Judging Freedom - Why we Must Abolish the FBI, Dr. Ron Paul

Episode Date: January 6, 2023

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He is, of course, the gold standard in libertarian thinking and libertarian activism in the modern era, former Congressman and Dr. Ron Paul himself. Ron, it's a pleasure. Welcome back to the show. A belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and to your family. Well, thank you very much. This is a real honor to be on your show again. Thank you. In my career, I talked with you back then and we've been talking ever since. Yes. I sure hope we're doing good work out there. I know

you are. Well, between the two of us and a lot of our colleagues like Tom Woods and Austin Peterson, we are getting the message out to a lot of people who are very interested in the dangers of too much government. So let's start with the dangers of the Federal Reserve. I'm going to unleash you. What is your opinion of what the Federal Reserve has been doing to interest rates in the past six months? problems that we have because the incentive is that uh the things that people the government the welfare Warfare State nothing would happen if you didn't monetize the debt and have a Fiat standard of money and yet even though more and more people are thinking this way and talking about it it's been very frustrating to know that our universities, our high school classes, you know, nobody's going to be taught that. But fortunately, and you've done so much education outside of those circles, you know, with the Mesa Institute and others, and there's a lot of young group, young Americans for

Liberty and all the work you've done, that I believe our audience is getting bigger. So some days, you know, it's a little difficult to say, well, everything's going to be okay, which I don't say. Everything is going to be okay if we do the right things, and these are the right things. So I think that the Federal Reserve is, it fascinates me. I started reading Austrian economics and paying attention probably in the 60s when they started talking about five or six years before Bretton Woods broke down,

the Austrian free market economists made predictions. They said, this system isn't going to work. Well, I perked up. What are they talking about? What are they doing? So looking into that, and then the confirmation came, of course, on August 15th, 1971. That was a big event. And I think for decades, nobody ever

mentioned the date. Have you noticed, Judge, that they mention it more than ever because they know something big has happened and something big is still happening in our monetary system. And of course, on August 15th, 1971, you're talking about one of the worst things that a modern president ever did, which was President Nixon on his own. This wasn't any legislation. And in fairness, it wasn't even the Fed closed the gold window. And he concluded what FDR began back in 1933, which was the total separation of American dollars by being backed by any type of a commodity whatsoever. Your former colleagues in the Congress, emphasis former, there are probably just a few there that would agree with you.

Thomas Massey comes to mind, enacted the most insane piece of legislation. It's hard to say which is the most insane piece of legislation. It's hard to say which is the most insane. You're talking about money. They call it the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. And of course, it spent a trillion dollars. It created the trillion dollars out of nowhere. What kind of a mentality does this other than one that thinks we're stupid? Well, it's a mass conditioning of the people because the people want bipartisanship. We want you guys to get along together. We want you to solve problems and don't stand around just talking past legislation, past legislation. And it's not an easy thing to sell. But I say, no, we have too

much bipartisanship because, you know, it's pretty bipartisan about spending money and running up deficits. Do you think the Republicans have a very good record when they have a little bit of clout in the executive branch and the congressional branch? Do they really cut back? No, it's it's bipartisan. And therefore that nothing really changes. And some people have they have to pretend of that being the same. But then, you know, there's a shift also that I'm sure you've noticed. It's interesting because it used to be in the 60s, the anti-war people were progressive liberal Democrats. Then there was a period of time that when I was in Congress, I liked it because we could talk to them and work with some of them. And I remember in the cities, Kucinich and others. But now the Republicans were becoming pro-war and

so are the progressives. So it's a tough thing to say, but they couldn't do it if they didn't have a Federal Reserve that print the money and take care of the debt. You know, when I was an undergraduate at Princeton from 68 to 72, I had a crew cut and I wore a t-shirt that said, Bomb Hanoi. And of course, the guys with the long hairs were the ones protesting the draft and protesting the war. Today, of course, I'd be 110% dissidents who are trying to rein in government,

or would you vote for Kevin McCarthy just to get it over with so the Congress could get on with its work? Judge, you always can figure out how to ask a hard question. You taught me. You know that's a trick question, don't you i i guess from my history and some of my beliefs i would probably quietly say nothing i wouldn't have any fanfare i would go about my business of trying to convince people that both sides are off uh off this beam and and that the speakership is not very relevant. The Congress is not relevant. It's all outside that. It's the deep state, it's the Federal Reserve, it's the people who locked down our schools and executive orders and all this thing is totally out of control. But I generally over the years, I did not like making the individual, the personality,

the issue. So I didn't want to participate. I didn't want to be a supporter for Bain or anything else. But generally, that wasn't my fight. That is not where, and some people are better at that. And I just didn't like it. I didn't think it solved the problems. I wanted to talk about the issues and if I had the chance, I would probably try to pester them with a lot of questions because if they want to be the speaker, I want to know where they stand on the issues but I think I would have leaned toward not just blowing up the place even though I'm about this far away from anarchism. I got to tell this story about, I think it was the second time we met.

