Ron Paul Discusses Freedom – Episode 069

The Clinton, Iowa area was thrilled to host a town hall meeting with Representative Ron Paul, currently running for the presidency of the United States. And we here at Off the Grid News Radio were excited to not only go to this meeting, we were able to record the session for our loyal listeners.

We’ve got a very special limited-ad broadcast for you today as Ron Paul tells us his views on the current state of affairs in the United States today, why he’s running for president, and his hopes and dreams for our country.

[powerpress]

Off The Grid Radio
Ep 069
Released: September 30, 2011

Brian: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a very special version of Off the Grid News – the radio version, if you will, of offthegridnews.com. I’m Brian Brawdy, here today along with Mr. Bill Heid. But, we have a very special audio guest that we’ll get to in just a moment. This is going to be a limited commercial addition because of the guest that we have today, Bill. How are you my friend?

Bill: I am very excited. I’m excited about the guest, as you say, that we are going to have on – have on, is that the right phrasing?

Brian: I think so. I should say to our listeners that if you didn’t get a chance to attend the Ron Paul speech in Clinton, Iowa recently, Bill went ahead and made sure that our production crew was there to record the entire speech. We have it in its entirety. What Bill has decided to do, through this portion of our radio show, we’re going to catch up for a little bit and then we are going to play the entire audio version of Dr. Paul, presidential candidate for the GOP nomination – the President of the United States – Dr. Paul will be in those. We’re going to do it in one full segment, Bill, so that anyone that wanted to get to the speech but just couldn’t, and it was an overflow crowd. The place was hopping. It was packed.

Bill: The local paper even said that it was over – they didn’t even make an attempt to try to say “no one was there,” which certainly FOX would have said if they were covering it. [laughs]

Brian: The highlight for me from that day, in addition to the overflow crowd – you know what it was, Bill? And people are going to – until they see the picture of you and Dr. Paul together – he genuinely enjoyed the time he had with you. When you guys got a chance to catch up after his presentation, and you look at the picture and he’s all smiles. Being there in person and watching, like a fly on the wall, the interview that you all had a chance – or the conversation that you all had a chance – didn’t he really seem genuinely enamored with the concept of solar? I remember him saying “you’ve got to tell me more about this,” and he taps his aide and goes “make sure you get Bill’s contact information.” He was really enamored with the concept of solar energy and solar generation.

Bill: I think you bring up a good point, Brian. I think that’s really the bottom line is, Dr. Paul’s interested in solar, he just thinks it ought to be market-driven. He’s interested in wind, he’s interested in all these other things that other candidates and presidents make bravado about, but his basically position is “does the market want this? Is this something that can compete in the marketplace?” Gee, great thought, right? Let’s build $500 million plants with no market for the products. Did anybody stop and think about that? If you believe, like I do, and like Dr. Paul, if you have a concept of biblical economics or Austrian economics, you realize that you don’t get something for nothing and that ultimately markets decide what’s favored in the world, what gets blessed, as it were, and what gets cursed, as it were. If we create something at Solutions from Science or whatever that the market doesn’t want, it’s a resounding shot. We find out pretty quick. “We don’t want that.” And how do we know that? Nobody responds to ads. So guess what? We don’t have $500 million loans so we have to scramble and figure out what customers really do want. I think Americans, to some degree, have lost that whole concept of entrepreneurialism and suffering those slings and arrows of risk that exist in entrepreneurialism. Dr. Paul, the reason we were smiling there is not only does he like risk, he loves markets. We were talking about Murray Rothbard and some other Austrian economists that we both knew. He’s just a delight. I think when people get a chance to listen to this – you’re not going to here – and some folks have heard Dr. Paul before – but you don’t hear tremendous oratory. You don’t hear thundering Nikita Krushchev-sounding on podiums – I almost pounded on the podium right there. But what you hear is just a guy talking to you like you’re another person, like you’re at a bar or church social or he’s over at your house. He’s not condescending. He’s not playing talking points. I have a lot of Christian friends, as you know, Brian, that were there. I just worry about it because I think Dr. Paul – his positions are generally biblical position but I think because he doesn’t have handlers scripting in the word Jesus every other minute like a Rick Perry or somebody would, I think people think “he’s not a Christian.” Clearly, you heard him articulate that the state should never take more than what the 10 percent …

Brian: Wasn’t that a great line? He goes “why would you give your government more than you would give your church?” [laughs] That was a great line.

Bill: And people have to realize, that’s the biblical position in economics. I think he is carrying the ball and for parts of the people that may disagree with on “I don’t like gay marriage” – basically, Dr. Paul is saying “look, move the venue of discussion away from the federal government to the states. That’s the Founders’ view.” That’s basically all he’s saying in those. I don’t think you’re going to get him to agree that personally that he endorses some of the things, but it looks on paper – and a lot of people would be frightened at the prospect of him saying – he goes through all these things where I have moral disagreements with him – don’t be too sure. Don’t be too sure that’s the case. He’s basically saying that we ought to move these debates to state and local debates. That’s the Founders’ vision.

Brian: That was the Petri dish they talked about, where the democracy was going to be able to test all these different things.

Bill: Exactly. And if you didn’t like the tax rate in one state, you could move to the other. If you didn’t like what the definition of marriage in Vermont is, you can move to Massachusetts, or whatever that might be. That’s was the Founders’ idea. They actually believed, as we’ve had other guests discuss, that you could have an Anglican or a Presbyterian state church, you just couldn’t do it federally. They believed that you could do it … but here’s the key. If you didn’t like the Presbyterian Church in Rhode Island, or the Baptist church in Rhode Island, you could say “we’re moving.” What’s interesting is …

Brian: Vote with your feet.

Bill: Exactly. Vote with your feet. Nick and I were talking about this and Nick was questioning me – my son, Nick – was questioning me a little bit about it. He was saying “does this really work?” I said “Nick, look where you’re sitting. You’re in Illinois. People voted with their feet when they decided to go west.” When they were in Boston, when they were in all up and down the 13 colonies and the seaboard. They said “maybe there’s more opportunity for us someplace else.” That’s all Dr. Paul’s saying. If you don’t like something, you ought to have the ability to get up and move to a different venue where you might like it more. I thought the speech was great.

Brian: Not only did I think the speech was great, but you know what I liked about the behind-the-scenes with you and Dr. Paul – and I’ve done advance work for national presidential candidates before, so you get to see a lot of the interaction with the crowd after the fact. I don’t know if – we’re going to get all kinds of hate mail so please remember to send it to Jeremy, we’re going to get all kinds of hate mail when I say this but I think you tapped into Dr. Paul’s inner geek because when you said solar panels, he goes “Oh!” His face lit up. I really mean that. It was cool to meet another geek that’s like “oh, solar energy!” With everything going on with Solyndra, with all the negative news …

Bill: Yeah, he didn’t blow it away by saying there’s this big broad brush thing, that doesn’t work. He’s extremely interested in solar, but with the qualifier it ought to be market-driven. Private enterprise ought to be competing. I’m saying to him – as you know, you can see the picture of us talking there – I’m saying “I’m competing with these guys. I don’t have $500 million cushion. Every day.”

Brian: I think he wants it on his house. I think you got to him to such a personal level. When he said “I want to hear more about this. I’m really interested in that solar” – yes, a part of it was the market, but I think he’s a regular guy.

Bill: Yeah, he’s got all this extra time to sit around and study our solar stuff.

Brian: He’s got you now. He doesn’t need someone to—

Bill: I’ve never seen a guy with a schedule like him. He was in on a jet and … crazy, crazy, crazy. But he was – he is interested in these things and I think people need to realize that. He’s interested in trade. He’s interested in a lot of the off-the-grid things. And, as people – if you listen to this thing, you realize his – and we can talk about this in the last segment when we come back – his interest in self-reliance. Do you remember when he said …

Brian: Absolutely.

Bill: Listen to this. You’re going to find part way into this where he gives a very important message about what you need to get ready for. This guy understands economics.

Brian: You know what? That’s probably as good a sentence to leave it on as any. We’re going to go to a quick commercial break. Then we’re going to come back into the audio. You’ll hear, in its entirety, Dr. Paul’s presentation – presidential candidate Paul’s presentation – Representative Paul’s presentation – in Clinton, Iowa recently. Then Bill and I will be back after that. Ladies and gentlemen, enjoy it. We sure did.

[0:09:33 – 0:11:43 break]

Dr. Paul: It’s getting busier every day. The numbers who have joined us and are willing to support us – it’s growing by leaps and bounds. Some people – well, not some – I get the question asked quite frequently from the media “why is it different this time? You’ve done it before. You were doing this four years ago and you did well but you didn’t do so well as you are right now. What is the difference?” My message hasn’t changed. My message has been the same for a long time because I’m convinced that the message of liberty is what we need and we need to not only have liberty but we have to have a lot less government in our lives. That’s what we really need. [applause]

As a matter of fact, I think it’s the opposite – when you ask for government, you have to sacrifice a little bit of liberty. The purpose of our revolution and the philosophy of the Founders was that – the goal was to preserve liberty and protect liberty. Have a strong national defense. But it wasn’t to do a lot more. Then, if the states wanted more, the states were not going to be prohibited from having more if they wanted to. Let the states sort out exactly the amount of government that they wanted and not allow the federal government to take over. We’ve been fighting that battle a long time. Those of us who would like less government have argued the case for more local government against the federal government. But you know, that’s not the only argument today. The argument has expanded to – going one step further – I think not only do we have probably too much local government in many ways, but we have too much federal government, but now they’re putting another layer on, it’s called international government – the UN and NATO and all these organizations. I don’t think we need those at all. I think we should even be out of the United Nations rather than depending on the United Nations. [applause]

Today we depend on international law too much. We have the United Nations and NATO telling us when we’re to go to war. The Constitution is very clear – as a matter of fact, that was one of the major issues, they didn’t like the way the colonists had to pay for the wars of the king decided had to be fought. That is why they put in the Constitution that the wars were to be declared by the Congress and also supported by the people. Today that’s totally ignored. We’re engaged right now in six different countries. The most recent one that we got engaged in is Libya. You don’t hear much about it and the fact that Americans aren’t being killed there doesn’t mean it isn’t a war. We’re spending a lot of money. Where did the authority come from? The President didn’t even have the courtesy to inform the Congress about his plans to go into Libya. But he said “there was a UN resolution and then NATO decided to do it.” I think that’s wrong. I think we’re in way too many wars – six is way too many. There are some in Washington now that think there are two more countries we should take on. Believe me, we can’t afford it and we shouldn’t do it and it’s not our mission to be the policemen of the world. [applause]

Actually, it’s a good political way of starting to cut the budget, just start with the military budget. I don’t want to cut defense but I do want to cut military. Too much of our money is being spent on militarism. Eisenhower had it right when he warned us about the military industrial complex. A lot of weapons systems we buy and the things that we do, do serve the interest of some people who build weapons – there is a weapons industry. Even Robert Taft, another great Republican, warned us. He said he didn’t want to be in NATO. He said “pretty soon NATO would end up dictating to us when we should go to war.” And here we are, in a war under NATO. As a matter of fact, the Bosnian war was fought under NATO and here this – well, all of them – NATO’s very much involved in Afghanistan. They pretend and endorse internationalism but guess what? Internationalism doesn’t mean we’re off the hook. We still have to pay all the bills. But this is a place where politically it should be a lot easier to cut the spending because it’s, to me, negative to spend the money on all this activity overseas. I don’t think it helps our national security. I think we’re less secure for it. We now have – under the current President – massive expansion of placing these drone sites around the world, especially in the Middle East and in Africa, which means they can bomb almost any spot in the world. Frequently, when they do, they might target an individual and maybe their information is pretty good. Maybe it is a bad guy but sometimes innocent people die. They drop these bombs and families die and children die and wedding parties get hit. I think “why wouldn’t people get angry, if somebody from 6,000 miles away were lobbing bombs on us.” I don’t know why we can’t apply the golden rule to our foreign policy. [recording problem 0:17:02 – 0:17:15] [applause]

There’s an attitude that comes to a country once you’re in war. In wartime, it’s easier to tell the people “this is serious.” I remember World War II and it was very serious and people get careless under these serious conditions. That same thing happened after 9/11. People are frightened, they don’t know what’s going on and they more easily give up their liberties. I happen to believe, even in wartime, you do not have to give up your liberties. That is not the reason – you fight war to protect liberty, you don’t fight wars and give up your liberties. I don’t think that is necessary. But immediately after 9/11, which we all justifiably were concerned about that, and I did support going after the Al Qaeda. I was very disappointed it took 10 years to get Bin Laden. That to me was a disappointment. But to me, it was the atmosphere that comes from this war mentality that is so distressing, is that immediately after 9/11 they decided that this bill, this law – or proposed law – that they’ve had around for years and years, it was called the Patriot Act. They said “ah, now it’s an opportunity. Now we can get the Patriot Act in.” it went in in a couple of days and nobody got to read it. It was passed with an hour’s worth of debate. I don’t think the Patriot Act should have been passed. As a matter of fact, I think we ought to repeal the Patriot Act. It doesn’t protect you at all. [applause]

But the undermining of our civil liberties can be best demonstrated by just looking at some of the pictures of American citizens who are totally innocent, they do not look like suspect, they do not look like there’s any probable cause and they’re stopped and treated like possible terrorists. al you have to do is look at the pictures of the prodding – small girls, elderly women or men – that get prodded all over, X-rays made, providing no special protection for us, is an undermining of liberty. Liberty is a major issue for me. I think if you understand liberty, you understand where it came from – it didn’t come from the government, it came from our Creator and therefore is precious and we should protect it at all costs. [applause]

The same way with life. Life comes from our Creator and all life is precious, not just special life, but all life is precious. If we have the defense of liberty and life, which this country traditionally has had – I think we’re very careless and we’re not doing a very good job now – but under those conditions, if you truly believe that, guess what is the consequence of that. If you have a right to your life, right to your liberty, you ought to have the right to keep what you earn. It’s your blood and sweat that produces things so you ought to have the right to keep it. This is why I’m opposed to the income tax because even a small income tax is bad philosophically because it endorses the idea that all your income belongs to the government and the government allows you to keep a certain percentage if you do what the government wants you to do. That’s why the Founders – they understood that principle. That’s why we didn’t have an income tax in our early years. We’ve had an income tax for 100 years. Guess what? Government has grown with it. Government was small before 1913. But major things happened in 1913. Not only did we introduce this notion of an income tax and the government owns our income, which helped us pay for big government, but then we also had something else in 1913 that has not been one of my favorite things – that was the introduction to the monetary system we have – the Federal Reserve system and the fiat money system. This is the reason I take a position very strongly – we don’t need the Central Bank and we don’t need a Federal Reserve System. [applause]

