WEBVTT NOTE My Visit to DC: An Interview with Lew Rockwell 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.600 Welcome to the Mises Institute's podcast. We have a very special guest today, Lew Rockwell, 2 00:00:05.600 --> 00:00:12.160 who's the president and founder of the Mises Institute and my boss and the boss of everyone 3 00:00:12.160 --> 00:00:19.600 else in this office. We're very pleased to have him. He just got back from a lecture, a speech, 4 00:00:19.600 --> 00:00:25.040 and of all places, Washington DC. So it occurred to us that this would be a perfect time for his 5 00:00:25.040 --> 00:00:32.400 podcast debut. What took you to Washington, Lew? Let me just say I apologize, first of all, for 6 00:00:32.400 --> 00:00:39.440 the cold I've got. I picked up a bug in Washington, I guess, but so if my voice sounds a little bit 7 00:00:39.440 --> 00:00:46.720 odd, that's the reason. But Dr. Ron Paul asked me to come and give a talk, rather his Liberty Study 8 00:00:46.720 --> 00:00:52.080 Committee, which is his organization that attempts to bring together libertarian-minded congressmen, 9 00:00:52.080 --> 00:01:22.080 and Social Friendship. 10 00:01:22.080 --> 00:01:27.480 And Ron and his wife Carol were there. This was at the Capitol Hill Club, which is a sort 11 00:01:27.480 --> 00:01:31.480 of slightly chilling Republican, official Republican club. And I must say, I definitely 12 00:01:31.480 --> 00:01:37.040 felt I was in, I don't know, a nightclub in Mordor or something when I was in this place 13 00:01:37.040 --> 00:01:40.640 because everybody else looked like a crook. I mean, they looked either like a crook or 14 00:01:40.640 --> 00:01:45.880 a war criminal. And I expected to see John Charles Houston or some of the guys from the 15 00:01:45.880 --> 00:01:51.800 old days, the ones who did the Nixon surveillance plans and plans for setting up dictatorships 16 00:01:51.800 --> 00:01:59.640 and so forth. They all looked awful, except of course the Ron Paul people. And it's been 17 00:01:59.640 --> 00:02:04.640 sometimes since I've been in this club, the last time I was there was during Ronald Reagan's 18 00:02:04.640 --> 00:02:11.480 first term, so that's a long time ago. So we had dinner with the staff and with two 19 00:02:11.480 --> 00:02:17.040 of Ron's friends, Congressman Walter Jones from North Carolina, who was the man who went 20 00:02:17.040 --> 00:02:21.280 down in history, I guess, for having said we should no longer call French fries French 21 00:02:51.280 --> 00:03:06.280 Congressman Jimmy Duncan from Tennessee. I had known his dad a little bit. In fact, in the mid-1970s, I went to England with him and a few other congressmen to look at the National Health Service Socialized Medicine, which of course we've now pretty much copied the English here in this country. 22 00:03:06.280 --> 00:03:10.280 This was a guy who voted against the war in the beginning, 23 00:03:10.280 --> 00:03:13.280 got in a huge amount of trouble in his district, 24 00:03:13.280 --> 00:03:17.280 although he told me that now people come up to him and his wife 25 00:03:17.280 --> 00:03:21.280 and congratulate them for having made the right decision. 26 00:03:21.280 --> 00:03:27.280 So when you say libertarian-minded, 27 00:03:27.280 --> 00:03:32.280 do you mainly talk about the war? What does it mean to be libertarian-minded? 28 00:03:32.280 --> 00:03:34.280 No, I'm talking about a broad range of things. 29 00:03:34.280 --> 00:03:42.120 First of all, a decentralized approach. These are all guys who think that there's something 30 00:03:42.120 --> 00:03:45.800 wrong with the federal government running all over the world, just from an institutional 31 00:03:45.800 --> 00:03:50.480 standpoint. They also are anti-tax, they're anti-spending. I wouldn't call them, they're 32 00:03:50.480 --> 00:03:55.860 not sort of members of the libertarian movement in any sense, much to their credit probably, 33 00:03:55.860 --> 00:04:01.160 but they tend to be sort of old-fashioned small government conservatives. 34 00:04:01.160 --> 00:04:05.160 Well, they seem to be popping up in strange places. I mean, are there surprises? 35 00:04:05.160 --> 00:04:11.160 I mean, in the 90s, you sort of knew who the libertarians were, at least we thought we did. 36 00:04:11.160 --> 00:04:17.160 Nowadays, it's slightly different, right? When you're talking about people who don't expect Washington to be running the world, 37 00:04:17.160 --> 00:04:19.160 are you talking about Republicans, mainly, or Democrats? 38 00:04:19.160 --> 00:04:20.160 These are all Republicans that I met at this. 39 00:04:20.160 --> 00:04:22.160 These are all Republicans, okay. 40 00:04:22.160 --> 00:04:27.160 For example, Roscoe Bartlett, who I think was just sort of a traditional conservative, 41 00:04:27.160 --> 00:04:39.160 I was at a luncheon the next day that Ron had some of these congressional friends of his in to talk with me about the gold standard, about the war, about whatever else they wanted to talk about. 42 00:04:39.160 --> 00:04:53.160 He said, you know, we were talking about socialized medicine, he said, you know, the federal government took a problem that was a problem for a few people in the 1960s, that is a problem of not being able to afford medical care or other kinds of related questions. 43 00:04:53.160 --> 00:04:58.160 is it made it into a problem, a huge problem for every single American with Medicare and Medicaid 44 00:04:58.160 --> 00:05:01.160 and he said this is the model of what they've done. 45 00:05:01.160 --> 00:05:06.160 So when you have a sort of a regular conservative talking like that, 46 00:05:06.160 --> 00:05:09.160 I would say to some extent these people are becoming radicalized. 47 00:05:09.160 --> 00:05:11.160 Now it's only a few of them. 48 00:05:11.160 --> 00:05:13.160 And then of course there's all kinds of other great news. 49 00:05:13.160 --> 00:05:16.160 I mean delay being shown up for the crook he is. 50 00:05:16.160 --> 00:05:20.160 Jack Abramoff, who I know a little bit, a Republican lobbyist crook, 51 00:05:20.160 --> 00:05:26.160 who's involved with a whole bunch of other congressmen, very interesting stuff going to be happening there. 52 00:05:26.160 --> 00:05:33.160 The hilarious case of Randy Duke Cunningham, the loudmouth warmonger from San Diego, 53 00:05:33.160 --> 00:05:39.160 who it turned out had taken a Rolls Royce, a Louis Philippe Commode, I don't know what a Louis Philippe Commode is. 54 00:05:39.160 --> 00:05:41.160 Sounds desirable. 55 00:05:41.160 --> 00:05:51.160 Michael Kinsley referred to it as a hilarious conucopia of baubles that he had received. 56 00:05:51.160 --> 00:06:02.160 But anyway, the next day we had this meeting and they came, a bunch of them, maybe seven or eight of them, came in for at least part of the time, a luncheon. 57 00:06:02.160 --> 00:06:05.720 and it was very, very nice and it's nice to see 58 00:06:05.720 --> 00:06:08.800 I mean it's funny that Ron Paul 59 00:06:08.800 --> 00:06:13.040 certainly in the early years that he was up there was all very much a matter of 60 00:06:13.040 --> 00:06:16.400 434 to 1 votes in the Congress 61 00:06:16.400 --> 00:06:20.040 Ron was 62 00:06:20.040 --> 00:06:24.920 pretty much alone. I would say it's a very different thing today without having changed his 63 00:06:24.920 --> 00:06:25.480 views 64 00:06:25.480 --> 00:06:29.000 really it's the power of truth 65 00:06:29.000 --> 00:06:41.000 The fact that he has continued for all these years to say the same sorts of things, stand up for the same sorts of principles against the Federal Reserve, against government spending, against wars, and so forth, 66 00:06:41.000 --> 00:06:50.000 it really has gotten him a lot of respect. So you have an amazing number of people who will come up to him and ask him to explain things, or why are you voting this way? 67 00:06:50.000 --> 00:06:58.000 And he's got a number of congressmen who have openly associated themselves with him and call him our leader. So it's neat. 68 00:06:58.000 --> 00:07:02.000 This is still a tiny minority, of course, but it's still fun to see it. 69 00:07:02.000 --> 00:07:05.000 It was one of the encouraging things about being in that awful city. 70 00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:15.000 Do you think that the Bush administration is, in a sense, forcing Republicans to choose between principle and politics? 