Several people have asked me about Ron Paul. Yes, I am a Ron Paul fan because unlike most members of the House, Senate, presidential cabinet and the President himself, he actually lives up to the oath he takes and protects and preserves the Constitution. Even in Barak Obama's inaugural address he vowed to do things that are unconstitutional and illegal...but I digress.
To give you a better idea of the man I thought I would give some excerpts from a book called "A Foreign Policy of Freedom" which is a collection of House addresses he has given from 1976 to 2008.
The following remarks were made on February 2, 1999.
Remember this was almost 10 years ago exactly. I have added italics in places that I find exceptionally relevant or important. This is not the speech in its entirety just excerpts.
“Mr. Speaker, I ask my fellow colleagues, how long will the war go on before Congress notices? We have been bombing and occupying Iraq since 1991, longer than the occupation of Japan after WWII. Iraq has never committed aggression against the United States. The recent escalation of bombing in Iraq has caused civilian casualties to mount. The Clinton administration claims UN resolution 687, passed in 1991, gives him the legal authority to continue this war. We have perpetuated hostilities and sanctions for more than 8 years on a country that has never threatened our security, and the legal justification comes not from the U.S. Congress, as the Constitution demands, but from a clearly unconstitutional authority, the United Nations.
“The Constitution has been blatantly ignored by the president, while Congress has acquiesced in endorsing the eight-year war against Iraq. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 has done nothing to keep our presidents from policing the world, spending billions of dollars, killing many innocent people, and jeopardizing the very troops that should be defending America.
“The continual ranting about stopping Hussein – who is totally defenseless against our attacks – from developing weapons of mass destruction ignores the fact that more than 30,000 very real nuclear warheads are floating around the old Soviet empire.
“Our foolish policy in Iraq invites terrorist attacks against U.S. territory and incites Islamic fundamentalists against us. As a consequence, our efforts to develop long-term peaceful relations with Russia are now ending. This policy cannot enhance world peace. Instead of changing it, the president is about to expand it in another no-win centuries-old fight in Kosovo.
“Credit expansion is the root cause of all financial bubbles. Fiat monetary systems inevitably cause unsustainable economic expansion that results in recession and/or depression. A correction always results, with the degree and duration being determined by government fiscal policy and central-bank monetary policy. If wages and prices were not allowed to adjust and the correction is thwarted by invigorated monetary expansion, new and sustained economic growth will be delayed or prevented. Financial dislocation caused by central banks, in the various countries will differ from one another due to political perceptions, military considerations and reserve currency status.
“The U.S.’s ability to inflate has been dramatically enhanced by other countries’ willingness to absorb our inflated currency, our dollar being the reserve currency of the world. Foreign central banks now hold in reserve over $600 billion, an amount significantly greater than that even held by our own Federal Reserve System. Our economic and military power gives us additional license to inflate our currency, thus delaying the inevitable correction inherent in a paper money system. This only allows for a larger bubble to develop, further jeopardizing our future economy.
“Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, when the Dow was at approximately 6,500, cautioned the nation about irrational exuberance; and for a day or two, the markets were subdued. But while openly worrying about an unsustained stock market boom, he nevertheless accelerated the very credit expansion that threatened the market and created the irrational exuberance.
“From December 1996, at the time that Greenspan made this statement, to December 1998, the money supply soared. Over $1 trillion of new money, as measured by M-3, was created by the Federal Reserve. MZM, another monetary measurement, is currently expanding at a rate greater than 20 percent. This generous dose of credit has sparked even more irrational exuberance, which has taken the Dow to over 9,000 for a 30 percent increase in just two years.
“Government propaganda promotes the false notion that inflation is no longer a problem. Nothing could be further from the truth. The dangerous financial bubble, a result of the Federal Reserve’s deliberate policy of inflation, and the Fed’s argument that there is no inflation according to government-concocted CPI figures, is made to justify a continuous policy of monetary inflation, because they are terrified of the consequence of deflation. The Federal Reserve may sincerely believe maintaining the status quo, preventing price inflation and delaying deflation is possible, but it really is not.
“There is good reason why we in the Congress should be concerned. A dollar crisis is an economic crisis that will threaten the standard of living of many Americans. Economic crises frequently lead to political crises, as is occurring in Indonesia.
“Congress is responsible for the value of the dollar. Yet, just as we have done too often in other areas, we have passed this responsibility on to someone else; in this case, to the Federal Reserve.
“The Constitution is clear that the Congress has responsibility for guaranteeing the value of the currency, and no authority has ever been given to create a central bank. Creating money out of thin air is counterfeiting, even when done by a bank that the Congress tolerates.
“Too often the American people have chosen security over liberty. Allowing the president a little authority to deal with world problems under a UN banner has been easier than reversing the trend of the past 50 years. Accepting the financial bubble, when on the short run, it helps everyone’s portfolio and helps to finance government spending is easy, even if it only delays the day of reckoning when the bills come due, as they already have in so many other countries in the world.
“Giving up a little privacy seems a small price to pay for the many who receive the generous benefits of big government, but when the prosperity comes to an end and the right to privacy has been squandered, it will be most difficult to restore the principles of a free society.
“Materialistic concerns and complacency toward the principles of liberty will undo much of what has been built in America over the past 200 years, unless there is a renewed belief that our God-given rights to life and liberty are worth working for. False economic security is no substitute for productive effort in a free society, where the citizens are self-reliant, generous and nonviolent. Insisting on a limited government designed to protect life and property, as is found in a republic, must be our legislative goal.
If we had listened to him in 1999 (or in 1976 for that matter) there is a very strong chance all of the things we are dealing with today would be non-issues.
If you are interested you can buy the book here.
