It started to dawn on a lot of people, even people who were not paying attention, say, six months ago, that the war in Ukraine is a big deal. It's not what they told us it was. It's not good for Ukraine and the people who live in that sad country, and it's not good for the United States, or for that matter, for the West. In fact, it's likely to be, in retrospect, a turning point in the history of the West and not for the better. Who could have seen this coming? Who could have known, say, 10 years ago, that actually US activity in Ukraine was not an effort to bring freedom to the Ukrainians, but was actually a massive intel operation designed to draw the United States into war with Russia for reasons that are even now not clear. Who could have seen that? Well, actually, one person did see that 10 years ago, and that person was Ron Paul. But don't take our word for it. Here he is in 2014.

I speak more from the perspective of the United States' taxpayers, and it doesn't serve our interest. We've already spent $5 billion in the the last 10 years, trying to pick and choose the leadership of Ukraine. And then we participated in the overthrow of the Yanukowitch government. And this is when this recent stuff really stirred up. But we've been involved too much, and I take a non-intervention in this foreign policy position. It's not our business. It doesn't serve anybody's interest. It's part of the same thing that led us into the disaster in the Middle East. A lot of people die, a lot of money is spent, and we're still suffering the consequences of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. There's the threat of the war in Syria. We don't need another threat. The American taxpayers don't want it. Our government thinks they can get away with, Well, I know the people don't want a war yet, but we're going to play games and we're going to threaten Russia and we're going to put on sanctions. They fail to recognize that we have $500 billion of investments in Russia. Russia has $450 billion invested in the West, and all we're doing is trying to stir up more trouble.

It makes no sense whatsoever. It makes a lot of sense for us to mind our own business and let somebody over there solve their own problem. Be honest.

Were you paying close attention to Ukraine in 2014? We weren't. Most people weren't. And as a result, this country got dragged without even knowing it, into one of the pivotal conflicts in modern history to our grave disadvantage. The question is, how did Ron Paul, former congressman from Texas, how did he get that right? How did he know that? Why did he know to pay attention to Ukraine, and not just Ukraine, to monetary policy, to the state of our economy, to the state of our country, to the state of the West? How did he know before the rest of us knew? Maybe because his principles haven't changed in about 60 years. So we thought it would be a good idea to spend a little time with the man himself to allow him a victory lap, a well-deserved victory lap, but also to probe a little bit on how did you see things that nobody else did. So we are honored, truly, to have former congressman, Ron Paul in studio now. Dr. Paul, thank you very much.

Hacker, great to be with you.

I've spoken for you a moment ago, but let me just ask you directly, how in 2014 did you see what so many others, including me, did not, that this was a very big deal, what was happening in Ukraine, and that it might end very badly for us?

Sometimes the people who are running the operation gives you an idea like Victoria Nula and Jeffrey Hyatt. You think, What are those people doing? But They're such an example of bipartisan. They can work with both of them, and they're the worst war monger. But all you have to do is you don't have to know all the details. I'm always I've tried to be very cautious, especially in economics. Well, this, this, and this, and next month there's going to be such and such happen. In Austrian economics, we're taught that you don't know exactly when things are happening, but you can see things coming. It's the same way you might be able to see our foreign policy coming if you want to go back and observe what happened at the beginning of the last century with the progressive movement. So the hints are there. I think what has helped me over the years is I'm curious. Most people are, but a lot of people aren't that curious. I want to know why it happened, because still the question I have, the reason things happen, I said, who's going to benefit? Who benefits from these bombs being dropped?

Who benefit? So I'm very curious, and then I don't try to know everything because I think that timing and elements and all this. But I'm always impressed that there are people awakening. They wake up and they say, this whole thing about audit the Fed, that came out of a speech I gave to University of Michigan, and that was early in the presidential things. And it was the crowd, those college kids. And I worry because I'm going to a liberal camp, I don't know what they'll think of me. And they started saying, in the Fed, and they took that Federal Reserve notes, and they were burning a Federal Reserve note. So I figured there's somebody's missing the boat because these kids know a lot more than they're getting credit for. I've changed my mind totally and completely because there are a lot of bad examples in college. There's a lot of junk going out there. A lot of bad professors. Did you know that?

