The Tucker Carlson Show - Congressman Ron Paul

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

For a man who correctly predicted most of the big disasters of the last twenty years, Ron Paul is remarkably humble. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It started to dawn on a lot of people, even people who are not paying attention, say six months ago, that the war in Ukraine is a big deal. It's not what they told us it was. It's not good for Ukraine and the people who live in that sad country. And it's not good for the United States or for that matter, for the West. In fact, it's likely to be, in retrospect, a turning point in the history of the West and not for the better. Who could have seen this coming? Who could have known, say, 10 years ago that actually U.S. activity in Ukraine was not an effort to bring freedom to the Ukrainians,

but was actually a massive intel operation designed to draw the United States into war with Russia for reasons that are even now not clear. Who could have seen that? Well, actually, one person did see that 10 years ago, and that person was Ron Paul. But don't take our word for it. Here he is in 2014. I speak more from the perspective of the United States taxpayers, and it doesn't serve our interests. We've already spent $5 billion over the last 10 years trying to pick and choose

the leadership of Ukraine. And then we participated in the overthrow of the Yanukovych government. And this is when this recent stuff really stirred up. But we've been involved too much, and I take a non-interventionist foreign policy position. It's not our business. It doesn't serve anybody's interest. It's part of the same thing that led us into the disaster in the Middle East. A lot of people die. A lot of money is spent. And we're still suffering the consequences of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And there's the threat of the war in Syria. We don't need another threat. The American

taxpayers don't want it, and our government thinks they can get away with, well, I know the people don't want a war yet, but we're going to play games, and we're going to threaten Russia, and we're going to put on sanctions. And they fail to recognize that we have $500 billion of investments in Russia. Russia has $450 billion invested in the West, and all we're doing is trying to stir up more trouble. It makes no sense whatsoever. So it makes a lot of sense for us to mind our own business and let somebody over there solve their own problems. Be honest. Be honest. Were you paying close attention to Ukraine in 2014? We weren't.

Most people weren't. And as a result, this country got dragged, without even knowing it, into one of the pivotal conflicts in modern history to our grave disadvantage. The question is, how did Ron Paul, former congressman from Texas, how did he get that right? How did he know that? Why did he know to pay attention to Ukraine and not just Ukraine, to monetary policy, to the state of our economy, to the state of our country, to the state of the West? How did he know before the rest of us knew?

Maybe because his principles haven't changed in about 60 years. So we thought it would be a good idea to spend a little time with the man himself to allow him a victory lap, a well-deserved victory lap, but also to probe a little bit on how did you see things that nobody else did? So we are honored truly to have former Congressman Ron Paul in studio now. Dr. Paul, thank you very much. Tucker, great to be with you. So I've spoken for you a moment ago, but let me just ask you directly, how in 2014 did you see what so many others, including me, did not, that this was a very big deal, what was happening in Ukraine, and that it might end very badly for us? Sometimes the people who are running the

operation gives you an idea like Victoria Nuland and Jeffrey Syatt. You think, what are those people doing? But they're such an example of bipartisanship. They can work with both of them. And they're the worst kind of warmonger. But all you have to do is you don't have to know all the details. I'm always, I try to be very cautious, you know, especially in economics. Well, there's this and this. And next month, there's going to be such and such happen.

In Austrian economics, we're taught that you don't know exactly when things are happening, but you can see things coming. It's the same way you might be able to see our foreign policy coming if you want to go back and observe what happened at the beginning of the last century with the progressive movement. So the hints are there. I think it's I think to benefit? Who benefits from these bombs being dropped? Who benefits? So I'm very curious. And then I don't try to know everything because I think that timing and elements and all this, but I'm always impressed that there are people awakening. They wake up and they say, you know, this whole thing about audit the Fed, that came out of a speech I gave to University

of Michigan. And that was early in the presidential thing. And it was the crowd, those college kids. And I worry because I'm going to a liberal camp and I don't know what they'll think of me. And they started saying, end the Fed. And they took out Federal Reserve notes, and they were burning Federal Reserve notes. So I figured, somebody's missing the boat, because these kids know a lot more than they're getting credit for. I've changed my mind totally and completely, because there are a lot of bad examples in college.

There's a lot of junk going on out there. Yes. A lot of bad professors. Did. There's a lot of junk going out there. Yes. A lot of bad professors. Did you know that? I've heard that. Yes. A lot of bad professors. So I'm very impressed. Young people have a more open mind and sometimes with a blanket accusation, which I should be cautious with, I'd much rather talk to young people who are curious than the people who belong to the Chamber of Commerce. I agree with you. Because the Chamber of Commerce people symbolizes the lobby. Of course they do. And they have economic interests that prevent them from thinking honestly. I had that experience. I was just saying off air at one of your speeches probably 20 years ago. I'd never seen you speak before, and you went off about the Federal Reserve. And I remember thinking,

what a weird, what an esoteric subject. I knew nothing about it. I thought only crazy people cared. But again, I was completely ignorant about monetary policy at the time. And I was shocked by how much the crowd loved it. They were completely tuned in. They thought it was really important. Why would the average person 20 years ago have a better sense of that than, say, me, who was paid to follow the subject but wasn't? How did people know? I got it from literature. You could read about it. We didn't have an internet. We didn't have the radio or TV giving us good information. But it was out there. For one group that helped me a whole lot was Leonard Reed, the Foundation for Economic Education. I knew him and he was a true believer.

He was a dignified person and very likable. And he talked about process, how you reach people. But he was very, very libertarian in his own way, but he was sort of an intellectual. And he influenced me a lot. So I read everything he did. And he did a lot of literature. But the follow-up of that was, of course, the Mises Institute. And I was part of that. And I think, see, I think they're important people. I know people on TV are really important. Oh, so important. So important.

But there are a lot of people that are important. I think the ideas are the most important. And they come and go. But the ideas make all the difference in the world. I mean, I look at the need for the ideas on how our country camenant, you know, I believe in the remnant, both in a philosophic and a religious sense. somebody there that's going to gather together 10, 12, 15, 200, or 500. They gather together and they talk about the real things that are important. And the remnant, I think, is much bigger than anybody ever realized. And I think when I walked into those stadiums, I don't know how many times I would say, where did these people come from? I was totally amazed. I thought the same thing.

Because I remember my goal was never to be in politics. I had no desire to be in politics, but I wanted to use politics to spread a message of personal liberty. And that was my goal. So that was the whole reason that I got involved and uh evidently there were other people looking for the same thing and uh i was impressed with how many people there were and uh i got to the point where i thought young people basically were being uh ridiculed and made fun of and they still get it and some of them deserve it but they're still young people very good and intellectual and uh and and they you know when i've even back it's been a while since i was a candidate when i would mention the remnant they knew exactly what i was talking about

people who gather together for ideological reasons and And it's nobody looking to be a good lobbyist and all that kind of stuff. And Washington is so bad that somebody said, how did you ever survive it? I said, well, I said, I just, I just, I said that I didn't, I never became an optimist. I never said I'm going to cure the world. I thought the ideas were important and that's what I wanted to do because I was very selfish because I thought it was, it made me feel better talking about something I believed in. Yes.

And then when I saw some kids at Berkeley and other schools getting up and saying, well, liberty is not dead at all. I think it just gets reignited. And I think we're in the early phases of that. But I also believe we have to go through rough, tumble times because the price always has to be paid. The price in a sense, how do you liquidate the debt? We can't walk away from that debt. How do we liquidate the debt? The market will liquidate it. And the way the market liquidates it is what they'll demand is like the person that wants $50 hourly wages.

Yes. You print money. And every time you print money, the value of the dollar goes down. So the value of the debt goes down. Just a theoretical thing. If you double the money supply and prices go up 50%, it doesn't work that way. But if you do that, the real debt goes down. So it's a theft. It's a tax. It's evil.

