All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest on the show today is Lew Rockwell.
He's the founder and I always forget the exact title.
Chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and also is the proprietor of the most read libertarian website in the history of all of humanity, LewRockwell.com.
That's L-E-W-Rockwell.com.
Welcome back to the show, Lew.
How's it going?
Scott, great to be with you.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here and lucky timing on me breaking everything.
I was able to fix it in time to bring you on the show.
That's nice.
So, first thing I want to ask you about is how do you feel about this whole Ron Paul thing going on right now?
Is that general enough for you?
Yeah, well, I think, you know, Ron is an amazing spokesman for liberty and for peace, for sound money and for a different sort of America than the one we're living in now, police state and so forth.
And he's just, you know, how is it that he keeps getting better?
I mean, he was amazing enough four years ago.
He was amazing enough 40 years ago.
But I mean, he keeps getting better and it's just, he expands people's minds.
I mean, for example, he introduced a bill, which is not unusual to you and me, but in Congress, of course, very unusual to abolish the TSA.
Now, the other Republicans under pressure, maybe they have a, they say, we're going to have a commission.
We're going to study this.
But of course, of course, they love the TSA.
They love the Department of Homeland Security because they were created by the Republicans.
They were, you know, the, uh, uh, by the Bush administration.
So here, Ron cuts to the quick and of course, they're not going to pass this bill.
But what he does by, by talking about abolishing this, he really can open people's minds.
He can make them think, well, you know, wait a minute, maybe we don't have to put up with this stuff.
And there's another example.
He was interviewed by the Conway, um, New Hampshire newspaper and a great YouTube.
And they said, well, gee, you know, you're, you, how are you going to get any votes from Republicans when you have such, um, uh, Utrecht ideas as legalizing drugs?
And he said, well, you know, aren't we supposed to be for states' rights?
He said, all I'm saying is that, you know, it's not the business of the federal government.
And that to the extent that it is anybody's business, it should be handled in the, in the American system by the states.
Now, of course, he's for, for, um, decriminalization everywhere, but he feels as a Congressman, his only job is to aim at the federal government.
Of course, I think we all should aim at the federal government.
That is the locus of oppression, of taxation, of spying, of killing in the whole world is the U.S. government, not Al Qaeda.
It's Washington, D.C.
So he gets people to focus there.
And to the extent he can make Republicans think, well, gee, you know, I am for states' rights in these seven areas.
Why should I be for the total federal power in the area of drugs?
So, um...
Hey, it was FDR that invented the federal drug war in the first place.
Yeah, it was.
And of course, it was to replace prohibition.
It was so they'd give all the, uh, the monsters who had been the, the, uh, you know, the Eliot Nesses of the world.
So I think this guy's a hero.
Of course, he was a total monster, uh, to give those guys.
And of course the government wanted power.
So here we had, you know, Bob Higgs said that the repeal of prohibition is the only, is the only example we have of a dramatic diminution of government power.
Uh, so one of their, you know, it's totally alarming to think of that.
And he argues, by the way, that the reason they did it, needless to say, had nothing to do with the politicians deciding we needed more freedom, but that the municipalities and the states were going out of business financially.
And this was a way to give them a vast, uh, infusion of cash, of taxes that people were anxious to pay.
People wanted to pay liquor taxes in order to be able to have reliable, um, uh, booze and not have to have bathtub booze and, um, sold in the underground economy.
They wanted, you know, they wanted them to the big liquor houses.
They didn't want, they didn't want it for Malcapone.
So, um, that that's why I hope that's not the only reason, but anyway, probe the repeal of prohibition was a big diminution of government power.
And as a result, they wanted to come up with something else.
And they began the drug war and the horrible, the horrible war against, uh, against marijuana.
I just saw a very interesting normal, um, public service announcement, but Willie Nelson endorsing the Ron Paul, Barney Frank marijuana freedom law.
And he was listing, and I think I know this stuff, but I mean, he was listing how many people have been jailed every year on marijuana charges in this country.
I mean, last year was like 850,000 people.
I mean, they call this the land of the free.
Yeah.
We have the incarceration capital of the year of the world.
Sorry, Scott.
Oh no, I'm sorry.
I was talking over there.
