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By Ron Paul
Is the Republican Party cracking up? Yep....Does that concern me? Nope....Is Trump ruffling the establishment's feathers? Yep....Does that mean I'd vote for him? Nope....Is there really any difference between the remaining candidates on both sides? Nope....Are they all just different flavors of authoritarianism? Yep....I'm on Fox Business below to discuss: By Ron Paul I had the great pleasure of being the guest on today's Tom Woods Show. Tom and his listeners came up with questions that I've never been publicly asked before. I hope you enjoy the discussion below:  
By Ron Paul
During her appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Attorney General Loretta Lynch admitted that she asked the FBI to examine whether the federal government should take legal action against so-called climate change deniers. Attorney General Lynch is not responding to any criminal acts committed by climate change skeptics. Instead, she is responding to requests from those frustrated that dissenters from the alleged climate change consensuses have successfully blocked attempts to create new government programs to fight climate change. These climate change censors claim that the argument over climate change is settled and the deniers’ success in blocking congressional action is harming the public. Therefore, the government must disregard the First Amendment and silence anyone who dares question the reigning climate change dogma. This argument ignores the many reputable scientists who have questioned the magnitude, effects, and role of human action in causing climate change. If successful, the climate change censors could set a precedent that could silence numerous other views. For example, many people believe the argument over whether we should audit, and then end, the Federal Reserve is settled. Therefore, the deniers of Austrian economics are harming the public by making it more difficult for Congress to restore a free-market monetary policy. So why shouldn’t the government silence Paul Krugman? The climate change censorship movement is part of a larger effort to silence political speech. Other recent examples include the IRS’s harassment of tea party groups as well as that agency’s (fortunately thwarted) attempt to impose new rules on advocacy organizations that would have limited their ability to criticize a politician’s record in the months before an election. The IRS and many state legislators and officials are also trying to force public policy groups to hand over the names of their donors. This type of disclosure can make individuals fearful that, if they support a pro-liberty group, they will face retaliation from the government. Efforts to silence government critics may have increased in recent years; however, the sad fact is the US Government has a long and shameful history of censoring speech. It is not surprising that war and national security have served as convenient excuses to limit political speech. So-called liberal presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt both supported wartime crackdowns on free speech. Today, many neoconservatives are using the war on terror to justify crackdowns on free speech, increased surveillance of unpopular religious groups like Muslims, and increased government control of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Some critics of US foreign policy have even been forbidden to enter the country. Many opponents of government restrictions on the First Amendment and other rights of Muslims support government actions targeting so-called “right-wing extremists.” These fair-weather civil liberties defenders are the mirror image of conservatives who support restricting the free speech rights of Muslims in the name of national security, yet clam to oppose authoritarian government. Defending speech we do not agree with is necessary to effectively protect the speech we support. A government that believes it can run our lives, run the economy, and run the world will inevitably come to believe it can, and should, have the power to silence its critics. Eliminating the welfare-warfare state is the key to protecting our free speech, and other liberties, from an authoritarian government. 
By James Alexander Webb
On March 13 Americans will, in their tolerant nature, acquiesce once again to a government initiated (and hardly popular) loss of one hour, and the setting of clocks out of sync with our planet’s celestial rhythm. After an earlier (unpopular) 1918 trial of Daylight Saving Time and its later repeal in 1919, it was re-enacted nationwide under Nixon under the “Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act of 1973.” It’s now a relic of inappropriate interventions of the early seventies that included wage-price controls and the 55 mph speed limit. It represents what we don’t need. Consider some of the reasons for repeal: Nature: It unbalances what is naturally harmonious. High noon should be when the sun reaches its apex, or as near as this can be, given the use of time zones. Sleep Cycles: The (circadian) sleep cycle need not be disrupted twice a year, even if accomplished by a show of hands. In truth, the legislative process should be called out for its shortsighted habit of running roughshod over established peaceable social order. Here it smacks of social engineering with a disregard for workers, not to speak of an insensitivity to children losing sleep in the adjustment. As reported at telegram.com “The Fatal Accident Reporting System found a 17 percent increase in traffic fatalities on the Monday after the shift.” This article cited findings in a University of Colorado at Boulder study of an increase in fatal motor vehicle accidents the first six days after the clocks spring ahead. This study suggests that the time change may even increase the risk of stroke. Freedom: If those in a workplace agree to change their hours of work they are free to do so. Such “emergency” legislation imposed by the Federal government, on the other hand — however minor they seem — mandate conformity at the expense of basic freedoms. Efficiency: Moreover, with the advent of LED-lights, the old cost-of-lighting argument has faded, especially because the start of the day has already been advanced about one hour as mentioned above. In fact, with more air-conditioning, the bias is for increased use of electric power under the time-shift, as people come home earlier in the hot season and turn up their air-conditioning. Inconvenience: One has the annoyance of twice a year resetting clocks. This may take only 10 minutes, but over a 60-year span it’s 20 hours. We all know what it feels like to arrive at work on time to find that everyone else had dutifully changed their clocks, so that we turn out to be one hour late. There are real-world effects on major industries as well. Train and transport schedules cannot be easily adjusted. Amtrak, for instance, idles trains (and passengers) for one hour to keep on schedule in the fall and then tries to make up an hour in the spring by hurrying. More hourly work schedules need adjustment now that more businesses are open 24-7. Affrontery: Perhaps worst of all is the fact is that there is no gain whatsoever in the number of minutes of sunlight in a day. It is hence presumptuous to maintain that the culture and habits of the people, as expressed by their arrangements and choices, were in error before the change. The benefit of the doubt should logically rest with conventional time. Principle: Resetting clocks and watches not once but twice a year, is less a compromise of effort than of principle. It contributes to the habituation of interference by the state. We already prostrate ourselves filling out 1040 forms that tax the sale of our labor, including a required signature in disregard of the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. If we ever want to undo such an affront to freedom, annoying impositions such as time-shifting are a good place to start. Sunset Old Laws: Thomas Jefferson suggested an automatic sunset provision for legislation: “… every law, naturally expires at the end of nineteen years.” In an April 2016 Reason article by Veronique de Rugy: “What Government Can Learn from Moore’s Law,” is suggested a sunset provision (that could be retroactive) in all Federal statutes and regulations to require an updated renewal within two years. Even better, might be a required supermajority for renewal. In Jefferson’s day, by the way, clocks were known as “regulators,” but such regulation stemmed not from legislation, but from social convention that produced efficient governing without the state. As with a plethora of interventions some may be minor inconveniences, but like time-shifting, they share in a disrespect for the principle of simply leaving people alone. Mandated time shifting affects everyone while standard time imposes on no one. This article was originally published at The Mises Institute. 
By Chris Rossini
It is often said that our minds are the most powerful tool that we have at our disposal. Every human has one, and it is our own personal and private kingdom. It has no limits. At any time we can imagine whatever we please. In a split second, we have the ability to see ourselves sitting atop a mountain, or flying into outer space. It can feel as though it's actually happening. There are no limits to mental creativity. No one can ban what goes on in our minds. No one can tax or shoot down what takes place in our private mental worlds. But the moment that we gaze out of our two eyes, we see a physical world that is quite different. We see the Earth that we all live on, with its super-abundance of resources, but it carries with it one big catch: there are limits. Our Earth and its resources are composed of a finite number of chemical elements -- 118. There's a finite amount of land, water, people, laborers, and resources of so many kinds. This is very different then our mental world. Our mental world is boundless and unlimited. Our physical world has very distinct limits. Since we live our human lives in a physical world, we have wants and desires. These wants and desires are purely mental. As such, they must be unlimited as well. Right this second, you and I can list all the material things that we want and desire. That list never has to end. We can always think of something else to add to it. We can always come up with just one more thing, even if that one thing doesn't even exist yet. So we have an unlimited mental world, with unlimited wants and desires, and in order to satisfy those desires we must live in a physical world that has limits. Quite an interesting setup, wouldn't you say? If both mental and physical were unlimited, it would be possible for everyone to have everything. But that is not the setup. Everyone cannot equally have all of their desires fulfilled. Some can be fulfilled, while others must be discarded. We have to choose what we want, and at that same time we choose everything else that we must forego. Since our wants are unlimited, how in the world are limited resources to be allocated? How do we know which things should be created, and which shouldn't? How do we know if a piece of land should be used for growing coffee beans, or if it should be used to house a baseball stadium? Ideas on how resources should be allocated have challenged mankind from the very beginning. Because our minds are unlimited, the number of ideas that can be concocted to solve this problem has no limits either. However, every idea cannot work. That we know for sure. Our powerful minds are capable of creating and believing in falsehoods and untruths when they're actually applied to the physical world. We can create mental illusions, but those illusions cannot be applied to a physical world that unmercifully follows the law of cause and effect. One illusion that throughout the ages has been believed and accepted by many people is the idea of socialism. It has enticed people (and still entices people today) despite being proven as a failure over and over again. Even hundreds of millions of deaths that have resulted from the idea's forceful implementation fails to sway those who continue to believe. And that's fine. Their minds are their own personal kingdoms. They're free to choose what they want to believe. But as those individuals hang onto their illusions, it's critically important for everyone else to understand why socialism is an illusion, and why it can never work in this world of ours. Socialism is the idea that there is only one property owner - the government, which is just a very small group of people. This group of people is to own all the resources, and they are to decide how those resources are to be allocated. Everyone outside of the government is to obey the orders of the government. Leon Trotsky summed it up perfectly: “In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.” If you're outside of that small group called government, you obey, or you starve. Think about what that means. Every person, with their unlimited minds, and unlimited wants is supposed to obey what a small group of people command to them. The people in government have their own minds and their own wants. How can they possibly allocate all resources for everyone else? How can they possibly know what even one single individual wants, considering the fact that one single individual can change his mind at any moment? When there is only one owner of all resources - the government - how can the government know where those resources are to be allocated? What does it have as a guide? How does it know that a piece of land, in a specific geographic area, would be better suited as a corn field instead of a factory for skateboards? How does it know if the person that it forces to work on a farm would not have made a better doctor? How can government possibly know? Answer? It can't. The great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, while intellectually battling the socialist utopias known as the Soviet Union, and Nazi (i.e., "National Socialist") Germany proved that without market prices, a socialist government "can't calculate". In other words, without market prices, there can be no profit or loss. Without profits and losses, government has no clue as to whether or not they're allocating resources in the right areas. In order to have market prices, there must exist private property owners, who own their own property and voluntarily trade it with other property owners. That's how prices are formed. This concept flew right into the face of the socialist planners. After all, they were to be the only property owners. Everyone else was to obey orders. Private property and socialism are mutually exclusive. You can't have both. Ludwig von Mises was right, and unfortunately he perished before the implementation of socialism collapsed into a billion pieces. The socialists were completely in the dark, as Mises said they would be. They didn't know how to allocate resources. They had nothing to guide them. The result (because people with power are stubborn and refuse to quit their illusions) was death on a scale that had never been seen before. It's quite remarkable how much human suffering and death can result from a bad idea. Socialism takes first place. That's really all socialism is too, a bad idea. Even though it looks so good in the minds of people that believe in it, it is not practicable with the setup of our lives here on Earth. We, as individuals with unlimited minds, our own individual desires, and our own unique talents are not made to obey dictates from other individuals. Rather, we are to live as we please, so long as we do not use aggressive force against others. We are to voluntarily trade our labor, our creations, our time....whatever we own as private property. And we are to voluntarily trade these with our fellow man, who has his own private property. That is how we can all peacefully grow wealthy in our own unique ways. That is, for those who desire wealth. People can freely choose not to exchange, or satisfy other people's desires, and as long as they don't use aggressive force, they are no lesser of a human being for choosing that road. But if we do desire the upward spiral, we are to use market signals as guides. If something is too expensive, it means that it is in short supply, and we should find other alternatives. If something is cheap, we can load up. If we see something as expensive, but can figure out a way to provide it cheaper to others, we can purchase the necessary resources and give it a try. That's known as being entrepreneurial. If we're correct in our estimation, we'll drive down prices so that many others may enjoy what was once in short supply. Profits and losses are to act as our guide. If we're earning huge profits, it means we're satisfying huge wants. If we're earning meager profits, it means we're satisfying meager wants. But profits simply mean that we're allocating resources rationally and efficiently. On the flipside, if we are losing money, and incurring losses, it means that we are wasting resources away. People do not desire what we've created, no matter how wonderful and how great we believe our creations to be. Socialism lacks these signals and that is its death knell. Of course, a voluntary, peaceful and private property society is not what we have at this point in 2016. There are elements of it for sure, but governments and central banks are monoliths that stomp all over the world. These institutions distort society. They wield violent force, they coerce, lie, cheat, steal, wage wars. They do not, as America's Founding Fathers had hoped, merely protect our life and liberty. They've sadly morphed into the greatest threat to our lives and liberty. That wasn't supposed to be the deal. There's a long road ahead of us when it comes to embracing and implementing the right ideas. We are all completely unique individuals, with unlimited minds, and we are to live in a world with limited resources. Liberty fits with that setup. Socialism remains an illusion that never has, and never can, work. 
