 He was the Libertarian Party candidate for President of the United States in 1988, and Dr. Paul is a practicing physician, and he previously served from 1976 to 1984 as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives and was a continual thorn in their side at that time. And we'll obviously have things to say about the influence he was able to have while in the House. He's a strong advocate of hard money, and he was instrumental in persuading the U.S. Treasury to issue, to resume the minting of gold coins. He was responsible indeed. And he is founder of the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education Free, an acronym that's free, in Houston, Texas, and it gives me a great deal of pleasure to introduce Dr. Ron Paul. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. I'll quit while I'm ahead. Thanks a lot. It's real nice to be here, and I appreciate the invitation to come. Jim Perrin extended the invitation personally, and I'm delighted to be here. Before I get started in my remarks, I would like to recognize some good work by Tony Nathan, who has been working with the public relations. She heard the other day that I was going to Washington to do a little bit of filming for my television program at the end of the month, and did get me on to C-SPAN for a 45-minute call-in program on libertarian ideas. So you might look for that, and that's going to be helpful. C-SPAN, you know, has been very fair to the libertarians. They were very fair, certainly during the campaign. Somebody once told me that if only the viewers of C-SPAN voted, I would have done a lot better in 1988. But unfortunately, a lot of people listen to the three majors still, and that makes it a little more difficult for us to get our views out. But certainly it is important learning from our mistakes and learning from what we do right, and learning from those who have been involved in the political arena on how to sell political ideas, the libertarian message, to get average America to endorse what we believe in. It's great to be philosophic and academic and precise and right all the time. And yet, if we don't do more to present our views in a way that it's palatable to the American public, where it's not offensive, really the views won't amount to much because it will be held by a narrow group. So I've dedicated a lot of my time and energy over the last couple of decades to trying to take libertarian views and making them so that the average person accepts them without thinking that they're accepting anything unusual. But that at times can be quite a challenge. During the campaign of 1988, there was one episode that certainly encouraged me. There were a lot of events that were exciting. But the time that we met at Faneuil Hall in Boston was certainly one that I remember very clearly. The part that I generally don't want to remember is the precise number of votes that we got. But if you analyze it carefully, there's no reason to be totally negative about that either because James Buchanan quoted me as saying that we took all the people who endorsed the libertarian party view and all those who rejected the Republicans and Democrats were in the large majority. So there are a lot of people who have now rejected the conventional politics and the conventional wisdom of Washington and Republicans and Democrats. And we certainly have to build on that because we have an answer. It's just that we have not been successful in delivering this message to the American people in a broad manner. But the time when we had our meeting in Washington thanks to the wonderful activity of a libertarian friend, Gene Burns, on the radio station in Boston, we were able to fill Faneuil Hall. Now Faneuil Hall is not gigantic but it's big enough to hold hundreds of people. And the hall was filled and there was a balcony it was filled and there was standing room only and there was a lot of television but the significance to me was what was important. Because Faneuil Hall of course was the place where many before the Declaration of Independence met and talked about the problems the colonists were facing and it was led by Samuel Adams who was not meek in what he believed and what he advocated. But it was a great night because there were no holds barred even when we would say things like ban the IRS and ban the income tax and ban the Federal Reserve system and a lot of other things this crowd went wild so it was very very encouraging. But the most interesting thing occurred afterwards because as we were going out one of my staff people was talking to the administrator or the caretaker of the building and he had taken care of this building for a long time and he said boy he says this was great. He says it was about time we had somebody in this building sound like Sam Adams. I was first introduced to the ideas of libertarianism in the 1960s. I believe very sincerely I was born a natural libertarian then I went to public schools and something happened. But by the 1960s I had to reeducate myself, cancel out many of the ideas pumped into my head by the media and by the schools and finally I again arrived at a position which is called libertarianism and as the 60s passed through with the influence of the war in Vietnam and some of the economic conditions building it was by the end of the 60s that it was clear to me what the philosophy ought to be to offer an alternative to what we had and have in this country. In 1974 I first ran for Congress that was my first race for Congress I was first elected in 76. I left Congress at the end of 1984 so there was a span there of approximately 10 years of running regularly