WEBVTT NOTE Liberalism and Peace 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:21.000 Thank you very much, Dr. Thornton. And I'd like to remind Dr. Thornton that if what is necessary to get a few more minutes for a person's talk is to deliver it with a German accent, I can do that too. 2 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:42.000 Now, it might seem that being pro-peace rather than pro-war is a pretty unexceptionable point of view. 3 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:45.000 Historically, however, that has not been the case. 4 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:50.000 Over the centuries, multitudes of writers and thinkers have idealized war. 5 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:58.000 From the time of the poet Homer on, Homer, who spoke of war, where men win glory. 6 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:05.000 The voices of those who spoke on behalf of peace, on behalf of the people, rather than the warriors, were rarer. 7 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:15.000 For instance, Jesus, of course, who blessed the peacemakers, and the Christian monk Erasmus, who castigated war in vitriolic terms. 8 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:22.000 In modern times, classical liberals and libertarians, and that's what I mean by liberalism in the title of this talk, 9 00:01:22.000 --> 00:01:25.000 have always been in the forefront of the advocates of peace. 10 00:01:25.000 --> 00:01:34.000 Ludwig von Mises in his exposition of liberal doctrine placed peace third right after property and freedom as liberal ideals. 11 00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:40.000 Reversing the rather obscure dictum of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, Mises wrote, 12 00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:44.000 not war but peace is the father of all things. 13 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:52.000 Murray Rothbard's tireless campaign for peace and against war and incitement to war is well known to the readers of his works. 14 00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:59.000 At the time, it caused writers for National Review to accuse Murray of being a communist sympathizer. 15 00:01:59.000 --> 00:02:05.000 Now, I knew Murray Rothbard. Murray Rothbard was a friend of mine. 16 00:02:05.000 --> 00:02:11.000 And one thing I can assure you of, Murray Rothbard was no comm-symp. 17 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:17.000 Extolling peace has characterized those classical liberals usually labeled as the most doctrinaire or dogmatic. 18 00:02:17.000 --> 00:02:22.520 from the early 19th century liberals whose motto was pay et liberté, peace and 19 00:02:22.520 --> 00:02:27.140 liberty, to Frederic Bastiat, who proposed the unilateral disarmament of 20 00:02:27.140 --> 00:02:32.000 France, to Herbert Spencer, the bitter critic of British imperialism and 21 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:37.280 especially of the war against the South African Boers, to Gustav de Molinari, the 22 00:02:37.280 --> 00:02:41.320 conservative anarchist who as Hans mentioned was the first to propose an 23 00:02:41.320 --> 00:02:46.840 end to monopoly government and who condemned Lincoln's war and invasion of 24 00:02:46.840 --> 00:02:52.440 of the South, to the American William Graham Sumner, who declared that McKinley's Splendid 25 00:02:52.440 --> 00:02:58.920 Little War was actually resulting in the conquest of the United States by Spain. 26 00:02:58.920 --> 00:03:03.120 And all through the writings of the founding fathers you can see the same thing. 27 00:03:03.120 --> 00:03:09.720 This is very typical from James Madison, whom my students are surprised to learn had something 28 00:03:09.720 --> 00:03:15.200 to do with the Constitution of the United States. 29 00:03:15.200 --> 00:03:16.200 Madison wrote, 30 00:03:45.200 --> 00:04:05.200 In English-speaking countries, the main grounds for identifying classical liberalism and peace are probably the work of the Manchester School and its leaders, Richard Cobden and John Bright. 31 00:04:05.200 --> 00:04:12.200 Cobden and Bright are best known for their campaign for free trade, which culminated in the repeal of the Corn Laws. 32 00:04:12.200 --> 00:04:17.080 They held that unhampered freedom of commerce among nations was the surest road to material 33 00:04:17.080 --> 00:04:22.920 well-being of the people and to an even higher goal, world peace. 