Alright, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm happy to be back.
I had a nice little break there.
Well, I was still working while I was gone, but I was not here doing the show.
But now I'm back.
And joining me on the phone, first guest on the show today is the great Tom Woods, Thomas E. Woods Jr.
His website is tomwoods.com, and he's the author of most of the books that have ever been published, including Roll Back and Meltdown.
You've got to read Meltdown.
Just please read Meltdown.
I mean, he wrote a lot of stuff.
You can go read all about all the stuff he wrote at tomwoods.com.
But you've got to read Meltdown so that you can really get your head around how we got into the financial crisis that we are still in today, and why we're still in it, in fact, even though it came out right after the financial crisis started.
That's my favorite Tom Woods book.
Anyway, welcome back to the show, Tom.
How are you doing?
Doing well, Scott.
Thanks for having me.
Happy to have you here.
Listen, so I have a theory.
And I really try, I'm trying to be objective here.
I really tried to think of something else, someone else.
But I couldn't.
I'm convinced that what Ron Paul has just done in his last campaign for the presidency was the nicest thing that anybody has ever done for anybody else.
That here he has taken such a huge stage to push that purist, plumbline, libertarian platform of peace and liberty and sound capitalist economics in a way that we could have never dreamed that anyone would have been able to take such a stand in front of so many people like this just a few years ago.
And he did it in 2007 and 8, and it was just incredible.
But then this time he's doubled it, and isn't it great?
Well, as a matter of fact, it is.
When you and I spoke this morning about, hey, let's talk about and assess what Ron's contribution is, I thought, well, this is great.
I love talking about this.
I mean, as a historian, I love trying to anticipate how people will look back on somebody in the future.
And, of course, we who took part in this, we will look back on this with a real fondness.
We'll be proud to tell our kids that we were involved in it.
But, you know, I have an article at the very top of lewrockwell.com today on Ron Paul and the Remnant, and I think this is relevant to what we're talking about because the Remnant is this idea that came from an essay by Albert J. Knock.
It's this classic essay called Isaiah's Job.
And Knock says, you know, you look in the Old Testament, you've got the prophet Isaiah, and God basically tells him, you better get out there and tell the people that you guys better shape up or things are going to be really bad in the future, everything's about to collapse, that you people better turn yourselves around.
And, by the way, no one's going to listen to you when you go tell them this.
Basically, they'll spit on you, the intellectuals won't give you the time of day, and you will be viewed as a crazy person.
And so Isaiah kind of wonders, well, gee, if you put it that way, it kind of seems like a waste of my time to go out and tell them all this.
But then, and this is all in Knock's vernacular, God says, but what you're overlooking is, there is a Remnant out there.
There's a group of people waiting for a truth teller.
And there's a group of people who, when everything collapses, these will be the people who will put society back together again.
And it's your job to go out and reach them and comfort them and reassure them that they're not crazy.
And that's what Ron Paul did exactly.
I mean, that's what he did, and the thing about Knock and Isaiah and all this is that Isaiah did go out and speak publicly so anyone could hear him, but he didn't care one way or the other if people listened to him or not.
He was just going to go out there and tell the truth, the unvarnished truth, and it doesn't matter, the masses pay no attention, the masses would rather just be flattered about how awesome they are and USA is number one.
Who cares?
Who cares about those people?
I am out to reach the Remnant.
That's what he did.
Yep.
Well, and the thing is, too, is, well, again, I don't think any of us imagined how big it was and just how popular that message could be, say, for example, on college campuses.
I mean, it's pretty easy to see why people would be sick and tired of your typical college-left liberalism, but it seemed like they just wouldn't get sick and tired of it.
But apparently, yeah, no, they did.
They just needed a good example, right?
And Ron Paul always makes it so easy.
Oh, all this.
Remember the debate where the questioners were other Republican congressmen and they asked them about, well, what about forward power projection?
And Ron just goes, power.
Look, you know, all we need is a couple of battleships to defend America, we'll be fine.
And just completely dismissing their entire ridiculous belief system in their imperial foreign policy with not even a wave of his hand, just a power.
