GOVERNMENT POLICIES HURT LOW-WAGE WORKERS by RON PAUL

Fast-food workers across the county have recently held a number of high profile protests to agitate for higher wages. These protests have been accompanied by efforts to increase the wages mandated by state and local minimum wage laws, as well as a renewed push in some states and localities to pass “living wage” laws. President Obama has proposed raising the federal minimum wage to ten dollars an hour.

Raising minimum wages by government decree appeals to those who do not understand economics. This appeal is especially strong during times of stagnant wages and increased economic inequality. But raising the minimum wage actually harms those at the bottom of the income ladder. Basic economic theory teaches that when the price of a good increases, demand for that good decreases. Raising the minimum wage increases the price of labor, thus decreasing the demand for labor. So an increased minimum wage will lead to hiring freezes and layoffs. Unskilled and inexperienced workers are the ones most often deprived of employment opportunities by increases in the minimum wage.

Minimum wage laws are not the only example of government policies that hurt those at the bottom of the income scale. Many regulations that are promoted as necessary to “rein in” large corporations actually hurt small businesses. Because these small businesses operate on a much narrower profit margin, they cannot as easily absorb the costs of complying with the regulations as large corporations. These regulations can also inhibit lower income individuals from starting their own businesses. Thus, government regulations can reduce the demand for wage-labor, while increasing the supply of labor, which further reduces wages.

Perhaps the most significant harm to low-wage earners is caused by the inflationist polices of the Federal Reserve. Since its creation one hundred years ago this month, the Federal Reserve’s policies have caused the dollar to lose over 95 percent of its purchasing power—that’s right, today you need $23.70 to buy what one dollar bought in 1913! Who do you think suffers the most from this loss of purchasing power—Warren Buffet or his secretary?

It is not just that higher incomes can afford the higher prices caused by Federal Reserve. The system is set up in a way that disadvantages those at the bottom of the income scale. When the Federal Reserve creates money, those well-connected with the political and financial elites receive the newly-created money first, before general price increases have spread through the economy. And most fast-food employees do not number among the well-connected.

It is not a coincidence that economic inequality has increased in recent years, as the Federal Reserve has engaged in unprecedented money creation and bailouts of big banks and Wall Street financial firms. As billionaire investor Donald Trump has said, the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing policies are a great deal for “people like me.” And former Federal Reserve official Andrew Huszar has called QE "the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.”

Many so-called champions of economic equality and fairness for the working class are preparing to confirm Janet Yellen as next Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Yet Yellen is committed to continuing and even expanding, the upward redistributionist polices of her predecessors. Washington could use more sound economic thinking and less demagoguery.

By increasing unemployment, government policies like minimum wage laws only worsen inequality. Those who are genuinely concerned about increasing the well-being of all Americans should support repeal of all laws, regulations, and taxes that inhibit job creation and economic mobility. Congress should also end the most regressive of all taxes, the inflation tax, by ending the Federal Reserve.

PROGRESS TOWARD PEACE IN 2013, BUT DARK CLOUDS REMAIN by RON PAUL

It is the time of year we feel a sense of joy and optimism. We are preparing for the holidays and looking to spend time with our families and friends. This year as we look back we see several developments that leave us feeling optimistic.

A US attack on Syria was averted to a large degree because the American people did not want another Middle Eastern war. Public pressure was so strong that President Obama was forced to back down from his threats to launch missiles at Syria over an alleged Syrian government chemical attack. We have just recently discovered that US claims at the time were based on highly manipulated “intelligence.” The president narrowly avoided another Iraq debacle, where the US went to war based on lies and fabrications. This time the American people were much more skeptical. That is good news!

A US attack on Syria would have brought us one step closer to the neocons’ ultimate goal of an attack on Iran. The administration’s decision to step back from the brink with Syria has consequently opened the door to an historic US diplomatic engagement with Iran.

Yes, the neocons have suffered a number of defeats this year for which we have great reason to be thankful and optimistic. However, it would be foolish to believe that a couple of defeats will end their obsession with American exceptionalism, war, and the US global empire. Though the neocons have had several set-backs, they will continue their efforts. And there are some dark clouds on the horizon that we should closely watch.

The Senate, for example, seems intent on ruining the Christmas spirit – a time when Christians celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace -- with new threats against Iran, even as diplomacy has achieved what decades of sanctions could not.

While US Senate efforts to include new Iran sanctions language in the National Defense Authorization Act for 2014 (NDAA) were unsuccessful, those pushing for more sanctions on Iran even in the midst of a diplomatic thaw have not given up. Last week 26 Senators – drawn equally from each party -- introduced the Nuclear Weapons Free Iran Act, which would impose severe new sanctions on Iran and on countries who do business with Iran.

Perhaps worse, the Act states that it is the sense of the Congress that if Israel attacks Iran, the US Congress should:

“[A]uthorize the use of military force, diplomatic, military, and economic support to the Government of Israel in its defense of its territory, people, and existence.”

Even though a “sense of Congress” has no force of law, these are the kinds of blank checks that lead to world wars. Though not binding, language like this is meant to establish US policy over time, so that if Israel does attack Iran, enough Senators will be on record supporting US involvement that they feel compelled to vote for war. This is the game they played for more than a decade with Iraq legislation.

The Senate bill is unlikely to ever become law, but even if it did, it would not succeed. Its demand that the rest of the world stop doing business with Iran just as Iran has shown such diplomatic flexibility would likely be ignored.

Congress – under the influence of the Israeli and Saudi lobbies -- is seeking to derail the Obama Administration’s diplomatic efforts with Iran. We can be optimistic over the steps toward peace this past year, but we should remain vigilant. The war lobby will not give up so easily.

RON PAUL AND LEW ROCKWELL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=o2kwzmnJum4

AFTER 100 YEARS OF FAILURE, IT'S TIME TO END THE FED by RON PAUL

A week from now, the Federal Reserve System will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding. Resulting from secret negotiations between bankers and politicians at Jekyll Island, the Fed's creation established a banking cartel and a board of government overseers that has grown ever stronger through the years. One would think this anniversary would elicit some sort of public recognition of the Fed’s growth from a quasi-agent of the Treasury Department intended to provide an elastic currency, to a de facto independent institution that has taken complete control of the economy through its central monetary planning. But just like the Fed's creation, its 100th anniversary may come and go with only a few passing mentions.

Like many other horrible and unconstitutional pieces of legislation, the bill which created the Fed, the Federal Reserve Act, was passed under great pressure on December 23, 1913, in the waning moments before Congress recessed for Christmas with many Members already absent from those final votes. This underhanded method of pressuring Congress with such a deadline to pass the Federal Reserve Act would provide a foreshadowing of the Fed's insidious effects on the US economy—with actions performed without transparency.

Ostensibly formed with the goal of preventing financial crises such as the Panic of 1907, the Fed has become increasingly powerful over the years. Rather than preventing financial crises, however, the Fed has constantly caused new ones. Barely a few years after its inception, the Fed's inflationary monetary policy to help fund World War I led to the Depression of 1920. After the economy bounced back from that episode, a further injection of easy money and credit by the Fed led to the Roaring Twenties and to the Great Depression, the worst economic crisis in American history.

But even though the Fed continued to make the same mistakes over and over again, no one in Washington ever questioned the wisdom of having a central bank. Instead, after each episode the Fed was given more and more power over the economy. Even though the Fed had brought about the stagflation of the 1970s, Congress decided to formally task the Federal Reserve in 1978 with maintaining full employment and stable prices, combined with constantly adding horrendously harmful regulations. Talk about putting the inmates in charge of the asylum!

Now we are reaping the noxious effects of a century of loose monetary policy, as our economy remains mired in mediocrity and utterly dependent on a stream of easy money from the central bank. A century ago, politicians failed to understand that the financial panics of the 19th century were caused by collusion between government and the banking sector. The government's growing monopoly on money creation, high barriers to entry into banking to protect politically favored incumbents, and favored treatment for government debt combined to create a rickety, panic-prone banking system. Had legislators known then what we know now, we could hope that they never would have established the Federal Reserve System.