So you inflate your way out of it. Yeah. And that's what will happen. Because what won't happen is the people are going to get together and all of a sudden said, Ron, you need to go back. Yeah, sure. We need to go back and get more people. We do have some very good people in Congress, but they're pretty lonely, too. They're very lonely. But I think I tell people, you're not going to get 12, 24, 100 new members of Congress. The system is so embedded with bankruptcy and corruption that that's not going to work. But I'm still an optimist because I think where it counts, where the people are studying and understanding, and they were ahead of us, I figured they were

ahead of me because they said, you know, you know, end of Fed, it's fiat money. And so they're well along the way. And it's more available now than ever before, this information. So I always figure that if somebody will listen, I'll talk. But like I said, I in a way do this for sort of selfish reason because I want to do it. I get some benefit, you know, emotional and philosophic benefit by doing it, but never as much as I expected. I mean, I always got more than I ever expected because there's more people out there wanting to change their mind. I mean, I just I still get hundreds and hundreds of letters. The neatest story I get

are young people writing to me that they've started their own organization. And there's a freedom organization. And they're very creative. And at the end of my speeches, I used to talk about, if you're listening and you agree with this, I think you have a higher moral responsibility than somebody that just doesn't know what's going on. Right. You have the responsibility to put it out there. And that I think is a lot of them took me at my word and they have started their own organization. You know, and I think you can't stop it. An idea whose time has come.

Can't be stopped by armies. And I strongly believe that. So ideas are powerful. And I sort of, you know, I didn't ever want a political career because the goal of it, the thing of it is if you want to be chairman of the banking committee you don't you don't bash the fan i've noticed so so then it's uh but but i think every issue we deal with you can look at it the same way whether it's personal liberty uh whether it's the foreign policy uh or whatever or monetary policy so but the the foreign policy is the big deal. Well, so I want to ask you, before I ask you about that, I just want to follow up on one thing you

said. You said you speak to the remnant, and no matter how bad things get, there is always a remnant of people who understand what's going on and who find each other, which I love, and I think it's true. But you said it's not just a political or practical consideration for you, it's also a spiritual principle for you. What did you mean by that? I think my spiritual beliefs, which I don't carry on asleep. I know, but I know they're sincere. I think that that's the same principle, the non-aggression principle. I think more Christians should know about non-aggression. I agree with that. How about people in Congress?

How about what is personally annoying to me are the ones who speak well, are dedicated to the Constitution and freedom and peace, and they go on and on. And yet they're the biggest warmongers ever. They've never voted a nickel against the military and all the complex, but they still call themselves conservative, constitutionalist. Well, the left does that all the time. And Christians. They call themselves Christians. Oh, yeah. They just take that as automatic, too.

But, yes, they would. So you don't see cluster bombs as a Christian principle? I see everything that leads up to even thinking about a Kostler bomb as not Christian. So, no, I don't manage the, you know, how would you handle Ukraine right now? Perfect answer. You know, well, now we have World War III on a doorstep. Every day we try to start another fight with Russia, and then we go on and on. So it's not going to be stopped that way. I think it has to be stopped by people changing their minds. And I think the founders were on the right track. I see something encouraging right now about the

sprouting up of independent statehood, the talk of going on their own. And the founders were pretty good at devising this because, for instance, we could still move from one state to another. Somebody might even want to just leave that place out west and come to Florida or something like that. And I think there's a lot of opportunity. More people are talking about that, too. More people are willing to challenge all this. And if you just get a person to show that you're on the right track. You know, when I gave my longer speeches, and I think you

suffered through one or two of them. Many. So I would do it and I would hit hard on a mess for them. You guys are getting ripped off. And look at this. It's all fake. It's all lying and cheating and stealing. And I go maybe average 45 minutes or so. And then I say, but it doesn't have to be that way. And I give them my positive spiel. It's not complicated. Don't hurt people. Don't kill people. Don't steal from people.

And there's going to be more peace and prosperity than ever. So I would go to this with a great deal of sincerity. And afterwards, so often, young people would come up to me and say, you know, Ron, what I really like about you, you're such an optimist. But I couldn't quite figure that out. Well, 45 minutes was, I was telling you the end of the world's coming, theoretically. So they say, yeah, but I think what happens is they, I think people are starved for the truth. I think you understand providing truth. Yes.