By Chris Rossini
The alarmism surrounding supposed "climate change" continues to reach ever higher levels of desperation. The propaganda runs 24 hrs a day and has crept into all aspects of media, crony corporate America, and (of course) government "schools". The arguments go from ridiculous to hysterical. We're told by many politicians that "climate change" is the #1 threat to Americans. This is of course a favorite of the swindling class. Others tell us that the #1 threat is ISIS, and some are now saying that it's Donald Trump. Some say it's North Korea, Russia, or Iran. The carousel of #1 threats is always in motion. In the media you'll find stories that free birth control is needed in order to battle climate change, and that climate change will turn women into prostitutes. Non-believers of this ridiculous propaganda are branded as "deniers". Oh, and never forget that "the science is settled"! Even appeals to religion and the afterlife have been showered on Americans. Whether it be comments from the Pope, or from Nobel Prize winning "economist" Paul Krugman, who says: "You can deny global warming (and may you be punished in the afterlife for doing so — this kind of denial for petty personal or political reasons is an almost inconceivable sin)." Boy, do these characters really want Americans to believe the climate change religion. And yet, despite it all, Americans do not believe. They're not buying it. After all, the government lies all the time (literally). People are supposed to believe that an organization like government, which can't even fix a pothole in the road, is going to "fix" the weather? Please. It doesn't matter how many scientists government trots out either. Americans can care less about science. Plus, whenever a group cozies up to violent state power, one can't help but look at that group with a suspicious eye. Government is corruption. How hard could it be to corrupt a few influential scientists? This is a tough one for climate changers to swallow. There is so much power for them at stake. If Americans would just believe, the sky would be the limit on micromanaging every American's life. Anything and everything could be blamed on climate change. It would be a bonanza of tax and forbid...tax and prohibit...tax and ban...tax, and tax, and tax. Naomi Klein has admitted that climate change could be used as an excuse for every crackpot progressive idea under the sun: I have begun to understand how climate change – if treated as a true planetary emergency akin to those rising flood waters – could become a galvanising force for humanity, leaving us all not just safer from extreme weather, but with societies that are safer and fairer in all kinds of other ways as well….
Even violent force is being considered an option against the heretics. News broke yesterday that the U.S. Justice Dept. has discussed civil legal action against "deniers".
If only Americans would believe...but they don't. Let's hope it stays that way. 
By Jacob Hornberger
It’s the latest rage among American leftists to point out that Donald Trump has fascist proclivities. A recent example is Robert Reich, who was secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997. In an article yesterday on Raw Story, Reich states “Trump has finally reached a point where parallels between his presidential campaign and the fascists of the first half of the 20th century — lurid figures such as Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Oswald Mosley, and Francisco Franco — are too evident to overlook.” Reich isn’t the only one. Former Mexican President Vincente Fox also called Trump a fascist. Current Mexican President Enrique Pena Calderon said that Trump’s “strident” rhetoric is how “Mussolini got in, that’s how Hitler got in.” In another article yesterday, this one in the Los Angeles Times, reporter Patt Morrison states: Well, there’s language and there’s style and manner that has echoes of the fascism of Europe in the 1920s and ’30s. There’s the claim that the United States is in decline and needs a strong leader. And that was at the heart of what Mussolini and Hitler promised. They offered a recipe for revival: nationalism, aggressive foreign policy, attacks on the enemies inside and out without much regard for due process, an obsession with decline and with enemies like Jew or socialists, foreigners — those are the echoes of that today.