I was just saying, yeah, the, uh, a quarter of the world's prison population is in America.
Well, that's why we're free.
Yeah.
Uh, with, uh, what?
300 million out of, uh, 7 billion people on earth, whatever that proportion is, uh, and yet a quarter of the world's prisoners.
But anyway, so yeah, on your point about, uh, you know, and this is what's exciting about this whole thing.
Uh, Ron Paul changing the political conversation in America completely.
He's just, uh, all the old definitions are just falling away.
Cause you have this wise old man going, well, you know, really, you don't have to have a world empire.
And you know, really the states ought to whatever, you know, like you're saying he's his, uh, consistent answers.
The same ones he's been giving all along are now given such prominence and face it.
I mean, the, the leadership of conservatism in the Republican party, you know, the, as opposed to libertarianism in the Republican party is Mitch McConnell is the highest ranking guy they've got.
He's got no charisma whatsoever.
And of course the Democrats are stuck with Barack Obama as their leader.
And here's this guy getting up there and going, no, no, no, you guys were all wrong.
The answer is obvious.
We just need to be free and at peace and things will be great.
You know?
Well, I guess this is typical of Ron, but I can remember this was four years ago, but some reporter was saying, well, wait a minute.
What do you mean?
Um, you know, get out of, uh, Iraq and Afghanistan.
How would you get the troops out?
And he said, well, I get them out the same way we got them in.
He said, we marched in, we can just march out.
So, you know, there is an answer that can go penetrate into everybody's head.
And then people think, well, wait a minute, why not?
Because of course they try to claim, well, you can't get out because of the, you know, all these various.
So again, he, he, as you say, he brings up, he is the only one to question the bipartisan belligerent, uh, warmongering, death dealing foreign policy of, of the U S empire.
And because he can't eat, he talks not only is it morally wrong, not only should the, not only it's so wonderfully true, there should be a golden rule foreign policy as we would like to be treated.
So we should treat others.
Um, but he, you know, he also talks about, there's no money and these wars are so vastly expensive.
And, uh, you know, he says we're going to have to cut, but rather than toss old people off Medicare or whatever, let's stop the wars first.
Then we'll get to the entitlements, but the very powerful, very politically potent argument.
And, um, I don't know.
I think he's, I think just by speaking the truth, just by, just by having the guts to speak the truth at a time when you're not supposed to speak the truth, he reaches people's hearts.
He re just like in 2008, he recruited millions of young people all over the world, not just in this country, all over the world.
And it's happening again.
It's, it's, it's quite extraordinary and wonderful.
Well, and especially, you know, on that argument about the military spending, it's very rare that he ever is really asked in a way that he would answer and say, well, really war is bad for the economy.
The myth is that it's good, but it's really not.
And here's why he's not ever usually in that position to explain it that way, but simply by consistently citing the expense of war and, and classifying it all as waste in his arguments, he really has put the lie to the whole war is good for the economy thing.
And I think it's going to be harder.
You know, the average American we're, we're all, I was taught that in school, you know, world war two saved us from the depression and whatever.
But I think that that is really kind of falling away just by implication of what he's saying day by day, that this money is all wasted.
It's not making us rich at all to go killing people all over the world, occupying building ships and sailing them away.
How does that make us more wealthy?
It makes no sense at all.
You know, not, not that if we could make ourselves wealthier by killing 50 million people, that that would be a good thing.
No, certainly not.
Right.
So it's, but no, of course it's, it's destructive.
On the other hand, there are people who get rich off war.
There are people who are made much better off economically, all the munitions manufacturers, the state itself, of course, all the, the contracting companies who are Blackwater and so forth who are connected to the state.
They do very well.
Just the average guy who's, who's ruined.
Of course.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, when we get back, we're going to talk more about the Ron Paul campaign and the political realignment against the state and for peace and Liberty along libertarian lines.
That's happening in our country right now.
And it's Lou Rockwell from the Mises Institute and lourockwell.com.
Hang tight right there.
All right, y'all welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking to Lou Rockwell from lourockwell.com and the Ludwig von Mises Institute is the author of speaking of Liberty and the left, the right, and the state and speaking of which, and the Ron Paul campaign and everything.
It seems like to me, Lou, that the most important object of course is ending the war, which is the germ of all the other tyranny in America, as James Madison put it back in the days.