71 00:07:15.000 --> 00:07:29.000 Excuse me. I think that, I think what we're actually seeing, and I was, you know, as you know, we live under the biggest, richest, most powerful government in the history of the world by many magnitudes. 72 00:07:29.000 --> 00:07:43.000 And just because of that, we're sort of living in an unfortunate social experiment, they can't do anything, they can't do anything right, because of the nature of bureaucracy, because of the nature of socialism. 73 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:50.000 This thing is the most incompetent bunch of boobs and the thugs ever to be assembled in probably the history of the galaxy, let alone the world. 74 00:07:50.000 --> 00:08:00.000 So they can't, you know, they can't go to Hurricane Katrina right, they can't do the trial of Saddam Hussein right, they can't do the war right. 75 00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:09.000 Here they put through, you know, well I saw, for example, this World War II memorial, the ugliest looking thing you've ever seen on the mall. 76 00:08:09.000 --> 00:08:12.000 They can't do a memorial to themselves right anymore. 77 00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:16.000 They can't, you look at this new drug welfare program that 78 00:08:16.000 --> 00:08:20.000 Bush is spending, you know, a quadrillion dollars for the drug companies on. 79 00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:24.000 Nobody can figure it out. They're like 84 extremely complicated choices. 80 00:08:24.000 --> 00:08:27.000 Older people, nobody can, everybody's hating the guts of the government, 81 00:08:27.000 --> 00:08:29.000 including those getting the government's money. 82 00:08:29.000 --> 00:08:34.000 So, when you see this, when you see this city 83 00:08:34.000 --> 00:08:38.000 and as a symbol of the federal government, 84 00:08:38.000 --> 00:08:41.000 They can't do anything. I mean, they're paralyzed. 85 00:08:41.000 --> 00:08:44.000 And it again has to do with the nature of bureaucracy. 86 00:08:44.000 --> 00:08:49.000 And so it's a sort of a teaching moment for us and a very interesting opportunity. 87 00:08:49.000 --> 00:08:51.000 But it's having an effect even internally. 88 00:08:51.000 --> 00:08:54.000 Also the corruption is having an effect internally. 89 00:08:54.000 --> 00:09:01.000 Because the congressmen who are not corrupt are very much bothered by the fact that the leadership is all corrupt. 90 00:09:01.000 --> 00:09:10.000 and I was reminded that Jim Wright, who was the Democratic speaker, was tossed out by Newt Gingrich. 91 00:09:10.000 --> 00:09:22.000 His crime, I hope I'm remembering this correctly, was having a friendly trade union by $48,000 worth of his book and distribute them to people. 92 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:24.000 for People. 93 00:09:24.000 --> 00:09:25.000 Shouldn't have done it, right? 94 00:09:25.000 --> 00:09:32.000 So Jack Abramoff just on one Indio casino deal alone has made $90 million. 95 00:09:32.000 --> 00:09:38.000 So the whole, there's a lot, and of course that's just a tiny bit of it. 96 00:09:38.000 --> 00:09:46.000 Some people are doing very well because of it, but there's, I think the decent Republicans are worried about the corruption thing. 97 00:09:46.000 --> 00:09:48.000 They're also worried about losing the House. 98 00:09:48.000 --> 00:09:55.000 I mean, a lot of them fear that the coming election, because of the war especially, that they're all going to pay the price. 99 00:09:55.000 --> 00:10:03.000 Wouldn't you, maybe you would expect to see corruption increase as a party expects to lose power. 100 00:10:03.000 --> 00:10:09.000 I mean, if they expect that everything's going to turn at the next election, why wouldn't you, right now, take all you can get? 101 00:10:09.000 --> 00:10:13.000 Sure, that's of course Hoppe's point, right? I mean, that's the nature of democracy. 102 00:10:13.000 --> 00:10:17.000 But I guess it really began, at least with the Republicans, when they came to power. 103 00:10:17.000 --> 00:10:28.000 I mean, when they, especially now that they have all power, they have the judiciary, the presidency, and the congress, and so some of them are, you know, definitely living it up. 104 00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:37.000 But that has an effect on the decent people, even if they're not our kind of people ideologically, it bothers them. 105 00:10:37.000 --> 00:11:07.000 So, and also there's a, and that's not just the Republicans, I mean there are both conservative Republicans and liberal Republicans who are sort of part of the Ron Paul network, and also some Democrats, so, it's very encouraging, people are sort of being educated, it's an interesting example of, I mean, Ron's never had political power in the real sense, and he never will have real political power, probably in this world anyway, but he, he still 106 00:11:07.000 --> 00:11:19.000 These are huge influences. Even though he's in politics, he's using his political office to educate people, not only his constituents, people all over the country, even people in Washington. 107 00:11:19.000 --> 00:11:28.000 Did you get any sense from anybody you talked to about you? Did people say, oh, you're Lew Rockwell, my goodness. 108 00:11:28.000 --> 00:11:35.000 A number of these congressmen, in fact every one of them, all read MisesOrganLewRockwell.com. 109 00:11:35.000 --> 00:11:42.000 And first I thought, well, you know, they've just been well briefed and they're flattering me, and then I thought, well, wait a minute, they have no reason to try to flatter me. 110 00:11:42.000 --> 00:11:47.000 So, I mean, it must be true. And they mention various articles, and they all get the Daily Article. 111 00:11:47.000 --> 00:11:54.000 And also these guys are all well-read. That's certainly not true of everybody in politics. 112 00:11:54.000 --> 00:11:55.000 They're intellectuals. 113 00:11:55.000 --> 00:12:00.000 They're all smart. I mean, they were all smart. They were different, very interesting, different kinds of personalities, all smart and all well-read. 114 00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:45.000 Well, just that it's not a coincidence that the first central bank formed in the 1690s in England was set up specifically to allow the king to wage war on his own say so and to circumvent the parliament. 115 00:12:45.000 --> 00:12:51.000 He didn't have to go to parliament anymore and ask for higher taxes, which was always very much of a problem for the king. 116 00:12:51.000 --> 00:13:02.000 So the central bank enabled him to circumvent that and in effect punish everybody through inflation but enable him to wage his wars. 117 00:13:02.000 --> 00:13:07.000 And of course again that our own Federal Reserve was set up right before our entry into World War I 118 00:13:07.000 --> 00:13:15.000 enabling probably the greatest disaster in the history of the human race World War I to follow out as it did through US intervention 119 00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:32.000 leading eventually to World War II and to Hitler and Lenin and what the deaths of 300 million people through government concentration camps and wars and oppressions, starvations and everything of every sort. 120 00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:38.000 So in some sense maybe if we hadn't had the central bank that all wouldn't have happened if we hadn't had Woodrow Wilson. 121 00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:45.000 So I just talked about that in our own situation here recently, President Bush didn't have to worry about the budget. 122 00:13:45.000 --> 00:13:52.000 It didn't really bother him whether his attack on Iraq was going to cost $5 billion or $50 billion or $500 billion. 123 00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:54.000 They just printed it up at the Fed. 124 00:13:54.000 --> 00:13:59.000 Of course, the new Fed governor, they're all interested in him, Ben Bernanke, 125 00:13:59.000 --> 00:14:05.000 and his specific lauding of the printing press. 126 00:14:05.000 --> 00:14:11.000 The printing press, they were all very interested in the article that he'd had in the Wall Street Journal that day about the Great Depression. 127 00:14:11.000 --> 00:14:16.000 And a number of them pointed out that he obviously hadn't read Rothbard's book on the Great Depression. 128 00:14:16.000 --> 00:14:17.000 Right, yeah. 129 00:14:17.000 --> 00:14:24.000 And of course he takes the standard line that the Great Depression was brought on by deflation. 