00:00:01.000Today on the Charlie Kirk Show, Congressman Ron Paul.
00:00:05.000He has some unique ideas about how American foreign policy should be conducted, but Ron Paul has been right for a long time.
00:00:13.000For a long time in the fight for liberty, Congressman Ron Paul has been right over the target.
00:00:18.000I encourage you to listen to this episode with an open mind and know that this is a lifelong crusader for liberty.
00:00:23.000He's more libertarian in nature, but he had a very big impact on my political involvement from a young age.
00:00:30.000We explore the Federal Reserve, the diminishing dollar.
00:00:35.000We explore American foreign policy intervention and more.
00:00:39.000Email me directly, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:42.000If you want to subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast, make sure you actually are subscribed by typing in Charlie Kirk Show and hitting subscribe in the upper right-hand corner.
00:01:57.000His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:02:06.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:03:32.000And we ought not to get ourselves involved in so much of this tragedy.
00:03:37.000And so can you walk our audience through kind of some of the foreign policy decisions over the last couple of decades that led to these sort of conflicts?
00:03:48.000I think you were running for president in 2008 or 2012.
00:03:51.000And you had the courage just to kind of chime up and say, wait a second, you guys want to go to war with Iran.
00:03:56.000We're the reason why the Iranian government is the way it is.
00:04:00.000Talk a little about how overly aggressive U.S. intervention over the last couple of decades has actually made many of these theaters worse.
00:04:10.000People, if they want to move in that direction, they have to understand the word intervention.
00:04:16.000Do we have a moral authority that we can intervene around the world and pretend that we own the empire and we can dictate because we not only are not the strongest military power, up until now, at least, we're the strongest economic power and we still have reasonably control over the reserve currency of the world.
00:04:39.000So intervention with that is very, very powerful.
00:04:43.000But then the second question people have to ask, if they understand intervention, what guidelines do we have?
00:04:48.000Well, you know, people at the audiences I spoke to would ask these questions frequently, what do you do?
00:04:56.000It's not going to be easy, but we can't simplify.
00:04:59.000You could start off by just reading the Constitution.
00:05:04.000We're supposed to, you know, everybody takes an oath of office.
00:05:07.000They go to Washington and they put up their hand, but they have a completely different understanding of the Constitution, and they get away with saying whatever they want and doing whatever they want.
00:05:17.000And the people eventually have to wake up.
00:05:24.000And the other thing that people should be encouraged by is that when people wake up, it's been said, and sometimes I sort of have to struggle with this to explain it, but governments don't exist without the consent of the people.
00:05:39.000You say, oh, no, that doesn't happen because how come there's so much bad stuff?
00:05:48.000It doesn't happen that everybody gets to vote.
00:05:51.000But eventually, for instance, just look at the abuse that we've suffered here these last couple years with the war on COVID, the attack on our civil liberties and all the spending going on and the inflation and all these regulations.
00:06:08.000But all of a sudden, you know, maybe six months ago or so, there was a subtle change and now there's a more major change.
00:06:15.000More people are gaining back and they're going, wow, I can take off my mask.
00:06:21.000It's sad that you're excited about doing something that you had a right to do from the time you were born.
00:06:27.000So it's one of the things that people understand this.
00:06:51.000But no, you know, I can remember for 20 years, I would go to the college campuses before I was in Congress and after I was in Congress and nobody had heard my name.
00:07:32.000More people like you, Charlie, and others that have followed through and have their own little program.
00:07:38.000So I think there's a tremendous boost.
00:07:40.000I give Lou Rockwell a lot of credit, you know, educationally that he's introduced Austrian economics to a lot of people.
00:07:48.000So, there's room for that, but people have to know about that and why, because it's not hard to understand once you get those few principles together, why we're in Ukraine, but it doesn't explain why are we not getting out of Ukraine.
00:08:05.000That's the step that we have to look forward to.
00:08:07.000So, something that some people struggle with, Congressman, that maybe you could help me help explain is that a lot of Americans don't like to see innocent people killed.
00:08:17.000A lot of Americans don't like to be a bystander when those sort of things occur.
00:08:26.000You know, when these kind of moral injustices occur, how should we approach that?
00:08:32.000How do we explain not involving ourselves when those kind of atrocities are unfolding?
00:08:39.000Well, one, the involvement of getting involved, you don't have authority to do that.
