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(Here is) why I have come to accept the idea that a gold standard is the only standard
that can be used if you want a free market and you want a sound
healthy economy. There is no other power greater than the power
over money, the power to create and contract the money supply,
the power to control the purchasing power of your money.
Throughout history, this has proven to be the most sought after monopolistic power of
man.
You say we shouldn't be nearly as involved as we are in foreign affairs,
and support, military support, for our allies. What if the Soviets started sending them (Mexico)
money if we didn't send the money?
The Soviet system would fall even more rapidly. They can't even feed themselves. We're financing
the Soviet system too!
So you wouldn't worry about that as President of the United States?
Well, I'd worry if they threatened my security and the security of the country.
But I think it would be helpful to bankrupt the Soviet Union if they want to spend all
their money. Because they couldn't win in Afghanistan and
they're broke and now they're getting more loans from the United States.
There are 38 million people today that have no health care after the Government has been
in health care for 45 years. The price has gone up, the quality has gone
down, and the distribution has been eliminated. There are more people without health care
now since the government's been in the business.
Ron, why do we keep getting into these foreign predicaments?
I think there is a basic flaw in our policies. We've gone astray.
We do not follow the Constitution. We do not follow our American Traditions.
And especially in this century our policy has changed, we have become an interventionist
government. I believe we became an interventionist government.
I believe we became interventionist in many areas.
not only does our government intervene in our personal lives,
our government intervenes in our economy and it intervenes in the internal affairs of other
nations. No longer do we take the advice of our Founders
and what was traditionally the American Non-Interventionist foreign policy.
And I think it's going to continue. This is not a tactical fight. This is not a discussion
of when you should go in. The Left and the Right so often argue about
"Well we should go in, he's the enemy, we'll attack him, but we'll let this person alone".
And then they switch and they flip-flop. And we lead to a disaster,
we don't know why we should go into these areas and it leads to disasters like Korea
and Vietnam.
We allied ourselves in the 1980s with Iraq in its war with Iran and assisted Saddam Hussein
in his rise to power. As recent reports reconfirm, we did nothing
to stop Hussein's development of chemical and biological weapons
and at least indirectly assisted in their development.
Now, as a consequence of that needless intervention, we are planning a risky war to remove him
from power; and as usual, the probable result of such
an effort would be something that our government does not anticipate like a takeover by someone
much worse. As bad as Hussein is, he is an enemy of the
al-Qaeda and someone new well may be a close ally of the Islamic radicals.
Although our puppet dictatorship in Saudi Arabia has lasted for many decades, it is
becoming shakier every day. The Saudi people are not exactly friendly
towards us, and our military presence on their holy soil is greatly resented.
This contributes to the radical fundamentalist hatred directed toward us.
Another unfavorable consequence to America, such as a regime change not to our liking,
could soon occur in Saudi Arabia. It is not merely a coincidence that 15 of
the 9-11 terrorists are Saudis. The Persian Gulf War fought, without a declaration
of war, is in reality still going on. It looks like that 9-11 may well have been
a battle in that war perpetrated by fanatical guerrillas.
It indicates how seriously flawed our foreign policy is.
In the 1980s, we got involved in the Soviet-Afghanistan war and actually sided with the forces of
Osama bin Laden, helping him gain power. This obviously was an alliance of no benefit
to the United States, and it has come back to haunt us.
Congressman Paul, you voted against the war. Why are all your fellow Republicans up here
wrong?
That’s a very good question. And you might ask the question,
why are 70 percent of the American people now wanting us out of there,
and why did the Republicans do so poorly last year?
So I would suggest that we should look at foreign policy.
I’m suggesting very strongly that we should have a foreign policy of non-intervention,
the traditional American foreign policy and the Republican foreign policy.
Throughout the 20th century, the Republican Party benefited from a non-interventionist
foreign policy. Think of how Eisenhower came in to stop the
Korean War. Think of how Nixon was elected to stop the
mess in Vietnam. How did we win the election in the year 2000?
We talked about a humble foreign policy: No nation-building; don’t police the world.
That’s conservative, it’s Republican, it’s pro-American –
it follows the founding fathers. And, besides, it follows the Constitution.
I tried very hard to solve this problem before we went to war by saying,
“Declare war if you want to go to war. Go to war, fight it and win it,
but don’t get into it for political reasons or to enforce U.N. resolutions or pretend
the Iraqis were a national threat to us."
Congressman Paul, Pete from Rochester Hills, Michigan wants to ask you this.
If you were president, would you work to phase out the IRS?
Immediately.
That’s what they call a softball.
And you can only do that if you change our ideas about what the role of government ought
to be. If you think that government has to take care
of us from cradle to grave, and if you think our government should police
the world and spend hundreds of billions of dollars
on a foreign policy that we cannot manage, you can’t get rid of the IRS;
but, if you want to lower taxes and if you want the government to quit printing the money
to come up with shortfall and cause all the inflation, you have to change policy.
Dr. Paul, how do you reconcile this moral, moral leadership kind of role of conservatism
with the very libertarian strain of conservatism – the Barry Goldwater conservatism that
you represent? How do you put together what he just said
with what you believe in a unified national purpose?
Well, you do it by understanding of what the goal of government ought to be.
If the goal of government is to be the policeman of the world, you lose liberty.
And if the goal is to promote liberty, you can unify all segments.
The freedom message brings us together; it doesn’t divide us.
I believe that when we overdo our military aggressiveness, it actually weakens our national
defense. I mean, we stood up to the Soviets. They had
40,000 nuclear weapons. Now we’re fretting day in and day and night
about third-world countries that have no army, navy or air force, and we’re getting ready
to go to war. But the principle, the moral principle, is
that of defending liberty and minimizing the scope of government.
Congressman Paul, Bob Hussay from Minnesota writes that perhaps the most important skill
a good president must have is the ability to make good, sound decisions,
often in a crisis situation. Please cite an example when you had to make
a decision in crisis.
I wonder if he’s referring to a political decision like running for office, or something
like that.
(LAUGHTER)
I guess, in medicine, I made a lot of critical decisions.
I mean, you’re called upon all the time to make critical, life-saving decisions.
But I can’t think of any one particular event where I made a critical decision that
affected a lot of other people. But I think all our decisions we make in politics
are critical. My major decision, political decision, which
was a constitutional decision, was to urge for (inaudible) years that this country not
go to war in Iraq.
We have Mrs. Reagan here. The camera will not focus on her, but I will
tell you, it will now focus on you. Mrs. Reagan wants to expand federal funding
of embryonic stem cell research.
yes or no on federal funding?
Programs like this are not authorized under the Constitution.
The trouble with issues like this is, in Washington we either prohibit it or subsidize it.
And the market should deal with it, and the states should deal with it.
I want each candidate to mention a tax you’d like to cut, in addition to the Bush tax cuts,
keeping them in effect.
Well, in my first week, I already got rid of the income tax.
In my second week, I would get rid of the inflation tax. It’s a tax that nobody talks
about. We live way beyond our means, with a foreign
policy we can’t afford, and an entitlement system that we have encouraged.
We print money for it. The value of the money goes down, and poor people pay higher prices.
That is a tax. That’s a transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to Wall
Street. Wall Street’s doing quite well, but the
inflation tax is eating away at the middle class of this country.
We need to get rid of the inflation tax with sound money.