The first time we met was a speech I was given, hosted by Jay Kornberger. And you were there in the audience. And I was just stunned because I was such a fan of yours. And I didn't know you were going to be there. And I introduced you as the Thomas Jefferson of our day. And it began a lifelong friendship. But the second time we met, I'm sure you remember this, you invited me to your office in the House of Representatives. Now, you may remember that I spent my sophomore year in high school at the Capital School for Pages,

and I was a page in the House of Representatives. And I knew the offices, I knew the tunnels, I knew the buildings. And I came to your office and I said, Ron, this is a glorified broom closet. And he goes, well, the offices are given out by the leadership. And this is what happens when you defy the leadership, as I do almost every day. So I think you'd be defying the leadership if you were on the floor of the house, but I won't push you too aggressively on that. You mentioned the deep state. You had a great piece the other day, and of course I've been writing about the FBI, which has become really a domestic surveillance entity. Your piece was a little different. I mean, your piece argued that the FBI practically turned Twitter into a subsidiary of itself. How dangerous is the modern FBI? Well, I think it's very dangerous. And somebody pulled up something

that I had forgotten about. I think it was in 1988. I gave a speech or an interview. You need to get rid of the FBI. They're up to no good and uh no it there's no place for that in a republic and the cia no place for it and uh yet there there's a lot of criticism coming from the republicans right now but uh it's still they're not at the point where they'd be willing to to get rid of it but uh i just don't think we would be less free if we didn't have the FBI. But the FBI does not protect us. It destroys our liberty. It's a horror. And I think that we need to call attention to it. And besides, the First Amendment is key because if we lose that, which we are, our battle, which we describe as intellectual and philosophic ideas, speaking out, and now just think of the medical profession, which I

identified strongly with all the abuse that the people who wanted to, you know, speak out about the truth of COVID. You know, what was so amazing was that the doctors were taught, I was taught in medical school, debate is what you want. You want doctors discussing it, discussing with your patients and all these things. And they want to eliminate it. They want to make a criminal out of you. And that came from something very early on that was recognized by the libertarians, and that is the takeover of medical care. And that's the first time it started was just the introduction of a third party payment. Well, I mean, you know better than I,

and probably better than almost anyone in the country, the dangers of the federal takeover of medicine and how unhappy medical students are today because becoming a physician is not the joy of healing as it was when you became a physician. It's now the unhappiness of dealing with federal regulations, regulation on top of regulation on top of regulation. I just want to get back to the FBI for a minute. I really think that this is going to explode. And I don't know which way it's going to explode because this stuff happened under Donald Trump. I can't imagine that he knew about this because the same elements in the FBI, which were telling Twitter what speech to suppress

and telling Facebook what speech to advance, was the same FBI that was tormenting him. And all of this happened under Jim Comey, whom he didn't appoint and fired, and under Chris Wray, whom he did appoint. Chris Wray has a lot to answer for when your former colleague Jim Jordan becomes the chair of the House Judiciary Committee and they begin investigating just what the devil the FBI was up to, how America becomes safe, how they were protecting our liberties by intimidating social media and suppressing people's free speech. I can't even imagine what explanation they could give for that. Judge, you've written a lot of books, and I write a few pamphlets. You've complimented me because you're just a nice guy, but I write a little bit, and I'm working on a little project now,

I call it the surreptitious coup, and think there was a coup starting especially it accelerated with the kennedy assassination and this is it's it's out there there is no government there has it's all secret and you know whether you have uh you know what what was going on. But fortunately, we should say, yes, but lately, we found out a little bit more about the FBI. And this is very, very good. And that's why your writings are so important, because that reveals to the people with intellectual credibility and the books that you've written, that this is a serious problem. When I left Congress, in a way, I didn't jump up and down. But my answer was, you know, for my efforts, the most important thing I have is the First Amendment, you know, because I know the Second Amendment is important and the Fourth Amendment is important and all this.

And I said, but we need to have an ability to speak out. And that's why it's so disgusting for this cancel evidence. We'll cancel you. And they'll blackmail people. They'll take your job away and people's reputation. But it's coming around. There's a little bit of change now. So there's a little encouragement there. But that has to come from an intellectual revolution. You've been part of that for a long time. And that's why I still hold out hope that we can move in that direction. Because people say, what can you do? What can you do?