Today, however, we do know better. We know that the Federal Reserve continues to strengthen the collusion between banks and politicians. We know that the Fed's inflationary monetary policy continues to reap profits for Wall Street while impoverishing Main Street. And we know that the current monetary regime is teetering on a precipice. One hundred years is long enough. End the Fed.

HOBBY LOBBY CASE IS ABOUT RIGHTS, NOT CONTRACEPTIVES by RON PAUL

        

One of the most important cases the US Supreme Court will consider this term is Hobby Lobby’s lawsuit challenging the Obamacare mandate that employer-provided health care plans must cover abortion and contraceptives. Hobby Lobby, a corporation owned and managed by a traditional Christian family, argues that the mandate violates their First Amendment rights.

Much of the discussion has focused on whether a corporation such as Hobby Lobby can even have First Amendment rights. But the issue of “corporate personhood” is a smokescreen. Hobby Lobby’s corporate status has no bearing on whether under Obamacare, Hobby Lobby’s owners, about whose personhood there is no doubt, have a right to run their business in a manner consistent with their moral beliefs. If the form by which Hobby Lobby did business was relevant to its right to operate free of federal interference, then Hobby Lobby could avoid the Obamacare mandate by simply reorganizing itself as a partnership or sole proprietorship.

Some Obamacare supporters cast this case as a conflict between Hobby Lobby’s First Amendment rights and the rights of its employees to contraception and abortion. Hobby Lobby is not trying to stop its employees from obtaining contraceptives and abortions; it is simply asking that the government not force it to pay for them.

Forcing Hobby Lobby to pay for abortion services is especially offensive because Hobby Lobby’s owners consider abortion a form of murder. Those who, like me, agree that abortion is an act of violence against an innocent person, will side with Hobby Lobby. However, this case is not about the legality of abortion. It is about whether someone can have a “right” to force someone else to provide him with a good or service.  Therefore, even those who support legal abortion should at least support a business’s right to choose to not subsidize it.

Supporters of the mandate claim Congress has the power to create rights to privately-provided goods and services. They also say that Congress has the power to legislatively override the rights of religious liberty, property, and contract. It is fair to ask what is the source of Congress’s power to create new rights. It certainly does not originate in the Declaration of Independence, which expressly denies that rights come from the government; or from the United Stares Constitution, which nowhere granted government the power to redistribute or create artificial rights.

The principle that Government can force businesses to violate their religious principals even if those principles conflict with civil law could be applied in ways some Obamacare supporters may find objectionable. For example, what if the government argued that the Pentagon’s need for some products produced by a Quaker-owned business trumped the Quaker owner’s objections to war?

The hypothetical example above shows just how radical and dangerous are arguments in support of the Obamacare abortion and contraception mandate. If Hobby Lobby loses, the US Supreme Court will have endorsed the idea that the federal government can force individuals to violate their most sacred religious principles to satisfy any government demands. The central question of the Hobby Lobby case, then, is whether religious liberty will continue to be meaningful in this country. For what good is a religious liberty that protects your rights to attend a worship service, but allows the government to force you to live in opposition to the values preached at those services? This is why all supporters of liberty and limited government—regardless of their views on the morality of contraception—should be on the side of Hobby Lobby.

YOU CANNOT NEGOTIATE WITH IRAN by RON PAUL

You cannot negotiate with Iran. That is what they told us for years. The Iranian leadership is too fanatical, they are not rational actors, they are “not like us.” One US official even recently said that deception is part of the Iranian DNA. But just over a week ago negotiations between the five permanent UN Security Council Members plus Germany and the Iranians produced an historic agreement that may be first step toward a new era in US relations with the Middle East.

As Middle East expert Eric Margolis pointed out this week, for Iran’s major concessions it will only receive “$7 billion – of its own money, which has been frozen abroad by US-led sanctions.” That sounds like quite a bit of compromise for such a “fanatical” country.

Earlier this summer the same people made the same arguments about Syria. You cannot negotiate with Syrian President Assad, they said. He is insane; he is another Hitler. But not only was it possible, a deal was signed ending the threat of a US strike in exchange for Syria agreeing to give up its chemical weapons and the ability to manufacture new ones. Syria upheld its end of the agreement and the chemicals were all accounted for on schedule.

Why have the interventionists, the neocons, and the special interest groups claimed for so long that negotiation and diplomacy was tantamount to surrender; that countries such as Iran and Syria “only understand force”? It is because these groups are afraid of diplomacy. They do not want a peaceful resolution to these conflicts. They see US foreign relations only in the starkest terms: do what we say and we will give you aid, disobey us and we will bomb you.

Now the warmongers who call themselves “foreign policy experts” have been exposed. The whole world sees that they are wrong. Their advice is bad. Their limited vision of how foreign affairs should be conducted is actually dangerous to the United States. It is now clear that there are workable alternatives.

As with the US threats against Syria, public opinion polls on talks with Iran demonstrate that the American people are solidly behind diplomacy and opposed to another war. According to one recent poll, Americans support the deal reached with Iran by a margin of two-to-one.

Congress, however, is once again far behind the American people. Even as US negotiators were reaching agreement with their Iranian counterparts, US representatives and Senators were drafting legislation to increase sanctions on Iran. Instead of listening to the American people, many in Congress seem attached to special interests like the Israel and Saudi lobbies, which oppose anything less than full Iranian capitulation. Israel refuses to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty yet it seeks to dictate the rules of the treaty to those who have signed it. Saudi Arabia is desperate to control the region politically and economically, and it views an Iran that is free to sell oil and other products on the open market as a threat to Saudi power.

For too long both Israel and the Saudis have benefited from a US military guarantee. It has created “moral hazard” that only encourages more belligerent behavior on both of their parts. It remains to be seen whether this six month trial period will develop into a permanent move toward normalization of relations with Iran. What if Congress refuses to give Iran its own money back? But we are moving in the right direction and we should be optimistic.

A better US relationship with Iran may signal the beginning of the end of US meddling in the region and serve as an incentive for Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Gulf States to solve their problems themselves. This would be a great boost to US national security, just as an Iran open to US business and trade would be a great boost to our economic security. Is peace finally breaking out? Let’s hope so.

CAN KARZAI SAVE US? by RON PAUL

After a year of talks over the post-2014 US military presence in Afghanistan, the US administration announced last week that a new agreement had finally been reached. Under the deal worked out with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the US would keep thousands of troops on nine military bases for at least the next ten years.

It is clear that the Obama Administration badly wants this deal. Karzai, sensing this, even demanded that the US president send a personal letter promising that the US would respect the dignity of the Afghan people if it were allowed to remain in the country. It was strange to see the US president go to such lengths for a deal that would mean billions more US dollars to Karzai and his cronies, and a US military that would continue to prop up the regime in Kabul.

Just as the deal was announced by Secretary of State John Kerry and ready to sign, however, Karzai did an abrupt about-face. No signed deal until after the next presidential elections in the spring, he announced to a gathering of tribal elders, much to the further embarrassment and dismay of the US side. The US administration had demanded a signed deal by December. What may happen next is anybody’s guess. The US threatens to pull out completely if the deal is not signed by the end of this year.

Karzai should be wary of his actions. It may become unhealthy for him. The US has a bad reputation for not looking kindly on puppet dictators who demand independence from us.

Yet Karzai’s behavior may have the unintended benefit of saving the US government from its own worst interventionist instincts. The US desire to continue its military presence in Afghanistan – with up to 10,000 troops – is largely about keeping up the false impression that the Afghan war, the longest in US history, has not been a total, catastrophic failure. Maintaining a heavy US presence delays that realization, and with it the inevitable conclusion that so many lives have been lost and wasted in vain. It is a bitter pill that this president, who called Afghanistan “the good war,” would rather not have to swallow.

The administration has argued that US troops must remain in Afghanistan to continue the fight against al-Qaeda. But al-Qaeda has virtually disappeared from Afghanistan. What remains is the Taliban and the various tribes that have been involved in a power struggle ever since the Soviets left almost a quarter of a century ago. In other words, twelve years later we are back to the starting point in Afghanistan.