130 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:32.000 And the lesson from that is the Fed always needs to err on the side of running the printing press 24-7. 131 00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:39.000 And he, in fact, has held this out as one of the great things about the Fed. They can print as much money at virtually no cost as they need to do. 132 00:14:39.000 --> 00:14:46.000 It seems to be the neoclassical consensus of this point. It's like a combination of Keynes and Friedman or something. 133 00:14:46.000 --> 00:14:52.000 And it does seem like, almost as if the Austrians are the only dissidents on this point, doesn't it? 134 00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:59.000 No, it's true. And, of course, the whole, you know, even the whole helicopter effect. 135 00:14:59.000 --> 00:15:05.000 Friedman implying that somehow inflation takes place as if money dropped from a helicopter. 136 00:15:05.000 --> 00:15:09.000 Bernanke, some people call him helicopter Bernanke because of this point. 137 00:15:09.000 --> 00:15:12.000 But of course, as the Austrians know, that's not the way the new money comes in at all. 138 00:15:12.000 --> 00:15:14.000 It comes into the banking system. 139 00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:21.000 And if in fact everybody's cash balances were increased to the same amount by the same time, by the same percentage, 140 00:15:21.000 --> 00:15:23.000 they would have no reason to inflate. 141 00:15:23.000 --> 00:15:27.000 I mean, it's because some people are forced to pay more than others 142 00:15:27.000 --> 00:15:37.000 and some people get the new money first. This is why they inflate, that and of course for the reasons that any counterfeiter inflates to pay the bills. 143 00:15:37.000 --> 00:15:52.000 So they were very interested in monetary questions, in war questions, very worried about what's going to happen, worried about, all of them I must say were outraged by the attacks on Murtha. 144 00:15:52.000 --> 00:15:56.000 They all liked Murtha and thought he was a significant guy. 145 00:15:56.000 --> 00:16:18.000 John Murtha, the congressman from Pennsylvania, who had said it was time to get out. The war was lost, and when he said this, Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and all the rest of them immediately smeared him as a coward and a traitor and a bum, probably in the pay of a sum of a lot, I'm kidding of course, but that was sort of the implication. 146 00:16:48.000 --> 00:16:53.000 and so forth. And we should have a debate. It's okay to have differing views and so forth. 147 00:16:53.000 --> 00:16:59.000 There has of course never been a debate in Washington in this war. The House and the Senate never held a debate on the war, ever. 148 00:16:59.000 --> 00:17:08.000 In fact, some of these guys are trying to do various parliamentary maneuvers to try to bring about a debate that involves pro-war people as well as anti-war people. 149 00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:15.000 But of course they don't want a debate for the fact that they've got nothing to say, except you're a traitor for wanting to question me. 150 00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:20.160 You know, at some level it's just outrageous though, isn't it? I mean, how long has the 151 00:17:20.160 --> 00:17:30.160 war been going on now? Very long time. And for people to be only now insisting, you know, 152 00:17:30.160 --> 00:17:36.880 that the thing be debated and that some decisive action be taken to rectify what are obvious 153 00:17:36.880 --> 00:17:37.880 injustices. 154 00:17:37.880 --> 00:17:43.600 Yes, of course it's true, but the whole point of it, one of the great things about a war 155 00:17:43.600 --> 00:17:46.760 The war from the state standpoint is where they get to shut everybody up, that saying 156 00:17:46.760 --> 00:17:52.300 anything counter to the official line makes you a traitor. 157 00:17:52.300 --> 00:17:57.340 Also I just want to mention one other thing, Merther said that I think set them back after 158 00:17:57.340 --> 00:18:02.920 Cheney went after him as a traitor and a bum and a terrorist, pro-terrorist and so forth. 159 00:18:02.920 --> 00:18:07.040 He said he didn't like being instructed by a guy who had taken five deferments during 160 00:18:07.040 --> 00:18:12.480 Vietnam about who should be going to get killed in the war and telling him who had actually 161 00:18:42.480 --> 00:18:50.980 People who use drugs into prison, whereas he himself, of course, feels that he should be able to use drugs and nothing would happen to him. 162 00:18:50.980 --> 00:18:57.480 So the fact that people are all such hypocrites is actually helpful. 163 00:18:57.480 --> 00:19:03.480 But did you say anything that rattled anybody at that Q&A session? 164 00:19:03.480 --> 00:19:08.480 Well, I think I was more radical than any of them, but that's why I was there. 165 00:19:08.480 --> 00:19:38.480 I'm not there so that I'm for a gold coin standard and while they're all for less inflation except for the exception of Ron Paul and I'm for, I think the only thing we can do in Iraq is stop doing evil things, there's actually nothing good to be done, all we can do is get out, we can't actually fix the place, we can't stop a civil war from happening which is happening right now anyway, 166 00:19:38.480 --> 00:19:46.480 I think the U.S. is not at all unhappy with that, but that we just have to stop doing 167 00:19:46.480 --> 00:19:49.540 bad things. That's the only thing that we can look to the government to do, whether 168 00:19:49.540 --> 00:19:55.000 it's in Iraq, whether it's with the Federal Reserve, whether it's with regulation or spending, 169 00:19:55.000 --> 00:20:01.000 taxation, whatever. We should never look to them. In fact, this was the subject of a talk 170 00:20:01.000 --> 00:20:05.980 that I litigated the same day to Congressional aides. We can't look to the government trying 171 00:20:05.980 --> 00:20:20.980 Your comment implies that what seems to be the case, the biggest reservation about an 172 00:20:20.980 --> 00:20:27.580 immediate pullout is precisely that people worry that the whole of Iraq will just collapse 173 00:20:27.580 --> 00:20:34.380 into just an uncontrollable chaos and this would spread and would result in mass violence 174 00:20:34.380 --> 00:20:38.220 in the U.S. would somehow catch the blame for this. So, your comment then addresses 175 00:20:38.220 --> 00:20:41.780 that point that you don't think that that would be the result or there's nothing we 176 00:20:41.780 --> 00:20:48.340 can do to that? Well, I just, I don't, there is mass violence, there is mass chaos. People 177 00:20:48.340 --> 00:20:52.820 are still, you know, everybody's unemployed. There's, of course, a huge regime of price 178 00:20:52.820 --> 00:20:56.540 controls and other kinds of interventions the U.S. has put into place in Iraq. There's 179 00:20:56.540 --> 00:21:00.660 still gasoline price controls. So they've got long lines to get gasoline. Here's a 180 00:21:00.660 --> 00:21:05.660 The Federal Reserve is a country that's second only to Saudi Arabia for its known oil reserves. 181 00:21:05.660 --> 00:21:08.660 They've created a shortage of gasoline. 182 00:21:08.660 --> 00:21:11.660 It's a lot like the Soviets in Afghanistan, isn't it? 183 00:21:11.660 --> 00:21:14.660 Of course, there's an underground economy. 184 00:21:14.660 --> 00:21:24.660 One of the things a lot of young boys do is they get these jerry cans that hold five or ten gallons of gasoline, very heavy of course, 185 00:21:24.660 --> 00:21:54.660 The U.S. does is arrest these kids. The soldiers arrest these kids for the economic crime of selling gasoline outside the approved system. It's definitely Soviet. The soldiers, I mean, it's not their idea. They're being told what to do. The whole thing is a disaster. We can stop killing people. We can stop killing people. We can stop killing people. 