But in their attacks on Trump, those on the left conveniently forget a discomforting fact: Their hero and icon — the man they (as well as conservatives) have extolled and glorified for some 80 years — President Franklin D. Roosevelt — was himself a fascist.
Oh, sure, it’s true that much of FDR’s New Deal was socialist, such as the federal pension plan — Social Security — that he permanently foisted onto the American people. But let’s not omit the other half of the story: Roosevelt also embraced economic fascism, especially in his efforts to get America out of the Great Depression. The best example was FDR’s National Industrial Recovery Act, a fascist program that would have fit perfectly in Mussolini’s fascist Italy. Under the NIRA, federal officials organized private American businesses, industries, and corporations into giant cartels that established “codes of fair competition,” which set prices, wages, and production in their particular sectors, all enforced by federal force. More than 500 codes of “fair practice” were developed. Not surprisingly, FDR put a military man, retired Hugh Johnson, to run this fascist program. Johnson had graduated from West Point, made the military his career, and ultimately reached the rank of General. According to Wikipedia: One author claims Johnson looked on Italian Fascist corporatism as a kind of model. He distributed copies of a fascist tract called “The Corporate State” by one of Mussolini’s favorite economists, including giving one to Labor Secretary Frances Perkins and asking her to give copies to her Cabinet.
To encourage compliance with the NIRA, FDR and Johnson adopted a symbol that could have come straight out of Mussolini’s playbook: the “Blue Eagle.” In what is undoubtedly one of the creepiest federal campaigns in U.S. history — one that would have made Mussolini proud, U.S. officials “encouraged” U.S. businessmen to post the Blue Eagle symbol in their storefront windows in a show of solidarity with the federal government. Any business that refused to do so was immediately denounced and ostracized for its lack of “patriotism.”
In 1935, thanks to justices who were still fighting to retain America’s founding constitutional principles, the U.S. Supreme Court declared FDR’s NIRA unconstitutional. They rightfully pointed out that such a scheme had no place in America’s constitutional order. Let’s not forget Hitler: He led Germany out of the Great Depression with a fascist program based on massive spending on public works, government-business partnerships, government management of the economy, and building up Germany’s military-industrial complex. Sound familiar? It should because that was FDR’s economic program too. As late as 1937, great leader Winston Churchill had nothing but praise for the leadership skill of Germany’s great leader: One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as admirable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.
While we are on the subject of Nazi Germany, perhaps it would be instructive to post the following planks from the Nazi Party platform and ask whether any of the presidential candidates, Democrat or Republican, disagree with them.
We ask that the government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a living. The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within its confines and be for the good of all. Therefore, we demand: an end to the power of the financial interests. We demand profit sharing in big business. We demand a broad extension of care for the aged. We demand … the greatest possible consideration of small business in the purchases of the national, state, and municipal governments. In order to make possible to every capable and industrious [citizen] the attainment of higher education and thus the achievement of a post of leadership, the government must provide an all-around enlargement of our system of public education…. We demand the education at government expense of gifted children of poor parents…. The government must undertake the improvement of public health — by protecting mother and child, by prohibiting child labor — by the greatest possible support for all clubs concerned with the physical education of youth. We combat the … materialistic spirit within and without us, and are convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only proceed from within on the foundation of “The Common Good Before the Individual Good.”
Perhaps we should also remind ourselves of the letter that Hitler sent Roosevelt through U.S. Ambassador Thomas Dodd:
The Reich chancellor requests Mr. Dodd to present his greetings to President Roosevelt. He congratulates the president upon his heroic effort in the interest of the American people. The president’s successful struggle against economic distress is being followed by the entire German people with interest and admiration. The Reich chancellor is in accord with the president that the virtues of sense of duty, readiness for sacrifice, and discipline must be the supreme rule of the whole nation. This moral demand, which the president is addressing to every single citizen, is only the quintessence of German philosophy of the state, expressed in the motto “The public weal before the private gain.”
