 Our guest this weekend is none other than my former boss Dr. Ron Paul and I'm surprised in looking back over the archives to see that we have never had Dr. Paul on our Mises weekend show so we need to rectify that and we need to have him on as a live guest in the very near future to handle some Q&A but for now enjoy a great speech Dr. Paul gave this past weekend at our Mises Circle event in Houston including a great reference to how Bernie Sanders doesn't seem to understand that the Plymouth Colony experiment in America was actually a failure. Stay tuned and have a great weekend. One thing I think about when we think you know what what is ahead for us and what's how can you predict what happens in the various civilizations over the many centuries and even in our lifetime certainly in the 20th century the most onerous of civilizations and empires was the Soviet Empire and it came to an end. Now the important characteristic of the end of the Soviet Empire was the fact that we didn't need a nuclear exchange it disintegrated from within and I think this is basically true outside forces have something to do with it all the way back to the Roman Empire but basically empires good or bad disintegrate from from within so I believe that that is what our contention has to be right now is what is happening to our country from within and actually it's very encouraging they're disintegrating it's giving us an opportunity we don't have to go to war with them they're gonna distrust destruct Keynesianism is coming to an end all they have to do now is dictate to us that every bank has to give us name will be required to have negative interest and get rid of cash and I think finally the American people will wake up and maybe revolt against this insanity but you know throughout history and history is rather short human history recorded history is probably 5,000 years and it's vaguely recorded back then I was trying to find out the exact date the Ten Commandments were in and you really can't find even you can't even get the date exactly when Moses brought down the tablets with the Ten Commandments but even then when you go back you'll find out that a lot of those principles were even known with the Assyrians two or three hundred years before the Moses issued the Ten Commandments but one thing that seems to have been the motivation there is to set some rules civilization was coming about it was rather primitive but they knew they had to have some rules for the people in order to survive and if you look at what the basic rules were what they were trying to design very very libertarian and it basically you know don't lie don't cheat don't steal and don't murder you know and it's found in most of the great religions and it was designed of course to limit the hostilities and the violence of individuals to bring about civilization and of course the government was supposed to be very much involved in this and that is that is where we come up short because the government hasn't done a very good job in doing this we've seen maybe the reversal of that but you know we had we had the Ten Commandments established and the move on generally over the many centuries was to see if we could develop the human race could develop a set of standards for tranquility and peace and try to curtail the power of government so a major event occurred in in in 1215 with the Magna Carta you know establishing you know that we you know have the governments can't hold us and governments should be held responsible to the same laws and this was a significant event it wasn't the event of of all history but it suggested that the kings had to live under the same laws that the people lived under and the the British followed this to some degree and tried to improve on that over the many years now another significant date from my viewpoint occurred when the people who got discussed for various reasons what was what was going on in Europe and in Britain and the different places so they heard about America and they wanted to come to America and the one particular settlement that I think stands out in history that we should pay attention to was the Plymouth colony in 1620 and it was it was a bad deal I mean they came over and the percentage of people that died was horrendous after even after they got here but they developed a system of pure socialism collectivism everybody worked together and whoever needed to eat they would take the food and lo and behold the people weren't working very well and they weren't doing well so Bradford finally comes along he has this brilliant idea had been floating around a bit about that time he said let's give up on this this not have socialism this is a new country what we want to do is a lot property rights to certain people and you're on your own go go what you want and raise which one and lo and behold to their tremendous surprise there was great productivity people produced more than they needed and then they automatically started taking care of the people who weren't capable of raising their own crops and it was in a in many ways burying in our early history the concept of socialism and of course they are in our early history there was much more individualism and there was much more incentives built into it and we were moving into an age of of thinking about capitalism and Adam Smith and these other events and that actually went it went pretty well but it was really established in 1776 another bold move on the part of our ancestors to put together and make a declaration of independence for the individuals emphasize the individual and this was one thing that Murray Rothbard had pointed out that one of the reasons why individuals were considered important and he gave credit to Christianity and the importance of the individual and in that sense Christianity did have an influence you know on on our culture and our society but this was a major event and we did benefit for a long time in that manner for up to where I think the progressive era started in 1898 then all of a sudden the progressive moved in and set the stage for the 20th century which is has had did not go well and and people capitulated to progressivism and they forgot about Plymouth and they went down and they had a more sophisticated method of promoting socialism and in the 20th century you know brought together two groups the conservative war mongers as well as the as as the liberals to brought them together the use of force and and and we ended up with socialism welfare ism special interest and a a concept where especially under Woodrow Wilson that we had a responsibility to make the world safe for democracy well guess what the world didn't become safe and it didn't become in their terms democratic it was a disaster so if we could do one thing maybe we could repeal Woodrow Wilson including the income