And they're starving for the truth. And then they say when they get this, they know that things can get better, that there is an answer, there is positive. So there's a benefit. And I use the analogy sometime in medicine. If you have a very, very sick patient, comes down with a very, very bad diagnosis, you don't go in and say, oh, so sorry, you have this cancer two weeks ago yet. You don't do that. You know, that would be insane. Of course, what they do is they say they've been struggling for a while and they don't

have a diagnosis and they're terrified. And somebody goes in and says, this is what you have and explain it to them. And there are options. And some of them are, you know, give people hope. And once they got that, they forgot about all the, they didn't want to hear about how sick you are and how sick the economy is. What they want to do is hear the side, we know that's bad, you convinced us, but what do you do about it? And that's where it's real easy for me to talk about monetary policy. Don't be a counterfeiter. This is fraud. The founders hated it. It's illegal. The Constitution says only gold and

silver can be legal tender. And here, guess what? 1930, 34, when Roosevelt made gold illegal. Yes. I was told as I was growing up in those years that there's only two places in the world you can't own gold, United States and the Soviet system. So that perked me up. So why do they do those things? And it isn't hard for people to understand counterfeit. And the other thing is, it's not hard for people to understand taxation. It's a tax. It's a vicious tax. It's a tax on the poor and the middle class. And it enhances war. It enhances all this welfarism. They take money like this. Sometimes they give it away to illegal immigrants. Anything they want to do, they use this money issue. But if you can't print the

money, it's all different in the world. It's honesty. And the message, the people that I came across are very attracted to it. I think they want the truth. And I think you've already recognized that. This episode is brought to you by Square. You're not just running a restaurant. You're building something big. And Square's there for all of it. Giving your customers more ways to order. Whether that's in person with Square Kiosk or online.

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Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC Optimum points on your first five orders. Shop now at nofrills.ca. So what does the average person do if what you have predicted comes true? And I think it likely will, that there's no way to get out of the debt, no way to liquidate it except through inflation, hyperinflation? How do you protect your family? What practical steps do you take? You have that obligation, and everybody does it a different way. Anywhere by endorsing the

Second Amendment or practicing the First Amendment, I consider the First Amendment key, because if we can't talk and get our message out, it's a lost cause. Yes. But the question I think you're asking is, yeah, but this is a big deal. What's Wall Street going to do? Are they going to collapse? Well, in theory, they don't have to. If we cut the back of their spending and quit printing as much money, you could improve it. But they're not going to do it. So they're going to continue to do it. And I think people should know about how throughout history, even currently, we're in the middle of it, the depreciation of the money and what people can do. See, the data that I list is a real eye-opener for me because I read about this stuff in the 60s and understood the significance of monetary policy. But in night, and then Nixon was in and they talked about the Austrian free market people were predicting we'd have to go off the gold standard completely and totally. We were already off half of it. Americans weren't allowed

to own gold. But we were honoring the dollar and that kept our dollar as a reserve currency. And people trusted it. Everybody else was worse than we were. So they would take the dollar. And that was a big deal. But you can't do that forever. I think we're reaching this point where some sudden thing is going to happen. I believe in that theory of the black swan. It's going to pop up and it's not going to be controllable. But people, you ask, what can they do? I think the most important thing is understand what's going on is education. That's why I happen to have a homeschooling program and I try to teach this stuff early because you can't change it. You can't go in and say, okay, you want $50 an hour? We can't do that, but we'll have a compromise with

the other people. We'll just give you $32 per hour, you know, guarantee. That kind of nonsense. You have to be able to, you know, tell them what they have to do. One is to protect the money. One is to protect your wealth. But when I go through this, when people really want to know some details and I get a little more in detail, I said, but really, really, the most important thing you do is study and understand what's going on. Because if you come away from that and you're able to accumulate a lot and get by and you have your guns and you have stored food and all that. It's not going to work. You have to understand what's happening. You have to know it's coming. It's very, very dangerous. And that's why I love to see smaller units of government, anything that hints that says they're springing up an idea in our states to act like they ought to act. Yes. And they're starting to. You know, they're starting to get more independent.

And this whole thing, I don't know why they don't jump on this. It should be easier to sell. Why do they get away with the total destruction of the Constitution that everybody can legislate? The courts legislate, you know, the executive branch legislate and they go on. But the Congress has the authority to cancel all that. If they write a regulation, Congress could cancel it. I think they've done it once. It's been around for 20 years. But they should just have authority to do it because it's in the Constitution. They don't have any authority to do that.

So they've lost all sense of authority and responsibility. Yes. And that means young people will give up on it. And this is why a lot of young people start acting like the government. You know, the government cheats and steals and counterfeits. Why can't we? That's why I love the story of Bastiat. You know, the Bastiat story is that if you and I can't steal from our neighbor

and we can't take their car and we can't hurt people, why is it that we let the government do it? You want to go to your neighbor and you say, well, you have three cars and I don't have any. I want one of your cars. Most people say, well, that's illegal. You can't just take someone's car. But the government can. The government's taking stuff from us all the time.

And most of the taking is from the people who work hard and are middle class and they're poor and they suffer the consequence of inflation. Very wealthy people don't have to worry about the cost of a loaf of bread, believe me. But they do have to worry about the big system because when the big system comes on, there's not many people who are going to escape it. There will be some. Some might have to move a long way off or something. But, no, I think it's giving people hope, but they have to understand what's going on, why we deserted the Constitution. I believe I talked a little bit in my little booklet about the coup. I think the government's been taken over. And interestingly enough, when we talked a little bit about

Kennedy, I think the date I say it was concrete that there was a coup and we lost our government was November 22nd. Yes. The assassination of Kennedy uh so i should just say you're talking about the great surreptitious coup who stole western civilization yeah that you've written and i've read a lot of it and you say two things that people may not know one you were in texas the day of the assassination you were senior flight surgeon at an air force base i think in san an. Right. And you saw Air Force One fly over like hours before he was killed. So that was amazing. Right. I was, being the chief flight officer didn't mean a whole lot.

Oh, well, it sounds impressive. Yeah, it sounded like that. But I didn't want to make it sound like I was in charge of Kennedy's safety. So anyway, I was told, just to be alert to the fact that Kennedy is going to land. He does a little bit of business. He went to the Space Center, I think at Brook Air Force Base. And then he took off, and I think he was on his way to, he had a busy two days. So he takes off. But I know how busy I was doing flight surgery work because when he took off, I was on the golf course.

They might say I was AWOL, but there was nothing I could do. But I remember it distinctly because I kept thinking, well, maybe I should be down on the flight line, you know, this sort of thing. But I was real close. I was like a quarter mile away. So I was there and I saw Air Force One take off. And I thought, you know, I stopped and looked and looked. And I thought I was so impressed. And then what I write is it never did. I think that within 24 hours, this world would change. Yes. It was less than 24 hours by the time he was killed, because I think he stopped in San Antonio. Then he came back to Fort Worth, and then he ended up in Dallas.

So you say in this, and I don't think it's a controversial statement anymore, but the CIA, of course, was involved in his murder. Alan Dulles, the director who he'd fired a year before after Bay of Pigs. But you make a point I've never heard before. You said you believe that his fate was sealed on June 10th, 1963, when he gave the commencement address at American University. Fairly famous speech, which I plan to watch tonight, actually, about peace. Tell us what you know. It was a peace statement. It was great.

Kennedy was controversial. He wasn't always anti-war as he was leading up to his death. Yes. He had some foreign policies that I wouldn't be endorsing. But he was coming this way. And that's when he said that, you know, he said flowering things about peace. And it became known then because he did speak out. And I think it wasn't that many days, you know, before his assassination, but they were, the establishment, the FBI and the CIA, the planners really souped things up for their plans. And he was, you know, killed by people that for a long time, you know, probably several years, I thought it was Oswald, you know.

You did? Yeah, because I wasn't in a place I was about to challenge. It didn't take long to start questioning this. One thing that another personal thing that came out was, you know, after 10 years, they had a group of the best pathologists in the country get together. And the one person in that group was Cyril Weck. And Cyril Weck was from the University of Pittsburgh. And I had heard lectures from him because I was OB resident. And as a pathologist, he would give us lectures. So I sort of... When you were in medical school.

Yeah, when I was doing my residency. But there were 12 of them, 10 maybe. But there was a group. And they had this going over the assassination. And all the experts were there. And everybody says, Oswald did it. And this was like eight or 10 years later. Except for Weck. And like eight or 10 years later, except the— Cyril Weck.

Cyril, except for Weck, he said, it can't be one shot. But he said that from the very beginning. So he was finally allowed to examine the paperwork of the autopsies. He was, I think, the only one. And he went, and guess what he discovered? No records existed. Can you believe it? Yes, I can believe it.