00:08:44.000If your neighbors are having a fight inside their house and you think you can straighten that out, you don't have a right to barge in there and with force tell them, quit your fighting, quit your fighting.
00:08:54.000Now, we don't have the authority to do it.
00:08:56.000The other one is practical because it really doesn't work.
00:09:00.000If you want to, I worry about that too, because I can't stand the idea of seeing these people come back from these wars and the tragedy, and also the civilians killed.
00:09:09.000But it's bad policy because they don't follow those rules that I outline.
00:09:14.000Because, you know, I lean in the direction of being a pacifist because I think these wars are so horrible.
00:09:23.000But if they do this and they follow this, all of a sudden it's completely different, but they don't have the authority to do this, to go get involved.
00:09:35.000And then if you worry about the innocent people, you say, well, that makes my case for non-intervention, because I bet I can show you the statistic to show that interventionism is the culprit.
00:09:49.000It's a concept that people have the right to get involved in their neighbor's business and their country's business and using force.
00:09:57.000They don't accept the idea of the non-aggression principle.
00:10:00.000You're not allowed to initiate aggression, no matter how much you might disagree with somebody else's ideas.
00:10:06.000And if you look at the number, take for instance, the number of people that maybe you could pick out an eight-year period, eight years under George Bush and eight years under the Democrats.
00:10:19.000And believe me, there's a lot of innocent people die because they both endorse the same foreign policy.
00:10:27.000You know, this week they had a vote in the House and it was to cut off all trade with Russia, not all trade, but to take away trade with Russia and Belarus.
00:10:44.000And it was eight Republicans voted against it.
00:10:50.000Everybody else, Republicans and Democrats, all went along with more sanctions.
00:10:59.000So if you care about innocent people, I mean, you should look at it, you know, from the practical viewpoint, there's a lot more innocent people die when the illegal wars are accomplished.
00:11:10.000And all the wars since World War II were fought without a declaration.
00:11:15.000And just think of the many citizens and died and military people, enemy and friends.
00:12:44.000And, you know, if I keep talking like this, I'll probably talk myself out of being an optimist, but I'm still an optimist because I think things are getting better.
00:12:53.000And people's, and, you know, when the people woke up about COVID, guess what?
00:13:00.000Their pressure on the government finally came around with some benefit with natural immunity, where people now, actually, some people can take off their mask again.
00:13:11.000So, but the people had to change that.
00:13:13.000But it's the lackadaisical effort of the people allowing these authoritarian, aggressive individuals who want to take over and they love it.
00:13:23.000So even though we've made progress in settling down all this business of lockdown, there's a lot of power still in the hands of the politicians that they don't even want to relinquish, even though they may have backed off a little bit.
00:13:39.000To me, it's still the study and understanding and the excitement about what a free society could be and should be like.
00:13:46.000So you bring up a really important point, which is congressional authorization of war, which is not done nearly as often as people think.
00:13:54.000Can you explain what the founders' intent was for this and how rare we have actually had a congressional authorization of war and where did we go wrong?
00:14:04.000Where did Congress delegate that power to the executive branch, where most of our listeners are probably unaware that we don't follow the original constitutional structure when it comes to war?
00:14:17.000The purpose was to let the people have a say in it.
00:14:20.000And so the people could reach their Congress and say, don't vote for this war.
00:15:29.000And he says, we need to do their save humanity, promote liberty, and, you know, stop communism and all this stuff.
00:15:38.000And it's something that the people bought into.
00:15:42.000So, yes, the Truman people were terrible, but so were the Republicans who supported it.
00:15:49.000And so was the media supporting it to convince all the, not all the Republicans, but Republicans that go along with the Democrats with their wars.
00:15:57.000So it's something that people go along with it, but that war was never declared.
00:16:05.000And that has sort of established the process ever since.
00:16:09.000About a week or two after I first won a special election in 1976, way back then, I went to Congress and there was somebody, a Democrat that was ahead of a committee, and they were having a radio debate about the issue of declaration of war.
00:17:04.000They don't even consider it and they mock it.
00:17:07.000If somebody like myself brings it up and say, you know, you ought to consider the Constitution, even with its imperfections, you know, it at least slows things up.
00:17:19.000And that, of course, is eliminated, like so many other things in the Constitution.
00:17:29.000We just totally ignore protection of property.