Where has al-Qaeda gone if not in Afghanistan? They have branched out to other areas where opportunity has been provided by US intervention. Iraq had no al-Qaeda presence before the 2003 US invasion. Now al-Qaeda and its affiliates have turned Iraq into a bloodbath, where thousands are killed and wounded every month. The latest fertile ground for al-Qaeda and its allies is Syria, where they have found that US support, weapons, and intelligence is going to their side in the ongoing war to overthrow the Syrian government.

In fact, much of the US government’s desire for an ongoing military presence in Afghanistan has to do with keeping money flowing to the military industrial complex. Maintaining nine US military bases in Afghanistan and providing military aid and training to Afghan forces will consume billions of dollars over the next decade. The military contractors are all too willing to continue to enrich themselves at the expense of the productive sectors of the US economy.

Addressing Afghan tribal elders last week, Karzai is reported to have expressed disappointment with US assistance thus far: “I demand tanks from them, and they give us pickup trucks, which I can get myself from Japan… I don’t trust the U.S., and the U.S. doesn’t trust me.”

Let us hope that Karzai sticks to his game with Washington. Let the Obama administration have no choice but to walk away from this twelve-year nightmare. Then we can finally just march out.

FEDERAL RESERVE STEALS FROM THE POOR AND GIVES TO THE RICH by RON PAUL

Last Thursday the Senate Banking Committee held hearings on Janet Yellen's nomination as Federal Reserve Board Chairman. As expected, Ms. Yellen indicated that she would continue the Fed’s “quantitative easing” (QE) polices, despite QE’s failure to improve the economy. Coincidentally, two days before the Yellen hearings, Andrew Huszar, an ex-Fed official, publicly apologized to the American people for his role in QE. Mr. Huszar called QE "the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.”

As recently as five years ago, it would have been unheard of for a Wall Street insider and former Fed official to speak so bluntly about how the Fed acts as a reverse Robin Hood. But a quick glance at the latest unemployment numbers shows that QE is not benefiting the average American. It is increasingly obvious that the Fed’s post-2008 policies of bailouts, money printing, and bond buying benefited the big banks and the politically-connected investment firms. QE is such a blatant example of crony capitalism that it makes Solyndra look like a shining example of a pure free market!

It would be a mistake to think that QE is the first time the Fed's policies have benefited the well-to-do at the expense of the average American. The Fed’s polices have always benefited crony capitalists and big spending politicians at the expense of the average American.

By manipulating the money supply and the interest rate, Federal Reserve polices create inflation and thereby erode the value of the currency. Since the Federal Reserve opened its doors one hundred years ago, the dollar has lost over 95 percent of its purchasing power —that’s right, today you need $23.70 to buy what one dollar bought in 1913!

As pointed out by the economists of the Austrian School, the creation of new money does not impact everyone equally. The well-connected benefit from inflation, as they receive the newly-created money first, before general price increases have spread through the economy. It is obvious, then, that middle- and working-class Americans are hardest hit by the rising level of prices.

Congress also benefits from the devaluation of the currency, as it allows them to increase welfare- and warfare-spending without directly taxing the people. Instead, the increase is only felt via the hidden “inflation tax.” I have often said that the inflation tax is one of the worst taxes because it is hidden and because it is regressive. Of course, there is a limit to how long the Fed can facilitate big government spending without causing an economic crisis.

Far from promoting a sound economy for all, the Federal Reserve is the main cause of the boom-and-bust economy, as well as the leading facilitator of big government and crony capitalism. Fortunately, in recent years more Americans have become aware of how the Fed is impacting their lives. These Americans have joined efforts to educate their fellow citizens on the dangers of the Federal Reserve and have joined efforts to bring transparency to the Federal Reserve by passing the Audit the Fed bill.
Auditing the Fed is an excellent first step toward restoring a monetary policy that works for the benefit of the American people, not the special interests. Another important step is to repeal legal tender laws that restrict the ability of the people to use the currency of their choice. This would allow Americans to protect themselves from the effects of the Fed’s polices. Auditing and ending the Fed, and allowing Americans to use the currency of their choice, must be a priority for anyone serious about restoring peace, prosperity, and liberty.

PLEA FOR PEACE

http://www.ronpaulchannel.com/video/plea-for-peace/

CHAINED CPI CHAINS TAXPAYERS

One of the least discussed, but potentially most significant, provisions in President Obama’s budget is the use of the “chained consumer price index” (chained CPI), to measure the effect of inflation on people’s standard of living. Chained CPI is an effort to alter the perceived impact of inflation via the gimmick of “full substitution.” This is the assumption that when the price of one consumer product increases, consumers will simply substitute a similar, lower-cost product with no adverse effect. Thus, the government decides your standard of living is not affected if you can no longer afford to eat steak, as long as you can afford to eat hamburger.

The problem with “full substitution” should be obvious to anyone not on the government payroll. Since consumers did not choose to buy lower-priced beef before inflation raised the price of steak, they obviously preferred steak. So if the Federal Reserve’s policies create inflation that forces you to purchase hamburger instead of steak, your standard of living is lowered. CPI already uses this sort of substitution to mask the costs of inflation, but chained CPI uses those substitutions more frequently, thereby lowering the reported rate of inflation.

Supporters of chained CPI also argue that the government should take into account technology and other advances that enhance the quality of the products we buy. By this theory, increasing prices signal an increase in our standard of living! While it is certainly true that advances in technology improve our standard of living, it is also true that, left undisturbed, market processes tend to lowerthe prices of goods. Remember the mobile phones from the 1980s? They had limited service, constantly needed charging, and were extremely expensive. Today, almost all Americans can easily afford a mobile device to make and receive calls, texts, and e-mails, as well as use the Internet, watch movies, read books, and more.

The same process occurred with personal computers, cars, and numerous other products. If left alone, the operations of the market place will deliver higher quality and lower prices. It is only when the government interferes with the operation of the market, especially via fiat money, that consumers must contend with constant price increases.

The goal of chained CPI is to decrease the government’s obligation to meet its promise to keep up with the cost of living in programs like Social Security. But it does not prevent individuals who have a nominal increase in income from being pushed into a higher income bracket. Both are achieved without a vote of Congress.

Noted financial analyst Peter Schiff correctly calls chained CPI a measurement of the cost of survival. Instead of using inflation statistics as a political ploy to raise taxes and artificially cut spending, the President and Congress should use a measurement that actually captures the eroding standard of living caused by the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies. Changing government statistics to exploit the decline in the American way of life and benefit big spending politicians and their cronies in the big banks does nothing but harm the American people.

RON PAUL INTERVIEW WITH MISES INSTITUTE

Mises Institute: Your books in the past have tended to address issues such as hard money, private property, and central banking. Why are you now looking at education?

Ron Paul: People during the presidential campaigns spoke of a Ron Paul Revolution. But without a revolution in education, there can be no Revolution. If people get to learn about the freedom philosophy only in caricature, if at all, and they never get exposed to the Austrian economists, it will be difficult to impossible to sustain our present momentum over the long term.
Don’t misunderstand me: I am thrilled at our progress and more optimistic than I have ever been. But as for the long term, I am concerned all this excitement could fizzle if the infrastructure doesn’t exist to keep it going. And that means we can’t ignore education.

MI: How would you describe your own education? How has the state changed the way that we are educated now compared to then?

RP: I was fairly happy with my education. I went to a public school, yes, but in fairness it was about as good as a government institution can be: we had full local control, no fashionable but silly pedagogy was forced on us, and the students came from solid family backgrounds. We had our troublemakers, but really none of the pathologies we encounter so often today.

MI: You mention Leonard Read more than once in your book. How has he shaped your views of education and freedom?

RP: From Leonard Read, whom I greatly admired, I took a commitment to educating the public in the principles of liberty at every opportunity. Leonard couldn’t have imagined the opportunities we’d have today — with the Internet, homeschooling, and the extraordinary combination of the Internet and homeschooling.