34 00:04:22.920 --> 00:04:26.800 Both Cobden and Bright were businessmen in the textile trades. 35 00:04:26.800 --> 00:04:31.600 They represented, they almost personified the industrious, creative, productive middle 36 00:04:31.600 --> 00:04:33.320 classes of Britain. 37 00:04:33.320 --> 00:04:38.800 They fought against coercive labor unions, as Cobden wrote, there's a desperate spirit 38 00:04:38.800 --> 00:04:44.820 of Monopoly and Tyranny at the bottom of these trade unions. That's what the Brits call them. 39 00:04:44.820 --> 00:04:50.280 They opposed state subsidies to the established church and all the other depredations of what 40 00:04:50.280 --> 00:04:59.280 John Bright called the tax-eating classes. Their cause was that of the tax-paying classes. 41 00:04:59.280 --> 00:05:04.320 Most of all, the Manchester School opposed militarism, imperialism and war. In the very 42 00:05:04.320 --> 00:05:13.320 The very first work he ever published, Cobden placed on the title page of the work, a quotation from George Washington's farewell address. 43 00:05:13.320 --> 00:05:22.320 The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, no isolationism, 44 00:05:22.320 --> 00:05:32.320 extending our commercial relations to have as little political connection with them as possible. 45 00:05:32.320 --> 00:05:37.320 So commerce with everyone, a few, if any, political connections. 46 00:05:37.320 --> 00:05:44.320 In the course of two decades, Richard Cobden developed into the greatest libertarian analyst of international relations who ever lived. 47 00:05:44.320 --> 00:05:54.320 The two volumes of his political writings, reprinted in the Garland Library of War and Peace in 1973, are devoted entirely to foreign policy. 48 00:05:54.320 --> 00:06:02.320 Cobden held that the greatest, as he said, the greatest home question is in reality the foreign question. 49 00:06:02.320 --> 00:06:07.320 Living in the heyday of British imperialism, that was a natural conclusion for him to reach. 50 00:06:07.320 --> 00:06:10.320 For America, however, it was not always so. 51 00:06:10.320 --> 00:06:17.320 For most of our history, other issues, the national bank, tariffs, states' rights, slavery and so on, were the central issues. 52 00:06:17.320 --> 00:06:23.320 But now we, like Cobden, have the privilege of living in the heyday of our imperialism. 53 00:06:23.320 --> 00:06:31.320 And now we, like Cobden, have the privilege of witnessing the truth of what he wrote about an imperialist country. 54 00:06:31.320 --> 00:06:37.320 For us, ominously, the most important of domestic issues is foreign policy. 55 00:06:37.320 --> 00:06:42.320 If you want to see just one expose of this, read James Boevard's book, 56 00:06:42.320 --> 00:06:47.320 Terrorism and Tyranny, Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil. 57 00:06:47.320 --> 00:06:52.320 Every page is white-hot of this book. I urge you to get it. 58 00:06:52.320 --> 00:06:57.320 It is remarkable how many of Cobden's insights are relevant to our own situation today. 59 00:06:57.320 --> 00:07:00.320 As I'm quoting a lot from Cobden here, 60 00:07:00.320 --> 00:07:05.320 In foreign politics, the masses are too little informed to protect themselves against fraud. 61 00:07:05.320 --> 00:07:09.320 He argued that the English knew little of foreign affairs. 62 00:07:09.320 --> 00:07:16.320 When it comes to foreign affairs, the British public, he says, is really just a big baby, his term, 63 00:07:16.320 --> 00:07:21.320 ready to accept any of the deceptions and mystifications of the government. 64 00:07:21.320 --> 00:07:26.120 As he said, even members of parliament were at a loss when it came to foreign policy. 65 00:07:26.120 --> 00:07:28.120 Which is really true enough, isn't it? 66 00:07:28.120 --> 00:07:31.640 And so parliament had abdicated any control in this area, 67 00:07:31.640 --> 00:07:35.880 which was in reality entirely in the hands of scheming ministers. 68 00:07:35.880 --> 00:07:38.920 He systematically doubted the claims of government leaders. 69 00:07:38.920 --> 00:07:44.360 As he said on foreign affairs, he refused to accept as true the word of any minister 70 00:07:44.360 --> 00:07:48.120 unless it could be authenticated by independent testimony. 71 00:07:48.120 --> 00:07:51.080 The ministers continually conjured up war scares. 72 00:07:51.080 --> 00:07:59.080 They wanted to be viewed as statesmen, as he says, but they talk exactly as if they'd taken passages from Baron Munchausen or Gulliver's Travels. 