I say, if you don't know what to do, why don't you just start and read the Constitution? Good place to start. The Constitution does not let the president send American troops and American military hardware wherever he wants. Congress has authorized him to send over $100 billion in cash and military hardware to Ukraine. Congress has not declared war. Congress may have us on the verge of World War III. I don't know. What do we do about the creeping American involvement in Ukraine, Congressman Paul?

Well, I think we have to continue to do what we're doing. And I think there has been a shift. You know, I imagine there's more Republican constitutionalists in that smaller group compared to a few years ago, but it's still very small. But they have to get the ammunition. Now, there's going to be a major crisis come where it's going to go one way or the other. The last time they had a problem picking a speech, a speaker was right before the Civil War. And I imagine they were talking about the conflicts that were going on back then. But this is something that we have to have an ability to change people's minds. Otherwise, nothing will happen. It can't happen. But we're really in a mess the way we are. But I think there is a change.

But I don't think it's going to come. It's going to come under much more dire circumstances. We're going to have a collision course. We'll have a collision, you know, financially. The paper money and the debt, these trillions and trillions of dollars. A lot of people know about it. I had one constituent tell me years ago, he says, Ron, I don't know. He says, I really agree with all your votes,

but I think you should be up there getting our part before it falls apart. You know, that attitude probably exists. He was just more honest with me. You know, the chamber of commerce type people, a lot of things are like that. I want to show you a quote from President Macron of France. This is on New Year's Eve. France will continue to help Ukraine without fail. And until victory itself, we will build a just and durable peace, count on France and count on Europe. Now, normally it wouldn't trouble me what the president of France says, but I don't think he would have said that without having run it past his colleagues in NATO and

especially past the people around Joe Biden. That's what terrifies me. That might be, in my view, this is the fear that I have, Congressman Paul, the tip of the iceberg of American involvement. Stated differently, is the president of France saying what Joe Biden wants him to say? And if so, how dangerous is that? You know, it's very, very dangerous. And I think what I just mentioned is the real challenge. The foundations have been ruined morally and financially, and there is going to be a major major adjustment for that and the big question is is can we educate enough people that will influence the recovery and uh

i i sort of think that uh the recovery after the civil war uh there was enough knowledge about the Constitution that things did pretty well for several decades. But I don't think that can happen now. You see, I sort of like, yeah, people say, did anybody ever go back on the gold standard? Well, at the beginning of our history, we did, but we did it after the Civil War, the Restoration Act. I said, so it can happen. I said, but not under today's circumstances. So, and that's why, you know, what I do on the economic education and the political stuff, I also recognize that people should know how to survive. The people who want to come to me and say, do this and this and this on investment. I said, yeah, that's good. I, you know, buy, I buy metals and have a little property and that kind of stuff.

You should do that. But there's only one investment that's worth very much. And that's investing in the cause of liberty because you could wipe the slate clean like the market would do, get rid of all the debt, but preserve the liberty. And if you preserve the liberty that means no income tax and no regulations and people say wow that would be pretty neat and

i think that if you did it it would sort of be like 1921 all over again there would be a boom like you've never seen before because uh well we'd be removing this restraint but are you when are we going to take over the the deep state and the militarism and and uh our empire uh you know mary you know it's a patriotic thing to defend the empire well we're not defending the empire we we have saved the lives and to say and produce more peace in the world than any country ever did in the history of mankind and i say yeah but you know there's a few few costs that went into the us our rescue operation nicely put congressman paul you're as energetic and cogent as ever it's always a joy to have you on this show thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you. Great to be with you. Pleasure. Pleasure, my friend. All right. If you're going to be in the New York City metropolitan area in the next month or so, you might want to know that your friendly favorite host of Judging Freedom is doing a one-man show off Broadway called Why Is the Government in My Soup? There's the poster from outside the theater. So it's Monday nights, starting this Monday night,

January 9th at 7.30 in the evening. It's basically a discussion of very similar to what Congressman Paul and I had, where the audience gets to ask me questions. I'm going to go through the Bill of Rights. I'm going to talk about President Trump and his me questions. I'm going to go through the Bill of Rights. I'm going to talk about President Trump and his woes. I'm going to talk about the freedom of speech. I'm going to talk about the deep state. All of this, trying to answer the question about why is the government in my soup? You see how you can get tickets online. It's at Theater 555. If you're local, that's 555 West 42nd Street. I'm doing it six Monday nights in a row. If you're one of my fans, come up and say hello to me afterwards.

Thank you for watching us today. Scott Ritter, this afternoon at 2.30 Eastern, what's the latest on the ground in Ukraine? Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu.