Thank you very much. It's real nice to be here. I appreciate the invitation. I appreciate seeing so many friends and so many individuals here who have helped my efforts in the past.
I've had some tough elections in the past, as you know, and I only can pursue this adventure with help from people like you, so I deeply appreciate that.
But I certainly want to mention the deep appreciation I have for the Mises Institute because I don't think much of politicians.
I don't happen to believe that politicians have the solution. The solution is much closer in this room than it is any place else.
But still, nevertheless, I pursue my efforts in a political way, and I think you probably understand exactly what I'm trying to do.
But you know, I have to confess, though, that since I've been here, I've been rather startled.
I met somebody who claims to be an anarchist. Can you believe that? Some of you did.
Oh, more than one. Oh, I see. Okay. But I want you to know that I feel very special because I'm in government and people actually believe in anarchy.
But I want to tell you, I am here from the government, but let me assure you, I'm here to help you.
So don't fret. But I feel honored that a group like this would actually invite somebody from the government to come into this room.
in this room, but I do feel very much at home, and of course, take all that the Mises Institute
does very seriously, because it really is a fight for the next generation as well as
it is for surviving tomorrow that counts, and so we have a long-term approach to this
as well as the short term. So I'm always delighted to appear and to participate and
encourage what the Mises Institute is doing. I went to college and medical school in the
1950s and quite frankly there weren't very many true believers in the free market, in
the gold standard and in libertarian views and strictly limited government, strict constitutionalism
had long been gone. So it was at that time where I came across literature, much of the literature came out of the foundation for economic education that helped me along the way to get introduced to ideas of Hayek and Mises and others.
But today I think there's reason to be more optimistic because there are a lot of groups now and a lot of teachers. You've met them here, a lot of professors.
and so I think we're doing much much better but I wouldn't say that about
Washington DC the job's not done yet don't get complacent because Washington
hasn't changed a whole lot I was there for four terms in the 70s and early 80s
and I was out for 12 years and went back after 12 years and actually things are
Things are worse. I think they're worse. The system is more corrupt. The struggle for power is more intense.
I think the financial situation of this country is worse. The dollar situation is worse. The deficits are worse.
So in that sense, I think things are a lot worse, but we have more allies than ever before.
So I think there's certainly a lot of room for optimism.
Just this very week, I had the opportunity to visit with an individual that at one time was more or less allied with us, and that's our friend Alan Greenspan, you know, the one that gets to print the money, and he comes before the banking committee twice a year, and he was before the committee this week, and he is probably going to leave in about a year, so I think there will be only this time and one more time
will be the last time I will be get a chance to ask him a short question that he can evade.
And so this week I decided that I would be more confrontational.
And so I thought I would try to use some of his own words to indict him.
So I decided to use his very well-known article that he wrote in 1967 for Anne Rand's Objectivist Newsletter,
which was, I think it was called Golden Economic Freedom, was a fantastic article, it was good stuff and a few years ago, I didn't do this in public but I did bring that article up to his attention because we were in a little meeting and we had a chance to get our picture with him and we were talking and I just happened to have with me the original copy of the Objectivist Newsletter which was that little green booklet that was faded all yellow by now and so I opened the
page to his article and I said do you recognize this and he sort of smiled and
says yes I recognize that and I said I'd like to get your autograph on this so he
took out his pen and he gave me an autograph and as he was signing I said
do you want to put a disclaimer on this article and he said no he says I read it
recently and I endorse every word he says I agree with every word that's in
there wouldn't change anything so I thought maybe he would be more ready to
to open up a little bit about gold.
So this week when I asked him about it,
he was not quite as friendly about it
because his answer this time was
when I was using his words against him,
he said, well, that was 40 years ago.
He says, my views have changed.
And he said something that his projections back then
and his concerns didn't pan out.
They weren't, it didn't work out the way he had expected.
So I really wanted my next 30 seconds, which I couldn't get because I wanted to ask him what about today's projections, whether they'd be any better, but I didn't get to do that, but in essence what I asked him was the idea, he has told me before that paper money, that central bankers are so smart, I'm paraphrasing, central bankers are smart enough today to make paper money act as if it were gold, and therefore the adjustments and everything
are essentially like gold and of course anybody who has an understanding of the gold standard would disagree and I pointed this out I said for instance I said the current account deficit probably would be handled quite differently under a gold standard the adjustments would occur more automatically and much quicker and we wouldn't have artificially fixed exchange rates say between the renminbi and the dollar and also the fact that the
The price inflation, which they like to quote, has not been held in check as well as gold would.
Of course, government statistics, the CPI, he's claiming, oh look, we've licked inflation.
And I pointed out, well, I thought there was still a little bit of inflation left.
So I mentioned medical costs, educational costs, cost of buying a bond.
and also I said I think housing prices are going up a little bit and and then
the housing prices not only go up but they they push up our property values and
our taxes go up I said you don't even count that in the CPI and of course they
don't they just ignore that so I was arguing a case and I think I got
vindicated rather quickly on that because of the next day this week we saw
at the PPI was going up at a 0.8% at the core rate so obviously I think in a group like this we all know that there's still a lot of price inflation there's a lot of basic monetary inflation out there and a lot of problem but the issue that I really wanted to hit him on is that I conceded to him that he's been very consistent over the years he always says you know if we have a problem it's your fault because you're the congressman you spend too much money cut down the deficit that's what we ought to do I said I tried to do my share I don't vote for any
I said, but I said, I think you're part of the problem as well.
You're part of the problem because if we, the Congress, spend the money,
and we run up a deficit, we print a bond, and you buy it.
You buy the bond with credit, you create thin air.
I said, so you're part of the trouble. It's this whole system.
And this is more or less what he was saying in that article.
He recognized this, that under a gold standard, this is preventable.
But he was rather adamant with me there that he does not participate and his Federal Reserve does not participate in any of this deficit financing.
Now, the interesting thing is the chairman of the Banking Committee, which is called Financial Services, is not going to give me any extra time.
And he is pretty strict on the time, but I always gauge it where I'm not going to ask a 30 second question because I won't get any more time because it will be used up in the answer.
in the answer. But this time I used about three and a half minutes and Greenspan had one and a half minutes. He was well into his answer. And it's the first time I've ever seen the half of the chairman with Greenspan speaking, gaveled him down. He says the time of the gentleman has expired. Usually the person down there answering the question gets as much time as he wants to answer it. But he wasn't much interested in hearing any part of this discussion. So that's a little bit of entertainment that doesn't solve
I don't know much of our problems, but it's something that makes it entertaining for me, at least, to put up with what I have to do in Washington.
But a lot of people ask me, aren't you pretty darn frustrated with this?
You've been beating your brains against a wall on this and nothing really seems to happen.
The deficit goes up and all these problems.
and I said you know the real truth is is I am not frustrated and I simply go
there with low expectations I just don't expect that I'm going to change the
world and I don't have the expectations that I'm going to be a committee
chairman because I won't be that's that's the way it works because you have to
you have to sell your soul and sell your votes and buy votes and and do
whatever they want in order to participate in that so that's that's
That's not my goal either.
My goal has been first to run for Congress with a set of beliefs that the people would
endorse.
And then after there, don't hide behind them but vote that way, express them and spread
the message exactly what I'm trying to do and just see if there is a district in this
country that would actually know what you're doing and reelect you.
And that's my goal.
Not me personally to have a seat in Congress, but to have yours and my views expressed and
voted for and be made real and then actually get a congressional district to endorse this.
And so far, so good.
I had four terms early on, I've been back there, I had three terms, the last election
was the fourth term, and I kept going up on my percentages, you know, it was 51%, 54%, 61%, and then this last go-around, after the second redistricting, they gave me a district which was the weakest Republican district in Texas, and meant to be that I wouldn't lose but I'd have to work at it, but lo and behold an interesting thing happened on the way
to the polls. Everybody else in Texas had an opponent except me. Democrats and Republicans
all had somebody. They didn't have major opponents. So I hope that's a message. I hope the message
that we have of liberty does appeal to Republicans, does appeal to some Democrats, does appeal
to some independents, does appeal to the libertarians and to the strict constitutionalists. I'm
I'm not sure that's a perfect answer because there are rumors that, you know, there will be somebody, watch out, watch out for your next primary.
So if I want to keep doing this, I have to stay alert because the biggest noise I get are coming from those who are die-hard Bush supporters.
And they will call and they say, why aren't you supporting the president?
and I explain to them the issue and tell them what I believe in, what I've said, what my
position's been, what the Constitution says, what our platform says, and all this is good
defense.
And they say that's beside the point.
I want you to support the President.
And of course the answer that I give them then is that, well, why have me here?
I mean, why don't you just send somebody here with a rubber stamp and do whatever he says?
I mean, if you have true representation, you want somebody there to at least read the bills
and know what they're doing and think for themselves.
And this is not frequent, but it's usually minimal and it usually comes from the very,
very die-hard Republicans.
But I am convinced from my experience of many years of doing this that our philosophy can
be and is popular.
For some reason, it hasn't been translated into having a lot of allies in Washington.
But if you go about the countryside, if you go about just talking to your friends and
neighbors, you say, well, they're ignorant and they don't know anything.
They haven't studied this.
They don't know Austrian economics, but if you talk to them and say, well, do you believe
in the free enterprise system and, you know, free markets and, oh, yeah, that's okay.
You believe that the government ought to stay out of our bedrooms?
Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good idea.
And then you ask them, do you think we ought to be the policemen of the world?
And they say, obviously, we shouldn't be the policemen of the world.
That was the campaign slogan of George Bush in 2000, you know, but lo and behold, the
people, I think, if they know about it and have a chance, they will endorse our views,
but all of a sudden, somebody's guard is left down because we end up with those same
individuals who have advocated those positions and they go to Washington, all of a sudden,
they're voting, spending like crazy and they're intervening like crazy, they militarize the
of the World, and they promote all the international government.
So what seems to come out of Washington's complete contradiction to, I think, what the
people would accept and would vote for if it's offered to them because it's been offered
to them, I think the real job is how do we keep their feet to the fire because too often
we get careless and the politicians get away with way too much.
You know, there was a recent piece of legislation passed dealing with the FCC on indecency.
You know, after that, a year ago, when they had that obscenity on TV, and I guess it was
during the Super Bowl, I don't happen to watch the Super Bowl, so I didn't get to see it.
But anyway, Congress had to do something about that, and they passed the law, but they brought
Let the law up again and this time penalty for obscenities on television and radio will
be $500,000 and last year when we had to vote I voted against it because you know it wasn't
a complicated issue because if you can read and I do take an oath of office sorry anarchists
I still take the oath of office I say I'll uphold the Constitution but if you can read
what does the Constitution say in the first amendment it says Congress shall write no
No Law
And I said to my colleagues, why are you writing these laws you're not supposed to?
Well, the government owns the airways, so we're responsible and we have to do it.
And you have to realize my district is south Texas, I had 22 counties at the time, very
rural, very conservative, it's called Bible Belt.
So you know, I have a challenge to present my views because I'd get rid of all the federal
drug laws, you know, that's a bit of a challenge.
So what do you do, you're not going to throw these people in jail for using bad language
on television?
Don't you care about your kids?
So I voted no, and I think I was the only Republican, and it caught the attention of
a national figure, and he thought he'd help me out.
So he gets on his radio program and starts bragging about me, and I said, holy man, this
Howard Stern is not helping me one bit.
He doesn't need to be doing this for me.
But the vote came up again, and of course it was overwhelmingly supported.
But the principle's bad.
We don't solve those kind of problems, but we could privatize the airways in a true sense,
and we could teach people to turn their TVs and radios off, and a few other things could
solve those problems.
But in Congress, they take the principle of Congress, shall write a law.
And if Congress doesn't write the law, we'll let the courts write the laws.
So they're in the law writing business, and believe me, they do their job quite well.
They write a lot of laws.
We'd like to get them out of that.
I'd like to have a moratorium on laws for a long time, you know, unless you repeal something.
Now, that would be a pretty good start.
Just the only thing that we could do, say, for five or ten years is, the only thing we
can do to improve the country is repeal.
And that to me would be the best thing.
My legislation is easy to understand. It's usually one page or one paragraph, because
it's along the lines of repealing. Now, on the other side, it's very complex. You can't
understand it. You don't even get to read it. The Patriot Act, this huge, horrible bill
that undermines our liberties, came to us one hour before the debate started. And it came
and it was difficult to find on the internet. There was not one single soul that could have
read it, because most of them couldn't even have found it. And yet, they were required.
But the only thing is, oh, the people want us to do something, let's do it, and they
vote for it.
And this came up again this last week.
I mean, we've had quite a few.
Liberty has not been served well since 9-11, in case you haven't noticed.
