 This is Mises Weekends with your host Jeff Deist. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back once again to Mises Weekends. I'm pleased to be joined this week by an old friend, Daniel McAdams, someone with whom I worked in Ron Paul's office in the early 2000s. He is now head of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. Unfortunately, due to this hurricane Harvey, which is hitting near where Daniel lives in South Texas, we didn't get a good Skype connection, so we're going to do this via landline phone. Daniel, I appreciate you joining us today. Hey, Jeff, thanks so much for having me back on Mises Weekends. Well, you know, foreign policy is in the news because of Trump's Afghanistan speech earlier this week. Talk a little bit about that speech. You know, you had been maybe a hopeful critic of Trump's foreign policy pronouncements when he was still a candidate. Of course, he's reneged on some of those. Do you think that this speech represents some sort of turning point or inflection point where he is now entirely sort of co-opted into the DC neo-conservative foreign policy mindset? I think with the speech he is really in the trap. And I think he may actually even understand and realize that he's in the trap. I thought it was very interesting that he started his speech by saying, hey, you know, my inclination is to pull out. And of course, everyone knows that because he's been saying that for 10 or 12 years. There's even this great tweet from him in 2011 where he says, Ron Paul was right about Afghanistan. We should get out. You know, so I think he's almost kind of waving the white flag. Like, I need some help, guys. I'm taking over. But I don't think it's the neo-cons, really. I mean, I think it's an overused term, but I would say it's the deep stay. It's the military state. It's Jim Jeffress called the military junta, which is probably pretty accurate. The neo-cons, they don't go all in for anything. They're on the sidelines cheering right now. Lindsey Graham is cheering on the sidelines. But you better believe the moment things go sour, those cheers are going to turn into jeers. Well, it was interesting that he used that language that his original instinct was to pull out. And it is entirely true that I think neo-conservatives have captured both sides of the equation when it comes to foreign policy, but we thought perhaps they had not captured Donald Trump. You know, Murray Rothbard said, and I'm sure you remember this, he said famously that he thought war and peace was really the key to the whole libertarian business, as he put it. And if you'll recall, in the early 2000s, when Ron Paul and New Rockwell and some others were arguing against invading Iraq, all the organizations in D.C., left, right, center, even libertarian were sitting on their hands. And now, you know, fast forward to 2017 and look at this mess we've got, not only in Afghanistan, but also in Iraq. And it seems like the same voices never have to say they're sorry, they never have to admit they were wrong, but yet they are shamefully allowed to come out and blast Ron Paul, who was right about all of this. Can you imagine, I would hide my, I would not only hide my face in shame, I think I would find a cave somewhere to live as a hermit in a contemplative life. These are the guys with blood, with the blood of maybe a million people on their hands. People like Bill Crystal, John Potter, it's in these people. The wars that they bray for constantly produced nothing but carnage and death. I mean, I'm constantly shocked that you find them on the television as experts every time you turn it on. They're just, not only are they shameless, but the TV stations. You know, what is wrong with these people? Well, to the extent there are some anti-war voices remaining. Apart from Ron Paul, let's talk about a couple of the bright spots in Congress. Obviously, Thomas Massey and Walter Jones on the Republican side have been good about this. Tulsi Gabbard, who's a fairly new Democrat, not in her first term, has been a voice of sanity, a voice for the anti-war left to the extent such a thing still exists. Do you think she will be silenced in the future? Do you think she'll be forced to moderate her stance? Well, you know, it's interesting. My mother-in-law lives in Hawaii, interestingly enough. And she says there is a huge move there to unseat her. The famous Hawaiian left, the liberals in Hawaii, they don't like someone this radical. They're angry that she actually went to Syria and not on one of these congressional junkets. But she actually went there. She went and met with all sides, and she came back and said there are no moderates in Syria. The opposition we support are a bunch of terrorists. So she actually did what she was supposed to do. And of course that infuriates the Democratic Party and of course Republicans as well. So I think she could actually face a well-funded primary next time around. Well, that's too bad. And it's too bad that there is no real anti-war left. We saw how, for instance, Jim Webb was treated during his primary against Hillary. He really got zero traction. And it seems as though both parties have been entirely co-opted when it comes to foreign policy. So the question becomes, what do we do about it? What is the way to break this stranglehold? Is it non-political? Yeah, speaking of Webb, you brought it up. I've always had a stop spot for Jim Webb. I think he was the last person I ever voted for way back when. But even he triangulated in a way. He was trying to sound a little more hawkish when he ran, kind of a me too thing. I always thought he would have gotten more traction if he had really come out as a blue-collar anti-war conservative Democrat. So what a tragedy on that front. I mean, such a great writer and such an interesting person. But the bright spots, I think, are still out there. And the Mises Institute is reaching out to them all the time. We had this great conference that we did together in April down here in Texas that was a full house. And people came from all over the country. I think even overseas they came. So I think it's there. People are looking for ways to get together and share ideas. They don't have a figurehead right now. You know, when Ron was running, we remember he was able to catalyze all of that energy and bring it together in a big movement. And it's harder when you don't have a campaign going. We don't have a candidate going to retain that kind of energy. And I think that's the