04/26/13 – Ron Paul – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is the Scott Horton Show, live from 11 to 1 Texas time, weekdays on No Agenda Radio, noagendastream.com.
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All right.
Our first guest today is Dr. Ron Paul, MD.
Welcome back to the show.
Ron, how are you doing?
Doing well, Scott.
Nice to be with you.
Well, I'm very happy to have you back on the show.
It's been way too long since we've spoken, and I'm really sorry to do this to you, but this is kind of the part of the interview where I have to ask you to sit there and squirm while I tell you about how great you are for a minute here.
The thing of it is, Dr. Paul, is that you're the greatest American hero ever.
And I'm just so lucky I have a chance to tell you this directly to you.
See, what you've done in your two presidential campaigns is you've taken purist libertarianism, plumb line libertarianism, and you have made it a topic worldwide, a household term worldwide.
You've increased public understanding of real economics, of peace and of really enlightenment, individualist libertarian theory in a way that no one else has ever done.
It's really comparable to the Declaration of Independence being published or something like that, when it comes to the number of people entertaining ideas of liberty that had not before.
And there's just nothing comparable to it.
There's no parliamentarian in the history of the world who has accomplished what you've accomplished in terms of spreading the ideas of peace and liberty the way that you've done.
And I'm certain that you'll live in history for a thousand years if the politicians don't get us all killed before then.
Well, I think you're exaggerating a bit, but I'll still take it.
I mean, it always sounds nice, but no, there's a lot of people who've done a lot of good work, and I'm just one of them.
Well, you're very humble, too.
The only thing that might verify this a little bit that we've had a little bit of effectiveness is the fact that they're still attacking me.
I thought when I left Congress, they'd leave me alone a little bit and let me just go and pursue my beliefs and convictions and try to spread a message.
The attacks came pretty vicious here in the last week or two, so maybe they still are very, very much opposed to what we're doing and afraid that we might influence some people.
But I appreciate your comments.
They're very nice.
All right, well, good.
I'm glad you took them in the spirit they were meant.
And now, of course, what's made them all so angry and the reason they attack you is because they're afraid of you, and you go throwing around this word peace like you mean it.
And in Washington, D.C., that's a terrifying thing.
That's what they said, be very afraid of Ron Paul's new Peace Institute.
Why don't you tell us about that Peace Institute, Dr. Paul?
Yes, we've set this up recently.
And the one individual that I placed a lot of responsibility on that worked with me for quite a few years in Washington, that's Daniel McAdams, who did my foreign policies.
He's very, very good.
I could always rely on him for analysis and advice.
And he came up with this idea and came to me, and I thought it sounded great.
So we have a large number of people, advisors, and people willing to participate.
And I think it's pretty important.
And I think your point is well taken about peace.
Why should anybody be turned off with peace?
When I go to the college campus, I start with the subject of liberty and then want to explain it, what it really means from our viewpoint.
And I said, why it is important is, I believe it's the only way you can have both peace and prosperity is through the understanding of liberty.
And that's where we have been lacking.
Too many people have different definitions of what liberty is.
Sometimes liberty is used in somebody else's life and money.
And young people, especially who are inheriting this mess, have to realize this.
And so far, I've been very pleased, you know, with the reception on the campuses.
And I've continued to do that since the reception was good during the campaign.
So even though there's lots of problems and lots of concerns, I still remain rather optimistic that there's enough people paying attention now to this message.
But like I said before, a lot of people are participating in this.
And I certainly didn't invent any of it, but I worked hard to try to spread the message.
Well, and you know, this is, especially in 2008 or 2007, eight during that campaign, this was what you really accomplished that, you know, it's in the documentary, Watering the Tree of Liberty, which is just great that I hope people will watch.
It was that fight with Giuliani that really was the turning point.
And what really happened there, other than just, you know, history began before September 11th and there's more to our terror war than is commonly portrayed.
It was also the fact that you are personally conservative, Christian, Texas Republican, and for peace in a way that it serves, I think, as a permission slip for a lot of people who have been told on TV or maybe kind of told by the culture their whole life, that the only people who are anti-war are ignorant hippies singing Kumbaya, but who don't know anything about anything or somebody like Jane Fonda sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun.
