 Now some 40-odd years after his death Ludwig von Mises is actually better known and better read Than he ever was in his lifetime, and I think that's a tremendous achievement and a big part of that I Think was due to the efforts over the years of Lou Rockwell Who's the founder and chairman of the Mises Institute and someone who's known dr. Paul for many many decades So please a round of applause for Lou Rockwell Like Jeff dice I had the rare honor of serving as Ron Paul's congressional chief of staff and I've got to observe him in many proud moments In his presidential campaigns in his congressional campaigns People sometimes today compare Ron Paul with Bernie Sanders The comparison of Bernie to Ron goes something like this Both launched in surgeon and I establishment presidential campaigns while in their 70s They shook up their respective party establishments and Attracted large youth followings But Bernie is no Ron Just on the surface. He's a grump and very difficult to work for Ron on the other hand is a kind-hearted gentleman who always showed his appreciation For the people in his office and as in his campaigns More importantly countless high school students and college students began reading difficult treatises and economics and political philosophy because Ron encouraged them to do so Ron's followers throughout the years were curious enough to dig beneath the surface of the state as a benign Institution that can costlessly provide whatever we might want But there might be moral economic and political factors standing in the way of these utopian dreams It's not hard to cultivate a raving band of people Demanding other people give them their things as Bernie Sanders does Such appeals arouse the basest aspects of our nature and will always attract a crowd It is very hard on the other hand to build up an army of young people Intellectually curious enough to read serious books and consider ideas that go beyond the conventional wisdom They learned in school about government and the market It's hard to build up a movement of people like these whose moral sense is developed enough to recognize That barking demands and enforcing them with the state's gun is the behavior of thugs not of civilized people and it's hard to persuade people of the counterintuitive idea that society runs better Individuals are much more prosperous when no one is in charge of it all Yet Ron accomplished all these things As the person who reached more people with the message of liberty than anyone else in our time And maybe in any time Ron has also brought home how that message can and must be spread I want to talk about five of these lessons The more on the subject of war cannot and should not be avoided first and foremost Ron is a critic of the warfare state Ron is not a pacifist an ancient charge against those who oppose constant war He believes in the right to self-defense But he does not believe in the initiation of violence whether by private criminals or the state The state has recently taken more than a million lives in its imperialist anti-muslim wars Ron Paul has opposed them with all his heart and soul He is a man of peace and the golden rule in its private life as well as in policy The war in Iraq Which was still a live issue when Ron first ran for the Republican nomination Had been sold to the public on the basis of lies through a transparent and insulting even by the government's standards the devastation in terms of deaths Mamings Displacements and sheer destruction Appalled every decent human being Yes, the Department of Education is an outrage But it is nothing next to the horrifying images of what happened to the men women and children of Iraq If he wasn't going to denounce such a clear moral evil Ron thought what was the point of being in public life at all Still this is the issue strategist would have him avoid Just talk about the budget talk about the greatness of America Talk about whatever everyone else is talking about and you'll be fine and they neglected to add forgotten But had Ron shot away from this issue there would have been no Ron Paul revolution It was his courageous refusal to back down from certain unspeakable truths about the American role in the world That caused Americans and especially students to sit up and take notice While still in his 30s Murray Rothbard wrote privately that he thought that war was the key to the whole libertarian business unquote This is another way Ron Paul has been faithful to the Rothbardian tradition time after time In interviews and public appearances Ron has brought the question posed back to the central issue of war and foreign policy Worried about the budget You can't run an empire on the cheap Concerned about the TSA Groping or government eavesdropping Or cameras trained on you These are the inevitable policy results of the hegemon In case after case Ron pointed to the connection between an imperial foreign policy abroad And abuses and outrageous at home Inspired by Ron Libertarians began to challenge Conservatives by reminding them that war after all is just the ultimate government program War has it all propaganda censorship spying crony contracts Money printing skyrocketing spending debt creation central planning hubris Everything we associate with the worst interventions into the economy But Ron Paul permanently changed the nature of the discussion on war and foreign policy The word non-intervention rarely appeared in foreign policy discussions before 2007 Opposition to war was associated with anti-capitalist causes That is no longer the case Ron kept insisting that