challenge that all of our organizations that honestly are striving for a broad anti-war movement, we have to face. We have to be creative. Well, to the extent Rand Paul is thinking about running again in 2020, why don't we suggest to him get out of the Middle East? Sounds like a pretty good campaign plank. You know, you mentioned Tulsi Gabbard's trip to Syria, which was considered heresy, no doubt, by some people. We don't hear as much about Syria the last few months. What's going on there? Talk about whether the U.S. actually has boots on the ground and whether we are still obsessed with removing Assad regardless of the consequences. Well, I think certainly they would like to. The interventionists never want to admit defeat, even if it drags us all down with them. But I think essentially, and I think a Russian general said this a couple of days ago, the war is de facto over. Really, the last pockets of ISIS and al-Qaeda control in the center of Syria are being flushed out and there really aren't any strong points. The Syrian army is really steaming toward Der Al-Zur, which is really one of the last strongholds in Raqqa, which was their capital. The U.S. is still bombing and it's killing an awful lot of civilians. I think a couple of days ago, they killed 100. But essentially, the war is over. Your first part of your question was important, though. There are boots on the ground. Our Kurdish allies in Syria said the U.S. will stay here militarily for decades. I wonder about that. That would mean challenging a victorious Assad for his territorial sovereignty. Does the U.S. have the stomach for it? It's a good question. Is Syria going to become another Afghanistan? Are we going to be talking about it in 10 years, 15 years? Are we going to have at least a limited military presence slash occupation there like we still do in Korea? Is the American public even thinking about these kinds of things? I will say I have seen some editorial cartoons that are at least joking about sons patrolling the same parts of Afghanistan that their fathers patrolled. I guess that's a bright spot of sorts. Yeah, I think that was an onion article someone sent it to me. It's almost not funny anymore because it's so true. It's hard to do humor these days. But I think Syria is different than Afghanistan simply because of the Russian and Iranian activity. I mean, the Russians and the Iranians pulled Assad's chestnuts out of the fire. And in a sense, it's a heresy to say this, but they did us all a favor because that place was about to be overtaken by people that were supposed to be U.S. enemies. ISIS, al-Qaeda, people that chopped the heads off of young boys, which we saw. These are the people that are being defeated with the help of Russia and Iran. And they've essentially done humanity and decency and civility a favor by doing it. But the fact that they have expended so much blood and treasure to use a cliche term to save Assad. Are they going to go ahead and turn around and allow the U.S. to come in and break the place up again? That's a big question. You know, talking about Syria, talking about Afghanistan, talking about Iraq, outside of Washington, D.C., there is almost zero constituency in the United States for continuing, perpetuating, intensifying any of these conflicts. It's a huge constituency for ending them. But it's interesting to me, and I'd like to get your comment on this, that all of our democratic processes, voting for president, voting for members of Congress, not only does it fail to produce good outcomes, i.e. anti-war, non-interventionist policy, it doesn't even create majority outcomes. I mean, here we are. There's no natural constituencies for these wars, especially amongst military families and the soldiers themselves, I might add. Yet they go on and on and on. So what's the constituency and how is democracy working here? It's not. It's not working very well, but democracy presupposes an informed voter, an informed participant, someone with a good heart, with a decent heart. And unfortunately, we don't have that. I don't need to tell you, Jeff, about the school system. I don't need to tell you what $100,000 college education is producing. Half of this country is littered with statues on the ground that our wonderful college students have taken care of. We don't have an informed constituency, so we have a constituency that is so easily malleable. The propaganda is so strong. Look, it was just a couple of weeks ago, we were all diving under our desks waiting for the North Korean bomb. This is a conflict that's gone on for 70 years, and they can ratchet it up whenever they wish. So propaganda is very, very strong and very, very effective, even with the rise of alternative media, which by the way is in the process of being censored. Well, it's interesting to note that back when Ron, Paul in Congress, was warning about Iraq, at the time the U.S. Federal debt was about $6 trillion. Now it's about $19 trillion. So it's interesting that our friends on the left don't squawk more about this and say, you know, you talk about single payer health care, you talk about money for schools, you talk about money for anything. Right there we're talking about, you know, $13 trillion in debt, not all from the wars. But those wars have played a huge role in that. And it doesn't seem like we talk about this. It seems like war finance is never discussed in the American media. That's absolutely true. And you know, that's that's why I mean, I would like to make an economic argument, especially to the middle class and working class. You know, if sometimes the moral argument can be too difficult to bear, an economic argument hitting someone literally in the stomach, I would like to think is successful, but you're right, the costs of war are so hidden. No one has felt it, except and as you suggested earlier in your question, except those families in places like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which were disproportionately affected by the war. And guess what they all voted Trump, because they like him saying, why are we in NATO? Why are we messing with the Russians? Why don't we get out of Afghanistan? They like that because they're the ones that have suffered. And now unfortunately, those ones being let down at least, at least for the present. Well, what's frightening to me is we have no idea what the future VA costs are going to be for all of these 20 somethings. We have coming home with missing limbs with PTSD with all kinds of