186 00:21:54.660 --> 00:22:24.660 I think that's about all we can do. Is there going to be a civil war there? Maybe. I don't know. I mean, it's the fact that the U.S. has set up, in effect, a Kurdish slash Shiite government that's going after the Sunnis for the things they feel the Sunnis did to them in past years. That's already happened. Most of the violence, of course, in Iraq is directed at the U.S. as the occupiers. If we got out, that would end. What else would happen? We don't know. 187 00:22:24.660 --> 00:22:38.660 Probably half people are unemployed, half the people would like jobs, can't get jobs, there's no electricity, the whole thing is very, very bad. 188 00:22:38.660 --> 00:22:50.660 None of the oil is being produced, we've made a desert and called it peace, we've made a desert and called it freedom, but it's not. 189 00:22:50.660 --> 00:22:56.660 And of course the answer is also not foreign aid, as some liberals think. I mean, foreign aid is also itself, of course, an imperial action. 190 00:22:56.660 --> 00:22:58.660 No, they don't seem to understand that. 191 00:22:58.660 --> 00:23:09.660 It's actually that that's the U.S. controlling things for the benefit of the U.S. state, its puppets in Iraq, big business in this country and favorite business interests in Iraq, ripping off the American people, ripping off the Iraqi people. 192 00:23:09.660 --> 00:23:12.660 We don't want foreign aid there or anyplace else. 193 00:23:12.660 --> 00:23:24.660 So, true bad things may happen, but I don't think we can buy the stupid Colin Powell analogy that he refers to as the Pottery Barn rule that if you break it, you own it. 194 00:23:24.660 --> 00:23:30.660 First of all, that's not the Pottery Barn rule. That's not the way Pottery Barn runs its business. 195 00:23:30.660 --> 00:23:36.660 But I always think of it as a case of, it's always useful to put these things on a more local level. 196 00:23:36.660 --> 00:23:44.660 If the police end up wrecking somebody's house looking for a criminal and maybe they capture the criminal and then they wreck the house, then they own the house? 197 00:23:44.660 --> 00:23:49.660 And they can tell you how to live and the other people in the house? No, you can't. That's just ridiculous. 198 00:23:49.660 --> 00:23:58.660 All we can do is stop doing evil. Internationally or domestically, there may very well be more bad things to happen in Iraq. 199 00:23:58.660 --> 00:24:03.660 But let's look at what the U.S. has already achieved in Iraq in terms of bad things through our intervention. 200 00:24:03.660 --> 00:24:08.660 First of all, there was the first, President Bush, the first attack on Iraq. 201 00:24:08.660 --> 00:24:12.660 We don't know how many civilians killed, probably 100,000 civilians killed. 202 00:24:12.660 --> 00:24:17.660 Then he imposed the starvation blockade that Clinton then continued. 203 00:24:17.660 --> 00:24:21.660 Twelve years, we don't know how many people were killed. 204 00:24:21.660 --> 00:24:32.660 During the Clinton years, Madeleine Albright admitted that the figure was probably 500,000 children and old people killed by starvation. 205 00:24:32.660 --> 00:24:37.660 She said it was worth it in an attempt to overthrow Saddam. The thing went on much longer. 206 00:24:37.660 --> 00:24:42.660 Some people think maybe a million people were killed by our starvation blockade. 207 00:24:42.660 --> 00:24:48.660 It's not often talked about, but right at the end of the first Gulf War, the U.S. deliberately bombed 208 00:24:48.660 --> 00:24:54.660 every single sewage treatment plant in Iraq, and then forbade any chemicals, chlorine, other chemicals, 209 00:24:54.660 --> 00:24:59.660 water purifying chemicals from being imported into the country, deliberately attempting to cause disease. 210 00:24:59.660 --> 00:25:29.660 The US government did that. Now, again, we've had at least 100,000 innocent civilian casualties, and not to speak of all the insurgents that were killed, the American soldiers that were killed, the whole mountain of skulls the US has created in Iraq. So the idea that this same bunch should be able to stay there to make things better, I think is just implausible, and really, we just have to get out. 211 00:25:29.660 --> 00:25:36.660 You believe that, too, concerning various plans. It seemed somewhat plausible to divide the country up, split it up into various pieces. 212 00:25:36.660 --> 00:25:38.660 Well, that may very well happen, right? 213 00:25:38.660 --> 00:25:40.660 But it should just happen, it should. 214 00:25:40.660 --> 00:25:43.660 Well, I think, yeah, it should not be up to us to decide, because there'd be some... 215 00:25:43.660 --> 00:25:49.660 The U.S. ... tough for some, as people understand, the U.S. is not a charitable institution, the U.S. government. 216 00:25:49.660 --> 00:25:53.660 So that even though it might be claiming to break up the country for freedom or whatever, 217 00:25:53.660 --> 00:25:57.660 there would be various other things happening in terms of the U.S. wanting to have control. 218 00:25:57.660 --> 00:26:00.660 We also have to relinquish all the military bases we've got there. 219 00:26:00.660 --> 00:26:05.660 The first act of the Coalition Provisional Authority after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein 220 00:26:05.660 --> 00:26:09.660 was to sign an agreement between itself and the U.S. government, 221 00:26:09.660 --> 00:26:11.660 as if these were two different entities, 222 00:26:11.660 --> 00:26:17.660 setting up 14 huge permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq forever. 223 00:26:17.660 --> 00:26:21.660 So this is one of the reasons why the Iraqis don't believe that the U.S. intends to ever get out. 224 00:26:21.660 --> 00:26:28.660 This is why the insurgents believe that the US intends to be there permanently. 225 00:26:28.660 --> 00:26:34.660 These bases are being built by Halliburton right now and similar military contractors. 226 00:26:34.660 --> 00:26:40.660 Some of them are thousands of square miles. 227 00:26:40.660 --> 00:26:44.660 We need to stop it. 228 00:26:44.660 --> 00:26:47.660 It may very well be that there should be three different countries. 229 00:26:47.660 --> 00:26:49.660 Maybe there should be 33 different countries. 230 00:26:49.660 --> 00:26:53.660 I don't actually know. I'm all for breaking it up. I think that's a great thing. 231 00:26:53.660 --> 00:26:58.660 On the other hand, it's not really true that Iraq was formed by the British Empire. 232 00:26:58.660 --> 00:27:04.660 I mean, that region of the world, which is pretty much equivalent to Mesopotamia, 233 00:27:04.660 --> 00:27:09.660 has been a coherent region for many thousands of years. 234 00:27:09.660 --> 00:27:11.660 So maybe it wouldn't break up, maybe it would break up. 235 00:27:11.660 --> 00:27:15.660 Maybe there would be several Kurdish states. Maybe there would be several Shiite states. 236 00:27:15.660 --> 00:27:43.660 The Shiite states. Maybe the Sunnis and the Shiites would end up being together. Who knows. A very interesting figure, Maqdur al-Sadr, who even though he's a Shiite, is very much an Iraqi nationalist and rejects religious, even though he's a religious leader himself, rejects religious bias in the new government and wants actually a more secular government. 237 00:27:43.660 --> 00:27:47.200 So there's all kinds of interesting things. The one thing we can be sure of is that we 238 00:27:47.200 --> 00:27:52.440 don't know anything. None of us know anything about Iraq, the history of Iraq, the tribal 239 00:27:52.440 --> 00:27:58.180 questions, ethnic questions, religious questions. And it's not just, because of course the Kurds 240 00:27:58.180 --> 00:28:05.180 are Sunnis. The Kurds are ethnically different. They're not Arabs, but they're Sunni Muslims. 241 00:28:05.180 --> 00:28:13.180 So anyway, there are all kinds of very interesting degrees of complexity that absolutely no American 242 00:28:13.180 --> 00:28:17.780 And none of which seemed to have occurred at all to the Bush administration when they first 243 00:28:17.780 --> 00:28:24.220 went in there. They seemed to accept the line from some of the Iraqi dissidents that all 244 00:28:24.220 --> 00:28:29.100 you'd have to do is go in and get rid of the dictator and then peace and freedom for all 245 00:28:29.100 --> 00:28:30.500 would just break out immediately. 246 00:28:30.500 --> 00:28:34.460 Well, you know, I know they said that. I don't think they actually believe that. I think 247 00:28:34.460 --> 00:28:40.780 that they have, I think that these people, when we think of them as neoconservatives, 248 00:28:40.780 --> 00:28:51.660 which is sometimes a useful term have an almost religious belief in the ability of force to 249 00:28:51.660 --> 00:28:56.540 accomplish things. They believe that put the gun to the guy's head and everything will 250 00:28:56.540 --> 00:29:03.660 be okay. Bombs and bullets will shape society exactly as they want it to be shaped and that's 251 00:29:03.660 --> 00:29:07.580 what they thought would do it. So that was, I think, the great illusion. I don't think 252 00:29:07.580 --> 00:29:11.580 I think that was just propaganda for the American people to get us into the war. 253 00:29:11.580 --> 00:29:17.580 No conquered people throw flowers in the feet of the conqueror. It just doesn't happen. 