MI: Are online resources for education making it easier for people to educate themselves and others?

RP: That’s putting it mildly! Having the great works of the great thinkers of our tradition, plus articles, speeches, books, and materials of all kinds at our fingertips, simply astonishes me. Even without an organized curriculum to guide someone, anyone who craves knowledge will find it. That’s how so many people wind up discovering the Mises Institute, isn’t it?

I’m managing a lot of projects these days. In some ways I’m busier than I was when I was in Congress. But what could be more important than handing on the great, life-changing ideas of liberty to future generations, and giving these students the educations you and I could only have dreamed of getting?

The curriculum I’ve designed (RonPaulCurriculum.com), and which I refer to in the book, is more than just history and economics, though. It’s math and the sciences, it’s literature, it’s writing, it’s public speaking, it’s learning how to start your own business, and above all, it’s learning how to learn. All of these are skills that will serve a young person well. If a substantial number of libertarian young people have these skills, I believe things begin to change.

MI: How can competition in education provide a better experience for students?

RP: The same way competition in anything provides a better experience for consumers. Competition in education is going to be especially fierce. If the government’s schools are spending $10,000 to $15,000 per student annually, and I can get students a better education for, say $750, how does their business model survive? Inertia, to be sure, but with state and local budgets under increasing strain, how does business as usual persist in education for much longer?

MI: You clearly take a positive view of homeschooling in the book. But when it comes time to go to college, won’t students need some kind of formal certification from an accredited school?

RP: These days, with homeschooling more and more mainstream, and with the academic skills of so many homeschooled students no longer seriously in question, colleges are less strict about this. Someone with strong standardized test scores, or who gets college credit via CLEP exams, has proven the merits both of his curriculum and of himself. My own homeschool curriculum, the Ron Paul Curriculum, makes passing the CLEP exams a priority. This is a feather in the student’s academic cap, and it’s a ton of money in the parents’ wallets when a student can skip courses, or even whole grades.

MI: Even with all the growth in homeschooling, the vast majority of students still go to public schools. So is it possible to make a difference with so many still receiving conventional, state-directed education?

RP: We don’t need to convince everyone. Most people take no interest in the issues that drive you and me. We need to persuade a dedicated minority. We need to reach the intellectual leaders of tomorrow from our ranks. If even 5 percent of the American public were truly conversant with the great thinkers and classics of the freedom philosophy, it would be a very, very different situation.
Remember, too, that the transmission of news and information is becoming decentralized. One no longer has to be part of the media establishment in order to get a hearing and even a following. I am looking to train the coming generations of libertarians to take up this role. That way, we can have an influence out of proportion to our numbers.

One last thing, if I may: I think many parents who like the idea of homeschooling lack the confidence to do it. That’s an understandable fear. Few parents feel comfortable with the idea of answering their children’s questions about calculus and physics. I explain in The School Revolution why this problem need not be insuperable. Parents can get their children a top-notch education without themselves having to do much teaching in the upper grades, or hire expensive tutors.

We are living through a period of rapid change, in so many areas of life. The mode of education may be the most important of these changes. We need to be ahead of the curve. That’s why I wrote this book.

WHAT WAS NOT SAID ABOUT IRAQ by RON PAUL

October was Iraq’s deadliest month since April, 2008. In those five and a half years, not only has there been no improvement in Iraq’s security situation, but things have gotten much worse. More than 1,000 people were killed in Iraq last month, the vast majority of them civilians. Another 1,600 were wounded, as car bombs, shootings, and other attacks continue to maim and murder.

As post-“liberation” Iraq spirals steadily downward, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was in Washington last week to plead for more assistance from the United States to help restore order to a society demolished by the 2003 US invasion. Al-Qaeda has made significant recent gains, Maliki told President Obama at their meeting last Friday, and Iraq needs more US military aid to combat its growing influence.

Obama pledged to work together with Iraq to address al-Qaeda’s growing presence, but what was not said was that before the US attack there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq. The appearance of al-Qaeda in Iraq coincided with the US attack. They claimed we had to fight terror in Iraq, but the US invasion resulted in the creation of terrorist networks where before there were none. What a disaster.

Maliki also told President Obama last week that the war in next-door Syria was spilling over into Iraq, with the anti-Assad fighters setting off bombs and destabilizing the country. Already more than 5,000 people have been killed throughout Iraq this year, and cross-border attacks from Syrian rebels into Iraq are increasing those numbers. Again, what was not said was that the US government had supported these anti-Assad fighters both in secret and in the open for the past two years.

Earlier in the week a group of Senators – all of whom had supported the 2003 US invasion of Iraq – sent a strongly-worded letter to Obama complaining that Maliki was far too close to the Iranian government next door. What was not said was that this new closeness between the Iraqi and Iranian governments developed under the US-installed government after the US invasion of Iraq.

Surely there is plenty of blame that can be placed on Maliki and the various no-doubt corrupt politicians running Iraq these days. But how was it they came to power? Were we not promised by those promoting the war that it would create a beach-head of democracy in the Middle East and a pro-American government?

According to former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, in early 2001 as the new Bush administration was discussing an attack on Iraq, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, “Imagine what the region would look like without Saddam and with a regime that’s allied with US interests. It would change everything in the region and beyond it. It would demonstrate what US policy is all about.”

We see all these years later now how ridiculous this idea was.

I have long advocated the idea that since we just marched in, we should just march out. That goes for US troops and also for US efforts to remake Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and everywhere the neocon wars of “liberation” have produced nothing but chaos, destruction, and more US enemies overseas. We can best improve the situation by just leaving them alone.

The interventionists have unfortunately neither learned their lesson from the Iraq debacle nor have they changed their tune. They are still agitating for regime change in Syria, even as they blame the Iraqi government for the destabilization that spills over. They are still agitating for a US attack on Iran, with Members of Congress introducing legislation recently that would actually authorize US force against Iran.

It looks like a very slow learning curve for our bipartisan leaders in Washington. It’s time for a change

WHAT I THINK.........ALLEN MENDENHALL

Former Texas congressman Ron Paul has been a track star, flight surgeon, obstetrician, author, political theorist, and presidential candidate.  Now he has written a book about American education.  What motivated him to do so, and when did he develop an interest in curriculum, education technology, and pedagogy?

The answer, he explains in his preface to The School Revolution, is rooted in his personal experiences as a young student in the 1940s and 50s.  Dr. Paul was educated in a small public school in a suburb of Pittsburgh.  He explains that he grew up when the “federal government was not yet endowed with the authority to keep us safe from ourselves,” which is to say, when the messianic character of American education had not yet set out to secularize the youth, condition them to accept the ideals and principles of Statism, and divorce them from the canons and foundations of Western Civilization.  The young Paul was instructed in prayer and the Bible and never saw his peers use drugs or commit crimes more serious than skipping recess or gym class.

Paul excelled in math and would finish assignments before the other students could.  “The sooner I finished,” he remarks, “the longer I could loaf while waiting for everyone to catch up, all the while probably making noise and interrupting others.”  The hours he spent waiting on his peers caused him, later in life, to realize that “it would have been better for the school to adapt the teaching scenario to each student’s ability—something now well understood in homeschooling.”

Dr. Paul’s book is not an autobiography, despite what its opening pages might suggest.  It is, rather, as its title declares, nothing less than a call to revolution.  Dr. Paul says as much: “Because I see my work for liberty as extending far beyond politics, and because I see that freedom is not divisible, I offer this book as the second phase of the revolution.”  The first phase of the revolution, to which he dedicated his career, was political (see, for instance, his 2008 book The Revolution), but this second phase is educational and, in that sense, foundational—for one must be educated in liberty before one may become an ambassador for liberty.