But this week, once again, we've had, you know, so many of the laws already passed with
Homeland Security and Patriot Act and other things, but this week it had to do with the
National ID card and of course the those who are promoting it would never call it
a national ID card you know if we had a bill on the House floor and said
national ID card I wouldn't pass nobody would vote for it but this was a bill to
to standardize federal standards for all drivers licenses oh that's okay because
we're going to catch the bad guys we're going to catch we're going to be able
Well that was not a tough vote for me, but it was a vote that will be noticeable because there was only one Republican that voted against that as well, because it was overwhelmingly supported, and this to me is, you know, for all the bad things we have done, this one was really bad.
I mean, not as the card will come out, it won't be horrible right away because they will be standardized requirements for all the states to follow it.
But they argued with me and they said, but it's voluntary. Yeah, sure, it's voluntary. You know how it's voluntary.
And so if the state doesn't do it and doesn't go along with it, anybody that lives in that state can't get on an airplane.
You know, that sort of thing. So it's just a farce that it was not standardized.
The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security was given unlimited license to put anything he wants on that ID card.
I mean, if you happen to belong to a gun group or a right-to-life group or who knows what, they can put that information on there.
and also that the courts could not review the law.
They wrote in the legislation that this would, the courts could never review this for a constitutional muster.
So that open-endedness was very bad.
Right before the vote, and I was getting ready to give my talk,
one of the more senior Republicans came in and he was going to take, he can bump me and take the time,
and he sat down, he says, Ron, we're friendly, and he says, I've decided you go ahead first because I want to hear what you're going to say.
and we benefit, and technology is helping us fight our battles.
But this technology that has already been put into the passports is this radio frequency ID,
where they don't even, I told them on the floor, I said, you don't, we won't have the old cliché of saying take out and show your papers,
all you have to do is walk by some scanner and they'll be able to find everything out about you without you even taking your wallet out of your pocket
Because they can read what is on your passport, it's not going to be on your driver's license now, but who knows in a year or two.
What if the other party gets in power? They might abuse our liberties if the other party gets in power.
So we have to be careful, we never know who's going to be in charge.
So I think that's something that hopefully that hasn't passed the Senate yet and I'm hoping that that can be stopped.
You know each time we have a break and we have a break now because next week we have to go, is Tom DiLorenzo still here?
We have to next week celebrate Lincoln's birthday so we get a special time off for Lincoln's birthday and others.
and on breaks the Republican leadership sends a brochure around you know a
notebook on our marching orders what we're supposed to do and how we're
supposed to coordinate the the propaganda so it's it's it's to me
insulting and of course I have to turn that around so I read it and I find it's
entertaining and the marching orders this week was to we were supposed to
I want to emphasize two things. First, the benefits of that ID card, because we're going to make you safer and secure, and make sure that you agree with this, and that was a job we had, because maybe there's some doubtful people out there.
And the other thing we were supposed to do was to go into our districts and explain to them that the Republicans aren't cheap, that they do fund the good programs, that we have increased benefits for education and benefits for medicine and benefits for homeland security on and on.
and we were to reassure everybody.
At the same time, we were to explain to them
that we're going to hold the line.
On the discretionary spending, we're going to cut at 1%.
And everybody's going to be happy.
So that is the mentality,
as if the 1% would make a difference,
as if the 1% would get passed.
And then the very next day after they put the budget in
or the next week, they bring in the supplemental budget,
which is not even mentioned in the budget, which is going to be $82 billion.
But there'll be good things in there and it's growing.
It was $78.80, now it's $82.
And, you know, it makes it awful tempting.
I mean, there's $780 million in there to build a palace in Baghdad for our embassy,
you know, our ambassador over there.
So you wouldn't want to look cheap over there.
So it looks like they're going to get another palace.
I thought they might have been able to use some of those old ones that they took over,
but I guess they're using those for prisoners right now or something else.
But that's the kind of stuff that's in there.
And so don't expect any fiscal responsibility coming out of this Congress.
I mean, if you think fiscal irresponsibility has something to do with putting pressure on the Fed to print money
and ignore the constraints of the gold standard they put on inflation.
You can expect that this is going to continue.
It's not going to go away, and I'm afraid it can get much, much bigger.
Just in the last 12 months, the national debt went up $664 billion,
much higher than what they call the national debt.
so that's the obligation and that is doesn't include all the obligation so
it's a it's a in a way a minor miracle that so much can be accomplished in
spite of what the government is doing to us but someday this is all going to to
catch up to us and then then I think that we will see a financial and a
monetary crisis of a serious nature one of the bill I want to mention I worked
on that I think also is a major threat to us because of the nature of it. And that has to do with compulsory mental health screening for every child in public school. Compulsory screening without permission of the parent. And lo and behold, this came out of a commission that was also associated with drug companies. And they believe that is in the best interest of young people that they make sure that we not have anybody
Drugs are going to stop the use of illegal or recreation drugs at the same time.