And, and to that end, we really need, as you referred to the bipartisan imperial coalition in DC, we really need a vast coalition out here in the real world.
I mean, face it, you and I as anarcho-capitalists are about one percenters, or I guess if we're lucky four or five, right?
We need the good lefties and the good righties and the American people to get on board for this new realignment against the war on the Bill of Rights, against the war on the people of the world, and against the, the bank bailout corporate welfare state.
If we can realign around those issues and we can break this whole thing down, us versus them, the, the war party, and then again, the rest of us on the other side.
Well, I think it'd be great.
I, you know, I unfortunately don't see any evidence of it.
I mean, I, even I was shocked to the extent of which the vast left-wing anti-war movement had nothing to do with being anti-war.
It simply was anti-Bush.
It was just partisan.
It all disappeared with just a few heroic exceptions with the coming to power of, uh, of Barry Obama.
So the Republicans back in the, in the, in Clinton's day, you even had people like Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich sounding non-interventionist, but of course it was all a trick, just a partisan trick.
So, uh, I think we absolutely do need a coalition, but we're not going to find anybody in Washington.
It has to be, um, you know, it has to be probably new activists because again, the sort of traditional democratic activists and Republican activists are all creeps.
Yeah.
Well, but then again, I mean, they've really put us, those creeps have put us in such a bad situation that it seems like, well, for example, Dylan Radigan on TV, I don't know all that much about him, but I, I would presume that he was a typical Democrat.
Only the more he covers the news, the more he realizes that it's us versus them, that you have these few biggest industries that are completely, all of them on welfare and control the state and keep us at war and, and destroy our dollar and the rest of these things.
And you don't really have to be a libertarian to understand that.
It seems more fascism, which is what the American system is.
It's a fascist.
It's economically a fascist system, maybe soft fascism, but it's fascism nonetheless.
Right.
So, I mean, that really does put all of us who aren't the fascists on the other side.
It seems like it could, it should, there's the truth.
And then there's the narrative.
That's all we got to do is replace the narrative with an honest one.
And then we win, right?
Well, I'll tell you that actually Ron is able to appeal to both left and right, if those words mean anything, uh, on, on the war issue.
And, um, that's why I think we, everyone's in a wall on Huffington poster, similar establishment sites, see vicious attacks on Ron because they actually know that he appeals to their own grassroots.
Because of course, there's nobody in the democratic party talking like that.
Even Kucinich doesn't talk like Ron and even Kucinich says he's going to support Obama for reelection.
So, whereas Ron, of course, never voted for George Bush or supported him, but it's something quite astounding for a Republican Congressman.
So, um, I think so Ron's purity, um, uh, not only in terms of ideological consistency, but in terms of his character, uh, and his obvious motives and so forth.
I think, uh, yeah, I think it can cut through the fog and is appealing to, there is, there has been among Republicans once in a while, an anti-interventionist tradition.
So Ron is able to bring people together against the warfare state.
And it's just an astoundingly, uh, optimistic thing.
Well, in fact, I've seen even at the Huffington post essays by liberals saying, Hey, I'm on board for this Ron Paul thing.
He means what he says and he's good on all of the most important things to me.
And so nuts to these Democrats.
I'm through with them.
Well, good.
Yeah.
I've seen actually progress.
Well, I think we are, I think we are making progress.
I think that's exactly correct.
And we need some progress.
Yeah.
Well, and you know, again, on back to the war issue and, and Ron Paul's effect on it, I think, you know, especially since the Vietnam war, uh, people have this attitude that if you're anti-war, then you're simply just a hippie chanting, no blood for oil without much, you know, or give peace a chance without much real knowledge or, you know, maybe you're just a wimp and you don't want to fight, but us tough guys know what we have to do kind of attitude.
And yet here's a Republican from Texas saying, no, no, no, all that's wrong.
And making it really easy.
No, no, no, we don't need any of that at all.
And I think that's a real, you know, permission slip granted to people who don't want to identify themselves with Michael Moore to go ahead and abandon their, you know, pro militarism and nationalism in that sense.
Yeah.
And it might, is Michael Moore actually anti-war.