73 00:08:00.080 --> 00:08:04.080 In other words, they concoct bizarre fables. Does that ring a bell at all? 74 00:08:06.080 --> 00:08:12.080 Cobden mocked the argument that England had an obligation to spread civilization and Christianity to lesser breeds. 75 00:08:12.080 --> 00:08:15.080 His reply was, physician, heal thyself. 76 00:08:15.080 --> 00:08:39.080 This is Cobden speaking. I think as a corporate body, as a political community, if we can manage to do what is right and true and just to each other, if we can manage to carry out that at home, it will be about as much as we can do. I do not think I am responsible for seeing right and truth and justice carried out all over the world. 77 00:08:39.080 --> 00:08:45.240 Cobden was appalled at the fact that when it came to British imperialist 78 00:08:45.240 --> 00:08:50.760 operations overseas, when British forces blew up thousands of Indians and Chinese, 79 00:08:50.760 --> 00:08:56.000 all that the British public cared about was the death of a few British soldiers 80 00:08:56.000 --> 00:09:00.960 during those operations. The thousands of Indians and Chinese and all of the others 81 00:09:00.960 --> 00:09:06.080 meant nothing to them. And Cobden said, and this British public calls 82 00:09:06.080 --> 00:09:36.080 Revisionism was always an integral part of Cobden's analysis of foreign policy. Since the Revolution of 1688, he wrote, we have expended more than 1,500 millions of pounds in those days upon war, 83 00:09:36.080 --> 00:09:41.720 Wars, not one of which has been upon our own shores or in defense of our hearths and homes. 84 00:09:41.720 --> 00:09:48.600 He said the history of England must be rewritten, especially the history of the last century. 85 00:09:48.600 --> 00:09:59.060 A few weeks ago, our own learned president, who informed us, a dime a dozen, but who informed 86 00:09:59.060 --> 00:10:05.760 us before he went to Africa to cure AIDS there, which is, Congressman Paul will tell us which 87 00:10:05.760 --> 00:10:12.400 Article of the Constitution authorizes that, informed us that Africa is a country with 88 00:10:12.400 --> 00:10:17.400 incredible disease. 89 00:10:17.400 --> 00:10:22.640 Well our own learned president attacked the growing threat of revisionism in the land 90 00:10:22.640 --> 00:10:27.640 and even establishment historians replied to it, you have to have revisionism, history 91 00:10:27.640 --> 00:10:30.040 is constantly revised. 92 00:10:30.040 --> 00:10:33.600 But in any case what is the alternative to revisionism, supposing we didn't have any 93 00:10:33.600 --> 00:10:34.600 revisionism? 94 00:10:34.600 --> 00:10:38.600 Then the government's lies would be enshrined forever. 95 00:10:38.600 --> 00:10:41.600 The Spaniards blew up the USS Maine in Havana Harbor. 96 00:10:41.600 --> 00:10:47.600 The Lusitania was simply a peaceful passenger ship sunk for no good reason, had no munitions aboard. 97 00:10:47.600 --> 00:10:54.600 Franklin Roosevelt toiled day and night to keep America out of war and all the rest of it. 98 00:10:54.600 --> 00:10:59.600 No wonder that Bush's handlers are so afraid of revisionism. 99 00:10:59.600 --> 00:11:04.800 The most fundamental reason for opposition to war and its concomitants, imperialism and militarism, 100 00:11:04.800 --> 00:11:09.200 was stated succinctly by John Bright. None of these people are pacifists, by the way, 101 00:11:09.200 --> 00:11:14.480 they're all in favor of defending their own country, but unnecessary wars, gratuitous wars, 102 00:11:15.360 --> 00:11:20.800 horrified them. And John Bright, during one of his great speeches denouncing the war in the Crimea, 103 00:11:21.440 --> 00:11:28.560 and criticizing those who speak glibly of the need to go to war, he said, what is war? I believe 104 00:11:28.560 --> 00:11:33.560 I believe that half the people who talk about war have not the slightest idea of what it is. 105 00:11:33.560 --> 00:11:36.560 In a short sentence, it may be summed up as this. 106 00:11:36.560 --> 00:11:43.560 War is the combination and concentration of all the horrors, atrocities, crimes and sufferings 107 00:11:43.560 --> 00:11:47.560 of which human nature on this globe is capable. 108 00:11:47.560 --> 00:11:52.560 We can contrast with John Bright's compassion for those who suffer in wartime. 109 00:11:52.560 --> 00:11:57.560 Contrast with that the attitude of a prominent neoconservative, 110 00:11:57.560 --> 00:12:01.960 David Brooks, who wrote in the Murdoch Subsidized Weekly Standard 111 00:12:01.960 --> 00:12:04.660 The next few years will be defined by conflict. 