 Really, Dr. Paul doesn't need an introduction to most of you. I'm sure everyone in this room knows all about his congressional career and presidential campaigns, but I've had a chance to meet him and some of his family members, and it's been a very great experience for me and we all know what he's done for Liberty over the years and and all the personal time and effort he gave. I'm not sure everybody really understands how many hours of his life he probably gave on flights and in airports and speaking to groups that were a lot smaller than this back in the 1970s 1980s before we had you know wonders technology to bring us all together, but apart from what he's done for Liberty I mean almost single-handedly. He has brought thousands upon thousands of especially young people to the works of Mises and Rothbard and Hapa and to the Mises Institute itself, so we appreciate that and without further ado, Dr. Ron Paul Thank you very much. It's nice to be here. It's nice to be among friends. Understand you've been spending a little bit of time talking about the police state, and I'm sure there's been entire warnings and we're worried about it. I remember writing an article for my Freedom Report. It must have been 10 years ago or so, maybe even longer. And I said, do we live in a police state? And I recall somebody writing a letter and they said, where are you? Are you wondering whether we live in a police state? And that was 10 years ago. So now things have changed. Everybody knows we live in a police state. And I think that's progress, not progress that we all live in a police state, but progress that the people are waking up. They realize what's happening, and they're getting annoyed. And I think that is a great degree of progress that we're making. You know, all revolutions, from my viewpoint throughout history, have have always been a revolt against the police state. When governments get out of control, they over-control the people. Whether you go far and back is Roman times in more recent history. Finally, the people rise up, and either the system exhausts itself or aggravated enough to motivate the people, or the intellectuals came along and said, there's a much a much better way. But you know, when in the 20th century, I was born in 35, and I consider, in my memory, probably one of the most important years for the acknowledgement and the attack on the police state was 1989. I think 1989 was a fantastic year. First, of course, we know that the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Within a few years, the Soviet system was totally gone. And it wasn't a surprise. Mises, Mises told us before, it even was well-organized. Socialism doesn't work. It would fail, and true enough, it did fail. But the people rose up, and finally, when they stormed the walls, and you know, the Berlin Wall, and started tearing it down next day in a few weeks the whole wall was torn down, and Germany was reunified, and the Soviet system collapsed three years later. So in many ways, this revolt against the police state was miraculous and fantastic. And I think one of the most important things is that I remember the Cold War so well, because I was drafted and put into the military, and there was this fear. I mean, there were missiles in Cuba, and we had a lot of worries, and all of a sudden, it just went away, and there was an intellectual reason for that, but there was the collapse of a failed system that happened. But 12, 12 countries just were divided away, and they got their independence back and began. There was secession, and it was, to me, it was like a miracle that this happened. And when Gorbachev, you know, resigned, turned the leadership over to Yeltsin, he literally, you know, in a way handed over the keys to a nuclear arsenal, and I think that is the way that we might look at how how, you know, the police state may dissipate or disappear. So as bad as it is, there's still, if we do the intellectual work right and get the support, intellectual leadership has to be there, the masses, the numbers of people have to go along either out of need for it, or they have no place else to go, and certainly a bankruptcy helps us along. But also in 1989, matter of fact, a short couple months before the Berlin fell, we had the incident, minor little incident, at Tiananmen Square. And this was fantastic. And back then we didn't, I imagine the internet was working, but it wasn't as activist today. But I remember the people did have some cell phones, but they had faxes, and we saw, I got a lot of information. And there were a lot of, a lot of coverage of what was happening then. But during the Tiananmen Square incident, they called it, we know that it was referred to as a massacre. The tanks came in, a lot of the Chinese revolutionaries were killed, and the government won. And the one incident there that I think is fantastic was the incident involving the tank man. And I was so impressed, and I'm sure so many of you remember that, this one Chinese young man, right now nobody really has his name. Some people suggest he was a 19-year-old student to walk out in a column of tanks coming down the streets to take over, and he just stood there. And the tank would turn and hit walkover and get in front of it. Now, you know, I hear some pundits on a few of