03/04/10 – Rep. Ron Paul – The Scott Horton Show

Every hero's got to have his theme music.
That one goes out to my hero, Dr. Ron Paul.
Welcome back to the show, Ron.
How are you doing?
Thank you, Scott.
Good to be with you.
I really mean that, too.
You know, I got to tell you, at least over here at the Hate the State Estate, we cheer out loud watching the YouTubes of your TV news appearances.
It's just great.
It's great seeing you get up there and teaching these people, especially no matter what the question is, you always bring up war.
They'll say, Ron, what do you think about Social Security?
And you'll say, well, we've got to end this empire.
Well, you know, they try to separate them into two factions.
You know, one is the foreign policy and one is domestic policy.
And I argue that you can't separate the two.
So if you want more money in our economy and the retired people take care of themselves and you have a free market, you want less war and less spending overseas.
But even in the transitional period, I'm willing to vote against all that operation overseas and hopefully work our way out of our domestic problems, which means that, you know, even the transition, you might be able to get a few converts to come out against the war.
The big frustration is, is that Obama was supposed to help us out on that.
And I'm sure the progressive Democrats aren't very happy with him on that issue either.
Yeah, well, they certainly don't have reason to be happy with him at all.
So, you know, basically what's happening here with all these TV appearances that you've been doing, you know, it's so cool for those of us who were big fans back in the day when you were sort of underground.
And, hey, did you know that there's one good congressman and all that?
Now it's totally different now.
You know, you're a household name for everyone in the whole society.
Everybody knows you now.
And you've been doing, you know, since the beginning of your run for president, this the world's greatest speaking tour on behalf of individual liberty and peace, I think, probably ever, which, you know, it's got to feel great knowing that you're getting away with continuing to accomplish this on a daily basis.
The people on the news keep calling you back because you have an answer for everything that they have to ask.
And it really is great.
And it seems like I say all that to set up for for a question here.
It seems like it's working, at least on the young.
And I'm joined here, actually, in the studio by my friend Nick Hancoff, and he's from the Young Americans for Liberty and the Year of Youth.
And he was there at CPAC and was part of, I believe, the voting population there that helped put you over the top a couple of weekends ago.
So welcome, Nick.
And did you have a question for Dr. Paul about CPAC and the peace movement here?
Yeah.
Hey, Dr. Paul, I've I have had the pleasure of meeting you a couple of times, once in Los Angeles and then once in D.C. for CPAC.
And real quick, I just want to say the youth movement is, if anyone has any doubts, I know Ron doesn't, but for anyone who has any doubts, there are real connections.
These are real people with, you know, their hearts really in the movement.
And we came together with close bonds and a lot of great memories out of CPAC.
And you and just the issues of the world today, I guess, are all together, bringing us together in this perfect storm.
But the one thing that's dividing the youth movement a little bit is how to react or what the commentary is on the relationships with names like Michael Steele or Glenn Beck or the types of names who came out before who, you know, aren't aren't friendly to a lot of our viewpoints, but then somehow magically they get to change their opinion or come around in for a photo op and swing in and all that.
So there's one side of the movement that is yelling heads on a stick, heads on a stick.
And then the other side of the movement is saying, no, you know, when when people realize they make mistakes, they're growing up or they're changing their minds, whatever you want to call it.
How do you address those issues and how do you know when someone's being genuine or just trying to use your influence, your movement?
I try to ignore the discussion of the personalities.
I don't want it to be over personalities.
And too often that becomes emotional.
So I don't go out of my way if they mention somebody's name and say, do you think they're trying to come in and take over?
They may well be.
I don't want that to be the issue.
I think the only issue should be is what we believe in.
And I see my responsibility as setting a record, not only saying the right things, but voting the right way.
I purposely avoided the best I could from ever mentioning George Bush's name when he was president, although I was opposed to his foreign policy and his, of course, domestic policy when it came to Patriot Act and other surveillance activities that he was participating in.
But I didn't want to have to both get, you know, take care of the emotional attachment to George Bush, especially since he was in Texas.
And I didn't want to make a personality thing an issue.
I think it's, you can win, you can win more battles if you stay in the realm of the ideas.
The only problem with it is in the media, they always want confrontation, they're always stirring it up.
And I do get some of these interviews mainly because I will oppose the conventional wisdom of both Democrats and Republicans, but especially the Republicans.
If it's a progressive state program, they might want to use it just to say, see, these Republicans don't know what they're talking about.
Ron Paul says this.
And I know what they're trying to do, but I really try to stay away from it.
I don't want to have the job of not only promoting the ideas I believe in, and then I have to discredit the people who are in opposition when there's an emotional attachment.
I try to avoid that the best I can.
Well, it seems, Dr. Paul, like the real split on the right is over war, and the positions are really being solidified.
It's funny, because I know that you're almost alone in the House of Representatives, but ideologically, out here in the world, where you have this whole Tea Party movement going on, and as you said, progressives who already are getting over Barack Obama after his expulsion of the wars and so forth, I wonder, do you think it's possible that Nick and the Year of Youth types can actually help you?
Is it an attainable goal, really, to get the right wing to be anti-interventionist?
I mean, it is Obama's war now, right?
What's to like about that?
Well, I think one of the reasons why I did well in the election was it was no longer me confronting George Bush, and it was Obama's war, so this should soften the position of the conservatives.
The conservative Republicans were positively opposed to Clinton's war in Bosnia, which was an interventionist war.
So I think there's reason to hope they'll do better, not maybe for a perfect reason, only because they're out of power right now.
But next week is a very good chance that there's a group of us who have gotten together, along with Dennis Kucinich and some other Democrats, and we've introduced a resolution challenging the war in Afghanistan based on the War Power Resolution.
And Dennis has been promised by the leadership that we're going to have a three-hour debate on Afghanistan.
We should have had it ten years ago and five years ago, it should be constant, but we're finally going to have a debate because that funding and the promotion of the Afghan war is more likely to come from the Republicans than the Democrats.
So I'll be interested in seeing how this comes down.
There will be a vote on this, and I'm hoping that we can pick up some more Republican support on this as well as more Democrats, for that matter.
The Democrats, the anti-war coalition that we worked with against Bush, that has softened on the Democratic side because of the partisan issue.
That becomes pretty frustrating, but next week might be an interesting week to see what happens.
Yeah, it's too bad.
I know foreign policy is not everybody's first issue, but I wish it could be, you know, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich and the Peace Party and let the Cheneys and the Obamas have each other, you know?
Yeah, that's about right.
At least that way, you know, because we have somewhat of an anti-war movement on the left and the right, but it's kind of hard to bring us together.
It's good to see you working with Dennis Kucinich on that.
I was actually just going to ask you about that, whether you were going to be or not.
So that's great to hear that.
Let me ask you about money real quick here, Dr. Paul.
Well, I'll put it this way.
I've got some Austrian economists in my left ear saying that the damage is done, the seeds have been sown, the dollar will be destroyed, it's only a matter of time.
And then I have a word of caution that comes from a few different places, but most importantly to me from the great Robert Higgs at the Independent Institute who says, well, they know that they're between a rock and a hard place and they will jack up interest rates through the roof before they let the dollar be completely destroyed.
They will find a way out of this, or at least they know that they need to.
So do you think that it's possible that we actually have time to maybe actually roll back the empire and cut some spending and avoid a total dollar meltdown and the kind of crisis that will come with that?
No, but there may be a position in between.
They won't.
They won't do it deliberately and calmly and more smoothly by just cutting back.
But if they allow it to continue, there will be a major crisis.
Something will have to happen, but it's not because they want to, but because they'll have to.
They may save the dollar in name, but they'll have to change the monetary policy.
They'll have to say, well, you know, in picking up the pieces.
I don't think it's going to happen without a much greater financial crisis, which I think is going to come, you know, in the next several years.
Nobody knows exactly when the panic hits and everybody panics and dumps dollars.
But then not only will the Fed raise interest rates, but the market will raise interest rates.
But, you know, in the early 1980s and 79, 80, when Volcker came in, he took interest rates up to 21% and got a lot of heat for it.
But in a way, if he hadn't done that, the dollar would have, the confidence would have been further lost and who knows what might have happened.
Right now, they're not on the verge of doing that because the conditions are worse.
And if they do that, the economy would weaken so much that they're going to wait until the market demands that something be done.
Do you think we're risking a real crack up boom where I think the worst case scenario, as I've read it, would be all the central bankers in the world panicking and saying, oh, no, today's the day and just dumping their debt.
And all of a sudden, trillions and trillions of dollars will be coming back to the United States and all of us will be the last ones holding the bag there.
I mean, is that really the kind of danger we're messing with here?
It sure is.
And right now, though, it's in everybody's interest to keep this game going.
You know, whether you're holding dollars or printing dollars.
And I'm sure what we do is we agree that if you help prop up our dollar, we're going to help maintain order in the system.
So if somebody gets behind, like Greece, we will, behind the scenes, help them out.
And certainly, if we can help countries like that around the world and bail them out, we'll bail out, you know, states like California and others because, you know, for a state like California, the default on payments just wouldn't be tolerated.
But the market is what regulates this, that when it gets absolutely out of control, then there will be dumping no matter how hard they work to hold it together.
All right, everybody, that's Dr. Ron Paul.
He represents District 14 on the Texas Gulf Coast there, and he represents me in the House of Representatives.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Good to be with you, Scott.
All right.
Also, everybody, go out and get in the Fed and most especially the Revolution of Manifesto.
That book will change your view.