112 00:12:04.660 --> 00:12:07.300 We will destroy innocent villages by accident, 113 00:12:07.300 --> 00:12:10.260 shrug our shoulders, and continue fighting. 114 00:12:10.260 --> 00:12:13.360 In an age of conflict, get this, in an age of conflict, 115 00:12:13.360 --> 00:12:15.820 bourgeois virtues, 116 00:12:15.820 --> 00:12:20.820 what, he's some kind of aristocrat from the Upper West Side, 117 00:12:20.820 --> 00:12:24.160 in an age of conflict, bourgeois virtues like compassion, 118 00:12:24.160 --> 00:12:35.360 Tolerance and industriousness are valued less than the classical virtues of courage, steadfastness, and a ruthless desire for victory. 119 00:12:35.360 --> 00:12:42.060 Brooks, like his fellow neocons, like to posture and talk as if they were modern-day Achilles and Hectors. 120 00:12:42.060 --> 00:12:48.460 But they're a little different from these ancient Greek and Trojan heroes. 121 00:12:48.460 --> 00:12:53.660 The neocons have never actually fought in combat, unlike Achilles and Hector, for instance, 122 00:12:53.660 --> 00:12:59.660 and they never will and it's not their children who will ever fight. You can count on that. 123 00:13:01.020 --> 00:13:05.660 David Brooks, incidentally, is the same great neocon intellectual. I mean they're really such 124 00:13:06.220 --> 00:13:10.540 intellectuals they must impress the hell out of President Bush. 125 00:13:13.820 --> 00:13:17.740 Brooks is the man who reviewed Ayn Rand's letters in the New York Times book review 126 00:13:17.740 --> 00:13:22.660 when they came out a few years ago and he attacked her for using the term 127 00:13:22.660 --> 00:13:29.620 parasites at the very same time when the news was beginning to come in of the 128 00:13:29.620 --> 00:13:36.540 Nazi massacre of the European Jews whom the Nazis also referred to as parasites 129 00:13:36.540 --> 00:13:42.180 right he actually wrote this it's tough well I don't want to say I published a 130 00:13:42.180 --> 00:13:47.260 little comment on that in Liberty magazine but I don't want to mention 131 00:13:47.260 --> 00:13:55.260 Or we can take Michael Ledin as another example of a neocon who blithely preaches the glories of war. 132 00:13:55.260 --> 00:14:03.260 After the Battle of Iraq, he writes, now it comes to Damascus, Tehran, Tripoli, Pyongyang, and Riyadh. 133 00:14:03.260 --> 00:14:07.260 They are on the list for invasion and overthrow. 134 00:14:07.260 --> 00:14:15.260 America must now go to war against Syria, Iran, Libya, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia. 135 00:14:15.260 --> 00:14:21.100 Arabia, Endless War and Endless Death. 136 00:14:21.100 --> 00:14:29.180 I am almost tempted to want to see it happen, to see this neocon dream come true, as C.S. 137 00:14:29.180 --> 00:14:36.400 Lewis said of his villains in his great Christian novel, That Hideous Strength, in their arrogance 138 00:14:36.400 --> 00:14:43.020 and their diabolical pride, they have pulled down deep heaven upon their heads and it utterly 139 00:14:43.020 --> 00:14:51.100 destroyed them. Today the state presents itself in two aspects, as the welfare 140 00:14:51.100 --> 00:14:57.020 state and as the warfare state. These two manifestations of the state are 141 00:14:57.020 --> 00:15:02.640 intimately intertwined. The welfare warfare state is a concept that Murray 142 00:15:02.640 --> 00:15:07.820 Rothbard used to analyze the state in its current phase. Herbert Spencer 143 00:15:07.820 --> 00:15:12.060 incidentally had already commented on the association of state coercion at home 144 00:15:12.060 --> 00:15:19.180 Home and Abroad. First, the warfare state supports and enhances the welfare state. A victorious 145 00:15:19.180 --> 00:15:24.740 warfare state, as the United States has tended to be, produces in its subject population 146 00:15:24.740 --> 00:15:29.940 a perverted pride and an infantile gratitude which translate into the readiness to welcome 147 00:15:29.940 --> 00:15:35.900 state action at home. This ideological shift has been brilliantly documented in modern 148 00:15:35.900 --> 00:15:42.700 and American History by Robert Higgs and his magisterial work Crisis and Leviathan. 149 00:15:42.700 --> 00:15:48.860 And is it an accident that our great war presidents, from Lincoln to Wilson to Roosevelt, Truman, 150 00:15:48.860 --> 00:15:54.140 Lyndon Johnson, have also been the greatest promoters of statism at home. 151 00:15:54.140 --> 00:15:59.380 In turn, an expanding welfare state prepares the people for state intervention and war 152 00:15:59.380 --> 00:16:01.820 abroad. 