But also, at this period of time, under Woodrow Wilson – he was President at the time – he also was a so-called idealist. Idealism is great if it’s the right ideal, but I didn’t like his ideal. His ideal was to spread our goodness around the world and make the world safe for democracy and therefore we had to join the war. Quite frankly, many historians now recognize that was probably a very unnecessary event and probably led to World War II. Making the world safe for democracy was the early neo-conservative approach to the emphasis of us going in to the Middle East now. We’re going there to spread our goodness. The belief of the neo-conservatives is that we are an exceptional nation – and there’s some merit to that thought. I think we have been exceptional. I think we have some exceptional ideas. I think we have had good things in our country. We defended liberty and freedom and prosperity and did a very good job. But, they take it one step further and they say “we are so exceptional, we know what’s best for the world and therefore we’re going to go over and we’re going to tell you what to do.” That is not the way to do it. If we’re exceptional, which we could be, what I think our obligation is, is to prove ourselves, make sure that we treat our people right – have free markets and prosperity and take care of our civil liberties, probably don’t start wars that we don’t need to start. I think then people would want to emulate us and we don’t have to force people to accept our viewpoint. [applause]

So far, we have generally followed a rule of offering others two options with our foreign policy. We go over and we throw our weight around and we say to them “we want you to be our ally because we want you to do this. You’re going to supply your oil …” – all the different reasons why we have to have a military presence – now, in 130 countries and 900 bases around the world. So what we do is we go and offer them money. Then we prop up dictators. But the people don’t like dictators. How many billions of dollars do you think we paid Musharraf, Mubarak in Egypt? Billions and billions and finally the people got annoyed and then they were overthrown. If we push our weight around, and they do our bidding, we give them a lot of money. But let’s say they don’t do our bidding or we grow cool to them and decide “we don’t like you anymore” – then we go and we use aggression, we use bombs to change them. Sometimes we go around and we tell them “you ought to have democracy like we do. You ought to have elections.” But if the wrong guy wins, we don’t recognize them. I think it’s much better to concentrate on our own well being, look to ourselves. As individuals I believe that is the case too. You can’t preach to your neighbor if you yourself aren’t doing a very good job because, actually, when you preach to your neighbor and tell your neighbor what he ought to do, sometimes they get angry at you. I think our biggest job is to look to ourselves and to do our best to improve ourselves, to work for excellence and virtue. That’s what I think life is all about. When government takes over that role of excellence and virtue, whether it’s worldwide or individual, it backfires on us. In a free society, responsibility falls on us. In religious matter, there’s something that I adhere to and that is free will. We have a lot of free will choices and we’re dealing with our eternity. That is left to us as individuals. We’re allowed to have our religious decisions made, we’re allowed to make our own decisions on intellectual things. But so often we defer to the government on other things – on economic matters or on our personal habits and things. “Oh, OK, I think it’s really ridiculous to let people waste their money and impoverish themselves with gambling.” But things like that – is the federal government going to make us better people by having a lot of rules and regulations? No, it doesn’t work that way. Therefore, this whole idea of liberty comes in different packages, but I say it’s only one – it applies to our foreign policy, it applies to your personal liberties and your religious values, your right to homeschool and all these things, and also an economic liberty. Economic liberty means that you have a right to work hard and be rewarded. Under those circumstances, people are – our opposition will say “you people don’t care about anybody. You have no compassion.” But you know? The more I’ve studied this and the more I’ve studied economics, the more I am convinced that if you are compassionate, you’ll care about freedom because that’s when you have the maximum prosperity and the best distribution of wealth and the least amount of poverty under those conditions. Those people who want to forcibly rule your life and redistribute wealth and socialize the economy – guess what? Production goes down and people get poorer. The housing bubble was great when it lasted but who ended up losing all their houses? The poor people. It doesn’t work. The same thing will happen in medicine, too. Medicine is not going to be solved by Obamacare or any other government program. The responsibility should go to the patients and the individuals and these problems should be worked out between – the doctor-patient relationship should never be undermined. If we depend on the government force coming in and dictating, we’re going to get less not more. For too long now, for nearly 100 years, we’ve taken bits and pieces of freedom. Somebody would defend free enterprise and freedom in the marketplace. Then others would defend personal liberties a little bit better than others. Then somebody else would have a position on foreign policy that would suggest that the Founders were right, that we shouldn’t be involved in entangling alliances. I think it should be all one package. If you understand this, I think the world and we would certainly be better off. But do you know why it’s not difficult for me to understand? These are my personal beliefs and convictions because I think the world and we would be better off. The whole thing is, we can defend these views by a strict adherence to the Constitution. That’s the kind of society we would have. [applause]

We have gotten ourselves into a mess, basically because we have, for many, many decades, drifted away from the Constitution. We have people who rationalize and say “we’ve been taught in schools the Constitution is overly rigid. It’s a living, breathing document.” All this stuff that you have to be flexible. The Founders thought about that and they said “yeah, it can’t be overly rigid, but it’s going to be tough to amend it. But you can amend it if you want to change it.” For instance, I imagine this is the way the Founders would have reacted to the idea of the federal government taking over our schools – they probably would have said “it’s a new society, we’re not going to tell you, if you think the federal government should run the schools and you want a Department of Education, then amend the Constitution.” I happen to believe that the federal government shouldn’t take over our education so I just assume we not even have a Department of Education. [applause]

