 It's interesting, we were just in this room a couple of years ago celebrating Ron's 80th birthday party, had a band that day and it was a great day and it's nice to see a lot of you again down here in Lake Jackson and not necessarily in Houston. Pat Barnett tells me this morning we have about 340 people here representing, I thought this was impressive, we have 25 states here today, so we're actually about half of the United States is represented along with Australia, Israel and Canada as well. So thanks so much to all of you for making time to join us this morning. I'm really honored by your presence and I know Ron and Carol appreciate it very much and we're so happy and honored and pleased that Congressman Massey and David Stockman could make time to be with us this morning. And of course when we first planned this event last fall I guess it was predictable perhaps that come April of next year the United States government would be bombing Syria. But what was perhaps not so predictable was that it would be Donald Trump doing it because we thought at that point Hillary was going to win. And of course now we're at the 100th anniversary of Woodrow Wilson signing the declaration of war for the United States to enter World War I. So we tend to recall that but what we tend to forget is that it was only a year and a half later that the United States and the Allies signed the Armistice. So wars used to have an end to them which I think is an interesting concept and something we certainly lost. So watching TV yesterday I always cringe when I hear the term foreign policy establishment or foreign policy community because you know whoever is going to be the next guest is going to be somebody bad when you hear that. So I'm watching MSNBC Morning Joe and Mika is smiling. She's the happiest she's been since Trump was elected. She's just ecstatic that the United States government is finally doing things is doing robust things. And you know when you hear about the foreign policy community what that really means is they're going to trot out a guest you've seen many many times before. So they've learned nothing from the Trump election. It's the same old people the same old ideas the same old thoughts. So they brought out General Barry McCaffrey and McCaffrey starts is starts waxing eloquent about the virtues of these Tomahawk missiles. You know you can park a warship in international waters and send these missiles for hundreds maybe thousands of miles and they can hit a target the size of a garage door etc etc. So he's animated by this and then he continues but you know our next task the next step in this is taking out the Syrian Air Force. And this unlike just lobbying Tomahawk missiles is actually going to require air power launched in other words fighter planes launched from from US naval vessels. So he goes on and on about how this is the next step it was incredible to me to listen to this how these things just devolve how how one air strike then leads to taking out the Syrian Air Force. There's no plan for any of this there's no declaration of war it's just something that that sort of unrolls and it seems so natural to McCaffrey that this should happen. And I think it has become natural for us and when we think about foreign policy in the United States we think about foreign policy intelligentsia the so called think tanks. For the most part I don't think it's a stretch to say they've been captured they've been captured by people with neoconservative foreign policy views empire building nation building views imperialist views and they've also been captured by the defense industry. That may sound like a bit of a cliche but I think it's largely true. And that's why we're you know we're so pleased to partner today with the Ron Paul Institute for peace and prosperity because really from my perspective they're the only organization in the United States certainly that's devoted to foreign policy from a purely non interventionist perspective. In other words from the perspective that non interventionism ought to be an actual principle by which we conduct foreign policy rather than just a policy option. And by non inventionism I mean that absent a really compelling threat to the United States that our country our government should not interfere militarily clandestinely economically in the affairs of other countries it's really just that simple. And this is the case of course that Ron Paul made for years and years in Congress. It's not isolationism it's certainly not pacifism although it's oftentimes painted that way. But of course non interventionism as a theory is based on the idea the ancient idea of just war doctrine that there ought to be some real interest served by going to war other than just a self serving national interest. And I think we've reached the point now where the national interest of the United States can mean virtually anything. I mean if a country is potentially going to have nuclear weapons 20 years hence or 30 years hence is that a sufficient national interest for us to be engaging the militarily today. I think there's some people who would say yes to that question. But the Ron Paul Institute is really dedicated to the opposite perspective that we should never interfere in the affairs of another country absent a real justification. And of course the Mises Institute really since its inception with the Rockwell has always been anti war and pro non intervention it's really been part of our hallmark as an organization. Because I think if you understand economics you very quickly understand that any country or government big enough to have an empire abroad is big enough to be burdensome and onerous at home tyrannical at home even. I think the Mises Institute has always tried to make the case that there's a connection between central banks and war. There's a connection between the Fed and war finance. And of course our namesake Ludwig von Mises himself fought as a lieutenant in World War One in the Austro-Hungarian Army. He was actually the ripe old age of 32 when he entered that war quite a bit older than many of his fellow soldiers and had already written a major treatise on money. He was already a very accomplished thinker, legal expert and economist and during that war he writes in his memoirs that during some of his darkest moments in that war he committed himself to writing another book afterwards about socialism because he really viewed war as a socialist enterprise and hence a nonsensical enterprise. And he gives a very interesting quote in his memoirs about war intelligentsia, the same people who plague us today. And I'm quoting Mises as he says, speaking of the great war, World War One. The war came as a result of an ideology that had been proclaimed from German lecterns for hundreds of years. Professors of economics had contributed to the intellectual preparation for war. Sounds familiar. They did not first need to be retrained in order to become the intellectual bodyguards of the Hohenzollern. And here he's referring to the House of Hohenzollern, the German Prussian Romanian dynasty. He says, economics was no longer taught, what was taught were the doctrines of war. And I think that rings so true today. I guess we don't have monarchical dynasties anymore. I don't know what our houses are today. Today we have the House of