I've heard that, yes.

A lot of bad professors. So I'm very impressed. A young people have a more open mind, and sometimes with a blanket accusation, which I should be cautious with, I much rather talk to young people who are curious than the people who belong to the chamber of commerce.

I agree with you.

Because the chamber of commerce people symbolizes the lobby.

Of course they do. They have economic interests that prevent them from thinking, honestly. I had that experience. I was just saying off air at one of your speeches probably 20 years ago. I'd never seen you speak before, and you went off about the Federal Reserve. I remember thinking, what a weird, what an esoteric subject. I knew nothing about it. I thought only crazy people cared. But again, I was completely ignorant about monetary policy at the time, and I was shocked by how much the crowd loved it. They were completely tuned in. They thought it was really important. Why would the average person 20 years ago have a better sense of that than, say, me, who was paid to follow the subject, but wasn't? How did people know?

I got it from literature. You could read about it. We didn't have an internet. We didn't have the radio or TV giving us good information, but it was out there. For one group that helped me a whole lot was Leonard Reid, the Foundation for Economic Education. I knew him, and he was a true believer. He was a dignified person and very likable. He talked about process, how you reach people. But he was very libertarian in his own way, but he was an intellectual. He influenced me a lot. I read everything he did, and he did a lot of literature. But the follow-up of that was, of course, the Mises Institute. I was part of that. See, I think they're important people. I know people on TV are really important. Oh, so important. So important. But there are a lot of people that are important. I think the ideas are the most important and they come and go. But the ideas make all the difference in the world. I look at the need for the ideas on how our country came about. Thomas Jefferson and others that knew exactly what they were talking about. But we don't have many Thomas Jefferson's around anymore.

But there's more people. They're influenced there. But the underground, the silent majority The remnant. I believe in the remnant, both in a philosophic and a religious sense. When things deteriorate, there's always somebody there that's going to gather together, 10, 12, 15, 200 or 500. They gather together and they talk about the real things that are important. And the remnant, I think, is much bigger than anybody ever realized. And I think when I walked into those stadiums, I don't know how many times I would say, Where are these people come from? I was totally amazed.

I thought the same thing.

Because I remember my goal was never to be in politics. I had no desire to be in politics, but I wanted to use politics to spread a message of personal liberty. That was my goal. That was the whole reason that I got involved. Evidently, there were other people looking for the same thing. I was impressed with how many people there were. And I got to the point where I thought young people basically were being ridiculed and made fun of, and they still get it, and some of them deserve it. But there are still young people, very good and intellectual. And even back, it's been a while since I was a candidate, when I would mention the remnant, they knew exactly what I was talking about, people who gather together for ideological reason. It's nobody looking to be a good lobbyist and all that stuff. Washington is so bad that somebody said, What? How did you ever survive it? I said, Well, I just said that I never became an optimist. I never I'm going to cure the world. I thought the ideas were important, and that's what I wanted to do because I was very selfish, because I thought it was...

It made me feel better talking about something I believed in. Then when I saw some kids at Berkeley and other schools getting up and saying, And the Fed, and the Fed. Well, liberty is not dead at all. I think it just gets reignited, and I think we're in the early phases of that. But I also believe we have to go through rough, tumbled times because the price always has to be paid. The price in the sense, how do you liquidate the debt? We can't walk away from that debt.

But how do we liquidate the debt?

The market will liquidate it. The way the market liquidates it is what they'll demand is like the person that wants $50 hourly wages.

Yes.

You print money. And every time you print money, the value of the dollar goes down. So the value of the debt goes down. Just a theoretical thing. If you double the money supply and prices go up 50 %, it doesn't work that way. But if you do that, the real debt goes down. So it's a theft. It's a tax. It's evil.

So you inflate your way out of it. Yeah.