00:17:31.000Just think how the privilege of freedom of speech has been undermined here in the last couple of years.
00:17:39.000But it's still, it's up to the people to wake up and do a hand.
00:17:44.000Just think of the people who finally said, I'm going to the PTA meeting and I'm going to talk to the school board members.
00:18:48.000But one thing for sure, the only thing we have a control of and an American president would have control of is to mind our own business.
00:18:55.000Unfortunately, we have done exactly the opposite.
00:18:58.000There was a conversation caught between the Assistant Secretary of State and our ambassador, Ukraine, planning strategy on how to take over the country and who's going to be the leader of the country in the future.
00:19:34.000All of a sudden, I go back and I reflect because probably if I walked off the floor or something, somebody asked me, I said, Nobody listened, nobody was there.
00:19:44.000So it looks like if you stick to your principles and follow through, you know, the one thing we don't know is how much benefit comes from it.
00:19:55.000And I think this is the reason I'm fascinated with the story of the remnant.
00:19:58.000The remnant exists all the time, and there's always somebody there.
00:20:03.000If you speak the truth and do your best and participate in a remnant of people who want to maintain the truth, there's always a remnant, according to biblical scripture, that the remnant is there, whether it's spiritual or economics.
00:20:19.000I believe that there's going to be people out there that will retain it.
00:20:22.000So all of a sudden, that's why, you know, like I just remarked about how much a pleasant surprise was that one individual at a PTA meeting stood up and all of a sudden the whole school board got fired.
00:21:06.000And we're going to run out of real wealth and we won't be able to afford so much of this.
00:21:11.000And the country is going to get poor and we will have to make a decision.
00:21:17.000And this is, and somebody says, yeah, you're going to end up with Marxism, a bunch of cultural Marxism and economic Marxism that want chaos.
00:21:27.000And when you look at the economic policies we have today, they're having chaos and they're causing friction and they're causing poverty.
00:21:34.000And I couldn't believe what's happening on our streets and the homelessness and the tense cities in places like San Francisco, Chicago.
00:21:43.000I mean, it is so bad, but still, I do believe there is that remnant out there, and all of us should make an effort to grow and identify with it.
00:21:55.000But don't the Bible tells you, don't ever try to count them because nobody knows where they are.
00:22:02.000And we have to our personal responsibility, as far as I'm concerned, is to deal with our own selves, to understand and to study and know what is right.
00:22:13.000Leonard Reed, who had the Foundation for Economic Education, was sort of a promoter of that idea.
00:22:20.000You really can't just yell at people and think they're going to change their mind.
00:22:26.000And he says that if you have an issue, whether it's an economic issue or worry issue, and you're prepared and can do it, he said, well, who's going to come?
00:23:54.000You know, back in 2010, 11, and 12, when you were running for president and doing a lot of the advocacy you were doing, monetary policy became kind of like a topic, a top topic, if you will, in the conservative libertarian space.
00:24:08.000We don't talk about it as much anymore.
00:24:10.000So please just kind of introduce our audience to the history of our monetary system.
00:24:15.000I know you don't have enough time to go into all of it, and then how should we approach it?
00:24:19.000Well, I approach it in a way that I think I approach all the issues because I like to see things and try to explain in my own mind the moral principle and the moral ideas behind it, and also the practicality of is it a good idea and also the Constitution.
00:24:39.000And I mentioned many times that you probably have heard me say that an eye-opening day for me was August 15th, 1971, about eight o'clock at night when Nixon gave his speech of introducing the wage and price controls and tariffs and closing the gold window, declaring bankruptcy.
00:24:59.000We would no longer honor our commitment, even though they weren't doing a very good job already, that they would not honor the dollar.
00:25:08.000And to me, the Federal Reserve is just licensed theft.
00:26:42.000You know, if everybody understood what it meant, if all of a sudden there was a one day where if this say bread was $2 a loaf and the next day it was $4 a loaf and it was universal across the board and people say, wow, this is terrible.
00:27:01.000What's the government going to do about it?
00:28:10.000You mentioned this, and this is something where you, if there was any topic where you opened my eyes the most, it would be our monetary system and where I'm probably in the most agreement with you, where I think most Americans need to just do a crash course on your book and the Fed and this entire fiat currency system that we've basically built our entire civilization around.
