The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - Senator Rand Paul - Ophthalmology, Economic Liberty, Taxation, & Immigration (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_932)

00:00:00.000 I'm delighted to report that I have joined as a scholar the Declaration of Independence Center

00:00:06.120 for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi. The center offers

00:00:12.300 educational opportunities, speakers, internship, and reading groups for the University of Mississippi

00:00:18.340 community. It is named in honor of the United States founding document which constitutes the

00:00:25.340 nation as a political community and expresses fundamental principles of American freedom

00:00:31.060 including in the recognition of the importance of Judeo-Christian values in shaping American

00:00:37.300 exceptionalism. Dedicated to the academic and open-minded exploration of these principles

00:00:42.720 the center exists to encourage exploration into the many facets of freedom. It will sponsor a

00:00:50.640 speaker series and an interdisciplinary faculty research team. If you'd like to learn more

00:00:56.340 about the center please visit Ole Miss that's o-l-e-m-i-s-s dot e-d-u slash independence slash

00:01:05.240 Hi everybody a couple of weeks ago I had the former prime minister of Britain. Well that was a first

00:01:11.340 today I've got the first sitting U.S. senator. Senator Rand Paul how are you doing sir?

00:01:16.120 Very good yeah we heard it was the podcast to be on so you know everybody wants to be on it you

00:01:21.800 know so. There you go uh I want to for for the three people who may not know who you are let me

00:01:27.920 just read a very short intro you're an ophthalmologist by training by the way in my forthcoming book

00:01:34.200 Suicidal Empathy you'll appreciate that I have a small section on Sir Harold Ridley uh which you'd

00:01:42.560 appreciate because I'm at one point I'm talking about this idea of the this the silliness of

00:01:47.260 settled science and of course he faced a lot of pushback when he was trying to implement his ideas

00:01:54.040 you're a Kentucky senator since 2011 you're the chair of the senate homeland security committee

00:01:59.460 uh your books include government bullies taking a stand the case the case against socialism as if we

00:02:08.160 still need to have a book to explain why socialism doesn't work and your most recent book deception

00:02:13.740 the great covet cover-up anything else you want to add senator before we get going uh but before we

00:02:19.760 leave the Harold Ridley uh that I agree with you completely I've given the same speech about settled

00:02:25.040 science so Harold Ridley uh when they take the cataract out in the old days they'd take the lens out

00:02:31.360 that was cloudy but they wouldn't put anything in its place and so you could only see with these

00:02:35.600 really thick like almost a half inch inch thick glasses that had a great deal of positive power

00:02:41.480 but they were um not great vision so he had the idea to put a plastic lens in but he thought he was

00:02:47.340 crazy the whole university world said he was insane and it'll ruin the eye now all cataract surgery is

00:02:53.600 done that way but he had to resist things but it also happened when we went from taking the cataract out

00:02:59.680 we used to make a big incision and we would sort of burp out the whole lens as one piece

00:03:04.620 after a while we started going to a much tinier incision like two millimeters and we dissolve

00:03:10.320 the lens with an ultrasound and then we roll up the lens now in like the tip of a needle and very

00:03:17.060 gently screw it in and it unravels and rolls into the eye and it's an elegant surgery but everybody at

00:03:23.260 the university said oh who needs that little incision that's crazy that ultrasound will destroy the cornea 1.00

00:03:29.040 and lo and behold these innovations a lot of times came outside of the university many of these guys

00:03:34.480 and women were private practitioners same with gallbladder surgery the universities resisted they

00:03:39.860 wanted the big incision and the small incision they said who needs that bad but you know every patient

00:03:46.060 in the world wants a small incision now because there's less pain in the recovery well i mean there

00:03:50.820 are many examples where you know a pioneer was first you know rejected by the orthodoxy but to stick

00:03:55.960 within the medical realm probably the biggest such example would be semelweiss right the the gentleman

00:04:02.020 who who said hey wait a minute maybe it's not a good idea to go do a child delivery right after we've 0.98

00:04:08.520 been working on cadavers and everybody said what kind of moron are you and now how many people have 0.99

00:04:13.400 been saved because of that insight from semelweiss who died a very tragic death senator but the great 1.00

00:04:19.600 story about semelweiss is also a story of how people are not stupid the enlightened uh philosopher 0.98

00:04:26.140 king should inform and control the public because people are stupid in that day and i think it was 0.87

00:04:31.820 in vienna right yeah so in vienna there were two hospitals there was the midwife hospital only about 0.98

00:04:36.880 one in a hundred women died after birth and at the doctor's hospital about one in five people were dying

00:04:42.580 and it had to do with the germ theory which they didn't understand they weren't washing their hands

00:04:46.680 but the midwives were never dealing with pus either and they weren't doing autopsies they were 1.00

00:04:51.300 doing only with uh with uh mothers coming into birth but the public understood this and so after a while

00:04:57.880 all the women all the moms had were choosing by the droves by popularity to go to the midwife hospital 1.00

00:05:04.980 because they heard the death rate was less yeah you currently practicing at all as an ophthalmologist or

00:05:11.400 or not at all i do some pro bono work and for years i've done some trips so i did a trip to guatemala

00:05:17.860 i did a trip to haiti i'm probably not going back to haiti six or seven years ago uh it was fairly

00:05:24.060 dangerous and one of the surgeons that went with us was a surgeon who was originally from haiti but was a 0.83

00:05:29.580 surgeon in chicago and i said will you be visiting your family and she said yes secretly at night and i said

00:05:36.520 well why do you have to visit them secretly at night because if anyone in the neighborhood heard

00:05:41.060 that i was a doctor in america and they knew my mom lived in this village they would chop her finger

00:05:46.140 off and send me her finger in the mail and say you can have your mom back for a hundred grand 1.00

00:05:50.420 uh so that was just the deplorable state of the lack of rule of law the other thing is is it was such

00:05:57.980 a depressing site they don't uh pick their trash up so some of that's a municipal function but really

00:06:03.740 who wants to live in a pigsty all of the trash was everywhere on people's front stoops all the rivers

00:06:10.140 all the lakes everything was just full of trash and uh but it was very sad so i do a little bit of

00:06:16.060 pro bono work but i've um i've done less since covid because you know i i somehow accepted that i had

00:06:22.600 natural immunity after i got sick i didn't really get sick after i had the disease and i know this is

00:06:27.860 heretical but i kind of think i didn't need a vaccine because i already got one from nature

00:06:32.280 how dare you disagree with science man himself fauci that's disgusting he is the science i don't know 0.83

00:06:39.500 what got into me that i would object to someone who thinks they are the science bad senator uh do

00:06:46.060 you miss it at all i mean do you ever sort of itch to go back into the surgery room or or this is sort

00:06:51.860 of behind you and you're now politicking all day no i do and it's it's obviously much more rewarding

00:06:57.940 uh cataract surgery is a relatively brief surgery but the rewards are enormous i mean almost

00:07:04.040 immeasurable to go from people who can't see to do what they want to do to getting mostly good vision

00:07:09.660 sometimes better vision than they've ever gotten because people who were extraordinarily nearsighted

00:07:14.840 because we take measurements to put the appropriate lens in we get rid of their nearsightedness

00:07:19.800 uh we had one gentleman that was just in in in the third world it's even more extraordinary because

00:07:26.900 their people are completely blind they come in blind and are able to see again in america and in most of

00:07:33.120 the modern world if you have a little bit of blurred of the vision where you're having a little trouble

00:07:36.900 reading or driving you'll usually have your cataracts removed but in the third world often they sit

00:07:42.340 there for years and years and i remember having one gentleman who basically was down on his knees

00:07:47.800 weeping you know just couldn't believe that he's got his vision back he you know he said he had lost

00:07:53.180 his wife lost his job he was living as a beggar and he was so excited to get his life back and all i 0.96

00:08:00.160 could say to him is what if your wife left you when you were blind maybe you choose a new wife

00:08:04.680 well now that you have your vision back happy when they get their vision back i hear you i i could keep

00:08:09.960 talking medical stuff all day but we have short limited time so i want to move to some other topics i know

00:08:15.340 that you are a big fan of the austrian school of economics i recently uh went on a deep dive i mean

00:08:21.840 i knew a lot about them already but i wanted to read the you know their biographies and so on i was

00:08:26.320 giving a talk at the university of chicago and there is a of course university of chicago school of

00:08:30.980 economics is right there milton friedman and so on and i bought you know hayek i bought the you know

00:08:36.660 the classic uh biography on von mises what was your entry point into getting to into all these guys

00:08:43.840 uh my dad you know my dad had been struck by uh the uh austrian school and his introduction was

00:08:51.660 probably uh through ayn rand ayn rand was uh personal friends with von mises personal friends