And that's what will happen, because what won't happen is the people are going to get together and all of a sudden said, Ron, you need to go back. Yeah, sure. We need to go back and get more people. We do have some very good people in Congress, but they're pretty lonely, too. They're very lonely. But I think I tell people, you're not going to get 12, 24, or 100 new members of Congress. The system is so embedded with bankruptcy and corruption that that's not going to work. But I'm still an optimist because I think where it counts, where the people are studying and understanding, and they were ahead of us. I figured they were ahead of me because they said, and the Fed, it's fiat money. And so they're well along the way. And it's more available now than ever before, this information. So I always figured that if somebody will listen, I'll talk. But But like I said, I, in a way, do this for a selfish reason because I want to do it. I get some benefit, emotional and philosophic benefit by doing it, but never as much as I expect it. I mean, I always got more than I ever expected because there's more people out there wanting to change their mind.

I still get hundreds and hundreds of letters. The latest story I get are young people writing to me that they started their own organization. And there's a freedom organization, and they're very creative. At the end of my speech, as I used to talk about, if you're listening and you agree with this, I think you have a higher moral responsibility than somebody that just doesn't know what's going on. You have the responsibility to put it out there. And that, I think, is a lot of them took me at my word, and they have started their own organization. I think you can't stop it. An idea whose time has come, can't be stopped by armies. I strongly believe that. So ideas are powerful. I didn't ever want a political career because the goal of it, the thing of it is if you want to be chairman of the Banking Committee, you don't bash the fan.

I've noticed.

So But I think every issue we deal with, you can look at it the same way, whether it's personal liberty, whether it's the foreign policy or whatever, or monetary policy. But the foreign policy is the big deal.

Before I ask you about that, I just want to follow up on one thing you said. You said you speak to the remnant, and no matter how bad things get, there is always a remnant of people who understand what's going on and who find each other. Which I love, and I think it's true. But you said it's not just a political or practical consideration for you, it's also a spiritual principle for you. What did you mean by that?

I think my spiritual beliefs, which I don't carry on sleep.

I know, but I know they're sincere.

I think that that's the same principle, the non-aggression principle. I think more Christians should know about non-aggression.

I agree with that.

How about people in Congress? How about what is personally annoying to me are the ones who speak well, are dedicated to the Constitution and freedom and peace, and they go on and on. And yet they're the biggest war mongers ever. They've never voted a nickel against the military in conflict, but they still call themselves conservative, Constitutionalist. Well, the left does that all the time.

And Christians. They call themselves Christians. Oh, yeah.

They just take that as automatic, too. But yes, they would.

So you don't see cluster bombs as a Christian principle?

I see everything that leads up to even thinking about a cluster bomb as not Christian. So no- Nicely put. I don't manage the How would you handle Ukraine right now? Perfect answer. Well, now we have war, war three on a doorstep. Every day we try to start another fight with Russia, and then we go on and on. So it's not going to be stopped that way. I think it has to be stopped by people changing their minds. And I think the founders are on the right track. I see something encouraging right now about the sprouting up of independent statehood, the talk of going on their own. And the founders were pretty good at devising this because, for instance, Well, we could still move from one state to another. Somebody might even want to just leave that place out West and come to Florida or something like that. I think there's a lot of opportunity. More people are talking about that, too. More people are willing to challenge all this. And if you just get a person to show that you're on the right track. When I gave my longer speeches, and I think you suffered through one or two of those.

Many. So I would do it, and I would hit hard on a mess for them. You guys are getting ripped off. And look at this, it's all fake. It's all lying and cheating and stealing. And I go maybe average 45 minutes or so. And then I say, But it doesn't have to be that way. And I give them my positive spiel. It's not complicated. Don't hurt people. Don't kill people. Don't steal from people. And there's going to be more peace and prosperity than ever. So I would go to this with great deal of sincerity. And afterwards, so often, young people would come up to me and says, You know, Ron, what I really like about you, you're such an optimist. But I couldn't quite figure that out. Well, 45 minutes was, I was telling you the end of the world's coming, theoretically. So they say, Yeah, but I think what happens is I think people are starved for the truth. I I think you understand providing truth, and they're starving for the truth. And then they say, When they get this, they know that things can get better that there is an answer, there is positive.