What are you talking about?
That's not what this is supposed to be about.
Yeah, well, that's the sort of thing that he would do regularly, and it would have been so easy in situations like that to just try and blend in with the GOP mainstream and try and tailor his message to them.
Now, you know, it's one thing to try to argue with somebody, bearing in mind where that person is coming from and you try to bring them along, but never actually conceding on principle.
It's quite another to just betray your cause entirely or retreat on it or whatever in the thought that maybe you'll reach more people, because what Knox said, what you actually wind up doing is you repel the remnant entirely.
The remnant will find you if you're out there telling the truth.
They're going to come find you, that's an absolute certainty.
But as soon as you just start making this general appeal to the masses where you get down to the lowest common denominator, then they just turn off immediately.
And he could have done that, and a lot of times it would have saved him a lot of grief, and he wouldn't have been attacked by all these moral pygmies out there at National Review and whatever if he had just shut his mouth and not said these things.
And yet he just got up there and just absolutely said them.
And I'm sure he drove some people on his staff up a wall for saying these things, but that's what's great about this guy, is that he just said them.
And he's going to keep on saying them.
I remember in 2007 there were a couple of times where, I don't remember specific examples, maybe he had to go on Fox News and get grilled by Hannity or something, and I was a little bit afraid for like how's he going to do or something.
And I just learned within, and I've been watching him on TV and whatever since 1997, and reading his stuff since then, since we came back to Congress.
But I just learned under the worst pressure, no matter who he's up against or whatever it is, how they're going to try to trap him or whatever, that I need never worry about what he's going to say.
He's always going to say something awesome.
He's always going to get it right.
He's always going to say, well, you know, if you want your transfer payments so bad, you're going to have to knock off this imperialism and bring it up.
They'll ask him anything and he'll bring up the empire.
And I can just watch him on mute all the time, and I know he's just rocking him.
He never disappoints, ever.
And this is why in some ways I'm sad to see him retire from public life.
But on the other hand, he's done what he can do.
He's probably disgusted with the whole system by now.
And we know that into his dying day he's just going to keep doing it one way or another.
He's going to find some way to just keep propelling, getting this message out.
But honestly, goodness, I mean, think about, well, think about like the 2008 contenders.
Does anybody remember Duncan Hunter?
I mean, who the heck was that guy, Jim Gilmore?
Anybody remember that guy?
Or I guess maybe Tommy Thompson you might remember.
People probably remember Rudy Giuliani, but that's because he's been seared into the national consciousness since 9-11.
Yeah, he's infamous.
That's different.
Right, exactly.
But, I mean, like 20 years from now, who's going to look back and say, thank goodness we had that universal genius Fred Thompson out there fighting for us?
I mean, Fred Thompson won't even be a Jeopardy question.
I mean, that would be considered an unfair question, way too obscure.
But is there any doubt whatsoever that Ron will still be known and that people will still take inspiration from him?
And that's why he matters more than all the Huckabees and all the Romneys put together.
None of them matter.
Nobody ever said, my life changed forever because of the philosophy of Mitt Romney.
Right.
Although, unfortunately, that may change, but it won't be because he inspired them.
It'll just be because of the things that he did with them against their will.
Anyway, it's Tom Woods.
We're talking about the greatness of Ron Paul.
And it's not hero worship.
It's just respect for somebody who really deserves the hell of a lot of it.
We'll be right back after this.
This past week, however, it was reported that the Pentagon indeed was finalizing plans to do just that.
In my opinion, all the evidence to justify this attack is bogus.
It is no more credible than...
All right, y'all, welcome back.
It's Anti-War Radio.
Scott Horton, I'm talking with Tom Woods.
He co-edited with Murray Polner the great compendium, We Who Dared Say No to War, American anti-war writing from 1812 to now.
Also, Nullification and many other great ones there.
Read all about them at TomWoods.com.
Get them and read them.
We're talking about the Ron Paul revolution.
And the greatest speaking to her on behalf of peace and liberty and sound economics.
And that's the whole thing.
This is a really big deal to a regular person who gets stuck with MSNBC, Fox, left, right perspectives.
That it's possible to get it right.
And instead of having a center of Lindsey Graham and Obama and Romney, a conservative Democrat, a liberal Republican, exactly the same on everything horrible, you could have somebody who agrees with the left and the right only on the things that they're actually good on and have it as a whole package.
So, Tom, I mean, when I grew up as a kid, if you're anti-war, then that means you wear tie-dye and you are a hippie and you actually don't know anything about the real, terrible, dangerous threats there are out there in the world.
And so those of us who know what has to be done will go ahead and do it regardless of what some hippie says.
And that was like the entire dominant theme of what is an anti-interventionist opinion in America up until Ron Paul did this revolution in 2007-8 and then again this time where he just said, no, that's not right.
You could be a Christian and a family man and a Texas Republican congressman and be absolutely opposed to each and every bit of this foreign policy.
And that's a lot because it's a big foreign policy, Tom.
Yeah, that's a huge step forward because, of course, I myself, growing up in the pre-Ron Paul period, I mean, you know, pre-presidential Republican stuff.
I mean, I was a high school kid when he ran for president of the Libertarian.
The only thing I remember about that is I did see a couple of Ron Paul bumper stickers at the time, but I couldn't think outside the box.
I just thought, well, this must be some crazy person because we all know the candidates are Bush and Dukakis.
But, of course, you know, I was not a particularly creative kid, and so I just thought, I know I don't like Dukakis.
I don't like the liberal Democrats, so therefore I'm a conventional conservative Republican and I repeat all the talking points.
And I don't trust the government except when it's foreign policy, and then I trust everything they say.
And I bought the whole thing.
And, yeah, of course, if you're against war, then you're obviously a stupid pansy who doesn't understand how the world works and that if the world's really going to work, we've got to really just crack some skulls and bomb some villages, and that's the only way peace through strength.
I mean, I was like a bumper sticker factory.
It was just horrible, and I look back on it, and I'm just mortified.
And I'm just grateful that I didn't really start my writing career until years later because, my gosh, what an embarrassing paper trail I would have to explain away all this awful stuff.
But now Ron has helped a lot of people.
The young people should not have to go through the phase I went through where they can skip right ahead to sort of like where I am now.
He can just get them immediately there by getting past these left-right prejudices, getting past the slogans, and just asking the kinds of fundamental questions that nobody else would ask.
Like, gee, how would we feel if another country did such and such to us?
The conservatives, it's like you're holding up a crucifix to Dracula when you make an argument like that.
They just can't.
They cower.
They can't believe you would ever compare the United States to another country to try to imagine that things would be reversed.
They're not reversed.
The U.S. is awesome, and you can't possibly ask this sort of question, but he does ask that.
And I would say of all the people I've talked to, and I've talked to a lot of Ron Paul people, the one thing, if I were to say what was the most common answer I got when I would say, so what was that thing that clicked with you that turned you into a supporter?
It's the we heard him say how would we feel if China was building bases on our territory or was stationing ships all around our coasts or was sending drones or they were sending, let's say, Internet viruses or whatever.
How would we feel about that?
They said, my gosh, I can't believe it, but I never actually asked myself that question.
Well, and there's that great documentary about the first presidential run for liberty, How the Ron Paul Revolution Watered the Tree of Liberty, I believe is the title.
And the big watershed for everyone is the conflict with Rudy Giuliani about blowback.
And history doesn't begin on September 11th.
Actually, we've been bombing Iraq from Saudi Arabia, and that's what got us into this mess.
And people just, they had never heard it before.
There are not a bunch, you know, 300 million Chalmers Johnson readers out there.
But they went, you know what, that sounds true.
I think I remember we'd been bombing Iraq that whole time, actually, now that you mention it.
And the fact that he was willing to stand up to a bully on the issue, and in a Republican presidential debate like that, it just shocked people.
I remember how outraged we were in the living room that Giuliani could be so unfair to Ron.
And then how stoked we were that he just stood up and said, no, actually, be cool, let me finish.
And he explained what he meant, and he won the point.
And we didn't know in the living room.
We only found out later that that moment just changed everything.
Yeah, and that's actually, this piece that I have, it's also linked at TomWoods.com.
The piece that I have today actually starts off with that moment and just points out that, you know, normally everybody sticks to the script.
You're allowed to hold certain views, and you can have views that are slightly to the left, slightly to the right.
But basically these are the views people are allowed to hold.
And whenever somebody by accident strays from that sort of range of respectable opinion, we know immediately what happens.
There are immediately clarifications, retreats, apologies.
And I call it like a liturgy of expiation.
It's like a religious ritual of, oh, my heavens, I am so sorry that I strayed from the holy mainstream between Romney and Obama.
And for heaven's sake, I'll never, ever do this again.
And so that's why it was such a big deal when Ron did not back down on that, because he had strayed from the Romney to Obama script.
And normally somebody like that would say, oh, you misunderstood me, or no, no, no, everybody's misunderstanding me, or I misspoke, or whatever.
And he absolutely refused to do it, and that's why in Brian Doherty's great new book called Ron Paul's Revolution, he quotes a guy out in L.A. saying, I felt at that moment that the world had changed forever, that what was possible had changed forever, because somebody had finally said, no, I'm not going to apologize for not hewing to the Kissinger line on Everything Under the Sun.
I'm, in fact, going to amplify my point.
That is a change.
No one ever does it.
Ever.
Right.
That's the comment in the chat room right there.
Any other politician would have backed down, especially before Rudy Giuliani.
Yeah, exactly.
Mr. 9-11 himself.
I have to mention this real quick, because I need you to talk about it, because I think it's so important, and because I agree with it especially.
He has said, no, you don't have to be a mean, greedy, ritual white man to be for capitalism.
If you want for the poor and the downtrodden to ever have anything, you have to support capitalism.
Capitalism is property rights, is human rights, is morality, is for the little guy, not just for some oligarch, and shown people that it's not a choice between just monopolists and Democrats, or whatever they teach in college.
Well, that is true.
I mean, of course, we've all been led to believe the opposite because of the school propaganda and the faces of the president looking down at us from up on the wall of the classroom, and these are the people who have made possible the standard of living we have.
If it weren't for them, we'd all be under the iron fist of the feudal overlords of the free market.
And there's no more truth to that than there is in what Donald Rumsfeld said about foreign policy.
And the more bureaucratic the economy becomes, the more the old boy network comes into play.
The various layers of regulation that people are calling for are not actually going to harm Wall Street.
They're going to empower the biggest institutions.
I mean, the whole Federal Reserve itself, the whole point of that from the start, was not to prop up Joe's country bank, it was to prop up the big institutions.
That's what it's there for.
And Ron Paul just told that to millions and millions and millions of people, just in simple terms, and they get it too.
You look at these rallies, 10,000 people show up for that, and they understand.
Yeah, and Ron Paul says to people, hey, you know, I like this economist, Ludwig von Mises, and he wrote this book, Human Action, and that's 900 pages long.
You have kids who went out and read that book.
Ron Paul told me to read this 900-page book.
Okay, done.
I mean, do you think Mike Huckabee could get you to read a 10-page pamphlet if you really tried?
You know what I mean?
I mean, this is incredible that that is even possible.
Right.
I mean, Mitt Romney even knowing who Ludwig von Mises is, much less inspiring people to do something like that.
Right.
Well, and just think, you know, in five, six years, well, I guess even before that, we'll really begin to see the effect of how many Austrian school PhDs are graduating and taking work teaching economics that way.
I mean, it's on now.
It's changed.
It can't go back.
That's right.
So we're not going to know until, I don't know, years down the road how many people he affected because they're all so young, half of them.
But there's no doubt, though, it's going to be huge.
It's going to be huge.
All right.
Thanks.
I'm sorry we're all out of time.
Thank you so much, Tom Woods.
TomWoods.com, everybody.