254 00:29:17.580 --> 00:29:22.580 People don't want to be ruled by foreigners. 255 00:29:22.580 --> 00:29:30.580 Even if one might say from some other perspective that some of the former British colonies were better off being run by the British 256 00:29:30.580 --> 00:29:36.580 than by their local leaders in one sense, but people don't want that. 257 00:29:36.580 --> 00:30:06.580 Here we are in Alabama, and I think, let's say, a country that were freer than the United States, Switzerland or Hong Kong or Singapore or whatever, conquered Alabama and was going to fix us up and make us freer, and we certainly could be a lot freer, what would the average, and then of course, in these cases wouldn't necessarily, if it's Switzerland, wouldn't be the case where we would have people who are as foreign as we are in Iraq, linguistically, religiously, 258 00:30:06.580 --> 00:30:12.580 Ethnically and historically, and every other sense, sense foreign. 259 00:30:12.580 --> 00:30:16.580 Let's say we had English speaking Swiss people came here and were running Alabama. 260 00:30:16.580 --> 00:30:21.580 Would the average young Alabama guy, who's of course well armed as a hunter and otherwise, 261 00:30:21.580 --> 00:30:23.580 would he be saluting and doing what the Swiss said? 262 00:30:23.580 --> 00:30:26.580 Or would he be heading to the woods and taking pot shots at them? 263 00:30:26.580 --> 00:30:29.580 I think we know the answer to that. That's the way human beings are. 264 00:30:29.580 --> 00:30:32.580 And I don't agree with that. 265 00:30:32.580 --> 00:30:38.580 I don't think that, I wish the people in Iraq were using a non-violent form of resistance. 266 00:30:38.580 --> 00:30:44.580 I don't like the fact that they're, I don't, it's, it's, it's not good in many, many different, 267 00:30:44.580 --> 00:30:50.580 different grounds to be killing people. It's not a good thing. 268 00:30:50.580 --> 00:30:54.580 But that's the way people react. People don't want to be governed by foreigners. 269 00:30:54.580 --> 00:30:58.580 That's why colonialism is one of the reasons colonialism doesn't work. 270 00:30:58.580 --> 00:31:04.580 Maybe you could say that the English did a better job of running India than certainly the Indians until the present time. 271 00:31:04.580 --> 00:31:11.580 Socialists, Nehru and maybe the Maharajas before, maybe in some sense the English were more progressive in a good sense. 272 00:31:11.580 --> 00:31:21.580 They stamped out the thugi cults where they had a religion that would kill people, pick up travelers and kill them as a religious right for the goddess Kali. 273 00:31:21.580 --> 00:31:24.580 Well, you know, the British got rid of that. 274 00:31:24.580 --> 00:31:30.580 But still the Indians like to be run by themselves. They don't want guys from London telling them what to do. 275 00:31:30.580 --> 00:31:35.580 And that's human beings. The Iraqis don't want us telling them what to do. 276 00:31:35.580 --> 00:31:38.580 People in Alabama wouldn't want the Swiss telling them what to do. 277 00:31:38.580 --> 00:31:42.580 In fact, those of us in Alabama don't want Washington telling us what to do, by the way, guys. 278 00:31:42.580 --> 00:31:46.580 This relates to the topic of your talk later in the day. 279 00:31:46.580 --> 00:31:50.580 Yeah. Ron also asked me to talk to congressional aides. 280 00:31:50.580 --> 00:31:55.580 So they sent out an invitation to the various offices and virtually no Republican aides came, very interesting. 281 00:31:55.580 --> 00:32:04.580 There were some outside visitors, Jim Beauvoir, the wonderful libertarian author who's got a new book coming out, was there, and other friends. 282 00:32:04.580 --> 00:32:08.580 But most of the Congressional aides who were there were from Democratic offices. 283 00:32:08.580 --> 00:32:13.580 Some of them were greatly outraged to find out that I was supposed to welfare, for example. 284 00:32:13.580 --> 00:32:17.580 A couple of them stalked out of the room. 285 00:32:17.580 --> 00:32:22.340 but I would say most people were interested and pretty much what I what I 286 00:32:22.340 --> 00:32:27.020 talked about was the title of the talk was in the impossibility of of imposed 287 00:32:27.020 --> 00:32:33.980 freedom and that part of the that the right-wing response to the left of the 288 00:32:33.980 --> 00:32:38.500 left obviously thinks you have to have total government control in order to 289 00:32:38.500 --> 00:32:44.260 prevent discrimination or poverty or unfairness and all the rest of the things 290 00:32:44.260 --> 00:33:01.260 The Republicans, too, sometimes the right seems to think that we need the government using market-based incentives to run the economy and society to fulfill the government's goals for us. 291 00:33:01.260 --> 00:33:31.260 Let's take, for example, the whole question of social security. A horrible program instituted by Franklin Roosevelt based on the original horrible program instituted by Bismarck in Germany, Bismarck, sort of the Lincoln of Germany, a guy who crushed the freedom of the various German states, united them into a single state for war purposes and one of the things he thought would help with this and help him circumvent the opposition of the left was to 292 00:34:01.260 --> 00:34:08.260 has a much poorer people, it's set up all kinds of very bad incentives, it's promoted 293 00:34:08.260 --> 00:34:12.740 the rotten idea of retirement, the ridiculous evil idea that men and women should stop working 294 00:34:12.740 --> 00:34:19.880 at age 65 and just vegetate on a golf course and stop contributing to society as productive 295 00:34:19.880 --> 00:34:29.760 members of the economy and as leaders among society. So this has been a terrible program, 296 00:34:29.760 --> 00:34:38.560 has caused vast amounts of resources to be transferred from productive investment uses 297 00:34:38.560 --> 00:34:46.280 in the economy into consumption. It's made people feel they don't need to provide for 298 00:34:46.280 --> 00:34:52.580 their old age because the government is going to take care of them. So now we're starting 299 00:34:52.580 --> 00:34:57.420 to see as the taxes go up and up and there are fewer and fewer working people versus the 300 00:34:57.420 --> 00:35:02.760 The people who are receiving social security becomes a cry for reform. People realize that there has to be something done. 301 00:35:03.040 --> 00:35:08.140 So what are the republicans and the DC types come up with? 302 00:35:08.520 --> 00:35:11.700 Well, it's have privatized social security, but which they don't mean, by the way. 303 00:35:11.900 --> 00:35:18.180 They've distorted the word privatization. They don't mean the idea of the government withdrawing from areas of the economy 304 00:35:18.400 --> 00:35:23.860 or society it's not controlling, but they mean the government running us in a new way for its own benefit. 305 00:35:23.860 --> 00:35:29.860 So the privatized social security, so called, would have set up a whole new system of forced savings 306 00:35:29.860 --> 00:35:34.860 and enable the government to control the stock market to a greater extent than it does, 307 00:35:34.860 --> 00:35:37.860 to control all of our lives to a greater extent than it does, 308 00:35:37.860 --> 00:35:43.860 have vastly increased spending, vastly increased deficits in the name of freedom and privatization. 309 00:35:43.860 --> 00:35:45.860 In other words, just a lie and a crime. 310 00:35:45.860 --> 00:35:51.860 So this is the Republican response to the left-wing social security. 