for office. During those campaigns I did endorse entirely the libertarian philosophy. Of course even within this room there may be some disagreements on the preciseness of that definition but nevertheless for general purposes I endorsed the philosophy and was capable of winning elections and not having opponents even the last time by taking the positions that I take now including that on drugs in a Bible Belt area but they actually became non-events as the people got to know me realizing that my drug position was a very sincere position that as a physician and as a parent I was very unconcerned personally about promoting drugs since they were very much aware of my criticism of drug usage but nevertheless I was able to take that and present these views and I was able to be elected. Now in Washington it was interesting to see the transition that went on in 1976 when I was first elected I was elected in a special election that the Republican Party and a lot of the supporters and certainly the members of Congress saw me coming in as a conservative Republican and of course the first week or so there was a B-1 bomber vote that came up and a few other civil liberties votes and all of a sudden they looked at me and they said what and thunder is going on here and they were really disturbed and provoked and annoyed and they just couldn't understand how I could be voting for some of these measures. It got easier as time went on. The Congress itself as the nation became more aware of the Libertarian Party and the Libertarian Message I think my identity was more strongly associated with the Libertarian Party after I put the 1980 Party Principles in the Congressional Record and that then sort of opened up more dialogue and more debate with the other members of Congress. Some people would say well wasn't it awful lonely? Were you the only one there? The only one that endorsed these views it must have been total chaos and a real problem. Well to some degree that is but if you look out in the other way you have something you can agree with everybody there you can agree with the liberals on some issues and the conservatives on some issues and for that reason rather than it being a negative I thought it turned out to be a positive. It also afforded some benefits too. There were sometimes when Republicans and Democrats couldn't even find an endorsement of anything that we were saying and then the vote would turn out to be 430 to 1. Now you would think that if you're voting by yourself and there's one vote it makes no difference. Who cares? You're one person. But you know your vote as an individual as one person was much more valuable because the media would say hey why did you do this? I mean it narrowed it down they had to ask me why I did it. So there were some benefits and it also allowed in a way I saw it as some fun because you got to play this game realizing that if you recognize you're not going to change the world and you're in that situation then it's not so bad. If you go as a libertarian to Washington and think you're going to make Congress libertarian you might as well forget it. You won't sleep at night very well because you'll be very frustrated and not much will happen. If anything more happened than I thought would because there were some pieces of legislation that nobody cared about but by a little bit of effort I was able to point some things out and bring people together and impose certain legislation. Certainly the bill that eventually evolved into the gold coin was something that I would have never dreamed of in 1974 or 76 that we could convene a gold conference. Of course the headline in the Washington Post after the conference was the gold commission has rejected the gold standard. Well I didn't think that was so much news as much as the fact that we had a discussion which was something that we haven't had for a good many years. So there were a lot of positives. During the campaign in 1980 the media frequently would come and say well fine you're running as a libertarian there are no libertarians in Congress what would happen if you became president wouldn't this be total disaster because there would be no help and assistance and you would be opposed by everybody and yet my answer was the same. You know a libertarian president might do quite well even under today's circumstances if you go to the liberals and get their support on civil liberties and go to the liberals and maybe get some more reasonable approach to foreign policy this you could build a coalition and you certainly could build a coalition with conservatives to cut back on some of the welfare spending. So even though this is very unlikely you won't have a libertarian president till you have not only a libertarian congress but a libertarian consensus among the people. So ultimately it's the changing of people's views points that really count so that the congress reflects those viewpoints and then of course endorse the president. But even theoretically under today's circumstances a libertarian president could do a lot better job than those guys are doing up there right now. And talking about jobs by our administration I want to very briefly make a comment because we had a press conference this morning. We had a television station show up thanks to Tony and we talked about the Persian Gulf in Iraq. And I see this as very dangerous. I made a comment in my weekly or my monthly report this coming month that actually events are moving more rapidly than I had once thought and I'm considered one who's waving flags and warning and saying that we're on a course of financial disaster and we're on a course