Can you believe that? I can't believe it. So you served in Congress, I think twice, as I remember, but for a while. I was drafted in 63 during the Vietnam thing. I didn't go to Vietnam. I was drafted then. But then the government really messed up my schedule. They took me out of the middle of residency and I had to go back and I had a break of six months. So I was very pragmatic. I said, why don't you just discharge me in six months? So I stayed.

So I was there two years plus six months. And then I was in the National Guard. But in all of your time in Congress, did you ever come across other members of Congress you served with who said, wow, you know, the CIA was involved in Kennedy's assassination? Was this widely known on Capitol Hill when you served there? I never heard anybody say that. Anybody? Well, probably heard my close friends. It's just funny that, again, now I think people recognize that that's true, but that was 60 years ago, and our lawmakers never talk about it. But you mentioned to me earlier and brought back in memory,

but do you know who they appointed to the commission? Alan Dulles. He was on the Warren Commission. Yeah. So the guy who's responsible for the murder was investigating the murder. That has a dawn on me. The republic is gone. That's when I said the day

it ended it was eroding from the beginning of the last century with the philosophic changes but I think I think it's still what about that former FBI or CIA agent said we were

taught to lie cheat and steal and then he giggled, and the crowd clapped, and he was making fun of it. It does make you wonder if people want to be free. At Desjardins Insurance, we know that when you're a building contractor, your company's foundation needs to be strong. That's why our agents go the extra mile to understand your business and provide tailored solutions for all its unique needs. You put your heart into your company,

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I'm sorry to jump around so much. I'm not a linear thinker, but just back to the economy really quickly. You have always been a proponent of owning gold, physical gold, and you've said this for many, many decades. Do you still believe that? And has that been a good strategy, do you think, over time? Yeah, but I'm not like a gold bug that gold is sacred. No, gold can protect you from inflation. It's been known for 6,000 years doing this. So, yes, I think that is the case, that you can be protected. But what I would tell the students that are looking for ways, I said, but you could do that.

You can have your gold. You can have food. You can have your cabin and guns and all this. I said, it won't matter if you don't have your freedom. If you don't have your First Amendment. See, I think the First Amendment is so powerful. But if you don't have that, what good would it do? I said, oh, I have gold. But, you know, talking about buying gold and preparing for gold, I don't think I broke any laws on this, but I'll tell you anyway.

You know, it was illegal to own gold. Yes. And in the late 60s, people were buying gold shares, gold stocks, because their price would go up when gold would go up because people were betting that $35 an ounce wouldn't last. They were right. Then Nixon proved it didn't last, but people didn't have gold. So he closed the gold window. But in that period of time, I don't have the dates, but before it was officially legalized, you were allowed to buy numismatic coins.

If you were a coin saver, that was a technical way you could get around it. So I remember my first gold coins I was buying, not for numismatics reasons, but they were some of the neatest coins I got. And the Mexicans were way ahead of us. They started minting coins and put a back date on them. So they fulfilled the requirement of only old coins that were numismatic. So you couldn't buy a coin that was, if I bought them in, say, 1969, I can't buy a coin that would be minted that year. Yes. So Mexico would date them back down to the 1940s.

So that made it legal. So those were my first coins. Do those turn out to be good investments over time, do you think? Do you think the dollars held up very well over time? No, I don't. You know, just since the Bretton Woods broke down August 15th, 1971, if you were betting on a gold coin or, you know, your dollar, dollar lost 98% of its purchasing power. And gold went from $35 up and down. You know, it's around $2,000.

Yep. Has a ways to go yet because the dollar has a ways to go too. Yes. Yeah, they can't. They can restore the dollar, but there has to be a liquidation of debt. You only liquidate it twice. An individual can work hard and save, pay, and pay off the debt. That's not going to happen for the government.

But the liquidation will be a lot more inflation. And when I say inflation, I'm not talking, well, there will be prices going up. But the inflation is the succumbing to anybody who needs money. But the more the prices go up, the more everybody needs money. Rich and poor need more money.