our TV stations and making fun about who's brave and who isn't brave and that people who fight us overseas, they're not brave because they'll sneak up on us and all things. But I would consider the tank man one brave sort of man. And the picture impressed me a lot. And I mentioned it and it was in 1999. I recall my staff knew how much I admired the picture went out. They didn't just take a clipping of the picture and take it off the internet. I think they actually purchased it through AP because it was an AP photographer that did this and got permission and they framed this for me. It's a picture that I've had in my my office. I think it's so symbolic about man against the state. OK, in the Soviet system, we had the failure of the state. It was glaring and the Soviet system collapsed. They admitted it, but that's not the case in China. You would say it was a total failure. The young man was pulled away. Nobody ever found him again, probably was shot. The government won. They had the tanks and there was this tremendous oppression once again. But I am convinced the tank man won. He won because he ushered in an age. China has changed. They still call themselves communist. But guess what? I've had business people tell me that you can start a business in China easier than you can start a business in the United States. And that's pretty bad for us and probably good news for China. So this this is something that I've often thought about. And the the tank man, you know, represents the independence and the and the and the liberties. Now, I call him a hero. But today, who are our heroes? I mean, from the media, there are always people in our military who have killed a lot of other people, the people who are great sharpshooters, the people who drops bones, the people who run drone missiles. And they never get criticized in the major media for killing innocents. But they they become hero. Everybody that has a uniform now is a hero. But what about somebody who wants to tell the truth? What if you have an Edward Snowden that finally speaks out and talks about the truth, he becomes a traitor in their eyes. I call Edward Snowden a true hero like the tank man. But I think the the results of what has happened in in China, not only they're more capitalistic, there are bankers, even though they call themselves a communist. But there was an article in the Houston paper here just the other day. Houston became the sixth American city that had daily non-stop flights to Beijing. And I thought, isn't that something when I was in high school? I remember very clearly a teacher that Carol and I had in high school was redrafted. He had been in World War Two. He was one of our coaches who was sent to Korea and got killed. I said, just think of the difference that is going on now because I don't think I think the founders are right. We're not as likely to fight the Chinese now over an incident because there's so much invested. Now, does that mean I'm going to defend the Chinese government? No, that's I would hardly defend them on all their civil liberties. But I look at it this way. I'm not in charge of that. I was always quite willing to avoid getting in that discussion in Washington. I said, our responsibility is to deal with the violations of civil liberties in this country and not think we know what to tell the Chinese, what to do with their violation. You know, now just recently we've had some more revolutions going on the Arab Spring. I'm sure Daniel, who's the real expert on foreign policy, would know exactly how many revolutions there have been. And there's been a bunch and and some look like, you know, they're questionable. But I think to get a million people out in the street, there has to be a sentiment that people are disgusted with what they have. Unfortunately, most revolutions end up being co-opted, and you would go from one tyranny to another. Many ways, this is what happened in Russia. Although it's better off. They got rid of the Soviet system. They have another form there, which is closer. Unfortunately, they drifted toward us with Keyesian economics and corporatism and and drifting more to fascism. But the Arab Springs, there were quite a few. I'm sure the people were unhappy with their dictators. And yet they too often would join a leader that would lead the way and solve all the problems. Well, I think the worst example of us being involved in one is is Egypt. You know, we propped up a military government for 30, 40 years to tune of 40 billion dollars. And then when the people become disgruntled, we support the rebels and we get them thrown out. We insist on democracy. Democracy is much better than tyranny. So they have an election, they elect somebody, but we don't like them. So we have to say, well, we don't like you anymore. We're going back to the military dictatorship. But of course, now we're going to have another election and we'll pick and choose. Well, I think all that mischief that we get involved with and because these Arab Spring revolts didn't work out so well, I think it's because we shouldn't be involved and we should be out of those things that would be much better off if we weren't involved at all. But you know, in this country, there's been a pheromone of resentment against the police state already. And this is where I, you know, tend to be optimistic. I'm still hoping things are going to be a lot better than they seem. Because if you look at it right now, you say it's getting worse because, you know, look at what the NSA is doing, what the CIA is doing. The CIA has a one thing about this known release of information we found out as a congressman, I didn't know. But we found out that the CIA gets 15 billion dollars a year and NSA gets 10 billion dollars a year. 25 billion dollars, but we're safe and free, so why should we complain? You know, they'll take care of us and protect our liberties. And, you know, you just have to send them some money and give them a little bit of your freedoms up and everybody will be happy. But this this is a movement. I think we're really in the middle of something going on in this country because though I mentioned at the beginning about the revolution that the Mises Institute has been involved in, and other organizations in a similar fashion, changing people's minds, we have we have also seen that the something is happening here. And I dated, you know, in a political sense, which is a consequence of the intellectual change from 19 from 2007. And if anybody recall what December 16, 2007 was all about, there might be a few. December 16 was the anniversary of the original Tea Party. And the campaign effort spontaneously wasn't my idea. I don't believe it was any idea in our campaign was to that's, you know, this have a demonstration that support these positions that have been exposed in a campaign. So they had a fundraising day and they also had events around the country. And this and there were only probably hundreds involved in some of the events, but thousands, if not millions of people, started to realize something different was going on in that campaign. So yes, I think that was and the and the word revolution was frequently used with our campaign. So there is and was a revolution going on at that particular time. But that was Tea Party. And we had a lot to say about what the principles are, what we believed in and that was the movement. But what what about the success of that? Where where is the Tea Party? How long did the Tea Party have a have a relatively pure message about liberty? Well, not too long. It was co-authent. People saw, yeah, there's a movement. They're disgruntled. Let's capture this and let's use it for our side. So guess what? A few a few Republicans in their organization, they thought it was a good idea. And actually, politically, they used it to their advantage, but they co-opted the issues. And in particular, the issue they most co-opted was the foreign policy issue. And I don't think that was that was by accident. So this this was something that, you know, certainly was was going on and the people, the people knew that a true revolution was occurring. So the Tea Party movement is still there. But I believe the real revolution is still there and it's loud and strong. I would like to see that it be more, you know, carried through intellectually as that one single man was able to do the tank man, because he won in the end. You know, eventually, in many ways, China was demilitarized and they stopped fighting the wars. So I think that there's every reason to believe that the that the police state is going to continue to crumble because it's out there. I think one thing that we have to accept about who gets the credit. Let's say that I'm right and we keep moving that way. And we will make a large advancement in in undermining the police state. I mean, if we worry about who gets the credit, you know, becomes a problem. I think everybody and nobody gets the credit. It's an intellectual thing and it's going to be diverse. But I am convinced that we're moving in that direction because a lot of good things have happened since then. First off, you know, after after the campaign, I remember in seven, the issue of the economy came up and I took the position. I thought the economy was in shambles. There's a lot of malinvestment bubbles there and something big is going to happen. And by the by the at least by the fall of eight, we had two presidential candidates rushing back to Washington to vote for the bailout. So that was a big issue. That was an issue that those of us who were unhappy with what was happening and the gigantic nature of our government that things were going wrong. And I think there was this tremendous confirmation how bad the economy was and and this collapse of what was going on. But I think the message was that just like when the Soviet system collapsed, it was clear evidence that socialism can't work and that something different had to replace it. But I think what's happening now, especially, you know, with this last collapse, because just printing the money hasn't solved the problem. I believe now that we are witnessing the time of a period of time when Keynesianism as a whole has been totally discredited and they're not going to stay in charge much longer. Another place where I think the revolution has won is let's say about the Federal Reserve. I mean, you know, how long I've been working on the Federal Reserve since I first went to Congress in 96, a few people would talk about it. But since 2007, we have had two times the House of Representatives voted to audit