Our government is spending all this money in cahoots with the drug companies to pump
more drugs into our kids.
And this one, I think we're gaining some momentum.
We weren't able to stop.
There was $20 million allotted for that last year, and there'll be more this year.
is an early start, it'll be in the hundreds of millions,
but they not only wanna test every kid,
they wanna test everybody in,
all the adults involved in education,
but I imagine there'll be a day when somebody will say
that every adult in this country
ought to be tested for mental health screening.
But we all know the stories of what it was like
under the Nazis and under the communists.
I mean, this whole tool that, you know,
You need to be rehabilitated in a mental hospital if you happen to disagree politically.
So that's the kind of thing that is on the horizon, maybe in a distance, but it's still
a danger.
I think it's just a horrible notion.
But this starts with the fact that what in thunder is the federal government involved
in federal education at all anyway?
That's what I think is a horror.
You know, George Bush ran on a program of no-nation building, and he thought we should
not be involved.
And one of the reasons why our foreign policy can be pursued in the type of policy we have
today, of course, is because they have a printing press, we as a people, not just the Congress
Token gold standard or a gold standard, during wartime they suspended it. So gold is not a panacea.
Gold itself, if we followed it, it would, but gold itself cannot prevent that from happening. I remember
a debate I had once with Milton Friedman, and one of his arguments against the gold standard was
governments didn't stick to the rules. They would just, when they needed to, they quit following
And he's right about that, but how could we trust them more so to print money at a certain rate or not at all?
So that argument I don't think has any weight. The important thing is that gold be permitted to be legal.
That is pretty important. So in a way we have a pseudo gold standard.
Because today if you don't like your greenbacks in your pocket and your credit and you get a little bit worried,
at least we have the legal right which we didn't have for quite a few years, several decades, where you couldn't even go out and buy gold.
So we are, we are on a, even though that market gets fudged around and manipulated, which I believe they do, it's still available.
And this means that there is a token ability for the marketplace to restrain this wild, wild spending.
and Wild Spending.
But anyway, the monetary system certainly goes a long way to helping to run this foreign
policy which George Bush campaigned against.
And I think that we should be deeply concerned about what's happening.
There are great threats around the world, and the expansion of that war, as I see it,
is almost absolutely determined.
How we're going to get out of there without expansion.
There is no way they're going to walk away from Iraq.
And there is no way they won't retaliate once there's another accident over there.
And they're trying to precipitate an accident, whether it's in Syria or Iran.
And that's when it's going to expand.
The limitation, though, eventually will be fiscal.
The inability of the Soviets to finance their wicked system came to an end.
But it wasn't because we built more weapons than they did.
I mean, their whole system just collapsed because it wasn't functional.
And ours won't be either.
Our system can't function under the current strain if it continues much longer.
So we as a group of people, especially a group like this, we have an obligation to ourselves
and to our families, but if we care about the country that we live in and the values
that we've had here, we should do whatever we can to pass this information around so
that if it does happen, we don't get something a lot worse.
And if we allow those individuals to continue to be in charge in Washington and we have
a crisis, a major crisis, believe me, don't feel comfortable.
But I think we're gaining, like I said before, we are gaining and we're moving in the direction
of a lot more people understanding exactly what's going on.
You know, there's a, there was a pamphlet, small booklet, an article written many years
ago that I want to refer to, and that was written by Randolph Bourne.
And I think most of you, many of you might not remember the name, but I think you'll
remember the title of his essay, and it was, War is the Health of the State.
And this is something I deeply believe.
You know, in reading that article, it's interesting how he takes and describes the difference
between the country and the people versus the state, and he actually puts government
into a different category.
And the government is more of the mechanics of what's going on, but the state is mystical,
and it is, it represents a strong belief of a special class of people, an elite class
of People, and he said that war is controlled by this elite class of people, not the masses,
and they do this.
And he had an interesting quote there which I think fits into something that's happened
rather recently, and he said that war can be called an upper-class sport.
And I think that's a pretty good analysis.
Not only internationally in these fights that go on for various reasons, and there are various
reasons why we're in Iraq, but also domestically.