00:28:31.000I want to play a clip here of you from a couple years ago on the Federal Reserve, and then we could talk about it.
00:28:37.000In a nutshell, Congressman, how has the Fed destroyed the value of money?
00:28:43.000What has it done to us in the nearly 100 years it's been in existence?
00:28:48.000Well, its policy is deliberate devaluation of the currency just by increasing units.
00:28:54.000If you increase the units of substance, the value per unit goes down.
00:28:58.000So they've been doing this systematically since 1913, and now we're working on a dollar that's worth two cents compared to 1913.
00:29:05.000And they do it with an understanding or at least a belief in their hearts that they can do central economic planning through manipulation of money supply and interest rates.
00:29:40.000Some people might have some coins around.
00:29:42.000Some people, after wars, they've used everything just so it had substance to it.
00:29:48.000It was an asset like cigarettes or whatever.
00:29:51.000So ultimately, the people have to endorse it.
00:29:53.000That's how all money originates by the people picking it out.
00:29:57.000And it fascinates me to read about how gold was picked out because it was used for a long time before it was actually even called money, but it was natural and the people used it.
00:30:08.000And it was something that they ended up trusting.
00:30:12.000So the people have to make that choice.
00:30:17.000But, you know, you can have laws, but the laws didn't do so well.
00:30:27.000You know, if we all of a sudden tomorrow had all constitutionalists in Washington, we would change the monetary system because it's way over and above.
00:30:36.000And then we would make sure they never go to war without a declaration.
00:30:40.000Make sure that they don't keep printing money for the welfare state, not only just for people here, but for around the world.
00:32:48.000I just worry about the controls the government's going to have on us going back and forth overseas and us traveling.
00:32:56.000Already there's so many restrictions on travel now that it's a real problem.
00:33:01.000But overseas, it's still people like that idea.
00:33:06.000Some people like to have the property where they can live off the property they have and have some survival equipment.
00:33:15.000But you know, when I go through all this and I do a lot of that myself, I end up, my total conclusion was: well, if you want to protect yourself, the most important investment you have to make is the investment in protecting and promoting liberty.
00:33:35.000Because I am convinced that if the outcome of the episode that we're just entering right now, if in a year from now it's in total chaos, if you took off all the regulations and returned the monetary system to the people and got rid of the taxing system,
00:33:54.000I think if you released all that creative energy where people didn't have to deal with the excessive regulations and the taxing system, that in a year or so, I think the country would be back on the feet again.
00:34:07.000And when I tell people that and they say, well, I'd like to have a year of freedom.
00:34:12.000I think I could really build up some wealth.
00:34:18.000And that's why I get so excited about talking about it because it fits my personal beliefs about the moral principles of liberty and where liberty really comes from.
00:34:31.000If you care about people, you care about poor people.
00:34:34.000You have to care about a market economy.
00:34:37.000And if you care about it, and most people do, but they don't understand what to do about it.
00:34:41.000If you care about living in a peaceful society and not sending kids off with a draft, which is always potentially available, still on the books.
00:34:50.000You can't even get that off the books, off to these wars.
00:34:54.000I mean, how can anybody turn this down?
00:34:56.000I can always say to myself and other people, how can we have this philosophy that is so adaptive to a wonderful society?
00:35:08.000It's available even under stressed conditions.
00:35:12.000It's available that the people demand it that they have a free society.
00:35:16.000And This is something that I think we who are interested and have knowledge about it have this obligation.
00:35:26.000I have this silly notion that if you come around that you're comfortable with your beliefs and not somebody that's just blowing a lot of wind, that you say, you know, these ideas are right and I feel strongly about it.
00:35:39.000I think you have a moral obligation to spread that message.
00:35:42.000I mean, don't we take some basic principles and have a moral responsibility to our children?
00:36:34.000About a year ago, we talked really and trying to get people galvanized and find and trying to figure out what was really going on with COVID.
00:36:43.000But I have other organizations too, and I still do a lot of speaking and I just do the things.
00:36:53.000And I have the most fun talking to young people because I think you said that you actually knew something about me when you were in grade school.
00:37:09.000You know, one thing that I liked the best was when teenagers brought their parents to my congressional office after we had a campaign to introduce them to me.
00:37:20.000And I thought the parents would be embarrassed, but they loved it because they loved the idea that their kids cared about it and they were understanding ideas about government.