For anyone who would like to further explore the parallels between FDR’s New Deal and Mussolini’s fascism and, for that matter, with Hitler’s national socialism, I highly recommend a book entitled Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, 1933-1939 by Wolfgang Schivelbusch.
The left definitely has a point about Trump’s fascist proclivities but let’s face it: The accusation doesn’t apply only to Trump but also to conservatives in general. Don’t conservatives favor government-business partnerships? Don’t they favor government management of the economy? Don’t they claim that their presidential candidates can manage the economy better than the Democrat candidates? Don’t they favor economic regulation? Don’t they favor public works? Don’t they extol the Interstate Highway System, which was modeled on Hitler’s Autobahn system? Indeed, don’t conservatives favor replacing FDR’s socialist Social Security system with a fascist one — one in which the government forces people to invest part of their income into government-approved retirement accounts? Don’t they extol and glorify the fascist retirement plan brought to Chile by fascist Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who himself extolled and glorified Spain’s fascist dictator Francisco Franco? Don’t conservatives also favor mandatory health savings accounts, whereby the government manipulates or coerces people into establishing medical IRAs? For that matter, let’s not forget the Department of Labor, which Robert Reich headed and which conservatives have long embraced as a permanent part of America’s governmental system. It would be difficult to find a better model of economic fascism than the Department of Labor, given its control over private American businesses. Let’s face it: Fascism has a glorious history among both Democrats and Republicans, so long as it’s called “reforming” or “saving” free enterprise. All the hubbub over Donald Trump’s fascism is personal, not ideological. This article was originally published at The Future of Freedom Foundation. 
By Chris Rossini
After receiving an endorsement from Carly Fiorina (yes, warmongers do stick together) Ted Cruz made a comment today that deserves a bit of contemplation. Amongst his gratitude to Fiorina, Cruz said: "I don't have any steaks to sell. I don't have any wine. I don't have any cleaning products."
The comment was, of course, aimed at Donald Trump. Considering the context and the source of the comment, it's actually quite revealing.
You see, Ted Cruz, with the exception of a few years as a corporate lawyer, is a career politician. He's been climbing up the greasy parasitic ladder, and is almost at the very top. F.A. Hayek wrote about those who reach the top of the parasitic class. It's not a good thing, to say the least. Donald Trump, on the other hand, has been a member of productive society for a majority of his life. It's a shame that he's decided to leave it in order to join the criminal class. Trump should stay in the peaceful and voluntary sphere of society and continue to satisfy the real wants of consumers. But, alas, violent political power is very tempting. In the voluntary marketplace, Trump continually tried to find ways to satisfy the wants and desires of consumers. He had no power whatsoever to force anyone to buy anything. Consumers are king, and Trump's job was to figure out how to serve them best. If consumers want steaks, then Trump would find a profitable way to sell steaks. If they want hotel rooms, golf courses, bottled water, men's clothing, Trump would satisfy those desires. Every single consumer has the ultimate power of choosing not to buy. Many people over many years chose to buy what Trump was selling, and it provides a testament as how well he served his fellow man. Let's now look at the other side of the coin. Government, where Ted Cruz has spent his life, is the opposite of peace and voluntary interactions. Government is force. You pay, or government throws you in a cage. There is no incentive for government to satisfy consumers. There are no profits or losses, so government has no idea how to rationally allocate resources. There is no struggle to find out the most urgent desires of consumers, or even to satisfy them. Taxpayers have to pay, and that's it. With that kind of setup, it should be no surprise that government is a giant black hole that sucks the life out of society with every passing moment. Ted Cruz poked at someone who has been productive. Ted doesn't create, doesn't innovate, and doesn't serve. That's not a badge of honor, but rather a black eye. Again, it's a shame that Donald has chosen to leave productive life in order to join the dark side. And as we've noted several times here at The Ron Paul Liberty Report, a lot of what Trump claims he'll do as president is very dark and very authoritarian. What a pity. |
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