Beat Obama! Ron Paul Does Best against the Current President

Transcript

Ron Paul: Thank you very much. Sounds like you’re having a great party. Well, we haven’t counted all the votes yet, about half of the votes have been counted, and we’re in a good second place. But the good news is we’re doing very, very well in getting delegates. That, as you know, takes little bit of effort. You have to follow up on that, that will happen, and that’s one thing we know how to do (to get delegates) and, believe me, things are going quite well. Just think of what has happened in the last couple of years and even in the last couple of months. The enthusiasm for the cause of liberty continues to grow exponentially. And that’s all good news, especially for you young people who need it and who will with for it. There are a lot of reasons for us to be very optimistic, even though, like I’ve said so many times, the country is waking up but Washington is still sound asleep. So our message has to be loud and clear, we have that wake them up, wake the rest of the country up, because we cannot continue to do what we’re doing. That is what most people in this country know, that we cannot continue to spend money, borrow money, print money, and spread ourselves around the world like we are. That always has to change because we’re flat-out broke, we have to admit it, which means, what we have to do is not all that complicated. What we need to do is just get people in Washington to follow the Constitution, it would solve all our problems.

Just think of how that would solve our foreign policy. It says in the constitution that we should have a strong national defense, it is the responsibility of the federal government, the president has a lot of responsibility. But right now, I don’t feel like we do spend a lot on defense, we spend too much money on militarism doing the wrong things getting ourselves into trouble. And, of course, one of the reasons is that since World War II, we haven’t gone to war in the proper manner. The constitution is explicit, the people are supposed to vote for their congressmen, and the Congress is supposed to vote for the war, and then the President runs the war. The president is not allowed to go to war without proper permission. One very good idea and a strong suggestion is, since we’re broke, and we’re 1.5 trillion dollars in deficit every single year, why don’t we stop spending the money overseas by bringing our troops home and stopping the wars. And, of course, we know the founders had a difficult problem with the monetary issue. Before they wrote the constitution, they had runaway inflation with the continental dollar. So they were explicit in the constitution, they said only gold and silver can be legal tender, and you can’t print paper money, and there’s no authority for a central bank, no authority for a Federal Reserve System.

Crowd: End the Fed! End the Fed!

Ron Paul: We are getting that message out, believe me. But the large majority is still not with us about ending the Fed, but 80% of the American people now say that it’s up to the Congress to start auditing the Fed and find out what they’re doing and who they’re bailing out. But, once they come around to understanding the monetary issue, if they’re concerned about big government and deficits, it’s impossible with sound money, because you can’t print gold, you can’t spend the money, and therefore, Congress would have to quit spending the money, and there wouldn’t be the deficits. Guess what that would prevent, the financial bubbles, the inflation. It would prevent the recessions and depressions and the weak economy and a massive worldwide debt crisis that we’re facing now that cannot be resolved by doing more of the same things that created the problems in the first place.

But we do have to ask the question then, what should the federal government be doing? I said, they should institute sound money, they should give us a strong national defense, they should keep us out of these wars. But what else should they do? They should protect our liberty, they should guarantee our freedom. You know, we take an oath of office to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Right now, we should worry a lot more about the domestic threat to our liberties than anybody invading this country, it’s not going to happen. That is one thing that we can say, our military is strong and efficient and nobody would dare actually attack us. So therefore, that is taken care of. So what we need to do is quit going looking for trouble, invading countries, occupying countries, and we have totally and completely reject this notion of preemptive war. Preemptive war is starting the war, we, as Americans, don’t start wars; we’ll fight them if we need to and we’ll win them if we have to, we’ll declare them if necessary, but we should not start the war.

Crowd: Ron Paul! Ron Paul!

Ron Paul: Now it is clear to so many of us that what made our country great was the emphasis on personal liberty. If you have personal liberty, that means you have a right to your life, you have a right to your liberty, and you should, of course, have the right to keep the fruits of your labor. But that system doesn’t work unless you understand property rights. You have property, you have a right to your own life, that means you own your own life. And property is very important, but property now today is regulated so much by government, you have to get permission from the government for every single thing you do with your land. And, of course, if you don’t pay your rent, your taxes, you lose your land. So the whole thing has deemphasized the value of property. The whole idea of income tax emphasis the fact that the government owns our income and they allow us to keep a certain percentage under their rules. But we can restore prosperity by having sound money, limited government, much less taxation, a lot less regulation, and a lot less debt, which means that we quit spending overseas. That is not complicated, but politically it is complicated because there are still powerful special interests in Washington and around the country who want power, power is the seductive issue that tempts people in both parties in all of politics. So wanting our liberty means we want to diminish the power of government and give the power and the control back to the people. Which means, if we understand where our liberty comes from, it comes to us from our creator in a natural way. It means that people should come together on this issue. Diversity shouldn’t exist, all diversities should come together because liberty permits people to be diverse, as long as they don’t hurt people or take people’s property. This means it should appeal to people and that people can use that liberty in different ways; they can spend their money the way they want. If they want to waste it, they have a right to waste their money in a free society, but they don’t have a right to come to us or to government and bail them out when they mess up.

And it’s the same thing about society or personal liberty, it is the same thing. For some reason, a hundred years ago, when we embarked on this big government, we took liberty and chopped it into pieces, thinking that your personal lifestyle and the personal way you live is different from your economic life. And people half-heartedly defended both. But you put it back together and say the right to your life means you defend your right to run your life as you so chose, and you also have your economic liberties to take care of your property and work and keep the fruits of your labor; it’s all one issue. We have a long way to go to solve our problems in Washington, but let me tell you, from the travels I have made around, especially in this particular state of Washington, there’s a lot of enthusiasm for the cause of liberty, believe me. But there’s reason to expect that it will take a little while longer, because we still have to deal with the politicians, you know, there’re still a bunch of politicians over in Washington and a lot of special interests. There are so many people who benefit from this system, whether it’s the monetary system, the military-industrial complex, whatever.

Crowd member: Media?

Ron Paul: Media is correct, they all benefit, there’s a big control and it’s power. So the answer can be found in liberty, we had this great experimentation, the best in the history of the world, we were the freest nation in the world, and we were the most prosperous nation in the world. And now we are less free, we’ve devalued our currency, which always undermines the middle class, and it always shrinks the middle class and wealth is transferred from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy. We see it all around us and we have nothing but debt, the debt that the wealthy and Wall Street and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ran up, we owe all that debt and the people have that burden. And it has to change. We cannot restore our freedoms and we cannot restore our prosperity until we understand the very nature of money, the very necessity of having a different foreign policy, the very need to have an understanding of property rights, and, of course, an understanding about what liberty is all about. We’ve had this grand experiment and had this great success, and now if we don’t do our job, if this message isn’t spread – and we’re all obligated to spread it – if this is not spread, we will continue to lose. But let me tell you, the message I’m getting is the message is spreading. We do not know exactly what will come out of the campaign, we do know that the strategy of building up delegates is a pretty sound position to have. But I want to finish on one note, the Republican Party and all the other candidates agree on one thing, they say, “We want to pick and elect the individual who can best beat Obama”.

Crowd: Ron Paul! Ron Paul!

Ron Paul: And it just turns out that there was a recent poll which showed that I, with your help, do the best against Obama right now. And it should not be a surprise, because when we go around and we get on our rallies, people come out. Of course, we have a lot of young energetic people, we have a lot of independents who have come out, and we have a lot of Democrats coming around too, because they’re frustrated. So that makes my point, freedom brings people together, and that is the reason this message will bring conservative Republicans, undecided independents, as well as Democrats who are sick and tired of the promises to protect civil liberties and to end these wars. We can build this coalition and bring it together and restore the republic.

Thank you very much.

Crowd: President Paul! President Paul!

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