tax in the Federal Reserve system but the 20th century I see is downhill and the communism and it that's the good part but now instead of taking advantage in getting a peace dividend in the 1990 as the as the Soviet system collapsed the world was enthralled with interventionism Keynesianism inflationism and all the nonsense that have been going on but we're now at the point where it is recognized that it's doomed it can't work it's not going to work and something has to replace it that's what the Mises Institute is all about and the many other groups that we have now is to provide the answers to what is the replacement going to be we don't have to think about how many tanks are we going to have to invade Washington DC they have more tanks they have bombs and drones and everything else but believe me ideas are much more powerful than those tanks that they don't even know how to run and won't even have the fuel to run eventually so I would say stick with the ideas of liberty to combat the disaster of the 20th century I think the opening salvo of this this event came in the year 2000 in the financial markets it was the Nasdaq bubble which was predicted by the Austrian economist it was way out of proportion and the crash came and most people thought well you know came but haven't we been doing quite well since I don't believe so I think it's been a disaster ever since and the the jobs leave the country the inflation is still there liberties are being reduced so I believe that that event led into you know the perpetuation and the desire to have even more and more bubbles and of course they think the bubble is the correction to the bubble phenomenon when the bubble burst which we all know can't work and won't work if you have a problem of debt and too much spending and too much government you can't correct that by just expanding government regulations and government printing in more debt so worth we're facing that today and the American people you know are really really in a quandary there's a lot of anger out there this election is different than the other elections it's a lot worse because I think there's more confusion than ever but everybody is angry the people who aren't getting enough are angry and the people who are sick and tired of paying for it or are angry and sometimes they're very confused at to who is the real cause and I think it's demonstrated all you have to do is listen to those debates but when I talk about the debates and the candidates I do have one exception I'm not accusing them all of under a misunderstanding economic policy so the people are confused and looking for it but I think the politicians look for scapegoats if we can just blame somebody this would be this would do the trick so it's it's the immigrants that the immigrants are coming and indeed it is a problem but is a consequence so often of economic policies you know it's the economic problems that we face in this country where there is a disintegration of the middle class and there's individuals who are on the dole there's too much welfare ism too much rewards for not working and then too many rewards for people who come illegally and where and why are they leaving are they leaving because of being bombed some certainly that's true in Europe but they're coming from South America and Central America because they have lousy stinking economic policies and they're just begging and pleading and looking for an answer so I I think that the message of liberty and the message of free markets and the message of sound money it's a you there's a universal need for this and to me it's the only answer I don't I don't for a minute think building fences will do it I think there has to be more more interchange between those of us who understand economic policies and those others who are struggling so there are a lot of people who are migrating and immigrating come as economic consequence it's a bad economic positive problem then it's compounded by our bad economic problems and people get angry and upset and jobs go overseas and they say well the solution to that is terrorists that sprays terrorists and and do all this nonsense so it it's an opening but the Austrian School of Economics groups like the Mises Institute can provide the answer and it's crucial because it's who puts it back together that counts I think we're in a good position because nobody else has anything worthwhile what we have to worry about is how violent and chaotic is this going to get and that's what that's what's really dangerous because there could well end up with riots not only in our streets we see the pictures already in Europe but it's even worse in Europe because they are suffering the consequences of our foreign policy it is true there's a lot of people leaving this country yes you could say well some of them are coming in there to undermine the culture of Europe and they certainly are seem to be achieving that but some of them are coming to escape bombs you know if they had good economic problem policies and we weren't bombing them believe there would be a lot less immigration from the Middle East into Europe or even into this country so the answer to this of course is to have sound economic policies but we have to have a sound foreign policy as well and foreign policy for those of us who believe in the non-aggression principle is that we don't have military forces spread around the world not only does it cause more trouble it distracts from defense of a country costs a lot of money we create a lot of enemies and what does it do it adds on more cost so it's a bad cycle that we're on but Europe I believe is in a real mess the whole world is in a financial situation that could come down on our heads just anytime and yet we have the answers and in the issue with the issue of liberty free markets property rights and a lot less government that is what I think would come a long way to solving our our problems but in order for people to make use of this out of ignorance or deliberately in order to in to the advance the power of the state is there's a lot of demagoguery that has to go around and and a lot of fears people act because they get scared they get scared economically who's going to take care of me and they get fearful that we're going to be attacked and yet there's it's very very difficult to get a people to look at look at themselves it's hard for individuals to look at oneself to improve I want one's person and one's character but this is what is very very difficult because of course I I had I've experienced that any suggestion that we may have had a flawed policy in foreign policy and I did not support this endless war mongering going on I was considered un-American and and and unconcerned about our troops and and literally get booed by Christian communities because the only answer to this