153 00:16:01.820 --> 00:16:06.700 The attitude of most Americans is reflected, I think, in the college students I run across. 154 00:16:06.700 --> 00:16:11.820 Not at the Mises Institute, I hasten to add. Our students are terrific, but at my own school 155 00:16:11.820 --> 00:16:20.660 and elsewhere. Their attitude on any domestic government welfare program is, why not? A 156 00:16:20.660 --> 00:16:25.580 problem exists. The media and their professors tell them it is a burning problem, the homeless 157 00:16:25.580 --> 00:16:31.360 prescription drugs for the elderly, whatever. So the natural, the inevitable solution that 158 00:16:31.360 --> 00:16:36.360 set up a welfare program and funnel taxpayers' dollars to it. 159 00:16:36.360 --> 00:16:39.360 Why not? No one ever told them. 160 00:16:39.360 --> 00:16:45.360 They have the slightest suspicion that there are principled and constitutional limits to what the government may do. 161 00:16:45.360 --> 00:16:50.360 Whenever something hurts, it's the government's job to fix it. 162 00:16:50.360 --> 00:16:57.360 Well then, now there's a problem overseas in some foreign country where some foreign people are hurting. 163 00:16:57.360 --> 00:17:06.060 Hurting, hurting, Bush used that term, his job is to help people who are hurting. 164 00:17:06.060 --> 00:17:13.460 People are hurting in Somalia, in Bosnia, Kosovo, or unliberated women in Afghanistan or wherever. 165 00:17:13.460 --> 00:17:18.160 The natural, the inevitable reaction now is to turn to the U.S. government. 166 00:17:18.160 --> 00:17:19.260 Well, why not? 167 00:17:19.260 --> 00:17:24.960 Isn't that the job of the U.S. government to right every wrong, to wipe away every tear anywhere, 168 00:17:24.960 --> 00:17:32.960 Central to the whole issue of war and peace is the question of language. 169 00:17:32.960 --> 00:17:39.960 The libertarian psychiatrist or rather anti-psychiatrist Thomas Saz has written, 170 00:17:39.960 --> 00:17:44.960 In the animal kingdom, the rule is eat or be eaten. 171 00:17:44.960 --> 00:17:49.960 In the human kingdom, the rule is define or be defined. 172 00:17:49.960 --> 00:18:03.960 This is nowhere more true than in the world of politics. Language, definitions of key terms are central to it, since most people, that's the way they are, judge more from words than realities. 173 00:18:03.960 --> 00:18:14.960 George Orwell was well aware of this. That is why in 1984, the state agency in charge of torturing and killing political opponents is called the Ministry of Love. 174 00:18:14.960 --> 00:18:21.960 and why the agency in charge of the incessant fabrication of new lies is called the Ministry of Truth. 175 00:18:21.960 --> 00:18:28.960 The statists have and continue to use the power of definition or redefinition with very great success. 176 00:18:28.960 --> 00:18:32.960 Probably their greatest success has been with the term isolationist. 177 00:18:32.960 --> 00:18:36.960 This goes back at least to the very end of the 19th century. 178 00:18:36.960 --> 00:18:41.960 William Graham Sumner complained that his opposition to the Spanish-American War, 179 00:18:41.960 --> 00:18:47.960 The War Against the Philippines and against the large policy of Theodore Roosevelt 180 00:18:47.960 --> 00:18:53.960 By the way, the neocons loved Theodore Roosevelt, of whom Charles Beard, the great historian, said 181 00:18:53.960 --> 00:19:01.960 he was probably the only important figure in American history, whoever thought that war was good in itself. 182 00:19:01.960 --> 00:19:09.960 So, Sumner opposed these policies and he was dismissed as an isolationist. But Sumner already had the repost. 183 00:19:09.960 --> 00:19:16.960 He said he was an isolationist only insofar as he wished to isolate his country from war. 184 00:19:16.960 --> 00:19:20.960 Imagine, calling someone like Sumner or Cobden or other great classical liberals, 185 00:19:20.960 --> 00:19:26.660 who promoted world-spanning free trade based on the gold standard, isolationists. 186 00:19:26.660 --> 00:19:28.460 But the term stuck. 187 00:19:28.460 --> 00:19:34.460 Now, anyone who was in favor of non-intervention, anyone opposed to U.S. meddling anywhere in the world, 188 00:19:34.460 --> 00:19:39.460 bombing at will peoples who have never attacked us, opposed any threat of attack, 189 00:19:39.460 --> 00:19:42.160 is dismissed as an isolationist. 