And that's why the insanity of all this, the most important price under those conditions is the interest rate. In a free market, that tells you what to do. Should you save? You should spend? Should you invest? And all this thing. So that's something that people knew about. But the interest rates, they took them to minus.

They took them down to zero. And then there was an inflation discount. So it was worse with zero. So that distorted. So I see all the money is not out there yet. And all the dissemination of this malinvestment and all these decisions made on, it was like building a city with big buildings without a ruler. Yeah. And it'll come down.

We threw the ruler away on purpose and said that you can't charge what the government want to give you money. Have you ever seen some ads recently? All this opportunity, especially after COVID, if you write here, get here, you can get $1,500 check immediately. And then this last week, they're always inviting you to take more money. So it's insane. And someday they're going to wake up and the market will wake up and there'll be a rush, a rush to try to protect themselves. But like I say, my investment is various because I do believe in a little bit of all that, whether it's gold coins or silver coins or a little bit of land and stuff like that.

But my big investment is the pleasure I get out of somebody calling me up and telling me, well, I heard you speak way back then, and that's why I started my organization. And he had a fantastic organization. So I get that on a routine basis. I think that's the greatest story told because nobody could tell. That's part of the remnant. Nobody could tell whether, oh, I converted one person.

Oh, great deal. But he might have a newsletter. He has 500 people. Yes. Who he spreads the message around. And I keep thinking, how could that be? Well, how did the pamphleteers do it during the revolution? They wrote pamphlets and physically had to pass them around.

Yes. And the greatest message of liberty occurred, you know, in pamphlet hearing. Were you surprised by the reaction that your foreign policy views got? I mean, I watched this. I wrote a piece about you for the New Republic when you ran for president. And it was a positive piece. And the magazine in the next issue wrote a piece about how you were a dangerous bigot.

Totally dishonest magazine and they did it because they hated your foreign policy views but instead of explaining why they were bad, they attacked you as a person morally. That's when I've run out of the argument. But it didn't seem to have affected you at all. You didn't seem to care. In a way, I can't care because they have the problem.

I don't have the problem. They do. I can offer them, but I don't believe. See, we have conservatives now. We're going to change these laws, all this crazy stuff they're teaching in schools, and we're going to say outlaw this and put this in and all that. I don't believe in that. That's a use of force.

Matter of fact, I don't even believe the government should be in our schools. Yes. It's not authorized in the Constitution. And that's the source of all our problems. And the universities are owned by the government. You know, all student loans and all the professors, they're all tied into the government. You know, all student loans and all the professors, they're all tied into the government. So. Why do you think that over the last, I don't know, let's just start with Reagan. So 44 years since Reagan got elected, the core of the Republican or conservative idea has

been smaller government. And they've had power at various times and they've shared power for all of that time. And yet government is many times bigger than it was 44 years ago. So how did, what was that? Do they not mean it? Is it impossible? Like what's the lesson? The people in charge are the ones that do it. There's a lot of people who still don't want that, but that's why whoever that deep state guy is, they direct things pretty well. The deep state. Who is the deep state guy, by the way? Well, I don't have a list in front of me. I have no idea.

Well, I think it's people who have tremendous power and they happen to hate liberty, and they happen to be people that have endorsed, because of their wealth, they've been able to get a lot of wealth, and because of that, they become nihilists. They don't believe in truth. Truth is impossible to reach, and there's a whole philosophy of nihilism, that you can't believe in truth and so it's rejected so but everybody wants something to believe in so they believe in themselves these people who uh you know have a lot of influence whether they're the president of a university we just like like uh not too long ago did we have a few professors show up on television that just were terrible terrible and they were the ones in charge of our kids.

So, no. Do you think there's a connection between great wealth, you know, being a billionaire and being a bad person? No. Matter of fact, I'm a strong defender of people who earn their money honestly. Yes. But why our richest class of Americans is the most nihilistic? Not all of them, but as a group. They're the most nihilistic.