Government schools cannot cultivate the wisdom and freethinking necessary to achieve such education, for their very existence is antithetical to liberty.  Against government schooling, which seeks always to validate its powers and hence to authorize the taxation and spending that sustain it, Dr. Paul presents “a libertarian view of education, from kindergarten through high school and college.”  He submits that the stakes are higher in education than in taxation because “future voters are trained in the principles of who should decide on taxes.”  In other words, one must learn to be aware of organized State theft (taxation) before one can effectively oppose organized State theft; however, one cannot, or cannot easily, learn about the dangers of the State from a State-sponsored system that seeks to train students into unthinking worship of the State.

Government schooling is premised on the false notion that every child can achieve the same level of success if only increased funding and nationalized curricula were mandated.  This ideal and its cult of followers, the most ingenuous, well-meaning of whom are decent and moral yet misguided and indoctrinated teachers and parents, have only served to delay the maturity and personal responsibility of the youth while instilling in students a dangerous sense of entitlement: when students fail, the teachers are at fault; when students cannot complete their homework, the homework is too difficult; when books are too long, the authors failed to account for their readers’ attention span.

The cumulative effect of these pedagogical errors is that students come to college with no plans for their future and with little appreciation for, or understanding of, the costs of their education.  Once they incur student loan debts, they turn to the State to bail them out through “loan forgiveness” programs based on “civil” or “public” service.  The predatory State thereby ensures and expands its power by making perpetual, infantilized dependents of the youth, who in turn pass along the inculcated values of Statism to the next generation.

Only in the hands of the central planners, those elite missionaries for Statism, could this massive, bureaucratic deformation and ideological transformation come about.  “[T]he modern welfare state,” Dr. Paul says on this score, “is premised on the view that individuals are not fully responsible for their actions, and therefore they do not deserve extensive liberty.”  He adds that the “welfare state winds up treating adults as if they were children,” for just as “children are not granted a great deal of liberty of action by their parents, so the modern welfare state constantly expands its authority over the lives of individuals.”  The more massive and more paternalistic the government education system becomes, the less mature the students become, and the further behind they fall in their competition with students of other nations.

By contrast, Dr. Paul proclaims, “[l]iberty is inescapably associated with responsibility.”  Therefore, he reasons, “as individuals mature, they must accept greater personal responsibility for their actions.”  Indeed, “there can be no extension of liberty without an accompanying extension of personal responsibility.”  If modernity taught us anything, it was that the “most meaningful way to improve the world is to free up the creativity of individuals.”  Too often our textbooks depict the history of Western Civilization as progressing in intelligence and creativity when humans were liberated from the constraints of the church—Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: How the World Became Modern comes to mind, although it isn’t a textbook—but something quite different is the case: the sciences and the arts flourish when they are disentangled from State interference.  Even the most memorable and talented preachers, saints, and theologians thrived when the church was liberated from the corruption and oversight of government. 
  
If Dr. Paul had limited his commentary in this book to the descriptive—that is, to the cataloguing and categorizing of failures in the government education system—then readers would be in for a gloomy account.  Yet he recommends exciting, profound alternatives to Statist education and advocates for rigorous leadership training “grounded in a system of cause and effect that rewards productivity, as assessed by consumers, and [that] promotes voluntary transactions and institutions.”  He urges readers to support homeschooling, an increased role for Web-based technologies in the classroom, rivaling education systems in which parents choose to place their children, the restoration of family-based practices and curricula, and drastic cost-cutting or more localized funding to finance measures in keeping with community values.

No longer should parents be forced to subsidize a flawed educational system that seeks to undermine family values and capitalism that together have done more than anything else to elevate the quality of life among all classes in all places, alleviate poverty, generate innovation and creativity, develop the humanities, facilitate wider access to basic healthcare and medicine, and expand general human happiness.  This book, in conjunction with the Ron Paul Curriculum, redirects us to the family and capitalism and attempts to correct decades of educational regression.  As the proverb says, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he should not depart from it.”  The School Revolution offers the children a direction in which they should go.  Now let us train them.

A WELCOME US/SAUDI RESET

Last week it was reported that Saudi Arabia decided to make a “major shift” away from its 80 years of close cooperation with the United States. The Saudi leadership is angry that the Obama administration did not attack Syria last month, and that it has not delivered heavy weapons to the Syrian rebels fighting to overthrow the Assad government. Saudi Arabia is heavily invested in the overthrow of the Assad government in Syria, sending money and weapons to the rebels.

However, it was the recent diplomatic opening between the United States and Iran that most infuriated the Saudis. Saudi Arabia is strongly opposed to the Iranian government and has vigorously lobbied the US Congress to maintain sanctions and other pressure on Iran. Like Israel, the Saudis are fearful of any US diplomacy with Iran.

This additional strain in US/Saudi relations came at the 40 year anniversary of the Arab oil embargo of the US over its support of Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. At the time, the embargo caused quite a bit of trouble for Americans, including gas shortages and long lines at the filling stations. A repeat of this move, however, would not have the same effect on the US economy. Though it would not be desired, these are not the 1970s and oil is now a more fungible commodity no longer solely in Arab hands.

Why does Saudi Arabia insist that the United States fight its battles? The Saudis are strongly opposed to the governments in Syria and Iran so they expect the US to attack. It is their neighborhood, why don’t they fight their own wars? Israel shares the same position in the region as Saudi Arabia: it has been fighting to overthrow Assad in Syria for years, and Israeli leadership constantly pushes the US toward war on Iran. They are both working on the same side of these issues but why do they keep trying to draw us in?

We have unwritten agreements to defend Saudi Arabia and Israel, which keeps us heavily involved militarily in the Middle East. But when the US becomes so involved, we are the real losers—especially the American taxpayers, who are forced to finance this global military empire. Plus, our security guarantee to Saudi Arabia and Israel creates a kind of moral hazard: there is little incentive for these two countries to push for more peaceful solutions in the region because the US military underwrites their reckless behavior. It is an unhealthy relationship that should come to an end.

If Saudi Arabia and Israel are so determined to extend their influence in the region and share such similar goals, why don’t they work together to stabilize the region without calling on the US for back-up? It might be healthy for them to cooperate and leave us out of it.

One of Osama bin Laden’s stated goals was to bankrupt the US by drawing it into endless battles in the Middle East and south Asia. Unfortunately, even from beyond the grave he continues to successfully implement his policy. But should we really be helping him do so? If Saudi Arabia wants to pull back from its deep and unhealthy relationship with the United States we should welcome such a move. Then we might return to peace and commerce rather than sink under entangling alliances.

DEBT CEILING DEAL: D.C. WINS, AMERICANS LOSE by RON PAUL

Washington, DC, Wall Street, and central bankers around the world rejoiced this week as Congress came to an agreement to end the government shutdown and lift the debt ceiling. The latest spending-and-debt deal was negotiated by Congressional leaders behind closed doors, and was rushed through Congress before most members had time to read it. Now that the bill is passed, we can see that it is a victory for the political class and special interests, but a defeat for the American people.

The debt ceiling deal increases spending above the levels set by the “sequester.” The sequester cuts were minuscule, and in many cases used the old DC trick of calling reductions in planned spending increases a cut. But even minuscule and phony cuts are unacceptable to the bipartisan welfare-warfare spending collation. The bill also does nothing to protect the American people from the Obamacare disaster.

As is common in bills drafted in secret and rushed into law, this bill contains special deals for certain powerful politicians. The bill even has a provision authorizing continued military aid to opponents of the Ugandan “Lord’s Resistance Army,” which was the subject of the widely-viewed “Kony 2012” YouTube videos.
Most of these unrelated provisions did not come to public attention until after the bill was passed and signed into law.

Members of Congress and the public were told the debt ceiling increase was necessary to prevent a government default and an economic crisis. This manufactured fear supposedly justified voting on legislation without allowing members time to even read it, much less to remove the special deals or even debate the wisdom of intervening in overseas military conflicts because of a YouTube video.

Congress should have ignored the hysterics. A failure to increase government’s borrowing authority would not lead to a default any more that an individual's failure to get a credit card limit increase in would mean they would have to declare bankruptcy. Instead, the failure of either an individual or a government to obtain new borrowing authority would force the individual or the government to live within their means, and may even force them to finally reduce their spending. Most people would say it is irresponsible to give a spendthrift, debit-ridden individual a credit increase. Why then is it responsible to give an irresponsible spendthrift government an increase in borrowing authority?