there was no real foreign policy debate in america because all we were allowed to do Was decide what kind of intervention the u.s government should pursue Whether intervention itself was desirable or whether the bipartisan assumption behind u.s foreign policy was sound This was not even mentioned much less debated In exposing the fraudulent american foreign policy debate ron exposed an overlooked truth about american political life The debates americans are allowed to have are ones in which the real decisions have already been made Income tax or consumption tax fiscal stimulus or monetary stimulus Sanctions or war Later war or war right now With debates like these it hardly matters who wins Ron pulled back the curtain on all of this to tell the truth It wasn't just on war that ron defied the censors of opinion Ask ron paul a question and you get an answer In miami he said that the embargo on cuba needed to be lifted In south carolina he stuck to his guns on the drug war He never ran away from a question or twisted it in spin doctor fashion Into a question he wished that he'd been asked in typical political fashion And the audiences kept growing Thousands and thousands of students were coming out to see him at a time when his competitors barely fill half of bingo hall ron knew that the philosophy of liberty When explained persuasively and with conviction had a universal appeal Every group he spoke to heard a slightly different presentation of that message as ron showed how their particular concerns Were addressed and most effectively by a policy of freedom When ron first spoke to the so-called values voters, for example, he was booed for saying that he worshiped the prince of peace The second time when he again made a moral case for freedom. He brought the house down But he did not pander to them nor to anyone else And he never abandoned the philosophy that brought him into public life in the first place No one had the sense that there was more than one ron paul That he was trying to satisfy irreconcilable groups There was one ron paul Number three the problem is not one person or one party ron rarely gets worked up over some government functionary who had been receiving some graft Yes, this is wrong. Yes, the guy should be sacked And maybe punished more significantly But to spend inordinate time on the scandal of the day is to suggest that if only we had good people in government The system would work The vast bulk of what the state does of course shouldn't be done at all by anyone And it doesn't matter whether they're good or bad people. You can always be managed far better by free individuals If a government official spends inordinate sums on vacations And luxuries or is exposed for being on the take Be assured that the person's political opponents will be all over the story Meanwhile, the inherent corruption of the system itself with a systematic expropriation and redistribution is ignored But that is by far the most important story and it's the only one that really deserves our attention Number four there is more to life and more to liberty than politics Before leaving washington and electoral politics ron delivered an extraordinary farewell address to congress The very fact that ron could deliver a wise and learned address only goes to show He was no ron of the mill congressman and whose intellectual life is fulfilled by talking points and focus groups results That a farewell address seemed so appropriate for ron in the first place while it would have been Visible for virtually anyone of his colleagues reflected ron's substance and seriousness as a thinker and as a man In that address ron did many things He surveyed his many years in congress He made a reckoning of the advance of the state and the retreat of liberty He explained the moral ideas at the root of the libertarian message non-aggression and freedom He posed a series of questions about the u.s. Government and american society that had hardly ever been asked much less answered And he gave his supporters some advice on spreading the message in the coming years Quote achieving legislative power and political influence. He said should not be our goal Most of the change if it is to come will not come from the politicians But rather from individuals family friends intellectual leaders and our religious institutions The revolution and the solution can only come from rejecting the use of coercion compulsion government commands and aggressive force To mold social and economic behavior Number five the fed cannot be ignored No focus groups urge ron to talk about the federal reserve No politician had made an issue of the fed in its 100 years Stick to the script the professionals would have said lower taxes and lower spending The monotonous refrain uttered by every single republican politician who typically has no interest in doing either Yet ron pointed to the fed as the source of the boom bus cycle that has harmed so many americans His dogged insistence on this point got a great many americans curious What after all was the fed and what was it up to? An unlikely issue to be sure and yet it was his willingness to talk about it Is in my view helps to account for much of his fundraising success There was a small but untapped portion of the public that responded with enthusiasm to ron's very mention of the fed And they wanted more Here again had ron adopted some conventional political advice He would have forfeited these historic moments and the ron paul phenomenon would have been greatly diminished If not compromised altogether Only a few months after ron officially