It does seem that way. Oh, I think I look at statistics that show that America is one of the most generous nations. Of course. No, but I mean, it's the billionaire classes. Oh, the billionaire. Yes. Yeah, because they're god they they've given up on god they've given up on a higher law yeah natural law natural law natural law can be known and you can't even depend on the founders to make sure that we all follow the natural law the natural law is uh if you and i

sat here and said well we are having our community, what would we think is a very natural thing that all people should follow? We should steal from each other. I'm for that. You shouldn't kill each other. We shouldn't do that. And you should hurt people. Even on the most early, all the way back to Nebuchadnezzar and Sumeria, they had rules against lying, cheating, and killing. Yes. And it's phenomenal that it's there. But the people, your question is why some of the rich people become bums. Yes, why do some of the rich people become bums?

Nicely put. I think it's because they don't believe in a higher spirit. Yeah. But, you know, like I mentioned to you, I don't think my position, what I'm doing here in Congress, I'm there to say, well, I know if you'd go to this church and do all, not that. But spiritually, everybody can have a spiritual life and i don't think the nihilists can get rid of their spiritual life they have a substitute and they become the sort of the substitute and they know what's best for everybody smart yeah so i i know you never talk about yourself you you um you said you don't wear

your religion on your sleeve. I won't press you. But I just have to ask you one personal question because I think it's interesting. So you married your wife who you met. She was in eighth grade. You've been married for over 60 years. You've got 19 grandchildren, great-grandchildren. You have a successful marriage, obviously.

How did you do that? I was thinking of something, and i don't know whether it has any meaning it came naturally yeah i always felt better when i'm doing what i discovered was the higher law yeah the natural law that uh then i say well i really do it for selfish reason because i feel better about it yes and if if i go i think well if i just rob that bank one time and take that grant i can become very wealthy uh then i that's beside it so i i think uh i i look at it and and all the other thing i advise my audience is is that you really ought to have a lot of fun doing this. And I think if there are some on TV that are maybe 60% right, 40% wrong, but they're so, oh, I don't know what the word is, boring and nasty.

I think you should be having a good time doing it. And people in these, you take homeschooling people. Have you ever met people that's homeschooled? Yeah. I mean, they get together and they have fun. You know, they say, oh, no, but they're social misfits. But I'll tell you what, the homeschooled people I run into are not social misfits. That doesn't mean there's always a shortcoming, but no, they hang together. I think there's going to be a lot of that coming. I think it'll continue to grow, especially with the destruction of the school system. The homeschooling numbers skyrocketed during the COVID because they couldn't send their kids to school. And I think,

but they need encouragement, even though, see, the majority vote, 51% can do anything at once, is the evil of democracy. But you still need a prevailing attitude about the people, the general rules that you can't steal from people. Right. You know, you don't have to explain that. But that's what makes it, I think it's so easy. To me, the wonderful part about it, our little program that we put out, it's little, is, you know, it's the Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Who can turn that down? But maybe the prosperity isn't coming fast enough, but they have to measure their prosperity in different ways. You know, there's different ways of measuring prosperity. Maybe all you want is five acres and a home or something. Yeah. Have you had fun looking back on your life? Have you had fun? Coming back? Looking back on your life. Have you had fun? That was always my goal. It was? No, in a serious way, though. Yes. No, I didn't. I think there's bad times that comes when there's family problems or somebody dies.

But I think it's something that you accept and you should have fun. And people think it's all dire and some people have a hard time you know with life and paying their bills and all but it's the government's fault it's not your fault and this can change they have to have hope yes and i think that's the most important thing and uh i always felt good if somebody said, sometimes the young people, and even as they got older, would come up and say, they would say things that almost they don't say that too loud. They'll think we're all crazy. And they'll say, you can't imagine how you've changed my life. And I say, I only wanted to change your money.

No, evidently the message I have didn't apply to monetary policy alone. It applied to everything. And it was a way of life. And that is non-aggression. Don't use force. Don't use violence. And the guides are, you know, most people's religions. There's not many religions that, well, you should go out today and murder as many people as you can. So I think I remain optimistic. There are days when I think, is it time to change? change. No, but the reward comes from people who say that it's been very beneficial. Some of them,

you know, were just, they'd be at campuses and they were floating, they weren't studying hard or anything else. And they'll come back and say, you know, after I heard you speak, he says, I buckled down, I applied to medical school and now I'm a doctor. And they want to give me credit for that. I didn't do it. Maybe I helped you a little. Dr. Ron Paul, thank you. Thank you. A lot of praise for being right.

Great to be with you today. Then as now. you