Congress surrendered more power to the president in this bill. Instead of setting a new debt ceiling, it simply “suspended” the debt ceiling until February. This gives the administration a blank check to run up as much debt as it pleases from now until February 7th. Congress can “disapprove” the debt ceiling suspension, but only if it passes a resolution of disapproval by a two-thirds majority. How long before Congress totally abdicates its constitutional authority over spending by allowing the Treasury permanent and unlimited authority to borrow money without seeking Congressional approval?

Instead of seriously addressing the spending crisis, most in Congress would rather engage in last-minute brinksmanship and backroom deals instead of taking the necessary action to reign in spending. Congress will only take serious steps to reduce spending when either a critical mass of Americans pressures it to cut spending, or when investors and foreign countries stop buying US government debt. Hopefully, those of us who understand sound economics can convince enough of our fellow citizens to pressure Congress to make serious spending cuts before Congress’s reckless actions cause a total economic collapse.

WHAT I THINK........JON RAPPORT

From a certain angle, history could be called the sum of succeeding limited solutions to basic problems. The result is a pile and a mess, which appears to have no exit, except more limited solutions.

On and on it goes.

You hear people say, “WELL, UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES, the only thing we can do now is X.”
In other words, things are so far gone, so muddled, there can be no going back to the original basic problem. There can be no working on the basic problem. The basic problem is buried so deep, it can’t be retrieved and resolved.

Imagine a nation whose people, over the course of a few hundred years, have undergone a vast reduction in intelligence. At this point, a small group asserts, “If we few, who have somehow retained our IQ, want to communicate with these morons, we’ll have to deploy horrifically simplified language and ideas. We’ll have to bring them, one tiny step at a time, toward an even rudimentary consciousness about life, current affairs, and situations that need repair.”

“Only limited solutions will work.”

But this doesn’t pan out. It only serves to make things worse. The morons inevitably pervert these limited solutions and parlay them into more problems. Each glint of light turns into a cloud of darkness.

The history of public relations reveals these developments. Finding simpler and simpler ways to reach audiences, PR people discover they have to resort to more infantile strategies, because the audience is becoming more brain-addled.

No, it turns out that the way to resolve all this is to return to the beginning, where the corruption first took place.

That’s the place where individual freedom, power, imagination, and the desire for uncompromising justice were bent and twisted.

Returning to the beginning works because people never really forget. They try to, they pretend to, but they don’t.

Somewhere down deep, they recall freedom and power and they want it again. Somewhere down deep, they aren’t morons at all.

If you can strike THERE, astonishing things can happen. A tremendous amount of spoilage and degradation and passivity can ignite and burn off.

But this requires faith, and it requires the knowledge that time (opportunity) is endless. There is no deadline, despite all appearances.

This also requires realizing that offering limited solutions geared to severely limited minds accomplishes exactly the opposite of what you want.

There is a further temptation. Often it is the limited solution that has backing, money, significant support, whereas striking at the heart of the problem and addressing it begins to pay dividends with only a whisper of a few people.

Imagine this: In the year 2982, all 600 million Americans are getting their food from Government Central bins. Instead of taking five of these people out to a farm in the wild and showing them food at its source, in nature, emerging from the earth in the rain and sun, you decide the way to go is:
“Let’s try to wean 500 million people away from the packets of ketchup at Central. It’s a start. If we can do that, then we might be able to show them the mayo is a bad idea. And then we can work on revelations about the fries…”

But lo and behold, this doesn’t yield positive results. People don’t seem to care about attacks on ketchup. They yawn and tear open the packets and squeeze the red stuff on their fedburgers.

“Well,” you say, “maybe we aimed too high. Let’s go slower. Let’s reboot and attack aspartame packets for the coffee. You see, people can always resort to sugar. They have an option. Let’s promote sugar, not aspartame…”

But again, nothing. No results.

Whereas, if you said, GOVERNMENT CENTRAL FOOD IS EVIL AND AN ASSAULT ON YOUR FREEDOM, a few people, at first, would wake up to the basic problem. A small spark, but one that travels deep.

Now you’re dealing with the subconscious memory of all 500 million people, where the desire for freedom still lives, where instinctive knowledge of what’s evil still resides.

Despite media attacks on Ron Paul, despite arguments about his credentials, his past record, his “horrendous” potential to steal votes from Republican candidates, when he said LET’S BRING ALL OUR TROOPS HOME FROM AROUND THE WORLD NOW, a hundred thousand people started to wake up that day.

“What are we doing with all those soldiers of ours? Why are they overseas in hundreds of places? What the hell is this? What’s our agenda? BRING THEM HOME. The Constitution specifies military force for direct defense of the United States, that’s all. BRING THEM ALL HOME.”

Paul didn’t say, “I believe we can soon initiate a partial draw down of troops in the area surrounding Kabul, given that our effort to build A-frames and swimming pools in Afghan villages are bearing fruit…”

The method of limited solution is a mirror of what the individual tends to do with his own mind. He looks for potential answers that swim across the surface, answers that appear clever, “in light of what he’s dealing with.”

As opposed to going to the place where his freedom and power live.

RON PAUL INTERVIEW WITH BUZZFEED'S ANDREW KACZYNSKI

Ron Paul doesn’t know what twerking is and he doesn’t care. Neither do his often-young libertarian-minded fans who enjoy his new venture the Ron Paul Channel. The retired congressman who spoke to BuzzFeed Monday was the same Federal Reserve-bashing, anti-government spending Paul as always, but seemed a bit more relaxed now that he’s free from the constant call of Washington.

1. Meet the Ron Paul Channel, Paul’s new grab-bag anything-goes outlet for expressing his views on a routine basis. You can subscribe, for just $9.95 a month.

“I want to have a channel where people can come together, have a take on the news that’d be different from what they can expect from any major network or almost anything they see on TV. Like, this morning I did a commentary on some articles that showed up over the weekend,” Paul told BuzzFeed, before launching into his usual “end the Fed” rhetoric that so many have come to know him for.

“Not exactly what you would hear on the evening news,” says Paul of the expected Fed critique you would see on his channel. “My goal was to talk about economic policy, monetary policy, all the spending, the attack on our civil liberties, and also the foreign policy, which would be not unique entirely but different from what you would see on the television. And people who are seeking more information, and a more truthful approach to the news would get it from our channel.”

2. Paul said he doesn’t know if his high-profile son, Kentucky senator and possible presidential hopeful Rand Paul, watches his channel. Paul said he’s never even asked him.

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve never asked him. He’s so busy. I can’t watch all his YouTubes, because he’s on so many and I have my thing, so, my guess would be he wouldn’t have time to but he was on the channel,” Paul said. “His schedule and mine do not overlap, we sort of keep up, but not on a daily basis.”

3. And Paul’s not worried about opposition researchers digging through his channel to find tidbits to attack his son should Rand decide to run for president. He doesn’t think it could get any worse than what people have already found.

“Couldn’t be any worse than they’ve already done. He’s already vulnerable — you know, it’s a mixed blessing for him because I think any individual who’s been in public life, there’s gross distortions and exaggerations, and they’re out there, and they’ve already been used against him. At the same time, the freedom movement, I’ve been closely associated with it, and there’s a large number of people involved and I was able to help him with fundraising and get him started on the Senate race. So yeah, it has to be mixed, but a lot of politics is that way. You have advantages and disadvantages.”

4. For Paul, leaving Congress has been a time to relax and do the things he didn’t have the time to do as a member of Congress.

“It’s been really quite enjoyable because my time is more my own. I’ve gotten to go to the universities. I’ve been to several universities, and I like talking to young people who are interested in the freedom philosophy as well as Austrian economics. So I’ve traveled. I’ve got a book out on homeschooling. I’ve got the channel started. I do some radio. And it’s just something that is on my time. Also, one of my former staffers helped me get started on a new institute. The Institute for Peace And Prosperity, which concentrates on foreign policy. So my activities have probably been busier. Before, a lot of time consumed but not really accomplishing a whole lot by running back and forth and going at the behest of the speaker. So now I don’t have to do that and have more time to do the things that I enjoy doing.”