311 00:35:51.860 --> 00:35:56.740 both are wrong and all I've tried to make the point that in what I think is the Jeffersonian point 312 00:35:56.740 --> 00:36:00.180 that liberty is not something to be imposed or given to us by the government 313 00:36:00.180 --> 00:36:04.660 but it's something that is natural it's a natural right and what we want is the government to not 314 00:36:04.660 --> 00:36:08.740 interfere with our liberties that's what our focus has to be on but we can't ever look to the 315 00:36:08.740 --> 00:36:14.020 government to give us freedom because it won't give us freedom it'll give us a counterfeit freedom 316 00:36:14.020 --> 00:36:19.020 It'll give us a yoke with another name on it. 317 00:36:19.020 --> 00:36:27.020 It does seem to be a critique of a certain brand of liberalism or neoliberalism, doesn't it? 318 00:36:27.020 --> 00:36:36.020 The Chicago School of Economics seems to think that you can kind of use the courts to establish a more perfect market economy. 319 00:36:36.020 --> 00:36:42.260 economy, and there's so many proposals out there that you would have Congress pass this 320 00:36:42.260 --> 00:36:51.260 or that bill to secure private property rights from invasion, from local governments, these 321 00:36:51.260 --> 00:36:53.420 are the kinds of plans you're referring to then? 322 00:36:53.420 --> 00:36:58.620 Sure, and I'm sure you're exactly right about the Chicago school, and we have a lot of libertarians 323 00:36:58.620 --> 00:37:28.620 is sort of advocating that in effect a judge rules society and the judges in making use of the Chicago School idea should define property rights and as they think brings about efficiency, economic efficiency, of course as Austrians we know that efficiency only has meaning in a subjective sense, I mean what's efficient for the property owner? What do they want to do with their property? That's obviously the correct position. 324 00:37:28.620 --> 00:37:58.620 The idea that judges, notice in common parlance too, I mean some people think judges are not part of the government, but they somehow stand apart from the government, of course they represent the government, they're part of the government, and Hans Hoppe has done some wonderful work on this to remind us that when you have the government, when you have an institution having a monopoly of justice, you've got problems. 325 00:37:58.620 --> 00:38:14.620 So it's why one of the things I tried to talk about was how wonderful the whole private arbitration movement is, in fact private courts in so many states handling so many commercial disputes and bringing actual justices versus the government courts leading. 326 00:38:14.620 --> 00:38:26.620 I must say one young lady who was with Congressman John Conyers office, to stalk out of the room, one of the things they did was they gave out copies of Speaking of Liberty to any of the congressional aides who came. 327 00:38:26.620 --> 00:38:32.220 and she this is your book yeah she tossed back the book to the Ron Paul's 328 00:38:32.220 --> 00:38:37.740 that you had given it to her and just sort of stocked up that would be it so 329 00:38:37.740 --> 00:38:43.860 the other hand I I had one very interesting question from a young man 330 00:38:43.860 --> 00:38:48.880 from Congress and Wexler's office and I congratulated him on being from Wexler's 331 00:38:48.880 --> 00:38:52.700 office Wexler being one of the people who had really not taken a strong any 332 00:38:52.700 --> 00:39:00.940 War Stands, one of the three people who voted to end the war immediately just recently. 333 00:39:00.940 --> 00:39:06.940 So he in his question said, well really aren't you saying, and he said it seemed to him that 334 00:39:06.940 --> 00:39:11.200 that was correct, that the real problem was the central government and that we had less 335 00:39:11.200 --> 00:39:16.880 to fear from the states and the localities, that maybe a decentralized approach was a 336 00:39:16.880 --> 00:39:17.880 better one. 337 00:39:17.880 --> 00:39:21.700 And this guy, by the way, is just, Wexler is sort of, I always thought of him anyway, 338 00:39:21.700 --> 00:39:26.700 I'm now going to have to examine him a little bit more on more than the war issue. 339 00:39:26.700 --> 00:39:39.700 But here was a democratic liberal aide making a great old right Jeffersonian, old conservative libertarian point about the dangers of consolidated government, 340 00:39:39.700 --> 00:39:46.700 a point unfortunately very few Republicans of the non-Ron Paul sort would agree with. 341 00:39:46.700 --> 00:39:48.700 At least not today, ten years ago. 342 00:39:48.700 --> 00:39:52.700 Yeah, but of course it was just a trick ten years ago, right, because Clinton was running the government. 343 00:39:52.700 --> 00:40:02.700 So I think that, you know, by the way, a lot of these, one of these congressmen from Idaho came in and was talking to me about, 344 00:40:02.700 --> 00:40:05.700 yeah, he just read a great book, Tommy Lorenzo's book on Lincoln. 345 00:40:05.700 --> 00:40:11.700 So, right, I mean, there, so he was just thrilled about that was, and of course that's exactly right. 346 00:40:11.700 --> 00:40:15.700 And again, a reminder that, and I say this as somebody who was a Republican all his life 347 00:40:15.700 --> 00:40:45.700 and now not associated with any political party, but the Republican Party was born in big government and big government, big business partnership and suppression of civil liberties and inflation and aggressive war and protectionism and all the rest of the rotten aspects of the Lincoln government and then we have McKinley and the war on Spain and the Taft and the income tax and the occupation, the colonial war against the people in the Philippines. 348 00:40:45.700 --> 00:40:49.220 They don't know how many, nobody but no American knows about this. 349 00:40:49.220 --> 00:40:54.620 Probably the U.S. government killed 200,000 Philippine civilians for the crime of wanting 350 00:40:54.620 --> 00:40:55.620 to run their own country. 351 00:40:55.620 --> 00:40:59.260 They didn't want to be run by Spain, there was a big revolt against Spain. 352 00:40:59.260 --> 00:41:01.780 They didn't want to be run by the Americans out there. 353 00:41:01.780 --> 00:41:11.260 And the U.S., it's where we got the whole program of strategic villages and concentration 354 00:41:11.260 --> 00:41:18.380 Prison camps and the sense of prison camps, just a horrific anti-guerrilla war in the 355 00:41:18.380 --> 00:41:23.540 Philippines and the U.S. of course held the Philippines as a colony until after, until 356 00:41:23.540 --> 00:41:27.940 the Japanese took it away and then the U.S. got it back but then they have to thank goodness 357 00:41:27.940 --> 00:41:32.380 let it go at the end of World War II. 358 00:41:32.380 --> 00:41:35.780 Filipinos didn't want to be run by the Americans any more than the Iraqis did. 359 00:41:35.780 --> 00:41:39.140 This unfortunately the Republican Party, and then we think of Herbert Hoover, well I must 360 00:41:39.140 --> 00:41:44.260 Let's say he was pretty darn good on foreign policy, but really started the new deals Murray 361 00:41:44.260 --> 00:41:51.100 Rothbard showed so eloquently in his book on the Great Depression. 362 00:41:51.100 --> 00:41:54.180 So unfortunately the Republican Party's got a bad history. 363 00:41:54.180 --> 00:41:58.860 Then there are great people as an opposition to Roosevelt and of course Taft and the great 364 00:41:58.860 --> 00:42:03.580 Howard Buffett, Warren Buffett's father who was a congressman from Nebraska, opposed the 365 00:42:03.580 --> 00:42:08.720 Cold War, opposed the Korean War, a friend of Murray Rothbard's. 366 00:42:08.720 --> 00:42:18.720 I don't know if they're great Republicans, but they've been in the minority, so I'm afraid that the Bush regime actually is the real Republican Party, not a... 367 00:42:18.720 --> 00:42:19.720 But still, it's striking... 368 00:42:19.720 --> 00:42:24.720 Any more than the Democratic Party is not the party of Jefferson, just in case anybody would think that in this case. 369 00:42:24.720 --> 00:42:31.720 But ten years ago, you're making a case against nation building internationally, nation building domestically, too. 370 00:42:31.720 --> 00:42:35.720 But these same points were being made by all the anti-Clintonites. 371 00:42:35.720 --> 00:42:42.280 I saw a great quote from Tom DeLay the other day during the Bosnian War, and he's denouncing 372 00:42:42.280 --> 00:42:47.440 Clinton for not having set a timetable and for not having a nexus strategy, for not defining 373 00:42:47.440 --> 00:42:50.240 what victory is, when do you know you've accomplished what. 374 00:42:50.240 --> 00:42:55.080 All the kinds of questions that are of course considered Osama bin Laden-ish to ask today 375 00:42:55.080 --> 00:43:00.120 of the Bush government, these guys were all asking of Clinton. 