is to drop carpet bomb drop more bombs if we need to show them how tough we are not realizing that's the cause of the problem you say well aren't there a lot of those bad guys that's the argument we always hear there's a lot of bad guys out there don't we have to get rid of them I say no we don't did we have to do that with the Soviets no we ended up probably being much too close to them rather than saying that we had to go in and do anything about it and that's just that's just a distraction because you look at the Alliance that we have with Saudi Arabia and they're not exactly the champions of civil liberties and yet at the same time we're yelling and screaming because we hear something and we don't want to deal with Saddam Hussein and the other dictators or China oh they violate civil liberties well what do you think they think of us what do you think the people from the Middle East think of us when they see us torturing people and and rounding up kids and bringing them here and keeping it for 20 years without charges being made and but we should be able to look at ourselves but of course what we have to do is get people to accept some basic principles you know the the trend over those many centuries that I talked about the it was always there to give more freedom to the individual and the government was sort of there and their job was to enforce laws but I think what has happened now is we had a pretty good code over those many centuries developed on how we as individuals should act in a very non aggressive way I don't lie cheat steal or kill murder not to do it what do we have today we have a government that lies cheats steals counterfeits murders people around the world puts our people in prison without charges and haven't become legal at the same time we see proposals today introduced by the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate to say that well what we must do is give more power to the president so he never has to bother coming and being annoyed with the Congress he needs more war powers that he can go anyplace anytime around the world and use the military if he doesn't like what's going on including in the United States as well I would say it's time for the American people to get this information and realize that our greatest threat is coming from within by the doctrinaires of individuals who don't have the vaguest idea of sound economics and if they do they fear it because they'll lose their power they don't understand what real liberty is all about and so therefore they become fearful and they claim the soul and most important responsibility of government is to make us safe you can't even find that in the Constitution they didn't say hereby we declare the United States whole purpose of the federal government is to make sure that everyone is safe and they have a safety net and free education free medical care and the whole works now it's not there the whole purpose there was to write a bunch of rules trying to restrict the government and trying to restrain the government and to make sure they live within the laws of the land but here today we have the government doing exactly what took centuries to try to get the American the people of the world to act responsibly to advance civilization now in spite of all this I think civilization has done quite well over these many years in spite of all the shortcomings but my disappointment has been that with all the intelligence and this is such a short period of time the idea is a freedom so so you know short it just hundreds of years really when it was really since the industrial revolutions it's not like centuries on centuries just hints to have occurred and so much advancement has occurred I mean the the universe billions and billions of years old as as and nobody knows exactly the age it's not brand new but the ideas of mankind advancing to the stage where they even have the concept of liberty and importance of the individuals very very short the advancement and now the movement is so much more rapid with the advancement of the exchange of information on the internet we have have it moving quickly I mean the ideas of liberty over the many centuries starting all the way back with the 10 commandments and the Magna Carta that was very slow and tedious but there's no reason why ideas can't move faster now in the industrial age industrial revolution tremendous progress just think of our standard of living in spite of the government you know our standard of living keeps going up but why haven't we had some advancement in in in the social affairs getting along with people and and trying to take our intelligence and saying why do we have to resort to war I think most people want peace I think most people still today nobody says nobody would admit it at least that oh yeah we got to get rid of that stupid law that says you shouldn't lie cheat or steal or murder no they still believe in that but but they they they are too careless about it and they allow the government to do it so the only way I can see progress for humankind as well as I see her in the United States is to take our intelligence and take this ability to spread information show the importance of the individuals and take what was given to us even early on with the libertarian principle of no aggression now isn't is that so much to ask from people all we want you to do is say I'm never going to initiate violence another against another person or property and I promise to do what I say I will do exactly as I promise in that that is not too overwhelming yet people are intimidated because of false ideas they make them scared and the people just roll over and say the solution is more government and we have to really make the case to for not only American people but for the world why we can't take this advanced step and take the intelligence of the human race and the ability to communicate you know worldwide we don't want I don't want closed borders but I want ideas and people to exchange views and go back and forth and this is this is happening you know I get so many so many calls and emails I mean this past week I think Daniel and I got a receipt of somebody took one of my books and translated into Chinese and somebody else translated another book into German and they said well is there going to be a charge you know the more the merrier printed spread the message I mean this is what's going on today and you know there was a time when you wouldn't even know about well we don't know about it this is activity so I think I think there's certainly a room for a revolution but not the not the revolution of Bernie Sanders he's going back to Plymouth colony and we don't need that we need to look forward to the days when Liberty will thrive and that prosperity will exist and we will have peace in the world thank you very much