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Can you imagine the money, that you work so hard for, actually increasing in purchasing power every year? Can you imagine your bills gradually falling over the years, instead of relentlessly rising? Of course you can't! And the reason that you can't is because of the government-created monopoly called The Federal Reserve.
 By Chris Rossini
We live in an age where many individuals are becoming increasingly hostile to truth, facts and reality. The meaning of words are often twisted and language is routinely corrupted. Many believe that by taking thought, they can add one cubit to their stature. If they think it --- and it feels good to think it --- then regardless of the truth, it becomes their law. This road has always been, and always will be, a road that individuals can take. A person can, if he so desires, live in an Orwellian world of his own making, where war is peace, and slavery is freedom. It's always an option, but just because an option exists, doesn't mean it's a wise move to chose it. The option is always there for you to run into a brick wall -- that doesn't mean you should do it. In an age of corrupted language, it's extremely important to have a firm definition of what the idea of Liberty actually means. That way when someone comes along and tries to pass Liberty off as something else, you'll know that you're dealing with a fraud. Definitions matter because ideas matter. Ideas are the inner seeds that produce our outer circumstances. If you've ever tended to a garden, you know that you don't toss generic seeds into the soil. The soil doesn't produce anything generic. Rather, you plant specific seeds -- i.e., watermelon, cucumber, lilac, rose -- and the soil will produce the specific thing that you plant. You will not get a cucumber from a watermelon seed, and planting flowers will not give you weeds. You choose what specific seed to plant, and the soil will bloom something specific for you. The world of ideas and circumstances work on the same principles. George Washington wrote to James Madison: "Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth." The idea of Liberty is a seed, and in order for it to "take root," the very first thing is for it to be understood to mean something specific. So what specifically does Liberty mean? Well, Liberty is another way of saying the word Peace.....or "Live and Let Live." Your life is yours, (and only yours) and your neighbor's life is your neighbor's, (and only your neighbor's). Your property is yours (and only yours) and your neighbor's property is your neighbor's, (and only your neighbor's). Since you and your neighbor are sovereign individuals over your own respective lives and property, the only peaceful way for two sovereigns to interact with one another is through the principles of Liberty -- Live and Let Live. If the sovereign individuals interact with one another, it is on the playing field of voluntarism and non-aggression. They can exchange, contract, and trade with one another, but cannot aggress, steal, coerce or use force against each other. The moment that aggressive force is introduced and accepted, Liberty has been compromised. Peace has been tainted, and sovereignty over one's life and property has been violated. There's only one way to go from there --- Down. Once Liberty is routinely violated, civilization goes from a piece-meal slide into a precipitous decline -- out of civilization and into barbarism. It's all choices. We're free thinking individuals. Not robots. If civilization is flourishing, bad ideas can bring it down. But the opposite is true as well: If civilization is falling apart, good ideas can bring a magnificent renaissance. We can choose the Orwellian life, or the Libertarian life. Each individual makes his or her choice, and the consequences will follow. If you're going to choose Liberty...be specific, and have faith that the soil will never let you down.
Departing Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats sent Congress a letter requesting that several features of the misnamed USA FREEDOM Act be made permanent, allowing the US government to spy in Americans in perpetuity. The Trump Administration wants to be able to intercept phone calls and text messages as well as snoop into business records and other violations of the Fourth Amendment. The FREEDOM Act was passed after Ed Snowden revealed that the NSA was illegally spying on American citizens. Falsely advertised as "reform," the replacement bill only made "legal" the illegality of the PATRIOT Act. Will Americans find the will to oppose this creeping tyranny?
By Ron Paul
Stocks fell last week following news that the yield curve on Treasury notes had inverted. This means that a short-term Treasury note was paying higher interest rates than long-term Treasury note. An inverted yield curve is widely seen as a sign of an impending recession. Some economic commentators reacted to the inverted yield curve by parroting the Keynesian propaganda that recessions are an inevitable feature of a free-market economy, whose negative effects can only be mitigated by the Federal Reserve. Like much of the conventional economic wisdom, the idea that recessions are caused by the free market and cured by the Federal Reserve is the exact opposite of the truth. Interest rates are the price of money. Like all prices, they should be set by the market in order to accurately convey information about economic conditions. When the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates, it distorts those signals. This leads investors and businesses to misjudge the true state of the economy, resulting in misallocations of resources. These misallocations can create an economic boom. However, since the boom is rooted in misperceptions of the true state of the economy, it cannot last. Eventually the Federal Reserve-created bubble bursts, resulting in a recession. So, recessions are not a feature of the free market. Instead, they are an inevitable result of Congress granting a secretive central bank power to influence the price of money. While monetary policy may be the prime culprit, government tax and regulatory policies also damage the economy. Many regulations, such as the minimum wage and occupational licensing, inflict much harm on the same low-income people that the economic interventionists claim benefit the most from the welfare-regulatory state. The best thing for Congress and the Federal Reserve to do after the bubble bursts is to let the recession run its course. Recessions are painful but necessary if the economy is going to heal from the damage done by government’s inflate-tax-borrow-spend-and-inflate-some-more policies. But Congress and the Fed cannot resist the cries to “do something.” So, Congress spends billions on wasteful “economic stimulus” plans and bailouts of politically influential corporations. Meanwhile, the Fed tries to “prime the pump” via new money creation, restarting the whole boom-and-bust cycle. This is not to say that no one would experience economic difficulties in a free market. Businesses and even whole industries would still close because of changing consumer tastes, new competitors offering superior products, or bad business decisions. There may even be bubbles in a free market as some investors misread fads as permanent changes in consumer preferences. But periods of downturn would be shorter, and most would only affect specific industries rather than the entire economy. President Trump’s imposition of tariffs (which are a form of taxes on American consumers) has been particularly harmful. The tariff war has not just raised prices on imported consumer goods. It has also cut off markets for export-reliant businesses, such as manufacturers that import materials used to construct their products. The trade dispute with China may be the event that pushes the US economy into a major recession or even a depression. However, the trade war is not the root cause of the downturn. The next recession, like every recession since 1913, will come stamped “Courtesy of the Federal Reserve.” The only way to end the boom-and-bust cycle and restore peace, prosperity, and liberty is to end the welfare-warfare state, repeal the Sixteenth Amendment, and audit then end the Fed.