376 00:43:00.120 --> 00:43:05.920 Well, you'd think that you would hope that, with the left studying the Bush administration 377 00:43:05.920 --> 00:43:13.120 so carefully, that the left would draw broader lessons from the experience, that you don't 378 00:43:13.120 --> 00:43:17.800 want a mega-state with all of this power because look what it can do to the country, look what 379 00:43:17.800 --> 00:43:20.000 it can do to the world. 380 00:43:20.000 --> 00:43:24.360 But for some reason, the right had the chance to learn that lesson from the experience of 381 00:43:24.360 --> 00:43:26.120 Clinton and it didn't stick. 382 00:43:26.120 --> 00:43:42.120 Yeah, you know, it's true I had a young man write me a few weeks ago and describe himself as a left winger and said that he was now beginning to question whether he really wanted the same government that was running the war in Iraq running him here at home. 383 00:43:42.120 --> 00:44:12.120 The Left, I was listening to driving home last night from the airport to Mike Malloy, who was a left-wing talk show host, great stuff to say about the war, and then he went on in the most unbelievable, I would describe it almost like a Hitler-like or a Stalin-like attack on Wal-Mart. It was just really chilling. It sounded like a problem in the 1930s going after the records. 384 00:44:12.120 --> 00:44:18.360 just horrible so yeah we have our work cut out for us in every sector I guess 385 00:44:18.360 --> 00:44:22.360 well after being in Washington for for a couple of days did you have any regrets 386 00:44:22.360 --> 00:44:27.880 that the Mises Institute doesn't have Capitol Hill headquarters no of course 387 00:44:27.880 --> 00:44:33.560 the the city has become the how shall I say the concrete barrier cop capital of 388 00:44:33.560 --> 00:44:38.160 the world I mean all these former streets are shut off with guards and 389 00:44:38.160 --> 00:44:47.620 with Barriers, and of course the thing is a cop afoot. I mean all over Washington they've 390 00:44:47.620 --> 00:44:54.800 expanded the Capitol Hill police by some unbelievable percentage and I must say it looks like they 391 00:44:54.800 --> 00:45:04.240 hired people for what a surprise on political reasons rather than, how shall I say this, 392 00:45:04.240 --> 00:45:09.080 Rather than for reasons of ability to say chase somebody down, I mean there were a lot 393 00:45:09.080 --> 00:45:13.000 of people who didn't seem like they had sort of the normal, which we think of as the policemen 394 00:45:13.000 --> 00:45:22.000 body shape, who were just standing around and soaking up tax dollars and making trouble 395 00:45:22.000 --> 00:45:27.880 and stopping people and the whole place is very unpleasant and on the other hand there's 396 00:45:27.880 --> 00:45:33.480 another unpleasant aspect to it, if you sort of in the outserts of the district, vast building 397 00:45:33.480 --> 00:45:40.000 going on, vast shopping malls, so of course they're sucking in all the money from the 398 00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:47.000 country and the world and living it up. I was put at the Pentagon Sheridan where as 399 00:45:48.240 --> 00:45:53.880 far as I could tell I was the only non-CIA guy in the hotel and right there is this huge 400 00:45:53.880 --> 00:46:00.880 Pentagon shopping mall and they all are living very well, they live very well. It's the most 401 00:46:00.880 --> 00:46:06.880 It lived very well. It's the most prosperous part of the country. But of course, they're all parasites. 402 00:46:06.880 --> 00:46:18.880 And it's one of the things we hope to do at the Mises Institute is try to protect and talk about the importance of the producers as versus the parasites. 403 00:46:18.880 --> 00:46:25.880 And businessmen as versus politicians. And when you're in that place, it's definitely the political capital. 404 00:46:25.880 --> 00:46:43.560 You know, did you have a sense when you were there that as you were saying these things, 405 00:46:43.560 --> 00:46:51.880 as you were speaking and talking to the audience of general shock or relief to finally hear 406 00:46:51.880 --> 00:47:17.400 I think they sort of knew they were going to hear something different. I would say some people were shocked. Some people were interested. Some people were glad to hear a different perspective. There were some conservative, retired bureaucrats there from various agencies who all thought they were going to hear, I think, a simpatico presentation. One of them was a bit of a 407 00:47:17.400 --> 00:47:22.480 they were going to hear I think a simpatico presentation and one of them was a big fan 408 00:47:22.480 --> 00:47:31.480 of distributivism, economic ideas of Chesterton and Bellwau and were shocked to find out that 409 00:47:31.480 --> 00:47:36.840 they didn't hear a sympathetic presentation. So sort of the old, I remember some of the 410 00:47:36.840 --> 00:47:40.840 old conservatives I remember from Washington, doesn't mean they aren't fine people, but 411 00:47:40.840 --> 00:47:47.380 there's something bad about living off others by force, it has a bad effect on you. People 412 00:47:47.380 --> 00:48:04.380 People have been lifetime bureaucrats, they may start out good, they may be still decent people, they're not beating their wife or robbing the bank or whatever, but still there's a, really if we care for, if we exercise a form of Christian love towards the bureaucrats and want the best thing for them, we have to make them get a job. 413 00:48:04.380 --> 00:48:13.380 I mean in fact that's what I said to all these congressional aides, get a job, get off the payroll, become producers, contribute to society, don't be parasites. 414 00:48:13.380 --> 00:48:18.380 So, you know, people, I didn't put in quite those terms, but that's in effect what I would say. 415 00:48:18.380 --> 00:48:23.380 But it's a strange aspect of Washington culture that people on the outside don't entirely understand, 416 00:48:23.380 --> 00:48:30.380 just how isolated sometimes it seems that people who live and work in Washington 417 00:48:30.380 --> 00:48:37.380 really are from any kind of productive activity, any kind of real world setting. 418 00:48:37.380 --> 00:48:41.380 I mean, inside the Beltway, it does have its own kind of internal culture of isolated culture. 419 00:48:41.380 --> 00:48:47.380 Yeah, it does. And you get that when you look at the Washington Post, which is like a house organ, like a company house organ. 420 00:48:47.380 --> 00:48:54.380 I mean, it's very different from a regular newspaper. And looking at the Washington Post helps remind you of this. 421 00:48:54.380 --> 00:48:59.380 And when I was flying home, I was sitting behind two people who were talking very loudly. 422 00:48:59.380 --> 00:49:07.380 One man who had some job at the White House, not a political job, but in some sense of some sort of catering manager or something like that. 423 00:49:07.380 --> 00:49:14.380 Women worked for some other aspect of the government, and I remember him, they were saying to her, laughing, and said, 424 00:49:14.380 --> 00:49:18.380 Well, we can sure agree the government exists for one purpose, to employ us. 425 00:49:18.380 --> 00:49:21.380 And she laughed, she said, that's right. 426 00:49:21.380 --> 00:49:25.380 And I didn't pour my coke in their head or anything, right? 427 00:49:25.380 --> 00:49:34.380 I was good, but I thought that's, you know, so they are, but it's differently, they're very much apart, they're a very strange breed. 428 00:49:34.380 --> 00:49:42.380 I've spent time in Washington. I worked for the honor of working for Ron Paul, which was a great experience. 429 00:49:42.380 --> 00:49:46.380 But I was reminded of all the things that I dislike about Washington. 430 00:49:46.380 --> 00:49:50.380 It's been a long time since I've been there. It'll be a long time since before I go there again. 431 00:49:50.380 --> 00:49:55.380 But they're happy to live off of us. It's not in their own interests. 432 00:49:55.380 --> 00:50:16.380 Do you think it's extraordinary, given that, at least according to the official statistics, the economy is not in terrible shape? 433 00:50:16.380 --> 00:50:24.380 Things are growing, the inflation is rising on the producer level, but it's not terrible on the consumer price level. 434 00:50:24.380 --> 00:50:29.100 and Consumer Price Level, unemployment is low, that you would have the public opinion 435 00:50:29.100 --> 00:50:34.900 in polls so expressing such discontent right now with the federal government. 