190 00:19:42.160 --> 00:19:44.260 There are other examples. 191 00:19:44.260 --> 00:19:48.560 In the old days, the U.S. government had a war department, 192 00:19:48.560 --> 00:19:50.060 as well as a department of the Navy. 193 00:19:50.060 --> 00:19:51.460 That was clear enough. 194 00:19:51.460 --> 00:19:53.960 Its job was to wage war. 195 00:19:53.960 --> 00:19:55.560 On our road to World War II, for instance, 196 00:19:55.560 --> 00:20:00.160 a man named Henry Stimson was actually called the Secretary of War. 197 00:20:00.160 --> 00:20:03.460 As a great revisionist historian, Charles Tanzler, commented, 198 00:20:03.460 --> 00:20:07.660 no one ever deserved the name war. 199 00:20:07.660 --> 00:20:19.060 But in 1946, the War Department was amalgamated with the Navy and the Air Force was added to produce the Department of Defense, some defense department. 200 00:20:19.060 --> 00:20:31.460 After expending trillions of taxpayers' money, it turned out that this Department of Defense could not even defend its own headquarters from attack. 201 00:20:31.460 --> 00:20:35.660 No one seems to think there's anything strange about that. 202 00:20:35.660 --> 00:20:38.780 But the redefinition was a masterful stroke. 203 00:20:38.780 --> 00:20:42.220 Now all the trillions the government ends up eating and waging war, 204 00:20:42.220 --> 00:20:47.180 preparing to wage war all over the globe, are called defense expenditures. 205 00:20:47.180 --> 00:20:49.660 Even our people call them defense expenditures. 206 00:20:51.900 --> 00:20:54.860 Nowadays the government's wars are given propaganda names, 207 00:20:55.420 --> 00:20:57.660 which are supposed to ratify them by definition. 208 00:20:58.220 --> 00:21:03.660 In bygone days there were neutral names for military operations, overlord, torch and so on. 209 00:21:03.660 --> 00:21:18.660 Now we have Operation Enduring Freedom. Enduring Freedom is supposed to be what the U.S. military was supposed to bring to Afghanistan, of all places where freedom is likely to endure. 210 00:21:18.660 --> 00:21:29.660 Before there was an Operation Rescue Democracy to Haiti, that beacon of Jeffersonian democracy that is an inspiration to the world. 211 00:21:29.660 --> 00:21:38.900 Incidentally, the first propaganda use I can find for a military operation is Adolf Hitler's 212 00:21:38.900 --> 00:21:41.500 name for the invasion of Russia. 213 00:21:41.500 --> 00:21:46.740 He called it Operation Barbarossa, after the German emperor who led a Christian crusade 214 00:21:46.740 --> 00:21:48.700 to the east. 215 00:21:48.700 --> 00:21:53.160 Now we have Operation Iraqi Freedom, at least the hacks in the Pentagon. 216 00:21:53.160 --> 00:22:05.160 This time, smart enough not to name it Operation Iraqi Liberty, the initials would have sounded funny. 217 00:22:05.160 --> 00:22:17.160 There's nowadays the use of the term terrorists and Islamic terrorists, but this has not meant the KLA, 218 00:22:17.160 --> 00:22:21.580 KLA, the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, on behalf of which the United States went 219 00:22:21.580 --> 00:22:27.880 to war with Serbia in 1999, bombed the hell out of those courageous people. 220 00:22:27.880 --> 00:22:34.080 This KLA, composed of militant Muslims, was by every common definition a terrorist organization. 221 00:22:34.080 --> 00:22:38.880 In fact, the U.S. State Department had labeled it a terrorist organization a few years before. 222 00:22:38.880 --> 00:22:43.460 The aim of the group was to eject the Serbian government and the Serbian population from 223 00:22:43.460 --> 00:22:51.460 from the province of Kosovo by assassination and other terrorist acts, typical policy of terrorist groups. 224 00:22:51.460 --> 00:23:01.460 By the way, this is an excellent book, a classic book called The First Casualty by Philip Knightley 225 00:23:01.460 --> 00:23:08.460 and his added chapters bringing it through the First Gulf War. 226 00:23:08.460 --> 00:23:14.900 The First Casualty, the famous saying, the first casualty of war is truth, and what he 227 00:23:14.900 --> 00:23:23.100 deals with are the government's lies from the time of the Civil War through the first 228 00:23:23.100 --> 00:23:24.380 Gulf War. 229 00:23:24.380 --> 00:23:30.860 And let me just mention, I'm getting tired of people talking about something being disingenuous, 230 00:23:30.860 --> 00:23:35.020 when what they mean is that it's a lie. 231 00:23:35.020 --> 00:23:41.460 It's as if these journalists have discovered the word disingenuous and are kind of showing off a little bit. 232 00:23:41.460 --> 00:23:48.660 We're talking about lies. We're talking about deliberate fabrications. 