I mean, he's another guy who was said some great stuff, did some great stuff, made a great documentary, but by and large, uh, attacking Bush, but he's been pretty darn silent under Obama.
So he's another example of a phony anti-war guy.
He was, he's just partisanship.
So he could have, he might've been attacking Bush on the war because he thought he was vulnerable there, but for no other reason, because he's certainly not at a war he's for democratic wars.
So I must say I have total disdain for these people.
And, um, I can't believe I, and I, I did think that some of them were actually anti-war because it turns out not to be true.
Well, you know, I'm not certain, but I think Michael Moore actually, um, was he bad on Libya?
I don't know.
I certainly, they don't give him the attention that he used to get.
I actually don't know where he stands on Libya.
So if he's good on Libya, that would be great.
Yeah.
It's a great atrocity.
What's happening in Libya, purely for reasons of oil.
He was good on Kosovo back in the Clinton years.
I remember that, you know, that's part of bowling for Columbine was he was saying the day of the Columbine massacre was the day of the worst bombing by NATO of Serbia and the Kosovo war.
And how come one kind of mass murder is okay.
And the other isn't good stuff for a Democrat to go against Obama.
I mean, it was easier to go against Clinton.
Obama is really like a holy, holy figures of them.
So it's, uh, but let's hope they go against them.
I mean, he is, you know, cause in some sense I always think of, I mean, it's useful to, to, uh, sum up the state in an individual, but Obama like Bush represents is just the front man for a vast oligarchy.
I mean, of, of, uh, bankers and military industrial complex and wall street and, you know, I'll go right down, down the list of all the big interests.
Um, so Obama's not really an independent figure.
In other words, Bush, they just, if they started to go against the regime, they would be out of there pretty quickly.
So they're just there to be the front man and to, uh, um, sell the policies.
And of course, sooner or later, every president becomes hated.
So they have to shift to another, another front man.
But it's the oligarchy of government, which we, we really need to focus on.
Um, and that oligarchy and that empire so big now, I wonder if Ron Paul was a president and signed all the right orders all the time that he could, uh, whether he would even be able to instruct the executive branch, what to do, or to stop doing.
My own view is the important work that Ron does is his educational work by opening up people's minds.
I I'm, you know, I, if anybody could do it, he could do it.
But I always wonder, can you actually use government to cut down government?
Is it actually possible to use the mechanisms of the coercive state against the coercive state?
I'd love to see it happen.
Um, I wonder about it.
Yeah.
Well, uh, as you say, if anybody could do it, it would be Ron Paul.
Uh, we know, for example, that, you know, when he says that he would order the Navy to get back away from Iran on his first day in power, whatever, we know he would do that.
We know that, uh, unlike a Barack Obama flip-flopping on all his promises, he would at least try his very best.
Well, there's no question.
And he, you know, unlike, unlike any other politician, uh, he actually is a man of his word.
I mean, yet what you see is what you get.
He's, he, he is the real deal.
So that if, uh, there's no question that he would do these things, but you know, when we have, there are too many instances of, of, uh, these bureaucracies being very tough to move.
So, uh, would the generals and the admirals resist?
I'd like to think that they would just obey him as the commander in chief, but we see right now during the Obama administration, in fact, uh, what seems to be actually shocking, you see the admirals and the generals resisting the president publicly when he wants some little tiny change in military policy in Afghanistan.
Uh, and I think it's been clear ever since nine 11, especially that, um, uh, that the military is more and more in, I think it's been true for a very long time, but it's more and more independent factor.
Uh, they have their own vast, uh, you know, numbers of troops.
They're the ones who are armed.
They've got all the bombs and everything.
Would they actually take orders, uh, from a president to say, you guys are going to become much less important.
You're not going to have these vast numbers of troops.
You're not going to be doing the things you love, killing people, bombing people, sending in the predator drones and that sort of thing.
There's going to be a change as a new guy in town.
Would they salute and say, okay, sir, I hope to goodness they would.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, we're all out of time.
We'll have to leave it right there.
Uh, I sure hope so too.
I know for sure.
It'd be interesting to watch.
Huh?
Very interesting.
All right.
Well, thanks very much again for your time, Lou Scott.
Thank you everybody.
That's Lou Rockwell.
He is the chair of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and the founder of lourockwell.com.
Thanks again.