436 00:50:34.900 --> 00:50:38.500 Yeah, I think of course part of it is the war, but I think it's because the economy 437 00:50:38.500 --> 00:50:41.340 is not actually as good as the statistics would legitimately believe. 438 00:50:41.340 --> 00:50:46.220 I mean part of the statistics would tell us that the gross domestic product is increasing 439 00:50:46.220 --> 00:50:51.060 and isn't that great, but of course as we know one of the problems with the GDP statistic 440 00:50:51.060 --> 00:51:04.060 The thing is that as government spending increases, the GDP goes up even though that's not only not a, as Rothbard pointed out, not only an indicator of increased prosperity, it's an indicator of decreased prosperity. 441 00:51:04.060 --> 00:51:14.060 So when New Orleans is destroyed and the government is going to rebuild it, that's considered economically a great thing from the standpoint of the GDP and people who pay attention to those statistics. 442 00:51:14.060 --> 00:51:21.060 It's actually a very bad thing. It's economically a bad thing. So it's not actually a good thing to destroy property, even though you're able to rebuild it. 443 00:51:21.060 --> 00:51:29.060 Hazlitt, and of course this is the constant Austrian message, that we're not paying attention to what might have happened to that money and those resources otherwise. 444 00:51:29.060 --> 00:51:36.060 So I think, I don't agree with Paul Krugman on many things except the war. 445 00:51:36.060 --> 00:51:38.480 He had a good column recently about 446 00:51:38.480 --> 00:51:40.620 median family income 447 00:51:40.620 --> 00:51:44.740 being down again 448 00:51:44.740 --> 00:51:46.900 people are struggling 449 00:51:46.900 --> 00:51:49.480 so even though the official employment statistics 450 00:51:49.480 --> 00:51:51.420 are looking pretty good even though 451 00:51:51.420 --> 00:51:54.700 the official CPI statistics which are also 452 00:51:54.700 --> 00:51:58.340 I think don't at all indicate what's actually going on, any of us who go to 453 00:51:58.340 --> 00:51:59.800 do grocery shopping 454 00:51:59.800 --> 00:52:00.900 realize that 455 00:52:00.900 --> 00:52:04.140 prices are going up at a faster rate than the government claims they are 456 00:52:04.140 --> 00:52:08.140 So I think people are picking up on this, and of course they're worried again about the future. 457 00:52:08.140 --> 00:52:12.140 They may have a job today they're worried about, but maybe they have a job, don't have a job a year from now. 458 00:52:12.140 --> 00:52:16.140 And of course one of the things the Bush government has done by increasing the government 459 00:52:16.140 --> 00:52:23.140 in sort of LBJ, FDR terms, I mean the amount of increased spending has been just horrific. 460 00:52:23.140 --> 00:52:28.140 And even though they're all living it up in Washington, they're all having a great time. 461 00:52:28.140 --> 00:52:35.140 and fancy restaurants, mansions of all the limos and it's a far wealthier area than say Beverly Hills or whatever. 462 00:52:35.140 --> 00:52:40.140 I mean you can't believe it. They're all in it, so unlike Beverly Hills, entirely parasitic. 463 00:52:40.140 --> 00:52:49.140 So they're all doing great, but this is so destabilizing and deep, destroys economic growth, destroys prosperity, 464 00:52:49.140 --> 00:52:56.140 everything the government is doing and it's because it's stepped up things at such an amazing rate under the Bush administration, 465 00:53:26.140 --> 00:53:31.900 Magnificent things going on, entrepreneurs are still doing wonderful things, many American 466 00:53:31.900 --> 00:53:36.240 industries are growing and producing magnificent products, the constant battle of the market 467 00:53:36.240 --> 00:53:40.380 against the government, I think in many ways the market is winning, and certainly the market 468 00:53:40.380 --> 00:53:46.020 will win, but the government is capable of amazing damage, and they're doing damage right 469 00:53:46.020 --> 00:53:47.500 now, and I think people pick up on that. 470 00:53:47.500 --> 00:53:50.880 I was going to say, when you're talking about positive things, the extraordinary growth 471 00:53:50.880 --> 00:53:55.660 of international trade and the expansion of the division of labor into China, Russia, 472 00:53:55.660 --> 00:54:01.820 Eastern Europe. Hasn't that just been astonishing how wonderful that's been for international 473 00:54:01.820 --> 00:54:10.820 productivity and for trade and far beyond I think probably what anybody really expected? 474 00:54:10.820 --> 00:54:17.380 I mean the entry of the Chinese people to the world economy has to be one of the great 475 00:54:17.380 --> 00:54:21.700 events in the entire history of the human race. I mean it's just extraordinary that 476 00:54:21.700 --> 00:54:28.700 We have the Indian people brought in. They weren't kept out in the sense of communism, but they had a very rigid socialist system. 477 00:54:28.700 --> 00:54:32.700 They were kept out. Obviously, the peoples of Russia and Eastern Europe were kept out. 478 00:54:32.700 --> 00:54:36.700 They've all, to one extent or another, come into the world economy. 479 00:54:36.700 --> 00:54:44.700 Very good for them, very good for us, very good for the cause of freedom, for the cause of international amity. 480 00:54:44.700 --> 00:54:49.700 So yes, it's just thrilling. And when you look at what's going on in China, you look at the Chinese cities. 481 00:54:49.700 --> 00:55:19.700 What do you say about a country that, at the time when Nixon was going to China, had vast concentration camps, vast famines, a horrible political regime, maybe the worst of the worst political regimes in the history of the world, since then to have developed a society that still is officially communist, but the corporate income tax is still there, and it's still there, and it's still there, and it's still there, and it's still there, and it's still there, and it's still there, and it's still there. 482 00:55:19.700 --> 00:55:49.700 The tax is at 5%, that's my kind of communism, and the unbelievable prosperity, it's still a poor country overall, but nobody's starving, concentration camps are gone, still a long way to go, but it's been a tremendous, we see it every day when we go to Wal-Mart or whatever, the benefits of trade with China, and even from a political standpoint, the neoconservatives 483 00:55:49.700 --> 00:55:55.700 and the Religious Right were beating the drums for a new war with China just before 9-11. 484 00:55:55.700 --> 00:55:58.460 That was their preferred war of the moment. 485 00:55:58.460 --> 00:56:01.780 They couldn't get away with that, I think, because so many Americans have a stake in 486 00:56:01.780 --> 00:56:07.140 doing business with China, American businessmen and American consumers, and it's Bastiat's 487 00:56:07.140 --> 00:56:08.880 point and Mises's another one. 488 00:56:08.880 --> 00:56:13.460 The free trade, besides bringing increased prosperity, brings increased human friendship 489 00:56:13.460 --> 00:56:16.780 and is an anti-war device. 490 00:56:16.780 --> 00:56:22.040 So it's one of the reasons why those who advocate mercantilism and protectionism are not only 491 00:56:22.040 --> 00:56:27.180 wanting to make us poor and make other people poor, but are in effect promoting warfare 492 00:56:27.180 --> 00:56:32.180 and bombs and killing, as versus human flourishing. 493 00:56:32.180 --> 00:56:39.640 George Reisman went to China a few months ago and blogged a wonderful item on the topic 494 00:56:39.640 --> 00:56:43.780 that very much reflects exactly what you said, and he thought it was one of the great trips 495 00:57:13.780 --> 00:57:28.780 The average Chinese businessman has nothing to do with the government medical system, has private doctors, private hospitals, and that sort of thing, and they advertise for customers. What an amazing thing, actual capitalism. Thrilling. 496 00:57:28.780 --> 00:57:32.620 The average Chinese businessman has nothing to do with the government medical system, 497 00:57:32.620 --> 00:57:36.520 has private doctors, private hospitals, and that sort of thing, and they advertise for 498 00:57:36.520 --> 00:57:37.520 customers. 499 00:57:37.520 --> 00:57:40.060 What an amazing thing, actual capitalism, you know, thrilling. 500 00:57:40.060 --> 00:57:44.740 I hope we don't have to wait till that trip for your next podcast. 501 00:57:44.740 --> 00:57:45.740 Thank you very much.