the other thing to do and that is you know to have you know eventually get rid of these governments that do these things and of course that won't be hard but what else what else can you do and and I think eventually there is no reason why people shouldn't think about you know being a conscientious objector in a in a massive sword away because the refusal to serve in in the military right now is a pretty reasonable thing people say no you have to be patriotic and they said besides didn't you serve yeah I was drafted and I went and and it's the real tragedy is is that you know the 18 year old or 22 year old is hardly a movement to resist the power of the state or being thrown in prison for the rest of your life for doing this but I think that in time this movement can move and move in that direction where less people will refuse to serve in these aggressive wars and people should be more attuned to not paying for them it's about time that we go straight on strike against the militancy of the US government the other reason why I lean toward optimism is is technology just think of all the technology of two three hundred years especially which from the Industrial Revolution on which is probably you know 80 or 90 percent of advancement of science and oh just a short period of time inevitably all this advancement of technology has gone into the hands of the government to fight more Wars and kill more people so we should get the hands of get the government's hands out of this business and I think there's an opportunity for us to take technology now and use it for the cause of Liberty for instance like the internet do we have to depend on the government stations you know do we have to depend on government TV oh you know you say their private yeah sure they're their private but it's the same news no matter where you get it so are we going to do that and or should we be able to get around it yes we can the Internet is something unbelievably massive and of course you say yeah but the government's watching us they they know where we're going and what we're gonna do but what about encryption there has to be people out there are a lot smarter than I am about technology and is I can read the stories of how private industry is trying to use encryption to defy the government and what we want is it's a contest now between between private inscription encryption versus government surveillance and there's no reason why we can't be optimistic enough to think that technology can be used for the cause of peace and I think this is one of the reasons why our movement is succeeding its technology and you know how can we talk to people around the world you know instantaneously the other night I did a couple a couple tweets dealing with the election I had to confess I did watch the election return and somewhere I was suggesting a few things here at home I got a few criticism but I got a lot of results from around the world they were interested you know so it's instantaneously instantaneous and that's what I think is so marvelous so I really believe there's a lot of room for for progress we have to accept a couple basic principles a libertarian principle and it fits my personal religious Christian beliefs and that is the principle of non-aggression well why why should we ever accept the idea that you can initiate force against somebody oh because he might hurt himself we're gonna force you to wear your helmet you might fall down and hit your head and I'll have to pay for your hospital bill so I'm gonna force you to do this and you don't eat right I'm gonna force you to do that and besides you might gamble your money and they have all these things that they they they have to want one to do so I think that now we have this tremendous opportunity to reverse that trend and it's available to us so I'm I believe that the whole idea of freedom can be even advanced to the point where it can be achieved not not even with our government especially without government because I think that's where it'll come from but the the other important thing about the two basic principles that I try to follow one of non-aggression and of course the Basquiat principle is fantastic and I think I've gotten a few people to read that book over the years and the idea is most people understand that we're not supposed to steal from our neighbor and we're not supposed to hurt our neighbor neighbor and fortunately that's still basically understood but they don't understand it if you and I can't steal from our neighbor we should never let the government do the stealing for us but the other basic principle is that of Tolerance and this is the toughest one for a lot of conservatives because tolerance for many people mean that you endorse it so if but that makes no sense because most Americans you know endorse the principle accept the principle of freedom of religion and principle so does that mean that the extremists have certain beliefs that you can't stand you don't tolerate you think they're bizarre no if you don't hurt anybody you can have any belief that you want but you just tolerate that and put up with it and and yet so so often people say well yeah that's true but what if they do things we don't like you know what if they gamble what if they have personal habits and practices that we don't accept we have to make them better people and it's a responsibility to government well anytime the government gets in the business of trying to mold behavior anytime that they want to get involved in developing excellence and virtue which would be a personal goal when the government does that they only do it with the with the tearing up and the usurpation of Liberty and that's what they do constantly the do-gooders a.1 you have the economic do-gooders and they play on emotions and say oh you don't care you're not a humanitarian you're gonna let the people start yeah yeah just look at the world how many people starved under true Liberty versus how many people starved under communism and socialism and fascism and how many people suffer now today because of totalitarianism I believe in in a sense that if you are concerned about your fellow man and you have these humanitarian instincts that you care about the maximum help for the maximum number of people you have to believe in a free society you can't have any other option for being I think the wonderful thing about Liberty is that it brings people together because if there's one group that wants liberty for one thing that I don't want to have any part of and another group wants it for somebody else they might have a religious belief or something else it it it should bring us together if you're going to use Liberty you want to get everybody together to defend and promote Liberty and then not argue and fight over how a person uses their Liberty because it's individual and even if Liberty hurts one's self they have to be allowed to do it the worst thing you can do is have a government that wants to protect you against yourself there's nothing left once the do-gooders get involved in that and we have way too much of that right now so we have I think a wonderful opportunity I see there's a the era an era is ending how fast it's going to go and how well how successful we are I nobody knows this but I do know that if we don't propagate and promote and expand these ideas not just in the Mises Institute or not just in Texas are not just in a Republican Party or not just in the United States it has to be Universal because it's been Universal for too long about tyranny of government and people people talk to me and they'll say well your your your radical you want to go back to the Dark Ages no I would say tyrannies in the Dark Ages we want to advance the cause of Liberty so it's it's very modern it's it's very new and it's delightful there's so no reason why we should lose the intellectual fight how can we lose the fight when we talk about allowing people to run their own lives as they see fit have more prosperity and more peace how can we lose this argument and basically it's because people want a free lunch now the free lunch was a strong argument and the free lunch or the prosperity came because we did have a fairly free society and therefore we took advantage of it the people concentrated on just forced redistribution and they thought it was in their best interest but that's all behind us there's no more free lunches because this country is totally bankrupt it's all a facade is it's a myth and someday is going to come crashing down our head and there should be one goal and that is the restoration of Liberty if they take all our wealth from oso way tomorrow and gave us our Liberty believe me we would all recover rather quickly Mises had great advice for us he says it takes two kinds of people to promote you know a society he says there has to be individuals and I'm sure he included himself because he was people who think in a theoretical terms and write theory and write about economics and and and the prints these principles they have to put him down but then he said there's another group that has to be able to take that and I like the word that he used he said there's another group that has to take him and make these views palatable to the masses of people and then when they accept that then we they move on and this is what we're in the process of doing we will continue to have individuals write the intellectual papers and and explain economics I was so excited in my younger days when I had natural instincts I think we're all naturally libertarians and they beat it out of us but I was so excited I was so excited to discover the Austrian economist because hey they agree with me the whole thing is that they give you intellectual support for these views and and we're way ahead on this so this to me is we're looking for people who who will help make these use palpable everybody has a responsibility and I believe so sincerely that a group like this and I know you're all below 35 so you have a lot of time to do this and that is that you have a greater responsibility if you know what's wrong on your cable boom you've read and you're convinced I believe you have a greater moral responsibility to do something about it analyst so often people will come up okay you convinced me tell me what I have to do and I have a very simple answer do whatever you want do whatever you think you can do it everybody has another angle they can do things they and their people that have gotten involved in last several years have been very creative so I'm excited about what's happening not naive they're still going to be a lot of a lot of violence and a lot of trouble but I just want to keep it logo I want to take the power away from the government and let us the people solve the problems thank you very much you

Channel: misesmedia

Views: 34,147

Rating: 4.941606 out of 5

Keywords: Ron Paul (U.S. Congressperson), Economy, Freedom, State, Economics (Field Of Study), Government (Quotation Subject)

Id: 3agqK_aGbWM

Length: 37min 34sec (2254 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 20 2014