mental health problems with suicide issues. It's going to be staggering because this is a good thing, but it costs a lot of money. We have a lot of battlefield medicine today that can keep combat injured people alive in ways that perhaps we couldn't during World War II. So they come back, they're young, perhaps unable to work, and they're going to cost us a lot of money in terms of VA coverage in the future. But you've talked in the past about the hidden defense budget, and you've argued that when you factor in a lot of the foreign aid, a lot of the State Department spending, that DOD expenditures are really more like a trillion dollars a year, which would put them on par with Social Security and Medicare and the federal budget. So talk a little bit about the hidden military spending. Yeah, and these are all, you know, you're right, military spending, it's not even DOD, it extends everywhere, Department of Energy, Department of Homeland Security. All of these things, the militarization of the police costs money. That's money that was appropriated, you know, ostensibly for the defense of this country, and it's going to make your local policemen have a tank of all things. But there are so many hidden costs. The militarization of everything across the board, the VA costs, as you point out, have skyrocketed. And when you factor it all, the NSA, the CI, we don't even know how much they spend, that has to be factored in as a military cost. So, you know, we've become a completely militarized society all the way down to our NFL games. It's something that's going into our DNA. And that's why it makes it so very difficult to resist. And as we said in the last question, the ability to hide the effect, to hide the fact that the dollar is being destroyed by this to this point is keeping people from turning against the war. Who knows, though, maybe the deep state, when it gets frustrated with Trump, they'll just let it all hang out and people will finally realize that their dollar is worth nothing anymore and they'll let the whole thing collapse on his watch. Well, at some point, I certainly believe that the foreign buyers of our treasury debt will end this game of musical chairs and realize that we are never going to get either our foreign policy or our fiscal houses in order. That said, Ron Paul Institute has an upcoming conference in Washington DC in September. I want to talk about that a little bit. I noticed that Julian Assange is going to attend at least via Skype, which is fantastic. He's obviously a big name that our listeners will know. Talk about some of the other names. I particularly am a huge fan of Louis Fisher for people who don't know him. He worked for years at CRS Congressional Research Service and he's an absolute expert on executive powers and how they've consumed the presidency in the 20th century and allowed presidents to go to war with this feckless Congress, not asserting its own constitutional product. So talk a little bit about Louis Fisher and some of the other guests, if you would. Sure. In either of us, they're fans of government, but Louis Fisher is someone that in a perfect world, that's what government would be like. He was an absolutely objective analyst, historian, legal scholar. Whenever we had a question, and I know for a fact that it wasn't just Republican offices, Democrat offices, everyone, when you had a question about these issues, you'd go to Louis Fisher, soft-spoken guy, very bookish. This guy's written 30 books. He had a full career. He worked full-time. He didn't come home and guzzle a six pack. He came home and wrote a book. He's just got another one out about the Supreme Court. Just brilliant. Louis Fisher is going to open our roundtable discussion on how Congress works, how it doesn't work, and that'll be with some former Ron Paul staffers. Adam Dick, our senior fellow is going to emcee that. But there are a lot of other greats. In fact, I've just had to extend the time because there's just too much to fit in. But we've got Mises Institute founder, Lou Rockwell, the inspiration in so many ways for the Ron Paul Institute is going to give a talk. We're so grateful to him for coming to D.C., which is not his favorite place, as you know, Jeff. Sure. And I'm super excited that Ron Paul is going to do the keynote speech and introduce his new book, The Revolution at Ten Years, which we've just finished publishing at the Ron Paul Institute. And it is really an inspirational and interesting book. So we're going to have some books there as well for people to get. And he's going to talk a little bit about it. But it goes on and on. We have a whistleblower's roundtable. In addition to Julian Assange, we have five really important whistleblowers, you know, John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on torture, and they threw him in jail for it, you know, the CIA. So Peter Van Buren, who many people know, Phil Geraldi, people read his stuff, Jess Lynn Raddock and Thomas Drake, you know, a great panel, Scott Ritter. Here's the guy who got Iraq right. He said, look, Saddam does not have weapons of mass destruction. They ridiculed him. They destroyed him literally. And he was the one that's exonerated by history. And he's been writing some terrific pieces lately for the American conservative. So we're so happy that he's going to come down. And this guy, Marine Intelligence Officer, hard-hitting, you know, guy, great speaker. So we're thrilled to have him. Jacob Hornberger, you know, a real inspiration. You know, really, the libertarians, libertarians is going to be with us well. So it's a jam-packed thing. I mean, if I wasn't putting it on, I'd be buying tickets to be honest. I'm like PT Barnum here, but I just, I love putting something. I'm sure you feel the same way that you would like to attend. And so that's how I feel about it. Well, if you're in the D.C. area or within driving or train distance, please check it out. If you want to know about a real foreign policy, a peace and non-intervention, a foreign policy that actually would strengthen America, not only in terms of making it safer, but also making us less indebted. You got to check out Ron Paul Institute, find them online, find them via Facebook, via Twitter. And Daniel and Dr. Paul are doing good work there against wildly overfunded neo-conservative enterprises of all stripes. So, Daniel, thanks so much for your time. I hope your conference is a tremendous success. And ladies and gentlemen, have a great weekend. Thank you.