The vying for power and prestige and control is a sport in Washington.
There's no difference between Republicans and Democrats.
We know that.
Even if you believed or wanted to think that we could have a democratic election, how can
you have a democratic election if you have one party?
That doesn't make any sense.
So there's a sport up there, and the sport is who's going to hold the power.
So there's no difference in belief.
You know, whether you have Bill Clinton in there bombing the Iraqis because he wants
to distract from his impeachments, or whether you have George Bush doing it to satisfy some
other group.
But it's the power struggle that goes on.
It's intense.
It's serious.
So yes, there is a difference between Republicans and Democrats.
Who's going to control the power? And they have their own little inner circle, so there's competition, so it's like a sport.
But I think something, now you have to remember, Borne wrote that in 1918, and the sad part about Borne was that he died at the age of 32.
He was a young man. He went through the war and ended up getting the flu, and died from the flu epidemic.
So he never even got to finish that particular essay, but even the short essay is really worth looking at and reading because there's a lot of psychology that he writes about in what moves the people.
But I think most of you heard this statement made, it was on the news, that I think confirms Born's idea that war is a sport.
And this comes from this Lieutenant General, John Math Mattis. He says, this is sick. This is really sick.
Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight, you know. It's a hell of a hoot. It's fun to shoot some people.
I'll be right up front with you. I like brawling. You go into Afghanistan.
You've got guys who slapped women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil.
you know guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway so it's a hell of a
lot of fun to shoot them now that you know let's hope that is an absolute
isolated incident but in a in a more general and broad way though he is
reflecting a lot of what goes on for the elite class for various reasons whether
it's for commercial interests, military industrial interests, banking interests,
is territorial interest, oil interest, Zionist interest, all these things and they come together.
Or maybe even the worst is that it's their game that they're playing because they feel this moral, religious obligation to spread goodwill, spread democracy,
Wilsonianism, make the world safe for democracy and therefore they are doing these wonderful things.
So that is, it's all mixed up in these motivations.
But the real sad part comes from us, the people who put up with this.
Pay the bills and let them inflate the money and taxes.
And it just goes on and on.
You know, Tom DiLorenzo was in my office the other day, a few members, and he talked about the Civil War.
And one member who is pretty hawkish and had voted for the war, and he kept asking Tom, he says,
he says to him, he says, how could they ever get those northern kids to have the energy and the determination
to march in the south and fight like this and kill and kill and kill? What was their motivation?
The motivation for the Southern was to defend their homeland, and the other side was it was a bit of this super patriotism and a little bit of coercion and a few other things that they pump them up and they feel like it's their patriotic duty to go off and fight.
So I looked to the fellow that was making this point, I said, you know, he was concerned about the Civil War, but it's sort of like what they're doing today.
I mean, this is why they go and fight. This is why people support the war.
And this is the number one issue, if I have a Republican challenge me, it's on the issue of war.
Why don't you support the president and support the war and support the troops?
I'd like to support the troops. I'd bring them all home tomorrow if I could.
You know, in dealing with the subject of what our obligations are and what we can do, I
want to quote something from a long time ago.
One thing I wanted to mention was in another conference down the hall, there was a young
man there and he spotted me and came over.
He happened to recognize me, but he wasn't with this conference.
He was disturbed because what can we do and what should we do and, you know, the exasperation
and the frustration of all that's going on.
And I want to address that.
And I might go about two minutes overdue
if it's OK to do this.
But I want to quote from something
that happened in Roman times.
We all know that Cicero fought a great fight
to try to preserve the Republic of Rome.
And in 70 BC, Cicero was a rather young man,
and he had been studying law.
and he was out on his first case to defend and it wasn't going well and he was defending
a businessman who was being unfairly challenged and it was just an abuse of his liberties
and abuse of all the rights that he was supposed to have under the Roman Empire or the Roman
Republic.
And so Cicero was absolutely frustrated because it looked like he was going to lose this case
So he goes to his teacher and Scavola, it was the teacher's name, and he got a rather
surprising answer, no soft support for Cicero.
He said to Cicero, he says, imbecile, of what use are records presented to tribunes, councils
or senators if the government is determined to rob and destroy a man who has displeased
Have I truly wasted all these years on such an idiot as this Marcus Julius Cicero?
So the message there is, you know, how can you fight this fight within the system?
And I ask myself, you know, am I doing the same thing?