5. Paul also said Rand’s done eye exams on him, correcting this reporter, who originally misstated that his son was a previously a dentist.

“Before he was in politics, if my wife and I stopped in to see the family in Kentucky we’d have our eyes checked. It would save me a visit to an ophthalmologist down here because I don’t have any problems, but there’s a history of glaucoma in the family, so it’s best to get the pressures checked. He’s done those examinations on me.”

6. Paul doesn’t have high hopes for Janet Yellen.

 “She’s just more of the same.”

7. He also thinks it’s “fantastic” the neo-conservatives lost on Syria, not to mention that he’s not so sure the rise of the libertarian wing of Republican Party means they’re disappearing — they could just be biding their time until the next conflict.

“They won’t go away quietly, they’re still there. All they need is some excuse and they’ll be back in it if there’s some serious confrontation in the Middle East,” Paul said. “I thought it was just fantastic that the neo-cons lost the public debate about bombing Syria and planning a war for Iran. And now they’re negotiating, making an effort to talk to the Iranians in the first time in all these years. I think it’s fantastic, but the neo-cons definitely have a setback, but I think they’re going to be around for a long time. They’re just looking for another excuse. The 9/11 episode certainly gave them their excuse to do what they’ve been wanting to do all along. They’re the ones who had the Patriot Act sitting around for years, waiting for the opportunity, and they’ve also wanted to remake the Middle East. They’ve done a good job of remaking it, but it turns out it’s a lot worse now than it was before they started. Just think of how many people have been killed and how much money we’ve spent.”
8. And twerking? Paul doesn’t know what it is. He doesn’t care either because he says his viewers and fans care about the big picture, not the little things.

“When I’m totally oblivious to those very important things that people your age love, they don’t hold it against me because they know that the system I’m interested in, freedom of choice and freedom to allow people to have their own social values, they understand that. So I think they get a big charge out of the fact that I’m the last guy in the world that would ever be involved with marijuana and then yet I’m the champion of legalizing drugs. I think it gives that movement some creditability, because I don’t have ulterior motive. My guess is they don’t hold that against me and they think it’s rather neat. But I know a lot more than I did a few years ago.”

9. Glenn Greenwald, Julian Assange, and Jesse Ventura have all been on his channel already. Now he’s eyeing to bring on one of his most famous supporters.

“Maybe someday I will get one of my supporters who donated money to me, Edward Snowden. Maybe he’ll come on the show. Who knows.”

REVISITED INTERVIEW WITH LEW ROCKWELL (PODCAST 356)

ROCKWELL:  Good morning.  This is the Lew Rockwell Show.  And what an honor it is to have as our guest, Dr. Ron Paul.  What do we say about Dr. Paul?  Because I could take up the entire podcast just describing — (laughing) — his qualifications and his achievements and not even begin to go over them.  I’ll just simply say he’s the great leader for liberty and for free markets, Austrian economics, who has influenced millions of people all over the world, young people especially.

So, Ron, it’s great to have you with us.  And I thought we’d get started by talking about your wonderful last column where you discussed the Neo-Cons, the people who seem to want perpetual war, the role of Bill Kristol and similar intellectuals in promoting the warfare state and the empire.

PAUL:  Yeah, Kristol had written this recent article and he was lamenting the fact that the problem with Americans is they get war weary.  Yeah, after 10 years or more –

(LAUGHTER)

– and many, many deaths and hundreds of thousands of people suffering and an epidemic of suicides.  Yeah, and people getting sick and tired of it, and he’s crying about it.  But he goes in and tries to expand on this that we didn’t even end World War II right.  You know, we didn’t fight Vietnam long enough; 60,000 lives lost weren’t enough.  So he goes on and on.  But, hopefully, he’ll lose credibility.  Unfortunately, the Neo-Cons have a lot to say about the war propaganda that gets out and converts the people into a pro-war stance.  But maybe he’s over the top this time.  But I’m not holding my breath because, so often, the American people start off being quite opposed to a war.  I mean, just look at the Iraqi War.  You know, 60% to 70% of the people were opposed to it and then the war propagandists, the Neo-Cons came in and changed that.  Even before World War II, most Americans were opposed to us getting involved until things were orchestrated in a certain way that the people more or less had to join in.

But, no, I think the Neo-Con should lose credibility, which means that he doesn’t want us to ever leave Iraq, ever leave Afghanistan.  He wants us to continue to build up in Syria.  And he’s the kind of guy that’s anxious for us to march on to Iran.  And it’s scary.  I wish the people would wake up.

But I’m sort of subtly optimistic that this will have to end, in a sad sort of way, in one sense, in that this country will be bankrupt and will have to quit.  More of less, how the Soviets had to give up their empire.  So maybe some good can come out of a bit of a financial crisis that will come.  And we have to admit that this financial crisis has been perpetuated and accentuated by the fact that we spend all this money on the military and on all these useless wars.

ROCKWELL:  You know, it’s interesting, the Kristols of earlier times, of course, used to complain about war weariness, too.  But it began much earlier, before the Federal Reserve, because people were simply being taxed.  So they got sick and tired of the high taxes for wars as well as all the other reasons that, of course, they should have been against the wars.  So it’s very difficult for governments to  maintain these long-term wars.  With the coming of the Fed, they can just print up the money for the defense budget.  There’s not even — I mean, I remember when they were going to war against Iraq or whatever, except for you, nobody was raising the question of costs.  I mean, how much was this thing going to cost in addition to the moral and other issues having to do with war?  Because, you know, they just phoned Greenspan and he turned on the printing presses.

PAUL:  That’s what’s so sinister about, you know, the Federal Reserve accommodating the warmongers is that the payment is delayed.  There’s no doubt it’s a benefit to those who want to perpetuate and promote big government, whether it’s for welfare or the warfare.  A direct tax to make people pay for these wars would bring it to a halt a lot sooner.  But it’s very convenient to put it off.  Then nobody knows exactly who the victims are.  Even the victims don’t realize it, you know, that their cost of living is going up.  And then they’re convinced, oh, it’s those rich people, it’s the oil people; they’re gouging us, everybody is gouging us with high prices.  It’s never the government’s fault, nor is it the fault of the mentality that supports these endless wars and endless spending and the printing of money.  So they’re interconnected.

And you know me well enough to know that, when I first started, I talked a lot more about — you know, economics motivated me, you know, during the ’70s and the Bretton Woods and that sort of thing.  But as years went on, I became more and more convinced of the interrelationship with financing these wars, how it’s related to the financial system, not only because of taxes and every penny you spend on militarism comes out of the peoples’ hide here at home, it hurts the economy.  At the same time, the ability to do this and hide the cost I think is what’s been so detrimental to this country.  But it’s all interconnected.

And that’s why I think the philosophy of liberty and the things that we have talked about brings us all together.  Whether it’s personal liberty on how people should run their lives or allowing other countries to solve their own problems, it all comes together once an individual understands what the concept of personal liberty is all about.

ROCKWELL:  And, Ron, don’t you think — or at least it’s certainly my impression that the young people that you’ve attracted to these ideas don’t like the wars.  I mean, they don’t like the Fed and they don’t like other things, too.  They don’t like the wars.  And maybe they’re realizing as you’re explaining it to them that, in addition to everything else wrong, they’re being ripped off.

PAUL:  I think that is the case.  But, you  know, at times, I get praised for doing such and such with young people and all, but one thing that I hope I’ve contributed to and that is get conservatives and limited-government people, Libertarians and people who like the military and supporters of America in general — have been taught that we should not feel guilty about not being pro war.  And I think this is what the propaganda has achieved.   You know, how many times have they accused me of being un-American and unpatriotic and I don’t support the troops and this sort of thing?  But there’s no reason in the world why we can’t feel good about taking this position.  And the young people seem to be very receptive to that.  Their instincts, like the instincts I think of most people initially, is against the war.  Then they’re told, well, if you’re not for the war, you’re not a good person.  And I think if they hear the truth, then they might feel more comfortable.

Sort of like when I discovered Austrian economics.  You know, when I naturally thought free markets were good, I kept hearing the story, well, no, that’s not good; you have to have a fair society; you have to have a little redistribution and all that.  So I was delighted when I came across Mises and Hayek and Rothbard because they were able to explain this to me, that there’s nothing to feel guilty about if you believe in freedom.  And they say, oh, no, you’re just a selfish person and you just want to — you know, you don’t care about other people, this sort of thing.  But I finally came around to the point where if you do have an instinct to care about other people, you ought to care about freedom because that will help the maximum number of people, and the best chance for us to achieve peace and prosperity.

ROCKWELL:  Ron, do you think that the whole drone warfare business — I guess Obama’s and the Pentagon’s plans to have eventually thousands of drone bases all around the world.  Is this the way that they’re attempting to counter the fact that Americans don’t like all the American causalities?  Unfortunately, they tend to care nothing about the foreign casualties.

PAUL:  Yeah.

ROCKWELL:  But they don’t like the American casualties.  And this is a way to — you know, some guy in a basement in Virginia is sending in the drone in Pakistan, he’s not going to get hurt.

PAUL:  No, I think what they’re trying to have is a neat little system that promotes the empire without getting their hands dirty.  But, you know, it’s not going to work because we’re in a different system.  We’re not fighting World War II.  We’re in a fourth-generational warfare time where wars are fought differently.  And they’re fought differently because it’s not going to be against government against government.  So what could warrant, incite a people to rebel against certain individuals than being hit with a drone by somebody who, in many ways, in their eyes, they don’t even have the guts to look at us in the face and — they do it in secret from thousands of miles away.  And when the individuals are killed, when there’s the collateral killings and families are killed, how many tens of thousands if not millions of people are affected like that?  You know, the torture goes on.  The pictures have been there.  And this just, you know, builds up the enemy.  So the sterile wars with the drones will not solve the problems of the Neo-Cons who want this world occupation.  In many ways, it’s just going to bury the issue in the sense that it’s going to be more terrorism and more attacks in this way.  But the world will certainly be less peopled.

And I also predict that all these individuals who run the drones, they will not be — they will not be able to avoid some of the backlash on them.  Like, we have now a suicide epidemic because of people going over and doing wars, that they realize they were killing kids and doing a lot of other things they shouldn’t be doing.  Well, I think the operators of the drones will suffer in a similar way.  I don’t know if there’s any statistics that bear that out yet, but I think eventually, if they’re a human being and they know, well, I did shoot that missile and it killed 10 extra people, you know, it can’t help but eventually bother these people.  And they bury these thoughts into their mind.  They’re told it’s OK.  They’ve been conditioned that war is wonderful and good.  But deep down inside, there’s a conflict.  And I think that’s why people are struggling and they’re suicidal.

ROCKWELL:  Ron, in support of your position, there was a recent item that the drone command, or whatever it’s called within the Pentagon, was assigning chaplains specifically to counsel the drone killers and, of course, to convince them that everything they were doing was perfectly OK.  So obviously, they are having — as you say, if they have consciences, if they’re human beings, they can’t feel good about this, unless you’re, of course, a serial killer and a monster.

PAUL:  You know, they say about 5% — and I don’t know if this is true.  They say about 5% of the people who go into the military are psychopathic, you know, to begin with because, you know, they just like guns and shooting, and it’s excitement and all this.  Most people go in for different reasons.  But if they withstand — if they are exposed to battle and these kinds of conditions of killing, after a while, some theorize that they all become, in a way, psychopathic or, you know, it’s very difficult to handle their emotions.  But I think it’s much more difficult when you’re trying to adjust to an aggressive war, when we’re the aggressors and not the defenders.  I think it would be a lot easier to adapt to some of the horrors of World War II because of Pearl Harbor and this sort of thing; and they adjusted better.  But I think people are starting to realize we don’t have a noble cause over there.  You know, it’s just not noble to send our young people 6,000 miles away.  And quite frankly, I’m convinced some of these young people who didn’t get very far in school and for economic reasons they resort to going into the military — and they probably don’t even know their geography that well, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them end up in some of these countries they’ve probably never heard of or exactly knew what was going on.  And they’re sent over to kill these people.  And then we wonder why there’s a down side to this.

ROCKWELL:  Ron, speaking of down sides, tell us what you think the effects of the whole Cyprus situation is going to be from the standpoint of the banking industry in Europe and, for that matter — and, of course, governments, and governments and banking systems in this country, too?

PAUL:  Well, you know, in a way, it’s hard to take it and say that’s exactly what’s going to happen to us, but something similar to that will happen.  How it evolves, we don’t know.  But in Cyprus, they didn’t do what they did in Iceland.  Iceland allowed a lot of bankruptcies to occur and, evidently, they’re back on their feet again.  So they liquidated debt, which is what should be the goal of the correction.  In Cyprus, you know, there’s a lot of bailouts.  They’re not allowing the real liquidation so it looks like some of the big guys are going to get bailed out.  And the bondholders of the Greek bonds and different things like this, they’ll get the bailout.  But there was still some liquidation of debt and confiscation of wealth.  But my prediction will be, when you’ve worked all that out, it will be unfair.  It’ll be that — just like our bailouts occurred.  There was some liquidation of our debt in ’08 and ’09.  Some people did lose some money.   And it usually was, you know, people that might have had a mortgage and lost their job and they got the bad part of the deal.  And yet, the wealthy were bailed out.

So I think this is going to continue.  I think the pyramid of debt is still huge.  And there’s no stomach for allowing the liquidation of debt to occur.  Politically, it just won’t be acceptable.  It’s always going to be more acceptable to keep the printing presses running.  And as long as the world takes our dollars, we’re going to keep printing them until the trust is lost.  And when that day arrives — nobody knows exactly when.  But I see no foundation to our system.  And each day, like what went on in Iraq, that steadily undermines confidence.  And one day, that’s going to happen worldwide with the dollar, and that’s going to be really bad news for a lot of us.

ROCKWELL:  Well, I thought it was interesting when that European official announced that there would be similar haircuts, as they put it, for big depositors in Italy and Spain.  And then, of course, they’re shocked to find out that people are taking their money out of the banks.  And then he’s backtracking, oh, no, no, no, he didn’t really mean it.  But probably not smart to keep huge amounts of money in a bank account whether you’re an American or a Spaniard or an Italian or anything else.

PAUL:  Yeah, but weren’t there some reports also in Cyprus that a few of the big depositors were tipped off — (laughing) — you know –

ROCKWELL:  Yeah, that’s right.

PAUL:  — a little bit early?

ROCKWELL:  That’s right.

PAUL:  And they got their money out.  That always seems to happen.

But it’s a very, very fragile system.  And anybody who understands Austrian economics understands that permanent prosperity cannot be achieved by inflating a currency and pyramiding debt.  And that once it happens and it quits functioning and producing anything, then you have to clear the market of that.  And you have to get rid of this bad debt so you can start building again.  And that has not been permitted.  I guess the last time that truly has happened on any significant downturn was probably in 1921 here in this country where we allowed the liquidation to occur.  And it wasn’t a prolonged depression.  It’s only been since the Keynesian-type mentality has taken over that has prolonged these depressions and recessions so long.  It’s been going on in Japan.  And they still, right now, believe, well, if we just print more money, you know, it’s going to happen.  But if that were the case, we wouldn’t have to really work for a living.  You know, we could just print dollars and –

(LAUGHTER)

– and export dollars.  So right now, that’s our best export.

ROCKWELL:  Well, Ron Paul, thanks so much for coming on the show today and sharing your wisdom.  And great to hear from you.

PAUL:  Great to talk to you, Lew.

ROCKWELL:  Bye-bye.

PAUL:  Bye.