233 00:23:48.660 --> 00:23:52.980 The Serbians were supposed to have committed genocide against Albanians in Kosovo. 234 00:23:52.980 --> 00:23:58.780 It was just like the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. No sign of genocide was ever found. 235 00:23:58.780 --> 00:24:07.380 Just some 2,100 or so corpses never identified as to whether they were Albanian fighters or Serbian forces or civilian bystanders. 236 00:24:07.380 --> 00:24:09.980 It was all a lie. 237 00:24:09.980 --> 00:24:13.080 But who remembers his ancient history? 238 00:24:13.080 --> 00:24:23.380 Meanwhile, the Albanian Muslim militants have killed and chased out the remaining Serbs in Kosovo and blown up over 100 ancient Christian churches and shrines. 239 00:24:23.380 --> 00:24:38.380 I think it was bad for the Taliban to have blown up those Buddhist statues, but why doesn't anybody mention these hundred ancient Christian shrines in Kosovo that have been desecrated, blown up, destroyed by the Albanian Muslims? 240 00:24:38.380 --> 00:24:43.380 We don't hear about those because we were on the side of those Albanian Muslims. 241 00:24:43.380 --> 00:24:52.380 Then they talk about peacekeepers. Why peacekeepers instead of occupiers? Well, peacekeepers sounds a lot better. 242 00:24:52.380 --> 00:24:56.620 seems that the U.S. government is going to bring some thousands of Turkish peacekeepers 243 00:24:56.620 --> 00:25:02.260 into Iraq. There are already a few thousand Polish peacekeepers in place. All of them 244 00:25:02.260 --> 00:25:09.140 and all the rest of the coalition of the willing, coalition of the billing is what it was called, 245 00:25:09.140 --> 00:25:14.020 our modern day Hessians. Like the Hessians in the American Revolution, today the client 246 00:25:14.020 --> 00:25:18.360 states of the U.S. government sell their own conscript soldiers. In the case of Turkey, 247 00:25:18.360 --> 00:25:27.360 The Office of Soldiers was preceded by an offer of 8 billion dollars in an American loan. 248 00:25:27.360 --> 00:25:34.360 The Turkish people, the democracy, opposed sending the troops, but the Turkish elite overrode the people. 249 00:25:34.360 --> 00:25:40.360 Bankrupt states like Turkey and Poland sent peacekeepers to act as surrogates for our own mercenaries. 250 00:25:40.360 --> 00:25:43.360 It's all bought and paid for by American tax dollars. 251 00:25:43.360 --> 00:25:59.360 Today world politics floats on an ocean of American taxpayers' money. Foreign aid is not to feed starving Africans, but to cover the budget deficits of the ruling elites, bribing them to fall in line with the policies of the U.S. government elite. 252 00:25:59.360 --> 00:26:08.360 Dr. Paul last week delivered a characteristically courageous and a characteristically blistering attack on foreign aid on the floor of the House. 253 00:26:08.360 --> 00:26:18.360 I just want to say that there have been, since I started following politics many years ago, a few good men in Congress. 254 00:26:18.360 --> 00:26:26.360 Senator Robert Taft, for instance, I was the head of the Students for Taft in New York City in 1952. 255 00:26:26.360 --> 00:26:33.360 It was a very important position and I did a lot of good. 256 00:26:33.360 --> 00:26:37.360 Well, it was me against Wall Street. What do you expect? 257 00:26:37.360 --> 00:26:47.360 I shook the hand of Robert Taft. But to my mind, Ron Paul is the greatest member of Congress to have served in my lifetime. 258 00:26:47.360 --> 00:26:53.360 Now everyone keeps bringing up George Orwell in his novel, 1984. 259 00:26:53.360 --> 00:27:02.360 Let's remember that the protagonist of 1984, Winston Smith, had a job at the Ministry of Truth. 260 00:27:02.360 --> 00:27:13.360 His specialty was scanning old newspapers for articles and pictures that did not jibe with the current party line, because the party, big brother, was always right. 261 00:27:13.360 --> 00:27:26.360 Winston Smith accomplished this by excising, offending materials from the old files, tossing them down the memory hole, you know the term memory hole or Wellian memory hole, 262 00:27:26.360 --> 00:27:31.360 shooting them down to the furnaces in the depths of the Ministry of Truth. 263 00:27:31.360 --> 00:27:37.360 Today, no such cleansing of the historical record is necessary. 264 00:27:37.360 --> 00:27:41.360 Amazingly, what a comment on human nature. 