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Kurt Wallace: Our guest today on Rare is Dr. Ron Paul, host of the Ron Paul Channel and his new media site Voices of Liberty and Dr. Paul thanks for being with us today on Rare.
Ron Paul: Kurt it’s nice to be with you.
Kurt Wallace: Robert Draper of the New York Times wrote an in-depth piece about libertarians “Has the Libertarian Moment Finally Arrived?” He references 1968 as being potentially, the declaration at the time, a breakout moment for libertarians, but that didn’t happen. Could you take us step by step through the last 45 plus years, what was it like then leading up to before you ran for president in 2008?
Ron Paul: Right, and to start off with I would say that that New York Times article Draper’s article had interesting stuff in it. But I don’t think he quite understands what’s going on. I see the whole process as being ideological rather than a partisan issue like how do the libertarians come along influence and take over the Republican Party. I don’t even see it in that way. I see the ideas of liberty and the libertarian movement as something that has been going on. I mean maybe ’68 was an important year – maybe 1956 was an important year. But I see a period of time from the 1950s there were only a very few who even knew the word or understood what was going on. One was Leonard Reed and the Foundation for Economics and Education planting seeds. And those seed have been numerous and they’re growing and they have come to life.
So, it’s a steady intellectual movement. And so I don’t know what he means exactly by a moment. I guess he means like all of a sudden the libertarians are in charge of the Republican Party and then they’re going to have a libertarian president and the world will be different. Ideologically, ideas have consequences and libertarianism is very important idea. And its competing with the status quo which is a variation of whats been around for thousands of years and that’s authoritarianism. And that is when you have kings and dictators a pharaohs and all kinds of government agents, communism in the twentieth century and fascism and Nazism.
They have prevailed, but right now with the libertarian movement there have been tremendous inroads. And there is not going to be a moment it’s going to be a transition. We’re in the middle of the transition. The twentieth century had a Keynesian transition which was rather dramatic in the depression although it existed before then. There’s a dramatic boast in Keynesianism which meant government spending is okay, deficits don’t matter, printing money is a good tool, size of government is very helpful and we’ve lived with that. That’s all coming to an end. Its ending right now.
And that is the reason we see the great growth of libertarianism. So, if you look outside of Washington you see the moment as a, you know, not a precise moment, but the movement has been around and its growing by leaps and bounds. And it really came alive in these last several years. Especially during the presidential campaigns. Because not so much of me being there but being there at the right time because they was so much blatant failure. You saw the failure of the economic system and the collapse and we’re still in the middle of that. At the same time, the American people, I think 78% said the war in Iraq made no sense and we shouldn’t have been in there. So, I see it as more of an intellectual transition and its very very powerful. And I don’t see it as a I don’t see it as precisely a political movement that’s going to take over a political party. Keynesianism took over a whole mental status of the country that people endorsed it, both parties endorsed it and it meant that the two parties didn’t have that much in difference. So, I think if you’re really going to see a significant, big significant influence of libertarianism it will influence Democrats as well as Republicans.
Kurt Wallace: Dr. Ron Paul, thanks for being with us today on Rare.
Ron Paul: Kurt, nice to be with you.