00:08:58.360 with henry uh haslett uh personal friends with murray rothbard and this group of people they all knew

00:09:04.440 each other well in new york and there are funny stories detailing their dinner parties and their

00:09:09.540 interactions but a lot of them uh became prominent after world war ii but the school really originated

00:09:17.360 in the 19th century and was a reaction to the labor theory of value and the labor theory of value said

00:09:23.680 basically that the table i'm sitting in front of is worth the labor that goes into it and so if a

00:09:29.920 capitalist comes along and sells me the table and makes 10 percent he's stolen 10 percent of that labor

00:09:35.900 from the people and this was the idea of labor exploitation this is what the the marx and ingalls

00:09:42.300 taught and lenin bought into that the workers were being ripped off based on an economic fallacy

00:09:47.980 and so then the the austrians combated that with this idea of the subjective theory of value

00:09:53.200 and uh because there are all kinds of things that didn't make sense you know why is a diamond uh worth

00:09:59.480 more than water you need water a lot more than you need a diamond and it really depends on the

00:10:04.660 circumstances if you're uh dying of thirst in the desert water is more valuable than a diamond

00:10:08.980 but it's really the marginal utility of that incremental uh additional unit but the the austrians

00:10:15.700 were big in this and i always say that the austrians should be and are famous for the refutation

00:10:20.780 of the basis of marxism and that's a pretty big deal and still should be important then there's

00:10:26.780 you know um more esoteric things but also they were very involved with the idea of uh what money

00:10:33.520 should be that money should have real backing such as gold or silver now uh i i mentioned in your in

00:10:40.040 the intro that you know it's it's disheartening to know that somebody has to write a book in 2019

00:10:44.380 on you know fighting against socialism the guys that we're mentioning had already we thought maybe

00:10:50.120 killed that that phoenix but it keeps rising now my my reasoning and you'll tell me you know if

00:10:56.720 if you agree my reasoning is that because there is sort of an infantile attraction to socialism so 1.00

00:11:04.640 that even if you kill the idea there is always going to be a new generation of imbeciles that are 0.98

00:11:10.920 going to say but wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where the elon musks don't exist like why do i 1.00

00:11:16.940 have to work so hard whereas he can make in one second more than my entire that that just seems

00:11:21.620 inherently unfair and it's easy it's almost part of our evolved emotional system to kind of repel

00:11:29.600 against that level of quote quote inequity is that why you need to write that book in 2019 and

00:11:38.340 there'll be the next guy who has to write it in 20 years and so on probably i think that uh you know

00:11:44.100 when reagan said freedom's just one generation away from being extinct i think the same could be that

00:11:49.580 socialism just one generation from popping its head up again and having to be rebuked and having

00:11:55.100 to be repudiated utopian notion that we can all have an equal amount and we can just sit around and

00:12:02.020 you know they will be ruled by philosopher kings this you know these ideas that came from plato and

00:12:08.100 from others they always have to be they always have to be repudiated and the reason we have to only not

00:12:14.400 repudiate them we have to be more skillful than the supporters of socialism because their job is much

00:12:20.340 easier the if aoc were on your program which god forbid you have her on right after me but if you 0.99

00:12:26.540 have aoc on next week she will offer all of your listeners free cars yes free college uh free universal

00:12:34.880 basic income all these things will be free you can't really there is no such thing as something for

00:12:40.300 nothing there there has to be work involved and you have to have the incentives to do it and

00:12:45.040 capitalism creates this great wealth that leads to so much wealth that we can actually take care of the

00:12:50.260 poor and the disabled but what i'm offering is an abstraction and if i'm going to try to sell you an

00:12:56.180 abstraction and they're going to sell you a free car who do you think has the easier argument they

00:13:01.520 always have the free or better argument so we have to be more articulate more complete and more

00:13:06.540 thoughtful but getting back to will the will the people be smart enough to choose opportunity or

00:13:13.260 choose a specific outcome that a perfectly fair outcome for everyone people need to be you know

00:13:20.600 extolling the amazing uh opportunity the amazing history that has come from capitalism i'm a huge fan of

00:13:28.500 this whole movement uh human progress.org is a part of cato that talks about this that talks about

00:13:35.780 things that have occurred that are factual that are irrefutable that people have no idea have

00:13:42.100 occurred and this is what's happened since the industrial revolution and you say well what is the

00:13:46.660 industrial revolution it's just a manifestation of capitalism it doesn't happen without capitalism