No matter where you look, the desire for the Fed to print, Print, PRINT, is intense! The president wants it, the Socialists want it, debtors want it...The consequences of this madness are more than predictable. Great Inflation awaits, and the only thing that stands in the way is an amount of time that no one can precisely predict. The Fed must go! Sound money needs to be ushered in.
The US government claim that US sanctions do not affect medicines and humanitarian assistance to Iran is a bold-faced lie. They make the manufacture of medicines in Iran nearly impossible and they make the cost of medicines beyond the reach of Iranians by disrupting the supply chain of raw materials. US sanctions policy kills innocents under the guise of being "humanitarian."
Get your tickets to the Ron Paul Institute Washington Conference on August 24th: RonPaulInstitute.org/Conference  Now, arriving at the end of my fourth year in high school with the Ron Paul Curriculum, I just had to fill out a report card on my own. Unlike a conventional report card, this one was not meant to give you an A+ in calculus, a B in US history, and so on. It was not about grades in specific courses: it would be hard for students to judge that on their own. Instead, I had to consider my improvement, from 9th grade through 12th grade, in terms of skills: how had my reading speed increased or decreased? What about my speed and accuracy in math? How many hours was I working per day? Was I better able to focus? How many hours per week was I devoting to leisure time? It was these sorts of questions that I had to consider, and some of them were hard to answer – for example, I do not know exactly what my reading speed was at the start of 9th grade, so I could not make an effective comparison. Still, if I were asked, “What is the most important skill you developed in high school?” I think I would have an answer. The most important skill I developed in high school is self-teaching.
Self-teaching is a broad term. It encompasses a myriad of other skills, notably time-management, self-discipline, focus, and so on. As my parents will tell you, I do not particularly shine in all of these areas. I still have serious trouble with time-management, getting things done in an allotted time. It is hard for me to force myself to sit down and follow a schedule every day. Nevertheless, I think four years of striving at this, fighting with it, have left a mark, even if only a small one. The unchangeable reality for me, over these four years, was this: if I do not do my work now, I will have to finish it later. There was no teacher to absolve me of my assignments, to make exceptions for my schedule. On the flip side, this meant there was no teacher to give me an F on an assignment I had procrastinated on – but it was up to me to come back later, finish the work, and try to produce A+ material on my own. And I hope this taught me some responsibility: I am accountable for my own work, for my own time. No one is there to tell me what to do, to force me to get things done. Not only did I have to learn self-teaching in terms of responsibility, though, I also had to learn it in the sense of teaching myself new material. Especially with more advanced math and science courses, there was a point where my parents were no longer able to help me with my schoolwork. I had to make sure I learned and understood. The Ron Paul Curriculum video lessons were key resources for me; so were Khan Academy videos (particularly for AP Calculus BC, where they were my main course material). I took several AP exams, and we bought test prep books for those, but I had to work through the books on my own. I had to find supplementary resources on the Internet for specific training on how to tackle, for example, essay questions on the AP US History exam. I had to take practice exams – I actually took an AP Physics practice test during a four-hour road trip, which was not the most comfortable setting (who says homeschooling isn’t flexible?). And, insofar as standardized test results are a measure of mastery of material, it seems my self-teaching has been pretty successful. This essay has contained a lot about me: what I did, and how I did it. I do not mean to boast. Daily, I am conscious of just how much I lack responsibility, how badly I manage time, how much I have left to learn. To be frank, it is still a struggle for me to go to bed early and wake up early. Yet I think what sets me apart from many other students, thanks to this curriculum which focuses so much on self-teaching, is this: I have tried. If I have not emerged victorious, I have at least started the battle. And through fighting the battle, I think I have learned – despite myself – important principles about responsibility and self-teaching. That is the most important skill I learned in high school, and for it, I am deeply grateful to my teachers, to my parents, and most of all to God. |
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