Judging Freedom - SPECIAL - Dr. Ron Paul on US failures in Israel and Ukraine. (RECORDED LIVE)

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

SPECIAL - Dr. Ron Paul on US failures in Israel and Ukraine. (RECORDED LIVE)See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, October 17th, 2023. Former Congressman Ron Paul joins us today. Congressman Paul, who has been my intellectual and ideological mentor for all the many years of our friendship, is the gold standard in American modern political history for limited government, maximum individual liberty, economic prosperity, and peace. And in his 24 years in the House of Representatives, he was the greatest defender of the Constitution in the modern era. Today, he runs the Ron Paul Institute, and he lectures all over the country. Congressman Paul, what a pleasure. Thanks for coming back to the show.

Judge, it's great to be back with you. We haven't done this for a while. I know, and we must do it more frequently, whether it's you here or me on your show, if I can be so bold. Was what happened in Israel two weekends ago when Hamas staged its savage attack, Israel's 9-11? I'm sorry. Oh, okay. We may have had a little break in the communication. Was what happened in Israel with Hamas's attack 10 days ago, is it fairly characterized as Israel's 9-11? Well, I think in some ways it is, but I think it's difficult to mimic everything that came about in 9-11, but there are certainly things that you can compare them to.

I think the reaction is one thing that you can compare them to. I think the reaction is one thing that you can compare it to, how people react. Is it an excuse to go and do more harm, or is it as an excuse to seek out the truth? And I'm sure you remember, Judge, that when I was doing the national campaign, that subject came up, and I said, well, you forgot about one thing, about checking and learning something from 9-11. What were their motives? Why did they do it? And somebody said, well, that's off limits. You're not allowed to ask that. And I said, well, every time there's a murder or a killing, they get suspects, then they have to know what is the motive, what is the excuse before they can go very far. And I think in foreign policy, we don't do that.

We didn't do that from 9-11. And I think in that way, we're doing something very similar with what is going on in uh uh in israel right now in gaza uh they're not really asking and you know i got i got uh you know strongly criticized by uh a host on fox one time somebody that you knew uh very well and i said i brought up the subject. He was after me because I was weak on wanting to be very aggressive, you know, against Iran. And I said, what? I said, do you know what happened in 1953? He said, I don't want to hear anything about history. You know, it has nothing to do with it.

Well, I'm the opposite. I want to know the background, the history, the motivation, because if you'rewrockwell.com, called Hamas's Victory. Can you explain how Hamas has, in your view, achieved in some respect a victory already? What was it trying to accomplish by this savage attack? Well, I don't know what they were doing it on purpose but what happened is stirred up a lot of a lot of animosity it didn't settle anything it got more people to uh join in and become more violent and whose side you're on people to spend more money, and they worked very hard to accomplish that. And, of course, they were looking for the chaos that's coming, and I think they did achieve that.

They didn't achieve the military victory for the Palestinians, but they achieved a victory in the sense that there's been, to me, a bit of a surprise how much animosity has appeared now. We've always known of the indecency of the anti-Semitic attitude, but most of the time it's been sort of held a little bit quiet. But I am amazed how that has has changed and if some of people wanted that they would might might just call that a victory because uh they're enemies the phallus and the israelis are enemies so uh there's a lot of people now sort of joining in and saying uh you know

maybe maybe it's part of this thing Maybe more people are looking at the original causes, you know, of what the animosity is all about. And that, I think, was one of their goals. And unfortunately, I think they've achieved it, which will not be a positive on the long run, other than the fact that people might understand how we get drawn into some of this. And that's, to me, the most important thing is if you find out that country A is doing such and such, and they're at fault, well, what did we do? Oh, we give them money. We do all these things for the various countries that are fighting these wars. And then we say, yeah, but we don't bring body backs anymore. So we're not morally responsible.

We're not responsible to the Constitution. And therefore, we have to just stir up all the animosity and get more enemies fighting on our side against our enemies. You're reminding me of comments made recently by Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, and Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut. It's amazing how these people that agree on nothing agree on war. Both said the same thing. This is the greatest defense spending we have. We're killing Russians, and they're not killing Americans. I guess they forgot about all the Ukrainians being killed. I want to ask you about foreign aid, but before I do, I would like you and the audience to look at a clip of you on the floor of the House of Representatives, arguing against foreign aid to Israel.

I rise in opposition to this resolution, not because I am taking sides and picking who the bad guys are and who the good guys are, but I'm looking at this more from the angle of being a United States citizen, an American. And I think resolutions like this really do us great harm. In many ways, what's happening in the Middle East, and in particular with Gaza right now, we have some moral responsibility for both sides in a way, because we provide help and funding for both Arab nations and Israel. And so we definitely have a moral responsibility, and especially now today, the weapons being used to kill so many Palestinians are American weapons, and American funds essentially are being used for this.