00:13:50.780 but because of that we went from a time period in 1820 where 98 of the people lived on two dollars a

00:13:57.660 day or less abject poverty barely bear sustenance today less than 10 percent of the world lives on

00:14:05.680 two dollars a day constant dollars so it's been an extraordinary success we are rich beyond our

00:14:10.680 wildest dreams and i i i asked this question at university so i was at brown recently in dartmouth

00:14:16.760 and a couple of the university and i say is this the best of times or the worst of times and it's

00:14:22.380 amazing how many people think we live in the worst of times and that things are getting worse and i

00:14:27.200 say no no no it's not only materially the best of times there's less racism than there's ever been

00:14:32.580 there's there's there's more interfaith interaction there's ever been there's more interracial or

00:14:38.540 interethnic interaction than there's ever been there's never ever been a better time to be alive and

00:14:43.420 it's unequivocal it's it's unimpeachable and yet these young people are like oh gosh it's so terrible

00:14:49.720 nobody likes me and because i'm of this certain ethnicity i'll never succeed in life and i'm like 0.99

00:14:55.200 get up off your ass and go out and kick some butt the world is waiting for you to go out there and 0.99

00:15:01.400 make something and be optimistic and yet we still have a lot of woe is me victimology being taught out 0.99

00:15:07.920 there well don't i know it senator i've been a professor for 32 years but i mean i think part of

00:15:12.940 the reason for that angst and you know gloom and doom that you're seeing in those students

00:15:18.040 might be because so there's an unequivocal finding which i discussed in my previous book

00:15:23.700 on happiness looking at political orientation as relating to happiness and the research is

00:15:28.920 unequivocal conservatives usually score higher on happiness than you know leftists and progressives

00:15:35.420 and my argument and you let me know what you think if you're a conservative by definition you

00:15:40.820 wake up in the morning and you say yeah i may not live in a perfect society but there are values worth

00:15:45.240 conserving and so that existentially i'm feeling good yes i can improve things but but hey i live

00:15:50.800 in the united states it's a beautiful beautiful place when i wake up as a progressive indoctrinated

00:15:57.680 at dartmouth and brown by the way i was a visiting professor at dartmouth so apologies if i'm criticizing

00:16:03.260 them uh i've been taught that just around the corner lies unicornia right this is where we if we can 0.59

00:16:10.940 only eradicate the current transphobic islamophobic sexist indigenous genocide and so on then we can 0.90

00:16:17.480 have the bliss that we're promised so i do wake up and i'm pissed off so the so your political 0.97

00:16:23.540 orientation ends up having an indelible mark on your existential happiness what do you think of that

00:16:28.820 well i think there obviously is a difference between optimism and pessimism with regard to your

00:16:33.940 your view of the world and you have to have an optimistic point of view if you think that

00:16:38.360 man women you know everybody included has the ability to achieve and attain happiness if you

00:16:45.920 think that though the world is preordained and that fate is this and and particularly if you think

00:16:51.760 because of who you are that the world doesn't like you and you'll never get ahead i i think it to me

00:16:58.180 it's um um it is optimism versus pessimism it's definitely chosen and i think it's it's it's worth

00:17:06.260 trying to point out what a great world we live in i mean these people who are so stern and drag we live 1.00

00:17:12.720 twice as long as we lived a hundred years ago we can buy 10 times as much food clothing costs one

00:17:19.840 one hundredth of what it used to cost when when when the automated loom came and the luddites were 0.84

00:17:25.860 smashing the loom with the with the hammers they were like this it'll never work all the weavers all

00:17:31.560 the hand weavers would be out of business in those days you had one set of clothing now we have 50

00:17:37.040 sets of clothing you know but so many clothes so they can't really anticipate this world but

00:17:41.880 that pessimism has always been wrong but i think to me it's important to acknowledge not only this

00:17:48.480 this progress this optimism is great wealth but where it came from this is why i'm forever saying

00:17:54.560 it isn't make america great again or even canada we can make canada great too if you want to talk

00:18:00.040 about canada but it's really what made us great in the first place and we were made great by capitalism

00:18:06.240 but we are also made made great by a portion of capitalism which is nothing different than

00:18:12.820 capitalism but is an integral part of capitalism and that is trade and the people who do not

00:18:18.100 understand that and think that we can banish international trade and somehow be rich

00:18:22.600 uh are really mistaking what capitalism is got you uh one specific question related to you know