the Federal Reserve, and that means the people are behind this. 80 percent of the people say we ought to audit the Federal Reserve. So I would say that is an achievement along with this change in the attack on the state, on the police state. But it's also in another place in money, there's been a victory. And that is in competing currencies. You know, I don't think I don't work on the assumption that if we get 10 more people in Washington, things are going to be OK and we're going to win the vote. That's not going to happen. What we have to do is get enough freedom to release the creative energy and come up with alternatives to the government. And right now, you know, we have competing currencies. There's competing currencies out there. I don't even understand them, but if they're competing with the Federal Reserve notes, I'm all for it. Of course, ultimately, I think the medals will compete with the paper. But if you have computer money that works and they don't put you in jail, that's all the better for it. But and of course, if you have competing currencies in a private market, the prohibition is against fraud. I mean, you can't you can't act like a government and counterfeit the money and commit fraud, but at least the principles out there where competing currencies are existing and even those individuals like Bernanke, when he's asked, he doesn't come down hard. So we always have to stop this if it ever becomes a truly competing currency. I think they may have second thoughts about it. But anyway, I think that's another place where we've had had some victories. And the other thing is there's a change in attitude. I mean, the police state up until now has always said the president decides when we go to war, Congress has nothing to say about it. We go to the UN. We go to NATO and and the presidency. It's a it's a unitary presidency. And the president has this power to do it. But guess what? What happened when the people decided they weren't ready for a new war in Syria, the people spoke out and they were talking our message. Don't do it and hold back on starting to bomb Iran. And guess what? We're talking to Iran. Hopefully that continues at the same time. It looks like Assad is a friend of everybody now. They're actually talking to him and he's holding a peace conference. I mean, it to me is is pretty neat. It's pretty miraculous. So so I think in many ways we are winning this and undermining at least on principle or so much of what the police state stands for. I think another area where we're winning and Tom Woods had a lot to do with this. And that is emphasize the issue of nullification. I've always argued the case that nullification has come. Probably won't come with Congress passing a law and say, OK, we recognize that that's a basic principle and we're going to write along to make sure that the states can nullify the laws. I always assume that the worst the federal government gets and the more broke it gets, the more people will act out on their own. But just think of what's happening with nullification. I think this whole thing about the drug laws, I mean, the states have taken over. And as of January and when people ask me about, you know, the legalization of marijuana, I always make the very strong point that I don't have a whole lot of interest in marijuana, but I have a whole lot of interest in freedom of choice and people making up their own minds about issues like that. But what NSA? We're making great progress now because of a hero like Snowden. He's telling us about it. Information, that's the most important thing. That's what you have to know and have to have in order to make make some some decisions. But several states now are in communities are fighting back. Like the place where the big NSA building is in Utah, they're they're moving to deny utilities to to the building. I think it's a great idea. And I think I think there's another. I think there might be some of that going on in California. Just deny the utilities so people can resist. So they have a neat old building there. But if they don't have water electricity, maybe they'll have more trouble. But who knows what they'll do. But but it means that people can stand up, you know, to the state. Also, I have one thing I frequently admit is that I don't have, you know, full grasp of all the technology that is available. I use a computer, but I have to work at it. But I have great faith and confidence in free minds. And the government now is way too intrusive. Everybody knows about it. But I believe that private enterprise can come up with things that can monitor what our government's doing and make sure that we can exclude that and protect the private exchange of information. I don't know that technologically, but I happen to have competence that that could happen. And there are people working on that all time on on the Ron Paul channel. We get people on that work on this issue and really believe there are ways you can circumvent. It's not going to be easy. It's going to be tough and you're going to meet resistance. But I think that is the is the best way to fight it rather than thinking that tomorrow all of a sudden we're going to have sensible people running our government in in Washington, D.C. We now we now recognize that mainly because what's happened these last six months, that whistleblowing isn't a bad thing. It's supposed to be a good thing. But then as long as you don't tell secrets about the government, you're allowed to tell other secrets but not about the government. So therefore whistleblowers are usually treated the way Bradley Manning you get beat up, tortured and thrown in a prison. But I think the American people now, by a large majority, think Snowden's a pretty neat guy and he's been very helpful. So I think whistleblowing is helping us a whole lot to tell us more truth about what's happening to the government. And this will be beneficial when we know the truth and we see the failure. When we saw the failure of the economy in 08 and 09, that was helpful to make our case. And I think the more failure that we have economically and politically, the more opportunities we're going to have. Also, it's been taught too many for too too too many people for too long. The deficits really don't matter. Now, conservatives always said they were concerned about deficits. But we know that they weren't concerned about it because as long as you spend it for the military industrial complex and for big corporations and banks and and their privileged clients, it wasn't a big deal. But I think people now are saying, well, maybe there is something to this. It looks like Detroit's about to run out of money. Or is it true that they already ran out of money? And I understand somebody told me, I hope this is true that they can't afford to police anymore, but the city has become safer. So and ultimately, that is the way we take care of ourselves and provide protection, not only economically, but physically. It should be by us as individuals or our friends and neighbors and families to take care of it. So all these things, I believe, are moving in in the right right direction and exposing the government for for their shortcomings in there and their fallacy. When when I think about the tank man, he was representing something that I often mention and Victor Hugo said, an idea whose time has come and can't be stopped, can't be stopped by tank. So if the tank man had the right idea in his vision prevailed, really, the tanks didn't stop him. Yeah, you know, momentarily they did. But ultimately, the tanks can't do it. But the ideas and what's happening in this country today, I think it's so powerful and so exciting that there's reason for us to have, you know, at least enough hope to keep plugging away. And if we recognize this, we won't become despondent because next year we have an election and Republicans take over the house and then two years from now after that, then we have a Republican president, he's a wonderful and then you didn't get good results. Well, don't hold your breath for that. These things that I'm talking about here, whether it's personal security and the surveillance, competing currencies, whether it's the Federal Reserve or whether it's Don't Bomb Syria. Guess what? It has nothing to do with partisan politics. The issues where we're winning are nonpartisan. They're endorsed by independence. The independence now is the largest number of people compared to Republicans and Democrats. So these ideas and it's not compromise. It's not coming together by giving up a half of what you believe in. It's by sticking to your guns and believe in something and you can bring both left and right together with this freedom message I am convinced. I have worked a long time on promoting the cause of liberty. A lot of people ask, well, what does that all mean? Well, it means to me that we each have a right to our lives and a right to our liberties and our lives and our liberties do not come from our government. They come from a creator. They come to us in a natural way and there's also a responsibility that goes along with this and the responsibility is to take care of ourselves and never demand, never take from other people. There is a golden rule involved in that you can't steal from your neighbor and we'd like to apply that rule to the government too. They can't take from your neighbor. It says, well, you might argue, Ron, you're just kidding yourself. What happened to you in South Carolina when you suggested that we have a golden rule in foreign policy that we not do anything to another nation that we didn't want to have them do to us? Well, in that very, very strong Republican forum that day, I got booed. Can you imagine that? I mean, that's so embarrassing being booed on national television. But I tell you what, you know, it is I really think our time is coming. It's here and it is changing. It is ideological. And if we understand this principle of liberty, what I see happens is that it releases the creative energy in us. We don't be dependent. And you might say, well, people are always dependent. I think that is true. People there will always be. Matter of fact, it might even be the majority, but the majority always follows leadership and the leadership in the world throughout the 20th century had been really vicious tyranny to now today. It's still, you know, dictatorship in economics and regulations and statism and and in a police state mentality. But I I really am convinced that we are moving in this direction where people are recognizing the benefit. So if the