11/23/11 – Rep. Ron Paul – The Scott Horton Show

Alright 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 dr.
Ron Paul.
He represents district 14 down on, Texas Gulf Coast And he's running for president of the United States tied for first in Iowa Doing a really strong second place in New Hampshire at least last I saw He's got a great archive of articles and speeches at Lou Rockwell comm and at original dot antiwar.com/Paul a lot of great foreign policy pieces there going back to at least 2002 maybe before that and His latest book is called liberty defined which is excellent, and I highly recommend it welcome back to the show dr.
Paul How are you?
Thank you Scott.
I'm doing well.
Thank you I'm very happy to hear that and I really appreciate you making time for us on the show today And I'll try to make this quick because it's more of a statement than a question, but I wanted to explain Why it is that your run for president is so important to me, and I know I speak for a lot of people about this as well You may remember the old right author Garrett Garett I believe it's in the people's pottage where he complains that the American people have never had the opportunity to choose between Republic and Empire It's always either Wilkie versus FDR or Dewey versus Truman or say McCain versus Barack Obama And the American people never really had a choice to choose our path here And that's what you represent to me is now for the second time peace and liberty and a constitutional republic and a sound economy on a Silver platter for the taking if the American people will just take it and I am so appreciative of that Well, well, thank you And of course that's been our goal and I I know the frustration by many by not having real choices You know in the old cliche Well, we can't we can't vote for somebody that might offer this because we have to vote for the lesser of the two evils But you know, I always make the comment when they ask about this Is that we send troops and money and we lose lives and we kill a lot of people spreading our goodness and our democracies We want to teach people how to have fair elections and then they have have elections that we don't like the election So we ignore them but back here at home.
Not only philosophically is it?you know hard to distinguish between the two and thinking that they're really different but Competition is tough in this country because third parties aren't welcomed It's hard to get on their ballots and they they write the rules and if if you're in a third party or an alternative party You know, you don't get into the debates.
So it's so it is a shame that has been offered So I've done my darndest to work in the Republican Party as well as outside the party and in education to make sure as many people as possible understand this distinction that it's it's either or and you can't you really can't maintain the status quo our status quo is always moving as History shows and it's always moving in the in the direction of Empire And if you listen to the debates and what went on last night, it seems like there's still a pretty strong consensus with the Republican Candidates that that's the direction they want to go But the one thing is I got I think one thing that's good news is I do think there's a lot of people especially the Younger generation, they're certain they're sick and tired of it.
Even now.
I've noticed in the last month or two talking to the audiences that have mostly social security people on them and talking about how their money was taken out of Social Security and spent Overseas and how these wars are detrimental to them how inflation is detrimental to them They're actually listening very carefully now, there are a lot less hawkish than they were five or ten years ago Mm-hmm.
Well, you know, I think I figured out something about the media's bafflement about Your strength and all the recent polling and your steady growth compared to all the flash-in-the-pan competitors on the Republican side And I think I figured out this morning reading the winners and losers analysis at the CNN website where you're in with the winners But in their lack of understanding they say well But the best he could do though Even though he was really strong would be to appeal to independence and Democrats who maybe might cross over and help support him And it's really beyond their capacity to understand or believe that actually you can lead the Republican Base to peace it's working Yeah, you know and and Republicans in the past have campaigned on peace, you know, like like Bush did you know in the year 2000?
His announced platform wasn't all that bad, you know a humble foreign policy and and said the words that sounded pretty good but the other thing that they're not quite recognizing they see the Republican Party as being a Fixed number of people and they are endorsed these issues but if you go to New Hampshire, the largest registration are independents and There are a lot of vote in the Republican primary and I think that's where we're making great inroads we're doing real well with traditional Republicans, but we're also Stirring it up in with the independence that will decide the election same thing same thing in Iowa You can even be a Democrat in Iowa and show up at a Republican caucus And it's sort of working in our benefit this year because there's no No Democratic contest and therefore if people want to make their vote count They can they can come over and vote in the Republican primary and because of the frustration and because They're starting to look at what I've been saying for years.
I think they're looking more carefully now, and I think that's good All right now very quickly at the end of the debate you were asked a question very softly about Somalia and the al-shabaab movement and you went ahead and gave a great answer and embarrassed Paul Wolfowitz and everything As the result, but I want to give you the opportunity to address Somalia in a situation with al-shabaab if you'd like Yeah, you know, I wasn't I didn't hear the question very well And I think she was trying to draw a corollary that the reason we we have problems in Somalia because we didn't follow through we met resistance and We lost a man, so we leave And if we do that, that's that's why we can't leave Afghanistan Obviously the longer we stay the more chaotic it's more people that that die, but we really never left Somalia We just transfer the responsibility.
I mean when they had the crisis in Mogadishu that crisis occurred You know with American troops, but now we just use proxy armies, you know with Kenya or Ethiopia we just buy their allegiance and send them in and stir up the trouble But I think you know the real answer to that is is why are we so worried about that?
Why don't we allow people to determine and have their self-determination and our problems?
Just get much worse when we think that we know what all these solutions are.
So it would have been a perfect Opening for me to emphasize the value of a non interventions foreign policy and the argument She was making as far as I'm concerned She just wants to perpetuate this forever if they want to have absolutely absolute control They got to send hundreds of thousands of people into all these countries and obviously it would bankrupt this So I think it's that she was talking about a failed policy and there's no way that could have and could solve The dilemmas that we face today, especially financially in the attack of our liberties here at home Well representative Bachman, I thought made an interesting point anyway, not necessarily do I agree with her conclusion?
But she talked about how some Americans Somali Americans I think she mentioned this have actually traveled to Somalia to participate in the war over there Which is a very worrying development Because obviously it doesn't take much imagination for them to go ahead and stay here and and commit some kind of terrorist act that kind But her problem, of course is she's analyzing the whole thing in a vacuum not as you're talking about Years and years of war over there, right?
But you know if you do have any Americans or American Somali Somalians here and they have an interest and they're not asking you to go or send your kids You know that to me is a little bit different If they want to be involved But it doesn't seem to be and seem to happen that way because too often there'll be prohibitions against that You know if you go as a private citizen and start getting involved too often our State Department will run on that but It's it's the use of force especially the government force It tells us that we have to use our money and our young people to go over and determine exactly what should evolve And then their argument always is well if we don't do it just think of the opposition You know who else is going to come in there the Chinese are going to come in the Russians will come back in there But the whole irony of this is we're over there in these various countries including Afghanistan and our foreign policy against Iran This is helping China.
We're driving people toward China China doesn't waste all their money and lives They're over there acting like capitalists there, and they're investing in these countries So this whole idea that it's fearful that they would use their military to take over I think they've learned a new trick And I think I I think we they learned it from us and unfortunately we have forgotten about how capitalism actually works Yeah, afraid so well.
We're gonna learn one way or another aren't we right all right?
Well, we're already a little bit over time I want to thank you so much for giving us a little bit of time today, sir great to talk to you Scott everybody That is the heroic dr.
Ron Paul author of Liberty Defined and a ton of great articles at anti-war calm and rockwell.com He's running for president United States right now You