00:18:30.600 finances then maybe one or two about sort of the existential existential threats facing the united

00:18:36.800 states and the west and then we'll wrap it up with maybe one or two uh quick personal questions

00:18:41.240 paris i call it parasitic taxation uh you may just call it heavy taxation now let me uh contextualize

00:18:50.320 you guys in the united states consider that you're heavily taxed if let's say you're in california

00:18:55.640 you haven't lived in quebec so in quebec it is by the way do you know off the top of your hand what if

00:19:02.120 you combine the two taxes federal and provincial what it would at the higher end what it would be at

00:19:06.520 do you know what it is no uh so at the highest level i think federal is 33 percent at the highest

00:19:14.080 provincial it's 25 percent so at the higher bracket yes it's a progressive tax you're you're getting

00:19:20.400 up to almost 60 percent but then what's left with you if you spend it your tax your double taxed sales

00:19:27.760 both provincial and federal so then you're getting killed another 15 percent if you add up all the other

00:19:34.240 taxes carbon tax and school tax and property tax so on you're probably left at around 30 cents to the

00:19:41.600 dollar so that let's put it another way from january till about end of august i am a full slave i i have

00:19:50.320 no personhood starting end of august i become a dignified individual now of course i always knew

00:19:58.080 about this but i particularly felt that senator when the parasitic mind my 2020 book became an international

00:20:04.880 bestseller the quebec and canadian government said hey you know we know that 99 of your book

00:20:11.120 royalties were not garnered in canada but can you please give us 58 of your book royalties

00:20:17.600 the level of existential rape that i felt is unimaginable i probably walked for about a month

00:20:24.720 unclear what had just happened to me can we ever hope senator to get to your flat tax i think is it 14

00:20:32.000 or 15 or is this a pie in the sky dream and it's only going to get worse forevermore well that is an

00:20:39.040 important question is it inevitable that people will give up and just want other people's stuff

00:20:43.360 you know um but they you know as thatcher said ultimately socialism will run out of other people's

00:20:48.240 money but i will say there are examples of people being fed up with it in sweden they had a big wealth

00:20:54.160 tax and all of the rich people vjorn borg the founder of ikea all these people left sweden and they

00:21:01.120 finally reversed it and gave them incentives to come back and as much as sweden is extolled as a socialist

00:21:07.440 sort of paradise by bernie sanders and others it's a high tax welfare state but they actually made some

00:21:12.880 accommodations and interestingly in sweden it they taxed the heck out of the middle class but they're

00:21:18.480 actually less progressive than canada or the us we are very very progressive in our taxation in the us

00:21:24.480 and ours has become more because what we're doing is in order to get some rate cuts they let they leave

00:21:30.480 people off the bottom so really you may if you're a family of four in the united states uh mother

00:21:36.640 father and two kids uh up to fifty thousand dollars you pay no income tax so everybody under fifty

00:21:42.160 thousand dollars with two kids is no income tax so ours is really heavily graded and they all complain oh

00:21:48.160 the rich one percent is one percent that well the top one percent uh i think have like pay forty percent

00:21:55.280 of the income tax so it's always the opposite of what they tell you when bernie says the rich are

00:21:59.840 not paying their fair share just think the opposite the rich are paying more than their their fair share

00:22:06.400 um but it's a continual battle like anything else because envy is an easy emotion to sell uh like

00:22:13.360 nationalism or other things like that it's easy to sell that and we have to argue that there is a great

00:22:19.840 deal of mobility is one of the biggest arguments so when we you know um pickety and others put forward

00:22:26.480 that there's no income mobility and it slows down the economies all crash all of that's complete bunk

00:22:32.480 and the statistics have been refuted uh many of the cato scholars have talked about income distribution

00:22:38.320 one interesting fact would be the people make a million dollars this year as an income a million that's

00:22:43.760 a lot of money next year sixty percent of them won't make a million of the people in the top uh born into

00:22:49.520 the bottom 20 percent uh 20 of them make it to the top 20 so we really have more mobility and and

00:22:56.640 people have to understand if you if you move to cuba there's a top one percent but the top one percent

00:23:01.600 in cuba are the ones that are brother to the leader cousin to the leader or general for the leader it's

00:23:07.440 the same way in venezuela maduro a few generals and and north korea there are no fat people except for

00:23:14.880 kim jong-un he's the only fat person in north korea every soldier you see is like you know five nine and

