BLAME THE FEDERAL RESERVE, NOT CHINA, FOR STOCK MARKET CRASH by RON PAUL

Following Monday’s historic stock market downturn, many politicians and so-called economic experts rushed to the microphones to explain why the market crashed and to propose "solutions” to our economic woes. Not surprisingly, most of those commenting not only failed to give the right answers, they failed to ask the right questions.

Many blamed the crash on China’s recent currency devaluation. It is true that the crash was caused by a flawed monetary policy. However, the fault lies not with China’s central bank but with the US Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies distort the economy, creating bubbles, which in turn create a booming stock market and the illusion of widespread prosperity. Inevitably, the bubble bursts, the market crashes, and the economy sinks into a recession.

An increasing number of politicians have acknowledged the flaws in our monetary system. Unfortunately, some members of Congress think the solution is to force the Fed to follow a “rules-based” monetary policy. Forcing the Fed to “follow a rule” does not change the fact that giving a secretive central bank the power to set interest rates is a recipe for economic chaos. Interest rates are the price of money, and, like all prices, they should be set by the market, not by a central bank and certainly not by Congress.

Instead of trying to “fix” the Federal Reserve, Congress should start restoring a free-market monetary system. The first step is to pass the Audit the Fed legislation so the people can finally learn the full truth about the Fed. Congress should also pass legislation ensuring individuals can use alternative currencies free of government harassment.

When bubbles burst and recessions hit, Congress and the Federal Reserve should refrain from trying to “stimulate” the economy via increased spending, corporate bailouts, and inflation. The only way the economy will ever fully recover is if Congress and the Fed allow the recession to run its course.

Of course, Congress and the Fed are unlikely to “just stand there” if the economy further deteriorates. There have already been reports that the Fed will use last week’s crash as an excuse to once again delay raising interest rates. Increased spending and money creation may temporally boost the economy, but eventually they will lead to a collapse in the dollar’s value and an economic crisis more severe than the Great Depression.

Ironically, considering how popular China-bashing has become, China’s large purchase of US Treasury notes has helped the US postpone the day of reckoning. The main reason countries like China are eager to help finance our debt is the dollar’s world reserve currency status. However, there are signs that concerns over the US government’s fiscal irresponsibility and resentment of our foreign policy will cause another currency (or currencies) to replace the dollar as the world reserve currency. If this occurs, the US will face a major dollar crisis.

Congress will not adopt sensible economic policies until the people demand it. Unfortunately, while an ever-increasing number of Americans are embracing Austrian economics, too many Americans still believe they must sacrifice their liberties in order to obtain economic and personal security. This is why many are embracing a charismatic crony capitalist who is peddling a snake oil composed of protectionism, nationalism, and authoritarianism.

Eventually the United States will have to abandon the warfare state, the welfare state, and the fiat money system that fuels leviathan’s growth. Hopefully the change will happen because the ideas of liberty have triumphed, not because a major economic crisis leaves the government with no other choice.

STOCK MARKET CRASH - WHAT DOES IT MEAN? - RON PAUL AND DANIEL McADAMS

WHO TIPPED OFF AL-QAEDA IN SYRIA? - RON PAUL AND DANIEL McADAMS

FOR IMMIGRATION ANSWERS, LOOK TO LIBERTY by RON PAUL

What should be done with the estimated 15 million people living in the United States without the legal right to be here? It seems most politicians and many Americans come down on one or the other extreme. Many Republicans, including Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, have the idea that they can round up 15 million people and ship them back to wherever they came from. Many Democrats, on the other hand, would grant them blanket amnesty, give them citizenship, and make sure as many as possible are fully signed up to the welfare ranks.

Has anyone thought for a moment about how difficult, expensive, disruptive, and dangerous to our civil liberties it would be to turn over every stone in this country to search for someone who might not be here legally? How many billions of dollars would it cost? The government would likely introduce a national identification card in effort to determine who should be here and who should not. The cards would no doubt be equipped with biometric data to transmit to the government information about law-abiding American citizens that they have no right knowing.

But on the other hand, how many billions of dollars per year does it cost to provide federal, state, and local welfare and other benefits to individuals who are not legally in the United States?

The situation seems impossible and it is true there are no easy answers. I have suggested in my book Liberty Defined that some status short of citizenship might be conferred on a case-by-case basis. Perhaps a “green card” with a notation indicating that the person is not eligible for welfare and not permitted to vote in the United States. I don’t think there is any doubt that many who come to this country illegally simply want to work and will take jobs that Americans refuse to take.

The fact is, in a more libertarian society citizenship itself would not be all that highly prized. Immigration could be controlled to a degree using property rights instead of building walls and issuing a national ID card. One very important “right” currently granted by US citizenship is the “right” to all the free stuff from the government. A more libertarian society would likely have a more restrictive immigration policy because entry into the US would not be accompanied by guarantees of free things and most property would be owned privately.

Similarly, the issue of birthright citizenship would be much less difficult if acquiring American citizenship by the fact of being born on US soil did not grant the child the ability to take advantage of the welfare state. Remove the welfare magnet and you will greatly reduce the incentive to give birth here in order to gain citizenship for the baby.

Congress has within its power the authority to clarify the 14th Amendment’s definition of citizenship by making it clear that it does not grant citizenship by birthright. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution is very clear: Congress has the power, “To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States.” This power has been used in the past to clarify birthright citizenship, including for the children of diplomats born on US soil and foreign prisoners who may give birth while in jail. There is no reason Congress cannot provide further clarification of what the 14 Amendment means when it refers to “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.

It is our weak economy, caused to a great degree by the Federal Reserve system and the business cycles it constantly creates, that makes the immigration situation worse for us. Neither extreme position is correct because neither takes this into consideration. A move toward more liberty would be the first step toward a normal immigration policy.

WHEN DOES OPEN IMMIGRATION BECOME AN INVASION? RON PAUL AND DANIEL McADAMS

THE SEAMLESS WEB OF LIBERTY by RON PAUL

Many people think the Internal Revenue Service was violating civil liberties when it harassed tea party groups. After all, the groups were targeted because they wanted to exercise their civil liberty to challenge government policies. However, the specific issue in the IRS case was the groups’ application for tax-exempt status, which seems to be an aspect of economic liberty. In fact, the IRS case demonstrates that there is no meaningful distinction between civil and economic liberties. A true friend of the free society defends both civil and economic liberties.

Many “civil libertarians” who oppose government laws interfering in the personal choices of consenting adults support laws preventing consenting adults from working for below the minimum wage. Other civil libertarians support government programs forcing consenting adults to purchase health insurance. Many liberals who join libertarians in opposing the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping fail to protest Obamacare’s assault on medical privacy. Even worse are those “First Amendment defenders” who cheer on government actions preventing religious individuals from operating their businesses in accord with the teachings of their faith.

The hypocrisy of left-wing civil libertarians is matched by the hypocrisy of many “economic conservatives.” Too many conservatives combine opposition to high taxes and Obamacare with support for authoritarian measures aimed at stopping individuals from engaging in “immoral" behavior. These conservatives do not understand that using force to stop people from engaging in nonviolent activities that some consider immoral is just as wrong as using force to make people purchase health insurance. Obamacare and the drug war both violate individual rights, and neither has any place in a free society.

In a free society, individuals must respect the right of others to make their own choices free from government coercion. However they do not have to approve of those choices. Individuals are free to use peaceful persuasion to stop others from engaging in immoral or destructive behavior. They can also avoid associating with individuals or businesses whose actions they find immoral or simply distasteful.

Many civil and economic libertarians also mistakenly believe that they can defend liberty while supporting an imperialist foreign policy. It is impossible to be a true civil libertarian, or a true fiscal conservative, and support the warfare state.

America’s imperialist foreign policy is the underlying justification for the rise of the modern surveillance state, and the reason Americans cannot board an airplane without being harassed and humiliated by the Transportation Security Administration. The warfare state is also the justification for the government’s greatest infringement on personal liberties: the military draft.

The United States government’s militaristic foreign policy costs taxpayers over $1 trillion a year. The costs of empire are major drivers of the American debt. Yet many of the most fervent opponents of domestic spending oppose even minuscule cuts to the defense budget. The government’s budget will never be balanced until conservatives give up their love affair with the welfare state and military Keynesianism.

Scholars, commentators, and other public figures who defend liberty in some areas and authoritarianism in other areas — or combine a defense of economic or civil liberty with a defense of the warfare state — undermine the case for the liberties they claim to cherish. Restoring the link between economic liberty, civil liberty, and peace is a vital task for those seeking to restore a society of liberty, peace, and prosperity. I examine the link between an interventionist foreign policy and a loss of our civil and economy liberties in my new book Swords into Plowshares.

WHAT I THINK........DAN SANCHEZ

Ron Paul is a man of faith. His faith shines through every page of his new book, Swords into Plowshares: A Life in Wartime and a Future of Peace and Prosperity.

The title itself, based on a Biblical verse, evinces his religious faith, which greatly strengthens his steadfast opposition to war.

But what most pervades the book is Dr. Paul’s faith in humanity: his belief that mankind is naturally inclined to peace and averse to war. He devotes an entire chapter of his book to “Our Peaceful Nature.” And, he gives no credence to platitudes about “the inevitability of war,” largely because of this faith in man’s basically peaceful predisposition.

This is no blind faith, but a thoroughly informed one.

Dr. Paul sees humanity’s true nature bursting through artificial restraints in the many incidents throughout history of soldiers defying their commanders and choosing to show mercy, kindness, and even conviviality toward their fellow men on the other side of the battle lines. For example, he movingly relates the story of “The Christmas Truce.”

“World War I was only a few months old. The hate that automatically grows on both sides as the violence increases was not at a fever pitch on that very special and different Christmas Eve. That growth in hate came later, once it was clear that many of those soldiers on both sides who were involved in the truce that exceptional night were wrong in their belief that the war would end quickly. The dramatic and spontaneous truce that Christmas Eve spawned by the wishes of young German, British, French, and Belgian soldiers reveals the true nature of most human beings forced into wars that have no meaning.” [Emphasis added here and throughout.]

Dr. Paul also sees humanity’s natural revulsion against fratricide in the epidemic of “moral injury” among American veterans. Their devastating psychological problems cannot be fully explained by the terrors of personal combat. The specter of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) will even visit drone pilots in their safe, air-conditioned control rooms, and haunt them at home ever after. As Dr. Paul put it:

“It is now known that the “sterile” nature of this type of killing of innocents does not prevent the problem of PTSD.” (…)

Drone operators do suffer with PTSD and suicidal thoughts in spite of the fact that they are located thousands of miles from their targets. The real guilt of many is not felt immediately, and it can take years for it to end in suicide.”

Dr. Paul tells of the tragic consequences:

“Today, with 22 American military veterans committing suicide each day, it’s impossible to claim any victory from our decades of misadventure in the wars that our leaders have dragged us into. (…) Not being able to morally justify our wars contributes significantly to the suffering of our veterans.”

A major indicator of our peaceful nature is the fact that governments have to work so hard to overcome it in order to wage their wars. Indeed, according to Dr. Paul, government manipulation of the masses is the chief reason why man, in spite of his peaceful and sociable inclination, has been beset by so many wars throughout his history.

Indeed, governments are as predisposed toward war as individuals outside of government are predisposed against it. As Dr. Paul writes:

“By their very nature governments are opposed to peaceful resolution.”

This is because war nourishes the power and prestige of government, as official warmongers are fully aware:

“The authoritarians are mainly concerned with their power. They know well what Randolph Bourne revealed in his essay ‘The State’: ‘War is the health of the State.’”

To overcome their subjects’ natural reluctance to go to war, governments must resort to lying, fear-mongering, and jingoistic propaganda to make them feel direly threatened by a foreign foe. Only after this is accomplished do the people accept that the times are so desperate as to call for war, that most desperate of measures. As Dr. Paul writes:

“Certain conditions must exist for the people to be persuaded to support a war thatchallenges their natural instincts. (…)

The war propagandists must instill fear and get the people to demand that the government make them safe. (…)

For the authoritarians to convince the people that war is necessary to provide safety, the authoritarians present a common enemy whose defeat requires the people to sacrifice respect for their natural right to their lives and liberty. (…)

Though the people are naturally opposed to offensive wars, their support eventually comes as a consequence of the persistent, daily barrage of lies about dangers we face and calls for patriotic loyalty to the warmongering leadership.”

Dr. Paul concludes:

“The common people of all nations have always preferred peace, harmony, and prosperity over war. War propaganda, however, can overwhelm the natural inclination to seek peace.”

Governments tell countless lies to deceive the public into war. Dr. Paul and his Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity debunk such lies in real time every day in columns and on the Ron Paul Liberty Report show.

But in this book, Dr. Paul undercuts all such lesser lies at once and in advance by dismantling the one big lie upon which they depend: the falsehood that war makes us any safer in any case. He shows how, even if all the government’s horror stories about foreign bogeymen were true, war would still do nothing to effectively address those threats or enhance our security. To the contrary, it only endangers us.

Dr. Paul describes how “War is death and suffering,” discusses “The peril of entangling alliances” versus the benefits reaped by “Swiss neutrality,” and once again explains the principle of “Blowback,” as he has done for millions ever since his famous 2007 exchange with Rudolph Giuliani. He warns that, thanks to recent US foreign policy, for many around the world:

“It’s no longer a complaint about the “Ugly American.” Instead the “Ruthless American” is blaming others for acts of terrorism yet engaging constantly in the same.”

In an indictment of President Obama’s allegedly “smarter” and “more targeted” foreign policy, Dr. Paul argues that drone warfare does nothing to alleviate blowback, and if anything exacerbates it. Furthermore, Obama will not be able to tiptoe around blowback with his constant recourse to covert foreign intervention.

“Pretending to keep our hands clean by providing ‘secret’ assistance to various warring factions and limiting our military involvement by using drones will not serve the cause of peace even if such actions are less noticeable and not condemned by the American people. The victims of this policy know exactly where the money and arms come from.”

Dr. Paul relates scholarly work demonstrating that it is foreign occupation, and not religious fervor, that chiefly motivates suicide terrorism. And he argues that economic sanctions are counter-productive, in part because:

“…an opposed nation’s political leaders can often rally domestic support by blaming sanctions for people’s troubles.”

Some warmongers even contend that war not only makes us safer, but richer too. This is the other big lie that Ron Paul dismantles, devoting two whole chapters to explaining how war destroys, and does not create, wealth. He also shows how governments use central banking and unsound money to surreptitiously finance their wars.

Ron Paul warns that America’s rampant and profligate foreign policy, “will become a major contributing factor one day to a financial crisis associated with a national bankruptcy.” But he sees a silver lining in that dark cloud:

“This crisis may provide a historic opportunity to witness the failure of the current system built on bad ideas and to advance a replacement consistent with the cause of liberty.”

But such a rebound could only happen if the educational groundwork has already been laid.

“Yet, educational efforts that appear to yield no policy changes for years on end can set the groundwork for quick changes in times of chaos and distress. Patience, convictions, and vigilance are required.”

Ron Paul does not put forth elections and officeholders as the vehicles for such changes. Far from it, he writes that:

“The people who desire peace and prosperity must accept the fact that government and the politicians never deliver peace or prosperity.”

The heroes Ron Paul recognizes in the short run are not politicians, but educators and whistleblowers. He specifically cites Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.

As for the long run, Ron Paul takes a splendidly radical stand for civil disobedience, calling for an eventual:

…refusal to participate in government crimes through the military and tax system with full realization of the risks of practicing civil disobedience since government will not go away quietly;

==========

“If limiting government power by constitutional restraints doesn’t work, and if trying to influence elections to keep evil people out of office doesn’t work, what is left? Some would argue nothing. But, in reality the people can go on strike and refuse to finance or to fight in wars that have no legitimacy.

==========

“Let the authoritarian politicians do little by themselves plus deny them any funds or bodies with which to fight.”

==========

“Massive peaceful civil disobedience against government-initiated violence cannot be stopped once this “idea whose time has come” spreads worldwide like a giant brushfire.

If the authoritarians continue to abuse power in spite of constitutional and moral limits, the only recourse left is for the people to go on strike and refuse to sanction the wars and thefts. Deny the dictators your money and your bodies. If enough people do this, the time will come when the dictators’ power will dissipate. [NOTE: As he makes clear on his chapter on “dictators,” he means by this term all anti-liberty legislators, bureaucrats, and other office holders.]

Ron Paul closes his book with stirring optimism:

The more this is a worldwide movement the better. It may be radical, and it may have never been tried. Yet, there’s no reason to believe that mankind and civilization cannot advance in our political understanding. It worked in science; there it changed the world. There’s every reason to believe that a philosophy that strips government of all its arbitrary power will provide the world with its best chance for achieving peace and prosperity with AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME.”

Ron Paul’s Swords into Plowshares is a principled yet practical, realistic yet radical, message of peace and hope. For a generation afflicted by an empire that has declared the whole world a battlefield, it is just what the doctor ordered.

It is also a very personal book written from the heart by a plainspoken, but highly learned and deeply moral man. Due not only to his religious convictions, but also his abiding faith in both basic human decency and the power of ideas, he shares the optimism of Isaiah, who prophesied that one day, the people of the world:

“…will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no longer fight against nation, nor train for war anymore.”

REAL EDUCATION REFORM LEAVES THE GOVERNMENT BEHIND by RON PAUL

Among the items awaiting Congress when it returns from its August break is reconciling competing House and Senate bills reauthorizing No Child Left Behind. These bills passed early this spring. Each bill is being marketed as a huge step toward restoring state and local control over education. However, an examination of both bills shows that both provide local schools with only limited relief from a few federal mandates.

The biggest problem with these so-called reform bills is that they do not significantly reduce federal education spending. Congress and the executive branch use the promise of “free” money — which they have taken from the American taxpayer — to convince state and local governments to allow the federal government to control the classrooms. The only way to protect American schoolchildren from schemes like Common Core is to repeal, not replace, the federal Department of Education.

Restoring local control over education would be a good step toward restoring constitutional government. However, simply replacing federal bureaucrats with state, or even local, bureaucrats will not create an education system capable of leaving no child behind.

The key to real education reform is to give parents control over education by giving them control over the education dollar. When parents control the education dollar, schools must be responsive to parental demands that children receive a quality education that meets their unique needs. Therefore, if Congress was serious about improving education, it would defund the warfare-welfare state, which would then allow dramatically reduced taxes. Congress could also end the Federal Reserve, thus freeing middle and working class Americans from the regressive inflation tax.

In order to make parental control meaningful, parents must be able to choose from a variety of education alternatives. Thus, private schools, religious schools, and homeschools must be allowed to compete in a free market without government interference. This would allow parents to choose an appropriate education for their child.

The growing popularity of homeschooling has already created a thriving market in homeschooling curricula. Working with a team of scholars, I have developed my own homeschooling curriculum. My homeschooling curriculum provides students with a rigorous education in history, math, English, foreign languages, and other subjects. The curriculum is designed to benefit both college-bound students and those interested in pursuing other educational or career opportunities.

The curriculum features three tracks: natural science/math, social sciences/humanities, and business. Students may also take courses in personal finance and public speaking. The government and history sections of the curriculum emphasize Austrian economics, libertarian political theory, and the history of liberty. Unlike the curricula in too many government-run schools, my curriculum never sacrifices education quality to ideological indoctrination.

The curriculum is free for students from kindergarten through fifth grade. Families with a student above the fifth grade pay $250 a year, plus $50 per course.

I am offering three special deals to allow parents to see if my curriculum is right for their child. One is an academic boot camp, designed especially for college-bound students. This is a six-week course that should help students raise their grade point average by at least a full point.

The curriculum is also offering special courses in phonics and mathematics for preschoolers. Both courses consist of 40 video-based lessons designed to teach children basic math and reading in two months.

If you are a parent searching for an appropriate homeschool curriculum for your child, please consider enrolling your child in my academic boot camp, my preschool mathematics program, or my preschool phonics program. Go to ronpaulcurriculum.com for more information.

$100 MILLION TO SINK IRAN PEACE EFFORT - RON PAUL AND DANIEL McADAMS

WHAT I THINK.........ROBERT WENZEL

Paul Krugman’s obsession with Ron Paul has not stopped.

In a new post at NYT, he doubles down on his charge that Ron Paul’s warning about price inflation makes him Bernie Madoff-like:

It seems increasingly clear to me that what we’re looking at here has nothing to do with intellectual discourse as we normally understand it. It is, instead, about tribal identities: there’s a certain kind of person who rails against policies that debase the dollar, and that kind of person admires others who do the same no matter how wrong their predictions and disastrous their financial advice. As I said in a brief note on Ron Paul, it’s a form of Madoff-style affinity fraud, even if the perpetrator of the scam believes his own derp.

For the record, Dr. Paul has made clear his warnings about future inflation are based on the theories developed by economists such as Ludwig von Mises,Nobel prize winner F.A. Hayek and Murray Rothbard, who draw link increases in money supply with a tendency toward price inflation.

You can agree, or disagree, with this line of thinking. I happen to agree, but to call such a perspective lacking in intellectual discourse is simply bizarre, More accurately, calling such a theory Madoff-style affinity fraud seems to be lacking a bit on the intellectual discourse front.

POLITICS IS NOT THE PATH TO PRO-LIFE VICTORY by RON PAUL

During my time in Congress, I regularly introduced legislation forbidding organizations that perform abortions from receiving federal funding. The US Government should not force taxpayers to subsidize an activity they believe is murder. Thus, while I was horrified by the recently released videos showing Planned Parenthood officials casually discussing selling the organs of aborted babies, I am glad that the reaction to these videos has renewed efforts to end federal funding of abortion.

My experience in Congress does not leave me optimistic that federal funding of Planned Parenthood will be ended this year, however. This is not just because the current US president is pro-abortion. When I started my efforts to end taxpayer support of abortion, I was shocked to find out how many Republicans, including some self-described “pro-life” leaders, were unsupportive of, and sometimes hostile to, my efforts.

Most pro-life politicians preferred to add language to funding bills prohibiting federal funds from being used for abortions, rather than denying federal funds to abortion providers. This approach does not stop US taxpayers from subsidizing abortions. The reason is that money is fungible. Giving Planned Parenthood $100 to use for non-abortion activities allows it to spend an additional $100 of its non-government funds on abortion.

Foreign interventionists in both parties were particularly hostile to my efforts to eliminate federal funding for international organizations that performed or promoted abortions. This is a foolish policy that gives people around the globe another reason to resent the US government.

Planned Parenthood may have abandoned the explicitly racist and eugenic views of its founder Margaret Sanger, but the majority of its abortion "services" are still provided to lower-income and minority women. Every day nearly 2,000 African-American babies lose their lives to abortion, a rate five times higher than the Caucasian abortion rates.

I support the black lives matter movement. I have long advocated an end to the drug war, police militarization, and other threats to liberty that disproportionately victimize African-Americans. However, I wish some of the black lives matter movement’s passion and energy was directed to ending abortion. Unborn black lives also matter.

The federal government has no constitutional authority to permit, fund, or even outlaw abortion. Therefore, efforts to make abortion a federal crime are just as unconstitutional as efforts to prohibit states from outlawing abortion. A Congress that truly cared about the Constitution would end all federal funding for abortion and pass legislation restricting federal jurisdiction over abortion, thus returning the issue to the states.

While passing legislation may help limit abortion, the pro-life movement will never succeed unless it changes people's attitudes toward the unborn. This is why crisis pregnancy centers, which provide care and compassion to women facing unplanned pregnancies, have done more to advance the pro-life cause then any politician. By showing women they have viable alternatives to abortion, these centers have saved many lives.

One factor hindering the anti-abortion movement's ability to change people’s minds is that too many abortion opponents also support a militaristic foreign policy. These pro-lifers undercut their moral credibility as advocates for unborn American lives when they display a callous indifference to the lives of Iraqi, Iranian, and Afghan children.

Libertarians who support abortion should ask themselves how they can expect a government that does not respect the unborn’s right to life to respect their property rights. Therefore, all those who wish to create a society of liberty, peace, and prosperity should join me in advocating for a consistent ethic of life and liberty that respects the rights of all persons, born and unborn.

WHAT I THINK.........LEW ROCKWELL

Ronald Reagan used to be called the Teflon president, on the grounds that no matter what gaffe or scandal engulfed him, it never stuck: he didn’t suffer in the polls. If Reagan was the Teflon president, the military is America’s Teflon institution. Even people who oppose whatever the current war happens to be can be counted on to “support the troops” and to live by the comforting delusion that whatever aberrations may be evident today, the system itself is basically sound.

To add insult to injury, whenever the US government gears up for yet another military intervention, it’s people who pretend to favor “limited government,” and who pride themselves on not falling for government propaganda, who can be counted on to stand up and salute.

I had the rare honor of serving as Ron Paul’s congressional chief of staff, and observed him in many proud moments in those days, and in his presidential campaigns. But Ron’s new book Swords into Plowshares: A Life in Wartime and a Future of Peace and Prosperity, a plainspoken and relentless case against war that ranks alongside Smedley Butler’s classic War Is a Racket, is possibly the proudest Ron Paul moment of all.

It’s been calculated that over the past 5,000 years there have been 14,000 wars fought, resulting in three and a half billion deaths. In the United States, between 1798 and 2015 there have been 369 uses of military force abroad. We have been conditioned to accept this as normal, or at the very least unavoidable. We are told to stifle any moral qualms we may have about mass killing on the question-begging grounds that, after all, “it’s war.”

Ron, on this as on a wide array of other topics, isn’t prepared to accept the conventional platitudes, and a recurring theme in his book involves speculating on whether, in the same way the human race has advanced so extraordinarily from a technological point of view, we might be capable of a comparable moral advance as well.

There is much in this book for libertarians and indeed all opponents of war to enjoy – for starters, a refutation of the claim that war is “good for the economy,” a discussion of the dangers of “blowback” posed by foreign interventionism, and an overview of the War on Terror from a noninterventionist perspective. But there is a profoundly personal dimension to this book as well, as we follow Ron’s life from his childhood to the present and the evolution of his thought on war. I’ll leave readers to discover these gems for themselves.

Likewise, Ron relates some little-known stories of war. In one, it’s two weeks after D-Day, and Captain Jack Tueller decided to play his trumpet that evening. He was instructed not to do so: his commander explained that a German sniper had still not been captured from the day’s battle. Figuring the sniper was a frightened young man not unlike himself, he played the German song “Lili Marleen.” The sniper surrendered to the Americans the next day.

Before being sent off to prison, the sniper asked to meet the trumpet player. He said, through tears, “When I heard that number that you played I thought about my fiancée in Germany. I thought about my mother and dad and about my brothers and sisters, and I could not fire.”

“He stuck out his hand and I shook the hand of the enemy,” Tueller recalls. “He was no enemy. He was scared and lonely like me.”

Another story takes place just before Christmas 1943. Charlie Brown, a 21-year-old farm boy from West Virginia was on his first combat mission as a pilot when his B-17 was seriously damaged over Germany. With half his crew dead or wounded, he was struggling to get his plane back to England when a German fighter came within three feet of his right wingtip. But Franz Stigler, the German pilot, did not fire. Instead, he simply nodded, pointed, and flew off, allowing Brown to make his way back to England.

Some 46 years later, the two men met again. Brown finally got to ask Stigler why he had been pointing. Stigler replied that he was trying to tell Brown to fly to Sweden, which was closer. But since Brown knew only how to get back to England, that’s where he went.

The two men became close friends, even fishing buddies. Stigler said that saving Brown’s life was the only good thing that came out of the whole war for him.

You won’t be surprised to learn that in addition to human-interest anecdotes like these, Ron spends time in Swords into Plowshares linking central banking and war, one of his perennial themes over the years. It isn’t for nothing that again and again, countries abandoned the gold standard when they went to war.

We rarely pause to consider what that tells us. If they needed to abandon the gold standard to go to war, that means the gold standard was a barrier against war. Of course, the ease with which governments could abandon the gold standard serves to remind us of the need to separate money and state altogether, and that the state cannot be trusted to maintain a sound money standard.

As always, Ron is at his fiery best when he unleashes on the neoconservatives, whose every overseas fiasco becomes a justification for still another fiasco six months later. He invites us to consider a typical remark by neoconservative Michael Ledeen: “Paradoxically, peace increases our peril, by making discipline less urgent, encouraging some of our worst instincts, and depriving us of some of our best leaders.”

Note that it is peace, according to Ledeen, and not war, that encourages our worst instincts. This was the view of Theodore Roosevelt, loved and admired by progressives and neoconservatives alike, who considered prolonged peace a deplorable state that made a people flabby and otiose.

Neocons complain when libertarians describe them as “pro-war” – why, they favor war only as a last resort, they assure us, and only because there are bad people in the world – but how else can we describe the views of Ledeen, who to my knowledge has never been publicly taken to task by any other neocon?

(Perhaps my favorite of Ron’s collection of ghoulish neocon quotations, though, if only for its obliviously Orwellian quality, is George W. Bush’s remark from June 2002: “I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.”)

Meanwhile, the American people have been indoctrinated into a cult of the veteran, whom evangelicals blasphemously compare to Jesus Christ, and whereby everyone is expected to salute, applaud, and offer ostentatious thanks for the veteran’s “service.”

Here, by contrast, is Ron:

“Service” in our military to invade, occupy, and oppress countries in order to extend [the] US Empire must not be glorified as a “heroic” and sacred effort. My five years in the Air Force during the 1960s did not qualify me as any sort of hero. My primary thoughts now about that period of time are: “Why was I so complacent, and why did I so rarely seriously question the wisdom of the Vietnam War?”

Ron calls upon the peoples of the world to resist their governments’ calls to war and to refuse to take part in violent conflict. “If the authoritarians continue to abuse power in spite of constitutional and moral limits,” he writes, “the only recourse left is for the people to go on strike and refuse to sanction the wars and thefts. Deny the dictators your money and your bodies…. The more this is a worldwide movement, the better.”

This is why Ron is such a fan of the song “Universal Soldier,” which he asked singer Aimee Allen to perform at his dramatic Rally for the Republic in 2008. The man who enlists in the military and simply goes along with the prevailing current of opinion is the universal soldier. If he refused to “serve” and to fight, there could be no wars. Even Ron, a flight surgeon who never fired a shot, looks back on his time in the military and asks himself: why did I not resist? Why did I go along?

Needless to say, few among our political class – people who, generally speaking, have rather more to repent of than mild Ron Paul – reflect seriously on their moral choices, or rebuke themselves publicly.

When people read Swords into Plowshares generations from now – and they will – they will marvel that such a man actually served in the US Congress, and defied every campaign of war propaganda right on the House floor. But what’s great about Ron is not just his honesty, but also his constant intellectual growth – with the passage of time he has become an ever-more radical champion of freedom. His evolution is especially plain in this book, as you’ll discover for yourself.

One of the most important things Ron accomplished in public life was to show that it’s possible to oppose war without being a leftist. He likewise explained that a foreign policy of peace and nonintervention was a central, indispensable feature of the message of freedom, and not just an odd personality quirk of Ron Paul – as the many people who said “I like Ron Paul except his foreign policy” seem to have believed.

Bernie Sanders pretends to be antiwar, but as usual with socialists, a closer look shows he doesn’t really mean it. But even if he did, as a socialist he simply wants to point the guns at different targets – the undifferentiated aggregates like “the rich” to whom he urges his followers to direct their uncomprehending hate. Ron, on the other hand, is calling on us to put the guns down, and for peaceful interaction both between nations and among individuals.

It is a position most people had never heard of before 2008, since election campaigns are all about grabbing the machinery of state and pointing its guns at whatever group the eventual victor despises. But Ron captured the imaginations of millions of intelligent young people, whose brains hadn’t yet been deformed by an American political culture designed to deprive them of humane possibilities.

Ron turns 80 this month, and shows no sign of letting up in his life’s work of truth-telling. Wish Ron a happy birthday by joining us for a celebration in Lake Jackson on August 15, and by reading this extraordinary book.