I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Ron Paul 265
The depression had a tremendous impact on our country. There was a willingness to
bring in the welfare state based on bad ideas. During the depression the government kept
saying that the real reason it happened was because of the stupid people who believed in
sound money and in free enterprise. Freedom had failed. That is absolutely false! We had
a depression because we had government intervention that created the whole mess. The
government supported by academicians insisted that we had to have this “third way,” and
called it “putting a human face on capitalism.” They wanted to curb freedom, but not as
far as communism or socialism. They believed that you could have some regulation and
some taxation and some special interests and still protect liberty.
They did not realize that there is always a steady and inextricable growth of government
if you don’t draw your lines sharply. People cannot grant power and authority to
government other than the rights they themselves have in a natural way. For example, I
don’t have the right to take anything from you so I can’t transfer that power to the president.
We do have a natural right to defend ourselves and protect our liberties. We can transfer
that power to a government, which then can form a police force and an army. We can’t
transfer anything else. Yet government now has everything else. That is where it fell apart,
especially in the twentieth century. We are now suffering the consequences.
We need to go back to the fundamentals and decide what we really believe in and what
the role of government ought to be. That is what the founders did at the time of the revolution.
They decided what had to be done and they knew enough about history that they
were able to fight the revolution based on those ideas. Fortunately for us they came up with
a pretty good document.
Unfortunately, the country is moving in the wrong direction. The government is getting
bigger and getting more involved in the economy and our lives. We are spreading
ourselves around the world even more. The crises we have now with the terrorists’ attack
has given us the chance to reassess this. Instead, again we are using it to do the things that
we should not be doing. The government is making further intrusion in personal liberty
and a further expansion of military power around the world.
To turn that tide and get us disentangled we would have to have a different type of
Congress. Unfortunately, we don’t have a different type of Congress so it will continue.
The next group in will be influenced by the same people who think it is our oil over there
and we have to keep a navy in the Persian Gulf and so forth. I don’t think in the next
generation that Congress will become wise enough and brave enough to do the right thing.
We could just deny them funds and then it would be all over! That may happen anyway.
It could be during that next generation that we will go broke and not be able to afford it.
That is the way it will most likely happen. The government is only going to be held back
when the people tell them they won’t put up with them any more.
Technically we are broke now but our credit is still good. A lot of people are broke and
lots of companies are broke but they keep going. Enron was broke but they functioned
rather well until September 2001. They said they were making a lot of money but it was
all fictitious. There were not any real assets. That is the way the country is. There is a false
confidence in our economic system, our dollar, and our military might. The economy perks
along, although slower. We can borrow and tax. We have a strong currency because there