00:23:21.360 one hundred and five pounds uh kim jong-un is four nine and 250 pounds and uh but there there's always

00:23:29.360 a top one percent and it's not perfect to the top one percent is some people inherit it some will be

00:23:35.120 lucky and be six foot eleven and a great basketball player and some will earn it because they had a

00:23:40.800 electrical company and worked hard or were a writer this and that but the bottom line is in a free

00:23:46.320 society it is more based on merit than any other society capitalism bases wealth and reward on work

00:23:54.560 and on merit better than any other system ever known to man amen uh i know that there's a million

00:24:01.840 different things that keep you up at night as a senator but if i asked you the singular greatest

00:24:07.840 existential threat that most keeps you up at night regarding the united states i've got my

00:24:14.720 my answer ready locked and loaded to be deployed but i'll first want to hear what yours is and then

00:24:19.840 i'll share mine what would it be i wouldn't say this keeps me awake at night but i think the biggest uh

00:24:26.240 danger to the world is always nuclear war and i know we don't talk about that very much but uh you

00:24:32.880 know there's a new movie and it isn't the greatest movie of all but it goes through sort of this

00:24:37.520 countdown towards a missile launch and what happens and the idea that the decisions have to be made

00:24:43.040 within minutes and so one thing i've tried to do and you know people can have complaints about what

00:24:48.320 i've done or not done is that i've tried to make sure we have uh the cell phones of people in china

00:24:54.800 the cell phones of people in russia you have an icbm is headed from one continent to the other of 18 minutes

00:25:02.400 to try to figure out was this an accident is this a satellite gone awry is there something and one

00:25:09.280 of the choices is launching a thousand uh icbms at russia or at china and then they do the same thing

00:25:16.000 and the the whole world is destroyed in a nuclear war we've avoided that for so long that people like

00:25:21.600 yeah no big deal but that's why i still want conversations discussion of nuclear uh armaments uh

00:25:30.400 i think it's important that we have a lot of different phone numbers that we can call in that

00:25:35.280 18 minutes to try to make sure that there wasn't an accident that caused this and um that i think is

00:25:42.320 is pretty important so war i consider to be a very much a federal job and a job that my job is to try

00:25:48.560 to prevent us from being in war if possible can i offer another thing that should keep you up at night

00:25:54.080 if it doesn't oh i don't need to step a knife go ahead well uh so i are i agree that nuclear war 0.60

00:26:01.920 would be sort of a cataclysmic event that would result in a mass extinction event in in four seconds

00:26:09.040 but if you have a longer view or if i can use the the vision uh analogy of you know as long as you don't

00:26:15.840 have temporal myopia and you look over the long term demography is destiny right i'm not the first to say

00:26:22.160 this if you allow entry into the west of millions of people who literally couldn't be any more

00:26:31.600 antithetical to the foundational principles of the west in general and the united states in particular

00:26:38.160 you don't need a fancy professor sad evolutionary behavioral scientist to then tie the dots for you

00:26:44.720 that you're only going to end up having problems so what you see with the somalis and yes

00:26:49.120 there are infinitely many beautiful somalis and what you see with the afghan and so on

00:26:53.360 they do have something in common which is they they stem from a religion that while there may be

00:26:58.880 millions of people who practice it peacefully they practice it despite what the religion says right 0.92

00:27:06.240 so right now we have dearborn michigan dearborn michigan is a small manifestation of what would happen

00:27:13.200 if you continue along the same immigration patterns there will be two dearborn and then seven dearborn 0.99

00:27:19.280 and then 94 dearborn and then you will live the childhood that i lived where we had to wear really

00:27:24.640 good running shoes and run really fast so that the bad guys would not decapitate us do you share those

00:27:30.960 sentiments or are you more hey they can come to the us and they'll be assimilated and we have kumbaya

00:27:36.960 forevermore so i have uh opposed the special visa program um the somali program i think happened before

00:27:44.080 i was here but i would have opposed the special visas for somalis uh i have opposed and was here

00:27:50.000 during the afghan national program we've admitted over 200 000 and i gave a pointed speech on the floor

00:27:57.680 and my point was is that afghanistan needs their own thomas jefferson they need their own george washington

00:28:05.920 who is most likely to be the next george washington of afghanistan someone who knows western ways and

00:28:12.400 speaks english and has been knows of the world's culture we are decapitating a country the intellectual

00:28:20.240 potential of afghanistan the best of afghanistan and bringing them all here and you're right maybe 0.56