So there's a benefit. And I use the analogy sometime in medicine. If you have a very, very sick patient comes down with a very, very bad diagnosis, you don't go in and say, oh, so sorry, you have this cancer two weeks ago yet. You don't do that. That would be insane. Of course, what they do is they say they've been struggling for a while And they don't have a diagnosis and they're terrified. And somebody goes in and said, this is what you have and explain it to them. And there are options, and some of them give people hope. Yes. And once they got that, they forgot about all the... They didn't want to hear about how sick you are and how sick the economy is. What they want to do is hear the side, We know that's bad. You convinced us. But what do you do about it? And that's where it's really easy for me to talk about monetary policy. Don't be a counterfeiter. This is fraud. The founders hated it. It's illegal. The Constitution says, I don't want to go in can be legal tender. And here, guess what? 1934, when Roosevelt made gold illegal, I was told, as I was growing up in those years, that there's only two places in the world, you can't own gold: United States and the Soviet system.

So that perked me up. So why did they do those things? And it isn't hard for people to understand counterfeit. And the other thing is, it's not hard for people to understand taxation. It's a tax. It's a vicious tax. It's a tax on the poor and the middle class, and it enhances war. It enhances all this welfareism. They take money like this. Sometimes, they give it away to illegal immigrants. Anything they want to do, they use this money issue. But if you can't print the money, it's all a difference in the world. It's honesty. And the message, the people that I came across are very attracted to it. I think they want the truth. And I think you've already recognized that.

So what does the average person do if what you have predicted comes true, and I think it likely will, that there's no way to get out of the debt, no way to liquidate it except through inflation, hyperinflation. How do you protect your family? What practical steps do you take?

You have that obligation, and everybody does it a different way. Anywhere by endorsing the Second Amendment or practicing the First Amendment, I consider the First Amendment key, because if we can't talk and get our message out, it's a lost cause. But the question I think you're asking is, Yeah, but this is a big deal. What's Wall Street going to do? Are they going to collapse? Well, in theory, they don't have to. If we cut the back of their spending and quit printing as much money, you could improve it, but they're not going to do it. No. So they're going to continue to do it. And I think people should know about how throughout history, even currently, we're in the middle of it, the depreciation of the money, what people can do. So the date that I list is the real eye opener for me because I read about this stuff in the '60s and understood the significance of monetary policy. And then Nixon was in and they talked about the Austrian free market people were predicting we'd have to go off the gold standard completely and totally. We were already off half of it. Americans weren't allowed to own gold.

But we were honoring the dollar, and that kept us, it kept our dollar as a reserve currency. And people trust it. Everybody else was worse than we were. So they would take the dollar, and that was a big deal. But you can't do that forever. I think we're reaching this point where some sudden thing is going to happen. I believe in that theory of the Black Swan. It's going to pop up, and it's not going to be controllable. But people, you ask, what can they do? I think the most important thing is understand what's going on, is education. That's why I happen to have a homeschooling program I am, and I try to teach this stuff early, because you can't change it. You can't go in and say, okay, you want $50 an hour? We can't do that, but we'll have a compromise with the other people. We'll just give you $32 per hour, guaranteed. That nonsense. You have to be able to tell them what they have to do. One is to protect the money, one is to protect your wealth. But when I go through this, when people really want to know some details, and I get a little more in detail, I said, But really, the most important thing you do is study and understand what's going on.

Because if you come away from that and you're able to accumulate a lot and get by and you have your guns, and you have stored food, and all that. It's not going to work. You have to understand what's happening. You have to know it's coming. It's very, very dangerous. And that's why I love to see smaller units of government. Anything that hints that says they're springing up an idea in our states to act like they ought to act. Yes. And they're starting to. They're starting to get more independent. And this whole thing I don't know why they don't jump on this. It should be easier to sell. Why do they get away with the total destruction of the Constitution that everybody can legislate? The courts legislate The executive legislature. The executive branch legislate, and they go on. But the Congress has the authority to cancel all that. If they write a regulation, Congress could cancel it. I think they've done it once. It's been around for 20 years. But they should just have an authority to do it because it's in the Constitution. They don't have any authority to do that. So they've lost all sense of authority and responsibility.

And that means young people will give up on it. And this is why a lot of the young people start acting like the government. The government cheats and steals and counterfeits. Why can't we? That's why I love the story of Bastia. The Bastia story is that if you and I can't steal from our neighbor, and we can't take their car, and we can't hurt people, why is it that we let the government do it? If you want to go to your neighbor and you say, Well, you have three cars, and I don't have any. I want one of your cars. Most people say, Well, that's illegal.

You can't just take someone's car.

But the government can. The government's taking stuff from us all the time. And most of the taking is from the people who work hard, they're middle class and they're poor, and they suffer the consequence of inflation. Very wealth people They don't have to worry about the cost of a loaf of bread, believe me. But they have to worry about the big system, because when the big system goes on, there's not many people who are going to escape it. There will be some. Some might have to move a long way off or something. But no, I think it's giving people hope, but they have to understand what's going on, why we decided the Constitution. I believe I talk a little bit in my little booklet about the coup. I think the government's been taken over. And interesting enough, we talked a little bit about Kennedy. I think the date I say it was concrete, that there was a coup, and we lost our government was November 22nd, of assassination of Kennedy.

So I should just say you're talking about the great surreptitious coup, Who Stole Western Civilization, that you've written, and I've read a lot of it. And you say two things that people may not know. One, you were in Texas the day of the assassination. You were a senior flight surgeon at an Air Force base, I think in San Antonio. You saw Air Force One fly over like hours before he was killed. So that was amazing.

Right. Being the chief flight officer didn't mean a whole lot. It sounds impressive. Yeah, it's not a long time, but I didn't want to make it sound like I was in charge of Kennedy's safety. Anyway, I was told I'll just be all alert to the fact that Kennedy is going to land. He does a little bit of business. He went to the space center, I think at Brook Air Force Base. Then he took off, and I think he was on his way to He had a busy two days. So he takes off. But I know how busy I was doing flight surgery work because when he took off, I was on the golf course. They might say I was AWL. But there was nothing I could do. But I remember it distinctly because I kept thinking, Well, maybe I should be down on the flight line, this thing. But I was real close. I was like a quarter mile away. So I was there and I saw Air Force One take off. And I thought, I stopped and looked and looked. And I thought, I was so impressed. And then what I write is, never did I think that within 24 hours, this world would change.

Yes. It was less than 24 hours by the time he was killed because I think he stopped in San Antonio, then he came back to Fortworth, and then he ended up in Dallas.

You say in this, and I don't think it's a controversial statement anymore, but the CIA, of course, was involved in his murder, Alan Dulles, the director who he'd fired a year before after Bay of Pigs. But you make a point I've never heard before. You said you believe that his fate was sealed on June 10, 1963, when he gave a commencement address at American University. Fairly famous speech, which I plan to watch tonight, actually, about peace. Tell us what you mean.

It was a peace statement. It was great. Kennedy was controversial. He wasn't always anti-war as he was leading up to his death. He had some foreign policies that I wouldn't be endorsing, but he was coming this way. That's when he He said flowering things about peace. It became known then because he did speak out, and I think it wasn't that many days before his assassination, but the establishment and the FBI and the CIA, the planners, really soup things up for their plans. And he was killed by people that for a long time For probably several years, I thought it was Oswald.

You did?

Yeah, because I wasn't in a place I was about to challenge it. It didn't take long to start questioning this. One thing that another personal thing that came out was after 10 years, they had a group of the best pathologists in the country get together. The one person in that group was Cyril Weck. Cyril Weck was from the University of Pittsburgh, and I had heard lectures from him because I was OB residents. As a pathologist, he would give us lectures. So I- When you were in medical school? Yeah, when I was doing my residency. But there were 12 of them, 10 maybe, but there was a group, and they had this going over the assassination, and all the experts were there. Everybody says, Oswald did it. Even this, and this was like 8 or 10 years later, except the- Cyril Wack. Cyril, except for Wack. He said, It can't be one shot. But he said that from the very beginning. He was finally allowed to examine the paperwork of the autopsies. He was, I think, the only one. He went, and guess what he discovered? No records existed.

