This week, retiring Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul gave his last speech in the House of Representatives. It was a 48-minute speech and was one of the most influential speeches he has ever given. It was not in front of thousands of people, it was not delivered on primetime television and it wasn’t a much anticipated event from the mainstream media.
It was, however, eloquent in espousing the virtues of peace, liberty, freedom and prosperity and iterating what’s wrong with Washington today. Indeed, his 23 years in congress in which he defended the constitution and promoted Austrian Economics may never be repeated again by anyone, maybe not even his son, Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul.
“If it’s not accepted that big government, fiat money, ignoring liberty, central economic planning, welfarism and warfarism caused our crisis, we can expect a continuous and dangerous march toward corporatism and even fascism with even more loss of our liberties,” stated the three-time presidential candidate.
For those who have some time, please watch his incredible speech here. If you’re an ardent supporter of Dr. Paul, a follower of the Austrian School and lover of all things liberty, then this video is crucial to watch.
With that being said, Dr. Paul gave a compelling interview with the Fox Business Network. Essentially, he repeated his positions about the “fiscal cliff” that he iterated last week with Bloomberg Television, which we reported on.
“Keynesians are taught you raises taxes if you need more money. Just because that ruins the economy, tax collections go down. They don’t seem to realize that. I don’t expect a whole lot of beneficial things to happen betwene now and the beginning of the year. They’re just going to pass the buck on for a little longer and worry about the real problems later on,” explained Dr. Paul.
“They’re barely touching the problem. Even the cuts they’re talking that would go into effect aren’t even real cuts. They’re just cuts on proposed increases. We’re not getting anywhere close to talking about the real issue. The real issue is that the country is bankrupt and the economy is too weak to pay for it. Someday we’re going to have to wake up and make some real changes and actually cut spending.”
Thank you Mr. Paul!
It is a shame the majority the American population has succumb to ignorance. Perhaps soon enough, the majority will wake up from their ignorance.
ACtually, Keynesians are taught to cut taxes in the face of low revenues, and to spend in order to stimulate the economy. These models have proven to work the world over, though I agree with Dr. Paul that there is some risk that tends toward fascism in this model. We can see that Keynes was a major shaper of the Breton Woods agreements, and those have surely resulted in state investment in corporate power all over the world. We can agree on that much, with regard to international policy.
However, when it comes to domestic spending, Dr. Paul bases his approach on the models of Fredrick Hayek, who worked in theory only, never held a private sector job in his life and wrote in The Road To Serfdom that there ought to be a base level of social support provided to all persons regardless of merit. That was food, shelter and medicine.
Additionally, Dr. Paul would have the free market work unreined. Economic history shows us again and again that to let the powerful do exactly as they choose is disasterous.
I believe Dr. Paul to be a populist, on the whole, and I respect that he wishes us to fight the fascistic forces that threaten to overtake our Republic. However, we must reach stasis on some facts first.