You know, Hamas, if you look at the history, you'll find out that Hamas was encouraged and really started by Israel because they wanted Hamas to counteract Yasser Arafat. So we first indirectly and directly through Israel helped establish Hamas. Then we have election. Then Hamas becomes dominant. So we have to kill him. There's too much blowback. There's a lot of reasons why we should oppose this resolution. It is not in the interest of the United States. There's too much blowback. There's a lot of reasons why we should oppose this resolution. It is not in the interest of the United States. It's not in the interest of Israel either. Eloquent as always and prescient as has often been the case with you. This podcast is sponsored by Talkspace. You know, when you're really stressed or not feeling so the case with you. With Talkspace, you can go online, answer a few questions about your preferences, and be matched with a therapist.

And because you'll meet your therapist online, you don't have to take time off work or arrange childcare. You'll meet on your schedule, wherever you feel most at ease. If you're depressed, stressed, struggling with a relationship, or if you want some counseling for you and your partner, or just need a little extra one-on-one support, Talkspace is here for you. Plus, Talkspace works with most major insurers and most insured members have a zero dollar copay no insurance no problem now get 80 off of your first month with promo code space 80 when you go to talkspace.com match with a licensed therapist today at talkspace.com save 80 with code space 80 at talkspace.com. What is the problem with foreign aid,

aside from the fact that it's not authorized by the Constitution, which the Congress doesn't care about, as we know? Well, there's a lot of reasons. The Constitution is one. There is no authority for it. That should be enough. But with the lack of respect to the Constitution, it's not a surprise.

But we don't follow that. That's what I was told once when I was trying to tell them, if you want to go to war with Iraq, you got to have a declaration of war. And I was instructed by the chairman, we don't do that. That part of the Constitution is anachronistic. Well, that is the case. So we want to have the people pay attention to what's going on. And what was the second half of your question?

I'm sorry. Sure, sure. What harm comes about by all this foreign aid? Yeah, you know, and I got off on a tangent on the Constitution, which I generally do. And it's a moral issue as well. But there's an economic issue, too. And the moral issue is not what we might do to foreigners and killing people and stirring up war. But where does the money come from?

Well, we have to steal it from somebody because we don't have it. There's no money in the bank. So we have to steal it from somebody because we don't have, there's no money in the bank. So we have to steal the money. So, well, we have income tax, but that's not enough. I mean, we have an empire to finance. So we have to get a lot more money. And that's why we had to become the manager of the World Reserve currency after World War II and get hold of that to build our empire. So we don't have any need to worry about collecting all the money we need. We just

print the money. And the system has just unfortunately been beneficial to those who endorsed that idea, but eventually it leads to chaos. But even this whole thing of saying, well, this is an easy way, we don't raise taxes, that and these things, but it is. Inflation is a tax. The tax, unfortunately, is passed on to the poor people the most, the middle class. And what's evident today? I mean, the middle class is getting wiped out, and it distorts the whole economic system. That in itself is a moral issue, the moral issue of where this money goes. And then one thing leads to another, and then it leads to the authority to put on sanctions. Right now, we're arguing about, should we give any money back to the Iranians that we stole from them? And if you say, yeah, give it back to them,

it's theirs, let them deal with it, let us get out of there, you know, that's blasphemy. That can get you into political trouble. But one thing I wondered is why they allowed me to stay in Congress, Judge, after all that time. I thought, you know, I went with the expectation that I wouldn't go get there because they wouldn't vote for my policy. Then I said, if they didn't know how I'm going to vote, I'm surely not going to have it.

So I didn't give my district enough credit to think that they would think these things through and actually not try to get rid of me immediately. So I got to stay a couple of years. Well, you were there for 24 years and much of that time was spent as a thorn in the side of the pro-war, pro-big government, pro-welfare, pro-warfare, pro-military industrial complex, big party, which is 90% of your colleagues in both houses and in both parties. I mean, you and I collaborated on a lot of public events in those days, and you were one of the few,

this was before your son was in the Senate and Thomas Massey was in the House, one of the few willing to point these things out. I mean, take, for example, foreign aid. You alluded to this earlier. We provide foreign aid not only to Israel, but to Israel's enemies. So we're effectively funding both sides of these no-win wars, just like we're funding the war in Ukraine, which without our funding, the country will collapse. We not only fund the war, we fund the government, we operate the health system, we operate, we pay for veterans benefits, we pay for the salaries of the President Zelensky's corrupt employees. And when you argue against this, just like you argued against stealing the six billion that belongs to Iran because it was in a bank that would listen to us,