Can you believe it? Yes, I can believe it. Can you believe it? I can believe it. So you served in Congress, I think twice, as I remember, but for a while.

I was drafted in '63 during the Vietnam thing. I didn't go to Vietnam. I was drafted then. But then the government really messed up my schedule. They took me out of the middle of the residency, and I had to go back, and I had a break of six months. So I was very pragmatic. I said, Why don't you just discharge me in six months? So I stayed. So I was there two years plus six months, and then I was in the National Guard.

But in all of your time in Congress, did you ever come across other members of Congress you served with who said, Wow, the CIA was involved in Kennedy's assassination. Was this widely known on Hill when you served there?

I never heard anybody say that.

Anybody?

Well, probably heard my close friends.

It's just funny that, again, now I think people recognize that that's true. But that was 60 years ago, and our lawmakers never talk about it.

But you mentioned to me earlier and brought back in memory, but do you know who they appointed to the commission? Alan Dauis.

He was on the warrant Commission. So the guy who was responsible for the murder.

He was investigating the murder. That's when it dawned on me. The Republic is gone. That's when I said, The day it ended. It was eroding from the beginning of the last century with the philosophic changes. But I think it's still, what about that former CIA agent said, We were taught to lie, cheat, and steal. And then he giggled, and the crowd clapped, and he was making fun of it.

It does make you wonder if people want to be free. I'm sorry to jump around so much. I'm not a linear thinker, but just back to the economy really quickly. You have always been a proponent of owning gold, physical gold, and you said this for many, many decades. Has that been a Do you still believe that? And has that been a good strategy, do you think, over time?

Yeah, but I'm not like a gold bug that gold is sacred. No, gold can protect you from inflation. It's been known for 6,000 years. Yes. Doing this. So, yes, I think that is the case, that you can be protected. But what I would tell the students that are looking for ways, I said, But you could do that. You can have your gold, you can have food, you can have your cabin and guns and all this. I said, It won't matter if you don't have your freedom. If you don't have your First Amendment. See, I think the First Amendment is so powerful. But if you don't have that, what could God do? And I go out and I said, I have gold. But talking about buying gold and preparing for gold, I don't think I broke any laws on this, but I'll tell you it anyway. It was illegal to own gold. Yes. And in the late late '60s, people were buying gold shares, gold stocks, because their price would go up when gold would go up, because people were betting that $35 an ounce wouldn't last.

They were right.

Then Nixon proved it in the last But people didn't have gold. So he closed the gold window. But in that period of time, I don't have the date, but before it was officially legalized, you were allowed to buy numismatic coins. If you were a coin saver, that was a technical way you could get around it. I remember my first gold coins I was buying, not for numismatics reason, but they were some of the neatest coins I got. The Mexicans were way ahead of us. They started minting coins and put a back date on them. They fulfilled the requirement of only old coins that were numismatic. You couldn't buy a coin If I bought them in, say, 1969, I can't buy a coin that would be minted that year. So Mexico would date them back down to the 1940s. So that made it illegal. Those were my first coins.

Do those turn out to be good investments over time, do you think?

Do you think the dollars held up very well? No, I don't. Just since the Bretton Woods broke down, August 15th, 1971, if you were betting on a gold coin or your dollar, dollar lost 98% of its purchasing power. Gold went from $35 up to $1,000. It's around 2,000. That's a ways to go yet because the dollar has a ways to go, too. Yes. Yeah, they can't. They can restore the dollar, but there has to be a liquidation of debt. You only liquidate twice. An individual can work hard and save, pay, and pay off the debt. That's not going to happen for the government. But the liquidation will be a lot more inflation. And when I say inflation, I'm not talking... Well, there will be prices going up, but the inflation is succumbing to anybody who needs money. But the more the prices go up, the more everybody needs money. Rich and poor need more money. Yes. And that's why the insanity of all this, the most important price under those conditions is the interest rate. In a free market, that tells you what to do. Should you save? You should spend? Should you invest? And all this thing.