majority, if the leadership is, you know, representing a certain viewpoint, this is also the reason why I'm a strong believer in private education and also home education as well to get the people to grasp roots. You know, there was an interesting statistic from North Carolina the other day I thought was pretty neat. The governor goes in and one thing he did was he cut off because they were out of money. He cut off the extension of unemployment benefits. Guess what? Unemployment went down. People people went and got job now. Isn't that astounding? I didn't get a check from the government. Maybe they're serious. Well, they're going to be serious because we're broke. And I'm going to welcome the bankruptcy because it's going to wake up more people, but it's up to us to fill the void, fill the voids to be able to protect oneself physically and financially at the same time. Ultimately, the protection comes from protecting and moving the cause of liberty. And we we have a much better chance than even the Soviet system and the Russians because their traditions weren't nearly as good as ours. I mean, we at one time, you know, had sound money, you know, and we believed in civil liberties. We had a pretense with the Constitution. We were supposed to have this freedom. So I and property rights and contract rights. And that's when we were a more vibrant economy and the wealthiest in the world. But what did you did? You see the statistic the other day by heritage. We're 12th now as far as Ben, you know, having a free, free economic system. Ethio, no. Pardon me. Estonia, yeah, that was Estonia is ahead of us now. So, you know, I remembered a very short story about Estonia. Caroline, I had a very good friend that the husband fought in the Russian Revolution with the Cossacks and came here. They became very close friends and he was a fisherman. And his wife was Estonian and she went back. She told a heartbreaking story when she came back. And this, of course, in 1960, the height of the Cold War, she went back there in the family. I was so glad to see her. The celebration was to get an egg, one egg and fry it and watch her eat it. And I thought, holy man, they didn't even have any idea that this woman, because she moved to America where he worked hard, had a big business. She could go and buy 10 dozen eggs in a day and wouldn't even be blink of an eye. But now they're ahead of America. So there must be some good thinking people in and in Estonia and must have a better tax system. Who knows exactly on somebody in here probably knows it. So things must be better there. But it turned around and we're going in the wrong direction. But there's no reason to believe that we can't wake people up on those issues that I mentioned, we have woken up. We have seen the change is very positive. One other personal reason why I think the concept of liberty is so important is that it releases this creative energy. But if our personal goal is virtue and excellence, which is a personal matter, it is so much easier to work on that in a free society than when the government is involved, you know, when the government thinks they know what is virtuous and what is excellent and what is fair and what kind of economy we have and how we have to spread our exceptionalism around the world. That's where the real crime is. So in liberty, that all falls on ourselves. When governments get involved in this idea that they know what's best for you to do, know how to promote virtue and excellence, believe me, there's no other way to do that without the crushing of personal liberty. And it's been going on for a long time. I believe the American people are waking up and there are exciting things ahead. And it should not discourage us. It should encourage us to do all that we can, because when the work of an institute like the Mises Institute does their job, the attitudes will change. It will change even more rapidly because of our ability to spread information today, and it's going to be much more rapid as we see the deterioration of the state. And believe me, there's a different attitude about economics. And I could see it was very dramatic after the collapse of the economy in seven or eight, and they have to admit the truth. And I think the statistics are going to start bearing that out. Today, all you read about is, well, stocks are going great. And yet the poor are getting poorer, the middle class is getting smaller and there's more grumbling. And the reason why this is so important, this is not a theoretical thing for me. This is important because it's in our best interest to do this, because if people don't understand this, then it's going to be political chaos. That's what we have to fear. You know, the Soviet system didn't end up with too much political chaos. And China, you know, got by with it. There's been more in these Arab Spring, so called revolutions. But there's a lot of demand out there. Hopefully it'll be more like what happened in North Carolina. Cut off the benefits and go to work. That's going to be a better way. And hopefully that will be it. But that opportunity is coming and we should all be excited about that. I want to thank everybody once again. I want to thank Lou and Jeff for having me here today and it was great visiting with you. Thank you very much.