Crystal or the House of Northrop Grumman. Those are the only seeming dynasties in America anymore that come and go regardless of administrations. And of course it was largely because of Ludwig von Mises that Ron Paul became Ron Paul. I'm sure a lot of you in this room know the story of Ron going to see Mises in the early 1970s at the University of Houston. And Ron came back from that talk, really dedicated the idea that he had to do something. He was a very happy and prosperous doctor at the time. But he felt that he wasn't doing enough, that he had to take the ideas that Mises was talking about and do something with him in his personal life. And of course that led to him running for Congress where, and I think he will tell you that he really started off as more of an economic libertarian. And if he had just been willing to stay that way, if he had just been willing to sort of tamp down some of his beliefs in the foreign policy arena, he really could have been a darling of the conservative libertarian establishment. He could have been feted in Washington. He could have been made quite wealthy, received donations. But he would never do it. And he showed his non-interventionist credentials early on. Even when President Reagan called him and asked for his support for the B-1 bomber program. And here's Ron, a young congressman who had been one of the few Republicans to support Reagan's nomination in 1976. One of only three or four Republicans at that time in the Texas delegation. He took that call from Reagan in his office. He said, no, I can't do it. And Ron continued to show his non-interventionist credentials when he signed his tremendous resignation letter to the RNC in 1987 and said, I can't be a Republican any longer. And he showed it when he ran for president in 1988, the Libertarian Party platform where he insisted on having foreign policy as a key part of his campaign message. He certainly showed it on October 10, 2002, when he was one of only six Republicans to vote against the Iraq War authorization. He showed it in 2008 in his now infamous Giuliani moment in the debates on, I guess that was Fox News. And he certainly showed it in 2012 when, as Carol Paul mentioned this last night, he was in South Carolina at a Republican primary debate and brought up the Golden Rule as a model for how Congress ought to connect foreign policy and was resoundly booed by the GOP primary voters in attendance. And of course he showed it really continuously since leaving Congress, deciding to create the Ron Paul Institute and to go on all the major media talking head shows and have the audacity to question things like the Syrian gas attack a couple of days ago. And I think Ron deserves a lot of credit for really putting neoconservatism on its heels somewhat and playing a role in that sense in the revolution we've had, the anti-war revolution we've had in just the past couple of years because there's an old adage in politics if you're explaining you're losing. And the neoconservatives have always had us explaining and now it's time to turn the tables on them and let's have them explain for a while why it's our job to remake the Middle East into Jeffersonian democracies, why it's our job to police the world, why it's our job to spend trillions of dollars on defense systems. And I think for the first time in a long time the neoconservatives are forced to explain themselves and I think that's a beautiful thing. So I'll leave you with this before we introduce our guest this morning. You know, way before I ever heard of Ron Paul as a young guy, for whatever reason in our house there was a copy of All Quiet on the western front laying around. And I happen to pick this up as a young guy and I've probably read it 20 times. I read it just over and over again in my youth. And it's really one of the greatest anti-war books ever written without trying to be. It's just a very honest and assessment of a fictional assessment of a young soldier's life in World War I. But I've read it a couple of times with my own son who's now 13. And in this book of course we follow Paul Boimer who's only 19 when he first goes off to join the German army and you know full of vigor and convinced that Germany's in the right. And the opening scene in this book he's with his buddies Krupp and Mueller and they go to see Kimmerich who's in the hospital who's been wounded and is doing very badly. And as they're standing around his hospital bed it becomes quite obvious that Kimmerich is probably not going to survive through the night. And as much as they love him as their comrade in arms they immediately start to eye his very shiny and still in good condition boots. And they start to ask him what will happen if we don't come back tonight? Will the orderly take his boots? Who will get his boots? Will they fit me? And so already just a year or so into the war Paul Boimer is starting to lose some of his humanity. He's forced to think more about his comrade's boots than his comrade's actual death because this is the situation in which he's been put. So a lot of this book is really about how Paul Boimer loses his youth and loses his innocence. And there's a very poignant scene where he comes home for leave and just two years removed from his hometown he can no longer relate to the townspeople because war has changed him so much. And what's interesting is we see this today when soldiers come back from Iraq and Afghanistan and we try to relate to them. His townspeople are still clueless about the war. They're still saying, well, you're just seeing the skirmishes you're in. You can't see the big picture. And then we'll be on to Paris soon. And of course, Germany at this point is badly losing. So I really recommend this book to just understand the sheer meaningless and the senselessness of war. I think it stands even today as one of the great anti-war books. And I'd like to just read you a quick passage of it that I love so much. This is his friend Kropp talking. This is soldier talk when they're not at the front lines. He says, it's queer when one thinks about it, goes on Kropp. We're here to protect our fatherland. And the French are over there to protect their fatherland. Now, who's in the right? Well, perhaps both, I say, without believing it. Yes, well now, pursues Albert, I see that he means to drive me in a corner. But our professors and Parsons and newspapers say that we are the only ones that are right. And let's hope so, but the French professors and Parsons and newspapers say the right is on their side. And what about that? Well, that I don't know, I say, but whichever way is, there's a war all the same, and every month more countries coming in. He says, and then Jaden appears. He says, how does a war get started? Well, mostly by one country badly offending another. Answers Albert with a slight air of superiority. Then Jaden pretends to be obtuse. A country, I don't follow. A mountain in Germany cannot offend a mountain in France, or a river or a wood or a field of wheat. So are you really just as stupid as that? Are you just pulling my leg, grouse crop? I don't mean that at all. One people offends the other. Then I haven't any business here at all, replies Jaden. I don't feel myself offended. So I've always remembered that passage from the book, and I've always enjoyed it so much.