So that is That's something that people knew about. But the interest rates, they took them to minus. They took them down to zero. And then there was an inflation discount. So it was worse than zero. So That's the story. So I see all the money is not out there yet, and all the dissemination of this malinvestment, and all these decisions made on... It was like building a city with big buildings without a ruler And it'll come down. We threw the ruler away on purpose and said that you can't charge. The government want to give you money. Have you ever seen some ads recently? All All this opportunity, especially after COVID, if you ride here, get here, you can get $1,500 check immediately. And then this last week, they're always inviting you to take more money. So it's insane. And someday They're going to wake up and the market will wake up and there'll be a rush, a rush to try to protect themselves. But like I say, my investment is various because I do believe in a little bit of all that, whether it's gold coin or silver coins or a little bit of land and stuff like that.

But my big investment is the pleasure I get out of somebody calling me up and telling me, well, I heard you speak way back then, and that's why I started my organization. And he had a fantastic organization. So I get that on a routine basis. I think that's the greatest story told because nobody could tell. That's part of the remnant. Nobody could tell where they're, oh, I converted one person. Oh, great deal. But he might have He might have a newsletter has 500 people. Yes. Who each spreads a message around. And I keep thinking, how could that be? Well, how did the pamphleteers do it during the Revolution? They wrote pamphlets and physically had to pass them around. Yes. And the greatest message of liberty occurred in pamphlets hearing.

Were you surprised by the reaction that your foreign policy views got? I I mean, I watched this. I wrote a piece about you for the New Republic when you ran for President, and it was a positive piece. The magazine in the next issue wrote a piece about how you were a dangerous bigot. Totally dishonest magazine, and they did it because they hated your foreign policy views, but instead of explaining why they were bad, they attacked you as a person, morally.

That's when I've run out of the argument.

But it didn't seem to have affected you at all. You didn't seem to care.

In a way, I can't care because they have the problem. I don't have the problem. They do. I can offer them, but I don't believe... See, we have Conservatives now. We're going to change these laws, all this crazy stuff they're teaching in schools. And we're going to say, Outlaw this and put this in, all that. I don't believe in that. That's a use of force. Matter of fact, I don't even believe the government should be in our schools. Yes. It's not a thought rise in the Constitution. That's the source of all our problems. The universities are owned by the government. All student loans and all the professors, they're all tied into the government.

Why do you think that over the last, I don't know, let's just start with Reagan. So 44 years since Reagan got elected, the core of the Republican or conservative idea has been smaller government, and they've had power at various times, and they've shared power for all of that time. And yet government is many times bigger than it was 44 years ago. So what was that? Did they not mean it? Is it impossible?

The people in charge are the ones that do it. There's a lot of people who still don't want that. But that's why whoever that deep state guy is, they direct things pretty well.

Who is the deep state guy, by the way?

Well, I don't have a list in front of me.

I have no idea.

Well, I think it's people who have tremendous power, and they happen to hate liberty, and they happen to be people that have endorsed because of their wealth. They've been able to get a lot of wealth. And because of that, they become nihilists. They don't believe in truth. Truth is impossible to reach. And there's a whole philosophy of nihilism, that you can't believe in truth. And so it's But everybody wants something to believe in. So they believe in themselves, these people who have a lot of influence, whether they're the President of a university. We just, not too long ago, did We have a few professors show up on television that just were terrible, terrible. And they were the ones in charge of our kids.

Do you think there's a connection between great wealth, being a billionaire, and being a bad person?

No. Matter of fact, I'm a strong defender of people who earn their money honestly. Yes.

But why our richest class of Americans is the most nihilistic? It does seem, not all of them, but as a group.

They're the most nihalistic.

It does seem that way.

Oh, I think I look at statistics that show that America is one of the most generous nations.

Of course. No, but I mean, it's the billionaire classes he's been doing.