But those of us who are adults and responsible and know things, we all know that something terribly violent must be done.
And what you did was you said, no, that's actually not the case.
You could be a conservative Christian Republican who's very well-informed and very concerned for the future of the country and know better than to have this warmongering foreign policy.
And that is what turned the world upside down.
Yeah, and I'm pleased with that because that was a challenge because for so many years, the votes that I would take, you know, with either by myself or with a very few others, it was always pained to be, well, you're un-American.
You don't care about our troops, you know, on and on.
You're not patriotic.
You don't vote at the Patriot Bill, so you're unpatriotic.
And yet, two things happened.
The world was rapidly changing in 08 and 09.
Financially, and of course, our country was sick and tired of the wars.
As a matter of fact, they were sick and tired of Bush too.
And unfortunately, we didn't replace them with anybody any better.
But the one other event that happened that really helped me on these attacks, these so-called Giuliani attacks, was the fact that when the dust settled, the military people liked our message.
And I wasn't totally surprised, but I was very pleased.
I didn't know it would be that strong.
So this sort of silences those individuals who had never served in the military.
Not that that should be a litmus test, but I had at least experience of being in the military.
And I took these positions, and they knew I wasn't against the troops, and that I was for America, and I was for peace, and for strong defense.
But when they defended me, not only with verbal support, but also financially, I have to admit, it made me feel pretty good.
Yeah, well, good.
Good, yeah.
You changed the history of the world right there.
No doubt about it whatsoever.
In fact, we were so angry at Giuliani in my living room, and then we were so proud the way that you stood up to him and answered.
I'll never forget that moment.
It was just incredible.
Of course, you'd won me over back years and years ago, but that was really something else.
All right, now, so tell us quickly, can you give us a rundown on which issues the Peace Institute is going to tackle first, and how you're going to go about your business?
Well, it's the big issue, of course.
It's the foreign policy and where we are.
I think the most important one right now is Syria and the Middle East, and actually things have gotten worse today because last week, Hegel visited Israel, and he said, well, they never mentioned to me that they had evidence about gases being used in Syria.
So then they announced that in public, and he didn't know about it, but now all of a sudden he says, oh, there's been gases spread around by the government, and therefore we have to, that's the red line we've crossed.
So I think we're getting very dangerous there.
We put the troops in Jordan.
We've been helping the rebels who are made up of Al-Qaeda in there.
So this could deteriorate, and we're going to work real hard in trying to expose the truth there in the most diplomatic fashion possible and try to avoid the demagoguing, but just say, these are the facts.
You know, even Hillary and others were admitting they didn't know who was in the factions.
So here we are supporting, once again, the side of the Al-Qaeda.
Another time we have a war against the Al-Qaeda and Taliban, and of course their argument always is, well, they hate our culture and they hate us for it, and therefore we have to go over there and kill them there so they don't come over here.
We will work really hard to try those perceptions.
I've argued for so many years that if that perception isn't changed, we really can't win this.
But as you pointed out, we had a surprise positive reaction to the Giuliani deal.
So I think there's a lot of other people out there once they hear about it, you know, they'll come our way.
Yeah, I mean, when they say redline this and redline that, I don't know exactly what that means, but part of me, I have to believe that somewhere in Washington, D.C. is, you know, at least the knowledge, if not the wisdom from the Iraq war that this is not always as easy as it might seem at first, you know?
It never is.
And there's always the unintended consequences, you know, both militarily and also financially.
And if you read the reasons why bin Laden encouraged 9-11 and what he thought would happen, you know, it's pretty astute.
It looks like he's laughing at us in his grave because it seems like they've won so much.
You know, and a lot of people, including Michael Schur, argues that we have lost these wars over there.
We're leaving.
Even though it's not as humiliating as when we left Vietnam, in many ways, it's very similar.
All of that fighting and killing and money spent, and things are more chaotic, more people dying.
And think of how many people died over there at our hands.
And this is the reason, the non-interventionist foreign policy is a powerful argument.