suspended his 2008 campaign the financial crisis struck Just as ron had said there was something indeed very wrong with the economy Because he hadn't hesitated to say what he believed even if it meant dealing with an issue No political operative would have encouraged him to discuss ron was a profit That point alone opened countless more people's eyes to ron's ideas and their minds There was just one guy in washington who warned us of what was to come And coincidentally there's been a time in american history in which more people were reading and writing Anti-fed books because of ron paul. I would argue People could see too that ron hadn't just gotten lucky in 2007 and 2008 In 2001 ron said on the house floor that the fed fueled bubble in tech stocks Which had just burst was being replaced by a fed fueled real estate bubble that would in its turn Bust just as surely Of course, it's not enough just to get rid of the fed Essential as that is we need sound money And for ron following mesis and Rothbard. This meant the gold standard Once when ron was invited on the other ron's air force one for a flight to houston Ron paul commented on reagan's watch, which was made from a $20 gold piece He said I wish we still had that monetary system You know reagan responded no nation that abandons the gold standard has remained great, unquote Reagan was told by his advisors never to bring that up again and never to say anything like that again 1982 ron paul served on the us gold commission to evaluate the possible role of gold in the monetary system In fact the commission was his idea It was carrying forth a promise made to the republican platform ron couldn't pick the members So from the beginning the deck was stacked The majority was dominated by monetarists who saw gold as too scarce and paper as just fine But ron's team was ready with his marvelous minority report Rarely has the dissent on a government commission done so much good The result was the case for gold and it was the greatest result of the commission It covers the history of gold in the united states Explain that its breakdown was caused by government and explains the merits of having sound money Prices reflect market realities Government stays in check and the people retain their freedom The scholarship and rigor impressed even the critics of the minority Ron and lewis lerman worked with a team of economists They included murray roth barry Murray was the main author so it's hardly surprising that such a book would result I'm convinced that the historians whether or not they agree with them Will continue to marvel that ron paul for many many years to come Was able to do what he was able to do Libertarians a century from now Will be in disbelief with the very notion that such a man could serve in the u.s. Congress of our time One of the most thrilling memories of the 2012 campaign Was the sight of those huge crowds who came out to see ron His competitors meanwhile couldn't fill a starbucks When I worked as ron's chief of staff in the late 70s and early 80s, I could only dream of such a day What was it that attracted all those crowds to ron paul? He didn't offer his followers a spot on the federal gravy train He didn't pass some phony bill He didn't do any of the things we associate with politicians What his supporters loved about him and love about him Was that nothing to do with politics at all Ron is the anti-politician He tells unfashionable truths Educates rather than flatters the public and stands up for principles even when the whole world is arrayed against him Of course ron paul deserves the nobel peace prize And the ron paul institute was last night awarded the first mary rothbard peace prize Very well deserved to this to this institute And of course in a just world he'd also be awarded the medal of freedom and all the honors for which a man in his position Is eligible But history is littered with forgotten politicians who were in piles of rewards handed out by other politicians What matters to ron more than all the honors and ceremonies in the world is all of you And your commitment to the immortal ideas he has championed all his life It's ron's truth-telling and has urged to educate the public that should inspire us as we carry on into the future Little did he know those thankless years of pointing to all the state's lies and refusing to be absorbed into the blob Would in fact make him a hero To see ron speaking to many thousands of cheering kids when all the respectable opinion Have been warning them to stay far away from this man is more gratifying and more encouraging than i can say Was especially thrilled when a tempestuous ron responding to the establishment's description of his campaign as quote dangerous Said you darn right. I am dangerous to them Even the mainstream media had to acknowledge the existence of a whole new category of thinkers One that is anti-war anti-fed anti-police state and pro-market The libertarian view is even on the map of those who despise it That too is ron's doing Young people are reading major treatises in economics and philosophy because ron paul recommended them Who else in public life can come close to saying that? No politician is going to trick the public into embracing liberty even if liberty were their true goal And not just a word to be used in fundraising letters For liberty to advance a critical mass of the public has to understand and support it It doesn't have to be a majority or even anywhere near it But some baseline of support has to exist That is why ron paul's work is so important And so lasting Thank you