Oh, the billionaire? The billionaire. Yes. Yeah, because they're God. They've given up on God. They've given up on a higher law, a natural law. Natural law can be known, and you can't even depend on the founders to make sure that we all follow the natural law. The natural law is if you and I sat here and said, Well, we are having our community, what would we think is a very natural thing that all people should follow? We should steal from each other. Well, I'm for that. You shouldn't kill each We shouldn't do that. You shouldn't hurt people. Even though on the most early, all the way back to Nebuchadnezzar and Sumeria, they had rules against lying, cheating, and killing. It's phenomenal that it's there. But your question is why some of the rich people become bums.

Yes, why does some of the rich people become bums? Nicely put.

I I think it's because they don't believe in a higher spirit. But like I've mentioned to you, I don't think my position, what I'm doing here in Congress, I'm there to say, Well, I know. If you'd go to this church and do all… Not that. But spiritually, everybody can have a spiritual life. I don't think the nihilists can get rid of their spiritual life. They have a substitute, and they become the the substitute, and they know what's best for everybody.

Smart. I know you never talk about yourself. You said you don't wear your religion on your sleeve. I won't press you, but I just have to ask you one personal question because I think it's interesting. You married your wife, who you met, she was in eighth grade. You've been married for over 60 years. You got 19 grandchildren, great grandchildren. You have a successful marriage, obviously. How did you do that?

I was thinking of something, and I don't know whether it has any meaning. It came naturally. I always felt better when I'm doing what I discovered was the higher law, the natural law. Then I say, I really do it for selfish reason because I feel better about it. If I go, I think, Well, if I just rob that bank one time and take that grant, I can become very wealthy. Then That's beside it. So I think I look at it, and the other thing I advise to my audience is that you really ought to have a lot of fun doing this. And I think if there are some on TV that are maybe 60 % right, 40 % wrong, but they're so, I don't know what the word is, boring and nasty. I think you should be having a good time doing it. And people people in these. You take homeschooling people. Have you ever met people in a homeschool? Yeah. I mean, they get together and they have fun. They say, Oh, no, but they're social misfits. But I'll tell you what, the homeschool people I run into are not social misfits. That doesn't mean there's always a shortcoming.

But no, they hang together. I think there's going to be a lot of that coming. I think it will continue to grow, especially with the destruction of the school system. The homeschooling numbers skyrocketed during the COVID because they couldn't send their kids to school. But they need encouragement, even though the majority vote, 51 % can do anything at once, is the evil of democracy. But you still need a prevailing attitude about the people, the general rules that you can't steal from people. You don't have to explain that. But that makes it... I think it's so easy. To me, the wonderful part about it Our little program that we put out, this little, is Institute for Peace and Prosperity. Who can turn that down? But maybe Maybe the prosperity isn't coming fast enough, but they have to measure their prosperity in different ways. There's different ways of measuring prosperity. Maybe all you want is five acres in a home or something. Yeah. Have you had fun looking back on your life?

Have you had fun?

Coming back?

Looking back on your life. Have you had fun?

That was always my goal.

It was?

In a serious way, though. Yes. No, I I think there are bad times that comes when there's family problems or somebody dies. But I think it's something that you accept and you should have fun. And people think it's all dire. And some people have a hard time with life and paying their bills. But it's the government's fault. It's not your fault. This can change. They have to have hope. I think that's the most important thing. I always felt good if somebody said, Sometimes the young people, and even as they got older, would come up and say... They would say things that almost they... Don't say that too loud, they'll think we're all crazy. They'll say, You can't imagine how you've changed my life. I say, I only wanted to change your money. No. Evidently, the message I have didn't apply to monetary policy alone. It applied to everything, and it was a way of life, and that is non-aggression. Don't use force, don't use violence. And the guides are, you know, most people's religions. There's not many religions that, well, you should go out today and murder as many people as you can. So I think I remain optimistic, there are days when I think, is it time to change?

But the reward comes from people who say that it's been very beneficial. Some of them will just be at campuses and they were studying hard or anything else. And they'll come back and say, after I heard you speak, he says, I buckled down. I applied to medical school and now I'm a doctor. They want to give me credit for that. I said, I didn't do it. Maybe I helped you a little.

Dr. Rampal, thank you. You deserve a lot of praise for being right. Great to be with you today. Then as now.