you are considered blasphemous or traitorous or un-American rather than being considered as someone who wants to, as Jefferson said, chain the government down to the Constitution. I don't know. The latest package here, I want your opinion on this, that President Biden is offering is $28 billion. Now listen to this. It's packaged as one bill. It's aid to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, border wall. Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, border wall. So there's something in there for everybody in an effort to borrow $28 billion from the Chinese and then print the cash to pay the interest on it? That's a mess. They can do things like that because they don't start

with a moral principle of what is right and what is wrong. Whatever you can get away with is it. If the big money and the special interest uh make a lot of profit that that doesn't bother them either uh but the the whole thing about the the ukraine the ukrainians they they uh they get this money from us and uh we have to borrow it from somebody else to give it to the Ukrainians. It's almost insane. You know, it's so foolish that people put up with this. But I think what they do is if they can tide it over, they have short memories.

If I can just get my food stamps for tomorrow, but the food stamps today that they're talking about are the food stamps that they want to add on to the owners of the empire. They want their food stamp banked full all the time. So just get it passed and make any excuse whatsoever. And so they approach it from a different viewpoint than I know you will and that I will, that you have to start with a moral principle. You know, and I love the way, Judge, that you've always emphasized a higher natural law, because without this, you know, they have no beliefs.

And it's difficult when they find this excuse that they don't have to explain it by a moral principle. Then it's who's the most aggressive? Who's the most powerful? Who's the most greedy? And it ends up with a bad world scene. And that's been there, of course, for thousands of years, that principle. But there are times when people recognize it. And the one thing, the more they recognize this whole principle of natural law, the more likely there will be peace and prosperity in those areas that endorse those principles. Well, the government, of course, hates the natural law because the government thinks that it is the source of our rights rather than our humanity being the source of our rights.

But here's President Biden manifesting no principle whatsoever, arguing on 60 Minutes that we can fight two wars at once. Cut three, Chris. His only principle is power. Are the wars in Israel and Ukraine more than the United States can take on at the same time? We're the United States of America, for God's sake. The most powerful nation in the history, not in the world, in the history of the world. The history of the world. We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense. He forgot that the last war we won was World War II. I don't know what he's talking about,

the most powerful country in the world. Vietnam, disaster, defeat. Afghanistan, disaster, defeat. Iraq, disaster, defeat. Cost trillions in dollars and millions in lives lost. I'll let you take it from there. You worked with this guy, I think, when you were in the House and he was in the Senate. Yeah. You know, while I was listening to Biden, this whole thing, who's the most powerful and most wonderful, and we are the powerhouse.

We're at the epitome of our empire. Of course, you know, I work on the assumption that if they don't develop decent, reasonable moral law, the empire ends. And I think that's a sign that maybe today that we're seeing that happening. But he said that we're the most powerful ever. Well, I happen to think ideas are the most powerful thing. And I like I love the statement that ideas have consequences. Good ideas have good consequences and good ideas cannot be stopped even by armies. And that's why I think you stick to your guns and you keep finding ways to spread this message. And it gives me motivation to do it, understanding that I don't have to learn how to shoot guns.

When I was thinking about medical school, one of the things, when I was thinking about my education, I thought, well, one thing is, because I remember World War II and all the other wars, that I didn't want to, I couldn't shoot and kill people. So I didn't want to. I said, and I know I'm going to be drafted. And I'm going to go into the medical care and that I think I can survive with, you know, being able to take care of somebody. But that's, people don't realize the benefits and the ability to ideas to spread and you never have to worry about how it happened you know the founders use the you know pamphlets and today we have other ways some of us get on radio and television and and other things but the messages change and even even i think it was great the way the people in america

basically and a large number got sick and tired of lockdown you know with covet you know finally the parents of kids and others went to board meetings a school board and that's the attack on the uh educational system is still there but we still have a lot of problems but and to me i think that's why you have to work in the area of ideas thinking that is a and i don't like to use power i like to say influence i don't want power but i would mind saying well you've had a lot of influence in a positive way. That would be nice to be heard. But no, they say that, no, we have to be powerful and we have to have more nukes than they have. That's sort of not my thing to talk about. Congressman Paul, as feisty, as influential,

and as filled with ideas as ever. Thank you so much for joining us. I hope we can do it again soon. Great to be with you, Judge. Of course, of course. Thank you, my dear friend and mentor over all these years. Coming up later today, Matthew Ho at 2 o'clock Eastern. How difficult will it be for the Israeli army once they enter Gaza and engage in something for which they've never been trained called guerrilla warfare. And at four o'clock this afternoon, Scott Ritter himself. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.