Whether it’s education or whether it’s the war issue or the regulatory agency and all the big government agencies that we have now, the system doesn’t work. Once we allow this to happen without changing the Constitution, there’s nothing left to the Constitution. They do what they want. We literally have been doing this for too long. You look at the Executive Branch. Congress has been derelict in following their responsibilities because the Founders said the Congress should be the number one out of the three parties because they’re the closest to the people. In Washington, DC, the capitol is the highest spot on the hill to make that point, that it should be the Congress. But Congress defers to the Executive Branch all the time. They pass a vague law, they send it over to the Executive Branch. The Executive Branch writes regulation. That’s writing a law. They’re not supposed to do that. Then when the Presidents want to use an executive order and say “the Congress is too slow, I’m going to write an executive order.” Or the Congress sends a bill over to the President and says “here’s a bill. I don’t like this part, I’m going to write a signing statement. I’m not going to follow that part.” Then they go to the courts and the courts do the same thing. They rewrite and write laws. But as a President, I would not be writing laws through executive orders. I would be repealing executive orders. [applause]

We need a new attitude about regulations too. We don’t need more regulations. I would like to be the first President that never expanded the Federal Register. Every year they add thousands and thousands of pages and nobody can really understand them. All you have to do is deal with the IRS – you know, they tested the IRS agents separately – fill out this, this, this – they don’t even agree with themselves. But if you make a mistake, you can be in big trouble and you’re guilty until proven innocent. That’s not the American that was intended and it’s not the America that I want to continue to live in because we need to defend our Constitution. We need to defend the principles of liberty. We need to defend a foreign policy where we don’t get into trouble but we defend our own country, protect our own borders and not worry so much about the borders between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Why do we expend lives and money overseas at the same time we neglect so much here at home? That is what we ought to concentrate on. [applause]

We are beneficiaries of a system that was created and brought about by our Founders because they did have strong beliefs. They understood where rights came from. They understood about self-reliance and responsibility. In this past 100 years, we have drifted a long way from that. The experiment could die if we don’t revive that spirit. It doesn’t mean that we have to go back to the 18th or the 19th Century. We can look at what happened there. I think we can improve on it. Even on the monetary system that I disapprove of so strongly, we could even have a better monetary system than we had under the old gold standard. There are certainly better understanding now. There’s no reason in the world why we can’t pick up where we left off 80-100 years ago, pick up and refine and develop and improve on our understanding of how freedom works and why it is in the best interest of all of us in that we don’t become poor. I have always argued that if I could live in a free society, even if I would be poor, I’d prefer to live in a free society. [applause]

We don’t even have to make that choice because we do know that if we argue from a moral position and we defend it in a moral way, we will end up with more prosperity. I think what happened to us as we had this tremendous amount of prosperity, we looked at it and we saw the material abundance. We concentrated on the material abundance. We saw this abundance and before we knew it, we wanted more abundance with less concentration on where it came from. This energized the lobbyists and big governments and there was so much welfare they could shift it around. If you had influence in Washington, you could get a contractor special deals. We became more materialistic and less concerned about our liberties. Now we’re in an age we’re up against a wall. We can’t continue to do what we’re doing. The debt is too high. The deficits are too much. The printing of press money does not create wealth, it undermines wealth. It’s equivalent morally and economically to counterfeiting money. We cannot continue to do this. It won’t be solved with the tinkering around that they’re doing in Washington today. They tinker around with the budget “OK, we’re going to have this special congressional committee of 12 and they’re going to replace the Congress of 535 and they’re going to come up with a [inaudible].” They don’t deserve our trust. [applause]

The reason this happens is too often Washington and too many get lulled into thinking that it’s just a budgetary problem. Some people say we could balance our budget by just getting rid of waste and fraud. That’s the nature of government – they’re wasteful and they’re fraudulent. They steal the money from us and they go and do things. We lose twice when they tax us – they take our money but then when they spend it they hurt us. They give it to a special interest or bailout the wrong people or they write regulations and they harm us. These conditions can’t be maintained. I think this is why the American people are saying “we want something different.” It isn’t like we’re inventing something new. This isn’t like we have to compromise. We don’t sell out on our principles. We defend our principles. But work with the different groups that may endorse certain portions of the freedom philosophy because not one group has access to all the information and all the defense of liberty. It is our Constitution, it is the principles of liberty and that is what we need to secure and protect. We need to build on it. There’s no reason in the world why we can’t have a much better society. I’ll tell you where I get a lot of encouragement because I talk to the generation that is inheriting this mess. Believe me, they know and understand. The receptions that we’re getting on college campuses are growing by leaps and bounds. I give it to them as straight as I can, not promising any handouts. I promise what I’d work for is for the cause of liberty and for you to take care of yourselves, but you’d be responsible. If you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t expect somebody else to take care of you. You can’t demand it. It’s well received so I’m very encouraged by that. Also, it would be logical for young people to look at what’s coming. They can read and write and there’s an internet where they get a lot of information. It’s a bad deal that they’re getting right now. They might be working hard and trying to get a degree, but where are the jobs? The jobs are overseas. Our financial system is such that we – we didn’t lose our jobs because of the evil of foreign nations, it’s because we destroyed the environment here in this country – whether it’s monetarily, through the Federal Reserve, and manipulation by too many regulations and too much taxes. We’ve destroyed the confidence in this country. We can’t blame foreigners on that. It’d be really easy to say “it’s all China’s fault.” But let me tell you, it is not that simple. I think sometimes we’re embarrassed because China has been doing so badly – they work hard and save money and they loan it back to us and they’re our banker now. We should be embarrassed by that. We owe $3 trillion to foreigners. In the Depression, in the ‘30s, they were bad times but we were still a creditor nation. This is different and it’s big. It’s much bigger because the world is engulfed with paper money. It’s a distortion of the economy. Too much debt and too many mistakes made. It needs cleansing. It needs to clear out. The debt needs to be liquidated. If you as an individual were deeply in debt, you can’t have economic growth because even if you borrowed more money it just meant more debt. If you had another material benefit, it’d be only temporary. Most people realize “boy, I have to reduce my standard of living. I have to cut back. I have to work harder. I have to pay down my debt.” Then you have real economic growth. That is what we have to do but that’s the tough one because who wants to hear that we have to cut back on some of this debt. For individuals who are willing to accept this, you don’t have to sacrifice anything. Like I said about personal safety, you don’t have to sacrifice your liberty. You don’t have to give up on the Patriot Act to be safe and secure. You don’t have to sacrifice to get this going again, if you’re willing to accept this idea that “I’m responsible for myself.” If you get your freedom, if you have sound money, if you have a judicial system that is fair, if you enforce contracts and nobody gets any special benefits and there’s no redistribution of wealth through all the shenanigans that go on in Washington and you get your life back again and you get your liberty back again and you get to keep the fruits of your labor, what are you sacrificing? I would say that would be a great gift if we could get that once again. [applause]

We’re in the midst of a battle. I see it as an intellectual fight as much as anything. People’s attitudes have to change, because I myself can’t go to Washington to become President and everybody else say “I don’t understand anything you’re saying. I want you to just send more entitlements.” It’s not going to work. The government we have, too often, is the government that the people have endorsed. We too long have endorsed this idea that we should be the policemen of the world and the Federal Reserve is OK – print the money, deficits don’t matter. That has to chance but the people have to realize why it’s in their best interest. All our interest to argue a different case, and when it happens, then the role of government will change. We have to ask sincerely, “what should the role of our government be?” I believe it should be limited. It should be for a strong national defense, not to be the policemen of the world. We should have sound money, not printing press money and a Federal Reserve System. We should have personal liberties, not government dictating every little personal habit that we have. We need to defend and protect our civil liberties. At the same time, we want a free-market economy. That’s where the prosperity comes from. It’s worth the fight and I tell you what, there’s a lot of Americans right now joining this cause. Thank you. [applause] [0:39:57 – 0:40:05 break]

Brian: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. We hope you enjoyed – we know you enjoyed – the presentation of Dr. Paul from a recent appearance that he made in Clinton, Iowa, brought to you by our parent company Solutions from Science in its entirety. Bill, just listening to that again, I don’t want to go all Chris Matthews on you and talk about the tingle – I don’t remember …

Bill: A Chris Matthews tingle, I love that.

Brian: A tingle up his leg, down his leg – whatever. But when you meet Dr. Paul, in person, he has such a passion for it. You’re right, there was no teleprompter – and I’m not doing a President Obama joke, I don’t mean it like that. It wasn’t even a stump speech.

Bill: He wouldn’t need a tele … he would have that same speech to you if he came to your house, Brian.

Brian: I would say it’s because the concept of freedom, the concept of individual responsibility, the concept of self-reliance – although you wouldn’t believe it listening to other media outlets – it’s a pretty simple idea. Pretty simple.

Bill: Exactly. His concept of economics, which undergirds so much of what he – I think he believes that in the Founders’ perspective that we talk about nature’s laws and nature’s God. I think his perspective is if I throw this pen up in the air, we know it’s going to come down because there’s something written into the universe that makes that pen go down. If you spend more money than you have as an individual, Brian, or as a family, there’s consequences associated with that. Why is it so hard to get people to understand that when you apply this nationally – the Bible talks about it, all the way through the consequences of dissipating yourself financially, the consequences of dishonest weights and measures? It’s a theme throughout the Bible. Take someone like Ron Paul, he wants to take this idea nationally and people scream bloody murder at him like he’s a lunatic. I’ll tell you what I was thinking during his speech – I really appreciate the fact that Bill O’Reilly, who when Stossel comes on or when he’s hacking away at Ron Paul – doesn’t have a clue. He asked him what Keynesian economics meant. Bill O’Reilly asked Stossel that. Remember that?

Brian: Absolutely.

Bill: Bill O’Reilly absolutely hates Ron.

Brian: I think he couldn’t pronounce the word.