of political chaos in this country unless we change our ways. But when I saw reports on the weekend that 250,000 troops may end up in Saudi Arabia that we are imposing illegal boycotts or on the Iraq nation when we still have 3,000 Americans behind those lines. I mean we're looking for a lot of trouble and then seeing the large hospital ship with 1,000 beds out of them moving out to the Persian Gulf. I think things are moving rather rapidly when just a few months ago we were concentrating on the breaking up of the Soviet Empire and the need to cut way back on the military. But now we see an orchestrated effort to build up the military again and several major programs including Ted Koppel's program to justify the need for more CIA activity around the world rather than the opposite of saying we need less of that. So we do live in perilous time. We live in exciting times and we see things changing behind the iron curtain or in the decenneration of the iron curtain. But until man becomes perfect we are going to have many of these problems and we're certainly going to face them. And unless we clean our own house here at home we are hardly going to be able to be good examples for around the world. But the obvious activity that we're pursuing in Saudi Arabia right now I think no matter what kind of justifications by the President for national security interests, whatever that is, I say that for national security interests we ought to bring all those troops home. I jotted down a few points I'd like to make on those things that I think are important that might help us in promoting libertarian ideas. The positive side of the libertarian message that the average American should respond to us. And then I want to talk a little bit about why we have problems because obviously we're having problems. I mean the country is not libertarian and we still have a long way to go and the message is right, we all know that, so maybe there's something wrong with our delivery. First point I want to make is that I think it's important that we emphasize to non-libertarians that our philosophy is based on a moral principle. A lot of people say well libertarians are too philosophic, they have too much concern about a principle. Well everybody has a principle. It's just whether it's a good principle or a bad principle. Interventionism and inflationism and socialism, they're all principles. They happen to be principles we don't believe in. But we have a moral principle. We believe it's the correct moral principle. It's certainly a moral principle that the American people have been comfortable with. It has to do with the individual. It's the emphasis that the individual is important and this is compatible with most religious beliefs in this country. That the individual is key, that the individual has rights, has natural rights or God-given rights and the individual is very important. I believe if we can convince people that we start there, it'll be very helpful in presenting the other program because those words aren't antagonistic, they're not threatening. They're views that the American people generally endorse anyway. They believe in God-given rights. They believe that the Creator gave us our rights. It's written into our Declaration of Independence and people are very comfortable and feel that the individual should be important. They do get confused when it comes to making people better and making the economy better. But that basic principle, if we accept that where we start, we can lead into the others. Another principle that we're all familiar with I think should be emphasized to non-libertarians and that is that we're not aggressive. We have sometimes an aggressive nature about what we believe in which at times can come across negative. But we as individuals do not promote and we condemn aggression. We believe people shouldn't initiate force, that people shouldn't be hurting other people and they shouldn't be stealing and hurting and killing. And this, of course, is something, how can anybody reject this? This is a wonderful idea that people are non-aggressive. And I think that one way I've turned this around a little bit with some liberals when it comes to the issue of guns. Liberals, you know, say that you do not have the right to own a weapon to defend yourself. And conservatives say, obviously you do. You do have a right to it. And the conservatives are so good, they don't even want your gun registered. They just want to register your kids. But the liberal, although she is absolutely opposed to you owning a gun, they are very generous with the use of the gun by the government. Everything they talk about is with the assumption that the government's gun is going to enforce what they think is the best for society. So whether it's a regulation or a tax or a war or whatever, the gun of the IRS or some agency. And we're even at a point now, one time before I left Washington, I left all the agencies that were permitted to carry guns. And it includes the IRS and ocean inspectors and EPA inspectors and certainly Secret Service and CIA and FBI. I mean, there's a lot of agencies of government that are permitted the use of the gun. And of course, if they're doing things immoral and unconstitutional, the liberal really is the individual who promotes the idea that you can't own the gun, but the government can, I think, is a very dangerous idea. Another approach to presenting libertarian ideas is to present it in the context of our history, American traditions and the Constitution. Now, we know the Constitution certainly had many shortcomings, but it happens to have been, although now ignored, a relatively good document when you compare it to the rest of the documents around the world. And therefore, if we pursue this from the original intent and the way the Constitution was written and what was intended by government, we're on pretty safe grounds. Now, many of you will recall the name Larry MacDonald. Larry MacDonald was not a libertarian. Matter of fact, he had some negative things to say about libertarians, but he was a constitutionalist and it was not unusual while we were there that he and I would vote together. But he was a principled person and he approached it from the Constitution and if there came up a project something like voting federally for the treatment and the cure of diabetes, how can you be opposed to that? Then every once in a while, Dr. MacDonald and Dr. Paul was voting up there with the superficial appearance that they don't even care, but obviously he was coming at it from a different viewpoint. So there's no reason in the world why we can't utilize that and say that, yes, our viewpoints aren't new and strange and bizarre and radical, ours are very conventional, they're constitutional, they're part of the American tradition. We're not the radicals. The radicals are the ones who are in charge in Washington today. Another point is emphasizing and presidents in recent years have used this, emphasize volunteerism. Kennedy did it, Reagan did it, Bush did it, they all do. That's the idea, of course they don't want to depend on volunteerism, they want to use it, but the lingo, the rhetoric was very libertarian, certainly Ronald Reagan was able to pick up a lot of our rhetoric and use it and even become associated with some libertarians, although he certainly did not follow through with any libertarian views. But volunteerism is important. People like volunteerism, they like to be kind and considerate and help out and along with this is tolerance, tolerance of other people's views. I don't think if you took a poll among the American people and say, do you think the American people should be tolerant or intolerant of their neighbors? Well, most people say, well, we should be tolerant. Well, when they accept that as a fact, then we have to push them a little bit further and saying, well, tolerance means that you accept them even when they do things or say things or read things that you might not like or do or we do yourselves. So tolerance is a little bit more than just something that you give lip service to. And I believe this is the way to capture the idea of goodwill. I think if we don't portray ourselves as having concern and want to portray goodwill, then it would be more difficult and is more difficult for us to sell the ideas. Libertarian philosophy and libertarian positions have influenced me a whole lot. And in one area in particular, of course, I started off mainly with the economic issues, moved in studying economics and Mises and the other Austrian economists. But then the next step was really in foreign policy. There was certainly a time when I wondered why we were doing all these things around the world, but then, as I said before, I was taught in public school why we had to do these things. And then it was later on that I realized that we didn't need to be doing these things around the world. And not only is it a better position, not only is it a constitutional position, but if we would do a lot less sooner, we would have a better chance for peace. The American people want peace. Yes, 80% right now are cheering Ronald Reagan on, but they don't know there might be somebody get killed and they might not know there's going to be a war and maybe they will have a second thought later on, but they have nothing else to offer than nobody else is offering another opinion. I was flying over on the airplane yesterday from Houston and the gentleman next to him, he struck up a conversation because he saw my name on an envelope. And he, thanks to Jim Perry, and he says, oh, yeah, he says, I know Ron Paul for president because I see that signed down in San Francisco. And so he, we got to talking and I asked, I wanted his opinion. I wanted to see what he was thinking about the mid-east. He says, well, I can see both sides. You know, he says, I see that there's some risk, but I see the necessity of going in, you know. But then he immediately followed up and he says, what do you think? And he was really looking for information. I mean, he was more or less starved for it. And it was all acknowledgement. You know, he said, yeah, that's right, that's right, that's right. But has he heard our view on television? No, our view doesn't get on television very often. And yet it makes a whole lot of sense. And the American people, they realize that long-term peace is better achieved with our policy than with the policy pursued by all the administration this century. They will come to us. And they're convinced that it's in American national interest and for world peace, for us to send a quarter of million men halfway around the world to jeopardize the lives of American citizens and soldiers and, of course, everything else that might follow. But the emphasis on peace, I think, should be something we should not forget about. The libertarian principle accepts two traditional principles that have been known for thousands of years. And they're basic. They're fundamental. They're in civilization. They're in our major religions. And yet they're key to the libertarian philosophy. And that is the recognition that life and property are important. We know that we as libertarians cannot initiate force. We can't hurt people and we can't steal from them. And their property is very important. And along with that is if you have the market process working, you ought to have a strong respect for voluntary contract, contractual arrangements. And if you agree to do something, you do it. And if there is a role for government, it would be in this very narrow sense to making sure that people do fulfill their obligations and not cheat and steal and defraud. Now these sounds so basic and yet they're so important if they're carried through to the ultimate end. But these are not new ideas. I mean, you can go to the Ten Commandments. Thou shall not kill and thou shall not steal. And obviously they're embedded. And the idea that you do what you say is part of the libertarian philosophy and something really, if put in the proper context, people cannot deny. And yet today we have government interfering with voluntary contracts on a daily basis. There's really no such thing in this country that really can be construed as a voluntary contract because they're telling us everything that we have to do in our economic and our social lives. Another area that I think where we come down on the short end and probably the most difficult for libertarians and where we get the most grief on and we get the most negative publicity and that is the social acceptability. The people that I know who are non-libertarians who just know a little bit about libertarians, I'm not saying the criticism is justified, but it's there. You can't deny it, it's there. They will come and say, oh yeah, libertarians. They're the ones who like pornography, prostitution, gambling and drugs and you're associating with them. But if that's the selling point, let me tell you that you can't sell it. Obviously you can't sell it because even if 90% of the American people endorse that, they don't want to be known to endorse it. So they won't publicly endorse you if you endorse it. So 90% of the American people are very, very cautious on what they publicly endorse. So if you're in the arena of politics, then you have to be careful not to be construed that you're endorsing any of these things that we certainly tolerate. And I think that is one of the major problems that we have if I had to judge from the many, many conservative and liberal friends that I have outside of the libertarian movement. Libertarian philosophy also should be sold for another very, very important reason. A lot of what I said here, a lot of people would write off and say, well this is theoretical and it's not all that practical and it sounds fine, but we're in the nitty-gritty real world and we want to do something. I mean we have to take care of the people. But we as libertarians have to be convinced just as Bob Smith earlier and others have talked about the environment. We have to come up with programs as libertarians to do something about it. We have to be the most practical party and we have to have the most practical ideas. We have to convince the American people that it's impractical. The world is coming to recognize that socialism is very impractical. At one time they thought forced redistribution of wealth was a good idea and it was very practical and it took away a little from the wealthy and gave more to the poor and everybody was going to be happy. Well that's very impractical and we're seeing the results. It's too bad they didn't listen to Mises in 1920 and they wouldn't have wasted so much time and energy and suffering to recognize this. But we have to be convinced that it is practical. It's practical both in the social-moral sense as well as in the foreign policy sense of more peace and certainly in the economic sense. If we want prosperity we have to have a free market and therefore we as a group have to ask ourselves what have we been doing if we have such a wonderful philosophy and it's based on American tradition. It's based on some of the good elements of many religions and it's practical and it's the philosophy that provides peace and prosperity. Why aren't we doing better? Why don't we have more people in office? Why don't we have more influence in the media? Why don't we have more influence in Congress? Well I think we're getting more and I think we're making progress but I still think we come up short in coming across in a positive way. But I think there's also some other reasons too. I think the opposition has had some advantages especially if we or they or us we live in a country that is rather prosperous and the prosperity has been accumulated at a time when we were more libertarian and great prosperity it may take a while to ruin prosperity it may take a while to destroy capital but we've been doing a pretty good job at it for these last 40 or 50 years and we are now facing a crisis in this country the capital has been consumed the value of the dollar has been undermined the basis of our freedoms have been undermined as well privacy is a major issue if I had to pick one issue that my subscribers are most interested in it's privacy and they're not all libertarians they're probably half aren't libertarians but they're interested in privacy it's financial privacy and other type of privacy but privacy ought to be the same and ought to be synonymous with liberty but the opposition has certainly some advantages the one advantage they have with this prosperous society is the advantage of playing the role of Santa Claus or Robin Hood and the American people sort of succumb to the temptation there is always a temptation among men to receive goods and services with less than full effort a temptation will exist throughout the history of man has and will but the demagogue the redistributionist is very prone to jump on this and grab the wealth and redistribute it play Santa Claus and say I care I really care about the people they care about their power but when they're selling their message they get up and they say I care about you Ron Paul over there wouldn't even have food stamps he doesn't care about poor people he wants them to starve in the street not realizing that there are more poor people more homeless and more starving people so ever since they've been doing all this wonderful redistribution of wealth but that has yet been proven the Duke Gooder is still riding the high moral ground of saying he's compassionate and he cares the conservative does it in the same way on the social issue the conservative says do you want to live in a society where they gamble and drink and there's prostitution and all these horrible things oh no we're going to make the people better and we have this high moral code that we're going to impose on the people so they grab the moral high ground and for that reason most people in this country are conservatives and liberals and yet we have to dispel that missed myth obviously and convert many of them to believing that it is better to accept another philosophy we have to deliver the message in a concerned, compassionate way if we do this and the people get interested it doesn't have to be and it shouldn't be in a self-sacrificial way yes we want to be compassionate, we want to be concerned we want to believe in free choices and tolerance because we think it will make a better world we think people will be better because they make their own choices rather than coerced by government we believe there will be more prosperity and therefore the individual, the American citizen who's making the decision has to make the decision based on self-interest it doesn't have to be on self-sacrifice and say well I'm going to make a lot of money but I realize that I have to give so much of the money away to the poor in order for a libertarian society to work no we don't have to concentrate on that that can be the role of the minister if they believe that tithing is good and that you should help your fellow man that's a personal decision and it should not be a political decision because even if nobody donated anything and everybody was a self-serving, narrow libertarian that consumed and used it only for themselves the world would still be a lot better off the world would certainly be a lot better off under those circumstances but politically we're better off if we can come across as being compassionate and concerned, I personally endorse a philosophy that says that I do have obligations and I believe in family care, community care and I believe that we should do it I think the libertarian philosophy has a greater chance if more of us do have voluntary compassion and are willing enough to contribute in a voluntary way but I think this is very important obviously Eisenhower made a statement once I think it's interesting and I'll go ahead and conclude I think there may be a few minutes left for questions Eisenhower made a statement, he said, you know he got a lot of criticism for not standing up and being an ultra-conservative and ultra-liberal and he admitted he walked down the straight and narrow middle road he says that takes courage he says because I'm getting knocked down by both sides and he says it's not easy to walk down the middle of the road and when you think about this, Eisenhower was seen as a moderate there are many moderates around but what is a moderate? a moderate is the opposite of a libertarian a moderate cries to coalesce and bring people together by saying, well, yes, I'm going to accept military interventionism and I'm going to accept social interventionism and welfare and they kind of bring them together and of course they get criticized by both and yet that's generally the way the world has marched on by accepting both sides of government intervention and we become more of a statist totalitarian society my suggestion is this obviously for us to have the appearance of bringing people together to coming together not to be off in some strange hinterland where people think we're strange and different and they don't understand this but to say, yes, we're working in the middle but we're going to bring people together for the right reasons we're going to bring the conservatives over here because they believe in free enterprise and we're going to bring the liberal over here because they believe in civil liberties bring them together and think about how this can be a positive move instead of a negative move I think if we can do this and we continue our efforts we will be successful education really is number one on the list we must educate ourselves and our youngsters and our people so that eventually we have influence in the media and in the government and then of course second then we go into political action the political action is a consequence of a consensus of the people I myself like to think that I participate in both by both being involved in political action for the sense of arousing interest and alerting people to other ideas as well as pursuing the educational efforts that so many have been doing for so many years and I think if we continue in this line that we will have a successful libertarian revolution in this country thank you very much I would endorse that concept I think it is the malpractice problem in medicine is a major problem and it's also in many other areas of litigation but it should be done with the least amount of legislation by the acceptance of the principle of voluntary contracts today if I contract with my patient that we will settle the dispute in such and such manner whether they would go as far as that and say they won't sue they might accept an arbitration panel they're thrown out of court they're not allowed to sign those and it's considered that they've signed away their inalienable rights and therefore they're not legal but I would accept your notion I think the filler would be insurance I think in malpractice if the patient came around to finding which physician they can get the best contract with and then if they don't have complete coverage if there's a major catastrophe then there should be flight insurance or surgical insurance that would cover this the project will you be running for office again and either way how can we assist you? 1988 was a long, long year and I'm still recovering and I'm not thinking right now at all about running for anything my current project of course is trying to put together 13 cable type libertarian programs we have seven, we've been on the air we will get back on the air again in the fall and hopefully we'll have all 13 because that's a season and each time we move we get a better station so I'm going to work real hard in trying to reach more people I have a strong belief that if we don't get into the electronic media we're not going to reach more than the smaller groups that we have at meetings like this so you could help me by encouraging my television but someday maybe down the road I might consider but not right now Lord? Me? Okay, he asked me if I would talk about Nancy Lord Nancy Lord is running for mayor in Washington DC she was very grateful that she raised a decent sum of money with a letter that I signed for a mayor's race she did quite well and I don't know, I don't keep up with the you know the race in Washington on a day-to-day basis but everything I hear has been very encouraging last week or yeah I think it was last week they had you know a grand opening of the campaign and I notified her that I would be going up there next week so let's hope that she does real well and that would give us a good boost The mercenary army will take this interest to sign a raid will you get? No Did everybody hear the question? He asked would I object to Exxon sending their army to the Persian Gulf to protect their property interest and I have no objection just so they don't use my kids or my money we'll take one more and I think we'll have to quit is that it Vince? Well, you indicated that over the last 50 years you think that we've been living off or reducing our capital stock but most economic data would seem to indicate the contrary personal income adjusted for inflation is up widely perhaps four times personal wealth is up capital stock is up could you tell us why you believe that we can to make sure capital stock? I think our standard of living is down I think we are less capable of producing steel and other things in this country than we have ever been certainly one source of soundness to an economy would be the soundness of a currency and we have a very weak currency there's really no true savings in this country savings represents capital not the Federal Reserve and what they do with the printing press so I see that we have been drifting into an anti-capitalistic system where we aren't producing and saving we are consuming and borrowing so I think what some of these figures that the government may report is a reflection of the fact that we were able for now borrow money at a cheap rate and took a little pressure off the Federal Reserve and therefore it looks like income has gone up but I don't think the American people as a whole are a lot better off I believe the liberal statistics that show that there are more people in the poor category and more people in the streets than there were 10, 15 years ago so I see our nation as poor and less capable of producing and have a dangerous amount of debt Was it libertarians in the U.S. Congress and you don't know what's up with that? That's a good question are there any closet libertarians in the Congress? Not in the true sense of the word but one thing I meant to mention at the opening and I didn't mention was that the congressman came to be very respectful of the message and they would frequently come to me and say what is the libertarian message and many of them had a guilt complex and would come and sit down Mickey Edwards being one in particular would sit down and say you know if they had been introduced to the ideas they know it's a good thing and they'll say you know I'm really a libertarian I'd like to vote with you but the heat's too strong for me at home so they got around to the point where it was always a positive to say you were a libertarian but they would like to be libertarians but they're politically they don't have the courage to be if there happened to be one of these statistical analysis of voting record if an individual who would not generally be associated with a so-called conservative republican would all of a sudden rank high which was a more libertarian analysis they would be very delighted to come and say hey look at this you know I'm right with you like you know I'm really a good guy but I just can't quite do this because my people they don't they don't they feel obligated that they cannot come with an opinion their job is to reflect you know the majority vote in their district and they say that I have to suppress these urges to be a principled person and what they're really arguing though is that whoever's given the most money they better reflect their views because they never really take a vote of the people thank you very much