265 00:27:41.360 --> 00:27:45.360 The true historical record is right there, everywhere. 266 00:27:45.360 --> 00:27:50.360 It continues to exist in hard copy in thousands of libraries. 267 00:27:50.360 --> 00:27:57.360 It's on the internet, it's on tens of thousands of personal hard drives all around the world. 268 00:27:57.360 --> 00:28:05.120 To take an example, check out Jim Boevard's excellent article last Thursday on lewrockwell.com, 269 00:28:05.120 --> 00:28:12.880 the 20th anniversary of the killing of 240 or so U.S. Marines in Beirut, and Boevard tells a story 270 00:28:12.880 --> 00:28:20.800 as everybody knows it is now, but that are lied about by the government at the time, and now no 271 00:28:20.800 --> 00:28:50.040 The Founding Fathers warned us especially against entangling alliances, George Washington from the Farewell Address, 272 00:28:50.040 --> 00:28:55.480 The nation which indulges towards another, and habitual hatred or habitual fondness, 273 00:28:55.480 --> 00:28:58.000 is to some degree a slave. 274 00:28:58.000 --> 00:29:04.200 Against the wilds of foreign influence, I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens, 275 00:29:04.200 --> 00:29:09.600 the jealousy of the free people ought to be constantly awake. 276 00:29:09.600 --> 00:29:15.700 In Jefferson's first inaugural address, peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations 277 00:29:15.700 --> 00:29:18.760 entangling alliances with none. 278 00:29:18.760 --> 00:29:35.760 The founding fathers understood that war is the chief enemy of liberty and that the delicate constitutional balance they established could not prevail against endless wars. 279 00:29:35.760 --> 00:29:40.760 They also understood that entangling alliances would entangle us in such wars. 280 00:29:40.760 --> 00:29:45.760 Do we have such alliances today? Obviously there is NATO, which is never going to end. 281 00:29:45.760 --> 00:29:53.760 It's probably outlive the European countries, maybe the United States itself. 282 00:29:53.760 --> 00:29:57.760 It's a perpetual military bureaucracy. 283 00:29:57.760 --> 00:30:07.760 And then there is, most of all, the unconditional support and the continual immense subsidies that the U.S. government gives to Israel. 284 00:30:07.760 --> 00:30:15.920 Now, whenever anybody criticizes Israel, the Zionist Amen Corner starts yelling anti-Semite. 285 00:30:15.920 --> 00:30:21.840 What can you do? It's like institutional racism. You know, how can you defend yourself against 286 00:30:21.840 --> 00:30:27.840 something like that? But is it anti-Semitism that leads Jews like Norman Solomon, Noam Chomsky, 287 00:30:27.840 --> 00:30:35.680 Norman Finkelstein, the libertarian, a friend of mine, Sheldon Richmond, to condemn Israeli 288 00:30:35.680 --> 00:30:38.480 and the Oppression of the Palestinians. 289 00:30:38.480 --> 00:30:46.260 Is it because they are anti-Semites that heroic Israelis like Rory Avnery and Ron Hacoen, 290 00:30:46.260 --> 00:30:52.760 you can read their articles on antiwar.com, attack their own government's murderous policies 291 00:30:52.760 --> 00:30:55.360 towards the Arabs? 292 00:30:55.360 --> 00:31:01.300 As Americans we cannot and must not have a foreign policy one of whose epicenters is the 293 00:31:01.300 --> 00:31:06.860 The Ruthless Expansionism of Ariel Sharon and the Liquid Party. 294 00:31:06.860 --> 00:31:14.140 Well, finally, I have to confess that my bitterness towards this administration and its neocon 295 00:31:14.140 --> 00:31:21.020 handlers is in part based on a personal element here. 296 00:31:21.020 --> 00:31:27.340 In my sunset years, I have looked forward to a well-deserved retirement. 297 00:31:27.340 --> 00:31:33.420 Enjoying my remaining time, reading, doing some research, and most of all, enjoying the 298 00:31:33.420 --> 00:31:42.780 winter wonderland that is Buffalo, New York. 299 00:31:42.780 --> 00:31:47.020 But the Bush government and the neocons have filled me with feelings I never thought I 300 00:31:47.020 --> 00:31:50.180 would have and I do not know how to cope with. 301 00:31:50.180 --> 00:31:55.980 Honestly, I never thought that I would regret Bill Clinton and wish that Bill Clinton were 302 00:31:55.980 --> 00:32:12.540 I never ever thought I would regret Janet Reno, who was a predecessor of our great John Ashcroft. 303 00:32:12.540 --> 00:32:18.020 For that and much else to this administration and its supporters, I say damn them, damn them all. 304 00:32:19.020 --> 00:32:21.020 Thank you very much.