Am I over there beating my head against the wall for this very same reason?
Because they're not going to listen to logic, they're not going to listen and respond.
And I see this daily on the problems that are brought to me by the bureaucrats in our
government trying to take, whether it's an eminent domain problem or some type of regulation
or some horrible regulation on imports, there's all kinds of things that people come to and
are just being harassed to death by our government.
But are we, if we work in Washington like myself, are we just being frustrated in the
sense that we're dealing with it by pretending that they're going to listen to us?
And my answer to that would be that I think that if we think only working through the
agencies of government and hiring a real good lobbyist is going to solve our problems and
and not deal with the principle, I think that would be the case.
I don't go there with the intention and the pretense and belief that I can change things
tomorrow.
Joe Becker is here and I reminded him and many times I believe, I am not a legislator.
I do not come here to legislate.
I come here for different reasons.
I do propose legislation, but it isn't to tinker.
I never want to tinker with legislation.
I always want to deal with the broad picture of non-intervention, sound money, limited
government, following the rule of law, and not to say that I have a minor victory, because
if you get a minor victory and you get a cut of funding by a couple million dollars and
then you vote for the bill, you've still endorsed the whole principle.
So I think there's a difference if you work within the system and you think you're going
to solve it.
Ultimately though, tinkering, I think we do that out of self-defense, but ultimately the
answer has to come with our beliefs and our convictions.
Our beliefs and our convictions of another generation, including whatever we can do.
Our obligations to ourselves and to our families, our friends and our churches and our communities
to band together and to know what we believe in and to be country and to be community,
but not to be government and not to be state.
I think if those are the goals, if we think we can clean the state up or clean up the
monetary system, the monetary system alone will not do it.
Often I thought the Cicero quote also applies to my approach to the war.
As a matter of fact, Randolph Bourne pointed this out.
He says, even when there are laws against going to war and you have to have legislative
of Approval, they never work.
And he was writing of recent history
because whether he would have remembered the Spanish-American
War and World War I, because the executive branch have
too much power.
They come in and they drumbeat, beat the drums of war,
and the executive branches or the legislative branches
go along.
So that makes me think, well, when
When the resolution came before our committee, I made them vote on a declaration of war,
more or less to show them what kind of hypocrites they were.
They were going to war, but they didn't want to say they were going to war.
They wanted to say to the president, you can go to war if you want.
The fact that we have been given responsibility not to decide whether or not, we don't want
that responsibility.
So I used that, if I thought they were going to vote against the war or that war wouldn't
And that I think would have been very foolish.
But hopefully there was a message to somebody someplace that said that where, why is it
that the Congress has given up so much of their prerogatives, have given so much response,
so much power once again to the executive branch of government.
And that is why, of course, we have a tremendous job before us.
I want to close with a quote from the famous economist Ludwig von Mises, and this is a
quote I've used before.
You probably have heard me use it, but I think it's really applicable to what I do and to
you as well in a different sense, and that has to do with our responsibilities.
And he said the flowering of human society depends on two factors.
The Intellectual Power of Outstanding Men to Conceive Sound Social and Economic Theories
and we certainly have plenty of those individuals and men and women here today.
And the ability of these and other men to make these ideologies palatable to the majority.
That's what we have to do.
We have to make them acceptable.
Make them acceptable to the point where they believe it's in their self-interest that the
The less government they have, the better off they are.
The better off we would be internationally, the less wars that would be fought, the less
economic turmoil we have, the less business cycles we would have, the less inflations
we would have, and the more personal liberties and personal satisfaction.
Our goals ought to be designed, our efforts, my efforts at least, are designed for one
thing, to promote liberty, promote the cause of individual liberty.
So that is what our effort should be, believe in very sincerely that people then have the responsibility upon themselves to promote their own virtue and to promote their own excellence, to promote whatever they need to promote their spiritual and their material life, and it's up to them, not the government.
We now live in an age where that responsibility has been endlessly given to the government and the government has this responsibility to take care of us economically and physically and medically and educationally.
And government can do it only. They can make an effort. They can't do it. They can only make an effort to do it by undermining liberty. So they're absolutely inconsistent.
So if we believe in prosperity and self-reliance and people working for the things they like
and family values and virtue and excellence, there's only one answer to that, and that
is liberty.
And that is to get the government off our backs and out of our pockets and out of our
lives.
And for that cause, I stand here with you.
Thank you very much.