And it's something that if we get the information out there, it's going to be hard for people to turn it down, especially when it's recognized how broke this country is.
You know, the Soviets weren't defeated because we had to fight them.
It was an economic issue.
They defeated themselves.
And we're on the verge of doing that.
And that was one of bin Laden's plans, was to drive us into bankruptcy and bog us down.
And evidently, we played into his hands.
Well, and I think that is going to be a very powerful argument, especially when it's so clear, as you just pointed out, that the war in Syria is blowback from the war in Iraq already, that this is the Sunni insurgency from Iraq that's fighting, the Al-Qaeda and Iraqis fighting alongside in the Sunni insurgency there.
Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, I was going to say, and the real irony is there was no Al-Qaeda in Iraq before we went in.
Right.
It's almost like, I mean, it is so bad on the surface.
It's, you wonder, are they really stupid or are they doing this on purpose?
Are they on the side of Al-Qaeda?
Which I don't believe.
I just think that they are absolutely inept.
They have goals and they always fail at them, fortunately.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, I could see how someone would think, hey, let's get rid of Assad, you know, I don't know, 15 years ago.
But it seems like they would have to change their opinion about that once all this new information comes in about the way the world actually works.
Yeah, because Assad's no nice guy.
It's easy to, you know, promote war against a dictatorship.
But but what's to come next?
Yeah.
All right.
And so this brings us to the last topic.
I know you got to go, but I wanted to ask you real quick about Ron Paul's America that you're doing with Charles Goyette, who is my favorite radio guy in the whole wide world.
And this is, I think, I just I could not overstate the importance of this.
You're going to be on, you already are on twice a day on radio stations across the country doing this sort of Paul Harvey cactus prior minute kind of a thing.
And this is so powerful.
All of these conservative talk radio stations playing Ron Paul twice a day, every day from now on.
Is this is it already a lot of fun?
Are you getting a lot of response from it?
Yeah, we are.
It's going very favorably.
And the the company that actually put it together for us and, you know, find the stations have called called me to try to come up with an understanding of expanding that they want to expand a lot more.
It's two things.
We do the daily things, but they also do a podcast.
So this is this looks like I think the limitation will be my time and my energy.
And I like it and enjoy it.
And it's not not that difficult to do, but there's always going to be a limit when I'm on a trip.
You know, this week I was up at Colgate and I had a nice visit up there.
So when you're gone for a day or two, you can't quite get that studio quality that they want.
They want me to do this with studio quality and make it sound very professional.
So I think it can get as big as I'm able to do it.
And which which means those individuals and stations, they're not they're not coming to me because they're philosophic allies, but they do know and understand that there's a market out there for our message.
And they're not doing it on purpose to spread our message.
They're doing it because they know somebody wants to hear it.
And if somebody wants to hear it, you know, then they can sell advertising.
So it's a it's a market phenomenon.
And I hope it's successful for that reason, if nothing else.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I'm always excited when I see that you're on TV and you're answering anybody's questions.
But the fact that in this case, you're answering Charles's questions is just huge because he really knows what the right question is.
He's not going to waste his time asking CNN fluff.
And I've heard a couple of dozen of them so far.
And they're just great.
I'm so excited about it.
I think that's wonderful.
Thank you.
All right.
Well, thank you very much for coming back on the show, Ron.
It's great to talk to you again.
OK, bye.
Thanks very much, everybody.
That is Ron Paul, the greatest American hero ever.
Ever.
As Anthony Gregory says, he makes Thomas Jefferson look like Alexander Hamilton.
His name is on most of my clothes.
He's the author of The Revolution, a manifesto and in the Fed and the case for gold and a thousand articles at LewRockwell.com and at Antiwar.com.
Check him out in on your local AM affiliate.
If they don't have him yet, call your local AM affiliate and see if you can get Ron Paul's America on there with Ron Paul and Charles Goyette, which is just great.
And check out the brand new Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Hey, I'm Scott Horton here, inviting you to check out WallStreetWindow.com.
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See what happens at WallStreetWindow.com.
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So also keep your eye on writermichaelswanson.com for more details.
Hey, I'm Scott Horton here for the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
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