Bill: He couldn’t pronounce it, he didn’t know who Keynes was. And yet he’s going to attempt to have a pinhead award? Is there a gun that they make – a dart gun – that you could shoot yourself in the foot or in the …

Brian: You and I, we probably will share our opinion of Mr. O’Reilly off air. I would agree with you. You look and listen to Dr. Paul make the presentation, you go “who could find anything wrong with this thoughts?” I’ll tell you something else – the survival part of me – do you know what I loved about his presentation – our listeners will hearken back – I was in New York yesterday. He came to us right after he did the John Daily show. I’ll let you tell the little joke he said about the Daily Show because other than his meeting with you that was only the other time that he laughed in his entire stay in Clinton, at least at the presentation. But when he said “I was in New York yesterday, doing Judge Napolitano and doing The Daily Show.” When it bursts, when it goes, you folks out here in Iowa are going to be a good bit better off to survive it than those folks in New York City. In one sentence, it was like “look, when we run out of money, the people in the Big Apple are going to be hurting in a big way” – and I’m paraphrasing, that’s not his quote, that’s ours. But they’re going to have it in a big way. “But you out here, you’re going to be much better prepared when it hits.” Not if it hits, Bill, but when it hits. No doubt in his mind it’s coming.

Bill: Why is it so hard? If you spend more money than you have and then you teach people that they have something coming for nothing. If you just teach people, generations of people – two or three generations over and over and over – that there’s something for nothing in the world, and then if all of sudden like Greece or Italy or wherever else they’re going to attempt these austerity measures – you attempt to dial back the spigot a little bit and you don’t expect them to march on the streets? We can agree or disagree on whether they should be doing that or not, but what would human psychology suggest to you? I mean, come on! This is not hard stuff.

Brian: I don’t think it is …

Bill: And everyone hates his guts for this though, that’s the remarkable thing about it. He just brings it up and he’s a kook, he’s a knucklehead, he’s a pinhead – to use Bill O’Reilly’s phrasing. I just don’t understand. I hear him saying “you need to focus on getting your own house in order, you need to make sure as an individual as your family, you need to have your house in order, your community. You need to make sure you have your church friends in order, your church group needs to be able to get ready to take care of other people.” He gave us, I thought, a nice little self-reliance piece there. He certainly believes that with all the fiber in his being that there’s going to be some kind of collapse. Something’s going to hit the fan – somehow, somewhere. How we come out of it? I don’t think any economist, Keynesian or an Austrian, would say “I know exactly how this is going to play out.” History’s an open book. We just don’t know what it’s going to look like. But he nailed it. I thought his premises – as you said before, Brian, this idea of liberty – it’s something we’ve got to all get on the bandwagon with and start talking about because liberty – you can’t have liberty without having risk. It’s impossible. There’s no guaranteed Solyndra successes. You can’t – no matter what governments do – markets are bigger than governments. They always have been. Governments are … do you remember? I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this before, this old image of King Canute, and I’m sure Ron would resonate with this, but years ago one of the Austrian examples would be this example of old King Canute standing out in the waves and he’s ordering – one of his economic advisors or somebody said “you’re the king. You can do this.” So he took off all of his stuff except the loincloth. He went out and he stood out in the waters and he commanded the waves to go back, by government fiat. He said “go back! Go back!” Of course he got five, six-foot whack. That’s just an example of what’s going to happen to markets. It doesn’t have to be a tsunami, it can be a seven-foot wave would knock you, I, President Obama, whoever back down on the ground. Maybe even hurt you if you got pounded. I’ve been on the beach before when the waves are coming in pretty hard and actually got dashed about a little bit. I think that’s all he’s saying is, there’s a smack – it’s smackdown time coming.

Brian: You know what’s interesting about the smackdown? It’s difficult even to defend Ron Paul now. I simply made a comment a couple days back where Britt Hume was on FOX News and he referred to all of the candidates, other than Perry and other than Romney, as low-voltage candidates. Low voltage. So I ask the question, how does a low-voltage intellect like Britt Hume get to decide who the people think is high voltage or low voltage? You should have seen the firestorm for that. So you can’t defend him in any way. If you then set out to attack the people that are attacking him, you’ve got a whole ‘nother can of worms. I likened him a bit – and again, all hate mail goes to Jeremy please – I likened him a bit to Columbo. Remember back – I’m probably dating myself when I do this – but remember how Columbo would walk into a crime scene and he’d be like “this and this …” and people would discount him? But in the end, he always got the bad guy. He always solved the crime. He was always right. When you look at Dr. Paul, he’s comfortable in the way he speaks. He was standing on one foot. Just little things that I look at – he was standing on one foot. There was nothing tense. There was nothing strenuous. He took all the questions. He had a command of the facts. He’s the guy. He believes this. He walks this. Which is why, when people say “why do you refer to him as Dr. Paul as opposed to Representative Paul?” I’m a huge – a thousand times bigger fan that he’s a doctor than he is an elected official. Because as a human being he digs that concept of freedom and liberty and that’s what I enjoyed about it.

Bill: What did he talk about as his major premise? He loves life. The idea of loving life to him and being thankful for what he has and what we have – I found that in the discussion as well. He’s an off-the-grid candidate if there ever was one. He’s not the only candidate and maybe Bachmann can win, maybe someone else can win. One thing I can say about Ron, throughout his career since I’ve been following him in the ‘70s when I was a young man, he’s voted the same. If we’re going to apply some biblical principles associated to this, in other words do something small and then prove yourself and then do it over and over and over until somebody takes notice – he’s the perfect candidate because he’s an honest man. You can disagree with him. Like John Stewart disagrees with him. But I think even the Left are enamored by his consistency, his congruity, his ability to stand and draw a line in the face of incredible obstacles. Even those obstacles that should get him kicked out – in other words, a liberal promising Pork in his district should be able to wipe him out. He doesn’t vote for that stuff.

Brian: But I also found interesting that when you talk about those same liberals, which is why I think we paint such a broad stroke – the media gets in trouble – I found it fascinating when he said, and our listeners just got to hear, that when you total up the amount of campaign donations from the military, he gets more than all the other candidates combined. He said “I’m not anti-military, I’m talking about defense. I want to talk about defending our country. I don’t want to talk about 400 …”

Bill: His largest base is the military.

Brian: What does that tell you?

Bill: And yet he’s going to get hammered on the old Pentagon channel for being against …

Brian: And liberals are going to be like “I’m not going to vote for a GOP – I don’t care if it’s Ron Paul or not.” Wait a minute, your anti-war message is his anti-war message. He wants the troops home from Afghanistan. He wants the troops home from Iraq. He wants some of the other bases closed. Protect our borders. When he said “guys, do you know that the Coast Guard …” – where was it? He was talking about the Coast Guard being over in the Middle East. He goes “I thought the Coast Guard was supposed to be guarding our coast. They’re not supposed to be over in the Middle East. The National Guard – we have disasters – we can’t even deploy the National Guard because ‘sorry, Madame or Mr. Governor, they’re over in Afghanistan. They can’t fight the wildfires. They can’t fight the aftermath of the hurricane. They can’t fight the flooding. They’re over in Iraq.’” I think his points were lucid, I think they were clear and low-voltage – I don’t know how he gets away saying that. I think he was a sharp guy. It changed my opinion of him – meeting him in person, I was really impressed.

Bill: I was impressed as well because he wasn’t attempting to be charismatic. He’s not trying to be “how can we use psychological manipulation? How can we use talking points?” He’s just not about any of that.

Brian: You mentioned John Stewart earlier. Stewart said on his show the night before “the reason you’re not getting any traction in the media is you never flip-flop. I say we have some breaking news right here. Take anything you’ve ever believed in and just tell me now it was a mistake and you believe the other way to pander votes.” Ron reaches in and goes “do you think that would get me more votes?” And Stewart goes “I don’t know if it’d get you more votes but it’ll get you more media coverage. So why not, on my show, right now, flip-flop for the first time in your life.” This is John Stewart now – “flip-flop for the first time in your life. I’ll get you media coverage.” That’s what a stalwart he’s been.

Bill: I was thinking as you said that, the only thing that he’s ever voted for – and he mentioned this in the Q&Q section which we didn’t have time to play – but the only thing that he’s ever voted for that really was taxpayers’ money was to help Vets who have been screwed up by the wars and have basically been abandoned. There’s a whole ‘nother story. We ought to do a show about what’s really going on where we have this very military view of the world and then how our guys get treated when they come back – in reality – not what the bravado says, not what our little quaint speeches say at Memorial Day and others, but what’s the reality of someone that’s come back that’s lost a hand, who’s messed up in the head, whose family has been decimated as a result of this. There’s some sad stuff there.

Brian: The terms here – war hero – and homeless should never be in the same sentence in this country, in my estimation. They should never be in the same sentence.

Bill: Exactly. We have to figure out how to recommend some charitable endeavors so people can help those folks. You sign on to do something and, yeah, you’re getting paid, but then to be totally ignored. Everybody should go watch the Tillman movie, whether you agree with Pat Tillman’s atheism or not, you should go watch the Pat Tillman movie which is on HBO or Showtime or some such place.

Brian: I haven’t seen it. Pretty good?

Bill: It’s very good. It’s very good – only from the standpoint you realize what your government will do –even with someone’s death – how they will use that as leverage, as spin to try to get … of course, the Pentagon used it as well as the media – they get their talking points from these paid intermediaries. They spin this thing to make it look like he was something that he wasn’t. But you really owe it to yourself to watch that.

Brian: Well, I think we can end by saying that the talking points that Ron Paul gets, he gets from his heart. I think that’s what I – would you agree? His talking points – he believes them.

Bill: He believes them. He’s like the last man standing. I had a conversation with Judge Roy Moore not too long ago, who’s considering running on the Constitution party. Part of that conversation was “is there someone that has convictions and those convictions are in the heart or deep in the belly – however you want to say it – who will die before he’ll change?” Here’s a guy that’ll die before he’ll change. Remarkable.

Brian: It is. It was remarkable. And so was the time that we got to spend with him. Ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately we’re going to have to run. We hope you’ve enjoyed this special version of Off the Grid News Radio show brought to you with limited commercial interruptions by our parent company, Solutions from Science. Please, as always, contact us with your emails, your questions, your critiques – [email protected]. Of course you can find us on Facebook – facebook.com/offthegridnews. And, as always, you can follow us on Twitter @offgridnews. Thank you so very much for giving us an hour of your day. On behalf of everyone here on the team, thank you so very much for joining us.

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