00:28:25.760 they don't assimilate here because of the religion but even more important to me is they needed to

00:28:30.800 remain to me it's equivalent to 1812 the british are back and it's a terrible place we lose 15 000

00:28:37.200 americans so the americans say oh can we have asylum in france you didn't hear of americans wanting to

00:28:42.880 leave for france no we start we we fought the british again we made them go to canada you know again

00:28:48.320 a an opponent of immigration but i think immigration should be based on merit and should be individualized

00:28:54.880 and i wouldn't prohibit people of a certain religion from coming but if there are countries like we

00:29:00.800 admitted all the somalis and then we admitted all of their relatives and it's like i don't know

00:29:04.800 there's several hundred thousand of them in minnesota now in one place and um you know the

00:29:10.320 other thing you can do to try to prevent them from becoming a reservation is uh we shouldn't allow

00:29:16.880 welfare so we have a rule in the united states you're not supposed to get welfare in the first five

00:29:21.360 years of immigration well except unless you're a refugee so all these special visa people were 0.98

00:29:27.920 refugees and they're immediately put on welfare well some of them are still on welfare 20 years 1.00

00:29:32.480 later and that's the big scandal they've just found in minnesota is people you know running these

00:29:37.680 fraudulent schemes to steal uh money from the government programs so i have less of a problem if

00:29:44.480 not if people are not on the dole and if it's based on merit and i would try to get away from bulk

00:29:49.360 immigration of uh huge populations all at once because i think there isn't an assimilation there

00:29:56.560 ends up being a uh sort of enclaves is there a critical mass of fellow senators that are you know

00:30:04.960 are falling in line with you in terms of what you're saying or are you sort of the lone wolf and

00:30:09.440 we're just going to keep it as is for the foreseeable future i would say donald trump agrees with me and

00:30:15.360 i think ran on that proposition the problem in the republican caucus is that there are many in the

00:30:20.480 republican caucus that are also really um more of the neoconservative variety more in favor of foreign

00:30:28.400 war they loved the iraq war and they loved the afghan war even more they loved being there they loved

00:30:34.800 you know spreading democracy and spreading freedom around the world and that they feel some sort of an 0.78

00:30:40.720 obligation to all these people but one there wasn't 200 000 freaking interpreters that's ridiculous

00:30:47.200 but they feel this obligation to those people i think it actually hurts afghanistan i don't think

00:30:52.560 it's good for our country to bring in 200 000 people at once from afghanistan but it also hurts them 1.00

00:30:57.840 they are probably uh some of the better people that could lead afghanistan once they're all gone who's 1.00

00:31:05.040 left the the people who want to chain up women or boys or whatever they do the the the the the war

00:31:12.400 mongers the drug dealers all the other people that ran afghanistan before if the good people leave so i

00:31:17.920 think it was always a big mistake and i argued it but there were many republicans uh who opposed me on

00:31:23.040 this last question because i want to be mindful of your time and then we could say quickly goodbye offline

00:31:29.360 in your career so far as a politician is there anything that has uniquely surprised you either

00:31:35.920 in the positive or negative about human nature probably in the negative is that one uh so much

00:31:44.080 of the decisions made are made by unelected bureaucrats the uh bureaucracy is so enormous that it dwarfs the

00:31:51.360 legislature part of that's because the legislature is wimpy weak and lacks ambition but uh the bureaucracy

00:31:58.480 sort of runs the place the other thing that's disappointed me is i see so many business groups

00:32:03.200 who come and they want to be regulated but they want to be regulated as rent control as uh you know if

00:32:09.920 you're uh a big bank in new york they love banking regulation they come and lobby for it why because joe's

00:32:17.040 bank in peoria uh uh doesn't have the ability to keep up with compliance so when joe's bank can't uh

00:32:24.320 uh absorb and and uh surpass the the cost of the regulations the big bank in new york buys the bank

00:32:32.240 of peoria so the fact that business likes regulation as an impediment to small business and the big

00:32:38.480 business and big banks get bigger because of regulations they support which is not capitalism

00:32:43.920 which is corporatism and cronyism uh that also is shocking and disappointing hey senator will you come

00:32:51.840 back when you have a bit more time so we can continue this conversation absolutely we'll do it again

00:32:56.400 thank you sir stay on the line so we could say goodbye

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - December 08, 2025

Senator Rand Paul - Ophthalmology, Economic Liberty, Taxation, & Immigration (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_932)

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript