oh man, this is so awesome. check the URL for the full version...

Some Observations on Four Terms in Congress

by Ron Paul
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul433.html

Before the US House of Representatives, September 19, 1984

Mr. Speaker, I shall be soon leaving the House and have asked for this special order to make a few comments regarding the problems our nation faces and the actions needed to correct them.
[list of contradictory policies omitted]....

THE PROBLEMS WE FACE

Contradictions are all about us, but we must realize they are merely the manifestations of more basic problems. Some of these problems are general, others specific; but all are a consequence of the precise ideology to which the nation's intellectuals ascribe. Understanding this is imperative if we ever expect to reverse the trend toward statism in which we find ourselves.

Our government officials continue to endorse, in general, economic interventionism, interventionist control of individuals, a careless disregard for our property rights, and an interventionist foreign policy. The ideas of liberty for the individual, freedom for the markets, both domestic and international, sound money, and a foreign policy of strategic independence based on strength are no longer popularly endorsed by our national leaders. Yet support by many Americans for these policies exists. The current conflict is over which view will prevail.

The concept of rights is rarely defined, since there is minimal concern for them as an issue in itself. Rights have become nothing more than the demands of special-interest groups to use government coercion to extract goods and services from one group for the benefit of another. The moral concept of one's natural right to life and liberty without being molested by State intervention in one's pursuit of happiness is all but absent in Washington. Carelessly the Congress has accepted the concept of "public interest" as being superior to "individual liberty" in directing their actions. But the "public" is indefinite and its definition varies depending on who and which special interest is defining it. It's used merely as an excuse to victimize one individual for the benefit of another. The dictatorship of the majority, now a reality, is our greatest threat to the concept of equal rights

Careless disregard for liberty allows the government to violate the basic premise of a free society; there shall be no initiation of force by anyone, particularly government. Use of force for personal and national self-defense against initiators of violence is its only proper use in a moral and free society. Unfortunately this premise is rejected – and not even understood – in its entirety in Washington. The result is that we have neither a moral nor a free society.

Rejecting the notion that government should not coerce and force people to act against their wishes prompts Congress to assume the role of central economic and social planner. Government is used for everything from subsidized farming to protecting cab monopolies; from the distribution of food stamps to health care; from fixing the price of labor to fixing the price of gasoline. Always the results are the same, opposite to what was intended: chaos, confusion, inefficiency, additional costs and lines.

The more that is spent on housing or unemployment problems, the worse the housing and unemployment problems become. Proof that centralized economic planning always fails, regardless of the good intentions behind it, is available to us. It is tragic that we continue to ignore it.

Our intervention and meddling to satisfy the powerful well-heeled special interests have created a hostile atmosphere, a vicious struggle for a shrinking economic pie distributed by our ever-growing inefficient government bureaucracy. Regional class, race, age and sex disputes polarize the nation. This probably will worsen until we reject the notion that central planning works.

As nations lose respect for liberty, so too do they lose respect for individual responsibility. Laws are passed proposing no-fault insurance for injuries for which someone in particular was responsible. Remote generations are required to pay a heavy price for violations of civil liberties that occurred to the blacks, to the Indians, and to Japanese-Americans. This is done only at the expense of someone else's civil liberties and in no way can be justified

Collective rights – group fights, in contrast to individual tights – prompt laws based on collective guilt for parties not responsible for causing any damage. The Superfund is a typical example of punishing innocent people for damages caused by government /business. Under a system of individual rights where initiation of force is prohibited, this would not occur.

Short-run solutions enhance political careers and motivate most legislation in Washington, to the country's detriment. Apparent economic benefits deceive many Members into supporting legislation that in the long run is devastating to the economy. Politics unfortunately is a short-run game – the next election. Economics is a long-run game and determines the prosperity and the freedoms of the next generation. Sacrificing future wealth for present indulgence is done at the expense of liberty for the individual.

Motivations of those who lead the march toward the totalitarian state can rarely be challenged. Politicians' good intentions, combined with the illusion of wisdom, falsely reassure the planners that good results will be forthcoming. Freedom endorses a humble approach toward the idea that one group of individuals by some quirk of nature knows what is best for another. Personal preferences are subjectively decided upon. Degrees of risk that free individuals choose to take vary from one individual to another. Liability and responsibility for one's own acts should never be diminished by government edicts. Voluntary contracts should never be interfered with in a free society except for their enforcement. Trust in a free society even with its imperfections – if we're to strive for one, must be superior to our blind faith in government's ability to solve our problems for us.

Government in a free society is recognized to be nothing more than in embodiment of the people. The sovereignty is held by the people. A planned coercive society talks vaguely of how government provides this and that, as if government were equivalent to the Creator. Distribution is one thing – production is another. Centralized control of the distribution of wealth by an impersonal government that ignores the prescribed role of guaranteeing the equal protection of liberty ensures that one day freedom will disappear and take with it the wealth that only free men can create.

Today the loss of the people's sovereignty is clearly evident. Lobbyists are important, if not the key figures, in all legislation – their numbers are growing exponentially. It's not an accident that the lobbyist's and chief bureaucrat's salaries are higher than the Congressman's – they are literally "more important." The salary allocation under today's conditions are correct. Special interests have replaced the concern that the Founders had for the general welfare. Conference committees' intrigues are key to critical legislation. The bigger the government, the higher the stakes, the more lucrative the favors granted. Vote trading is seen as good politics, not as an immoral act. The errand-boy mentality is ordinary – the defender of liberty is seen as bizarre. The elite few who control our money, our foreign policy, and the international banking institutions – in a system designed to keep the welfare rich in diamonds and Mercedes – make the debates on the House and Senate floors nearly meaningless.

The monetary system is an especially important area where the people and Congress have refused to assume their responsibilities. Maintaining honest money – a proper role for government – has been replaced by putting the counterfeiters in charge of the government printing press. This system of funny money provides a convenient method whereby Congress' excessive spending is paid for by the creation of new money. Unless this is addressed, which I suppose it will be in due time, monetary and banking crises will continue and get much worse during this decade.

...
Government cannot make people morally better by laws that interfere with nonviolent personal acts that produce no victims. Disapproving of another's behavior is not enough to justify a law prohibiting it. Any attempt to do so under the precepts of liberty is an unwarranted use of government force.
.....

The crisis we face is clearly related to a loss of trust – trust in ourselves, in freedom, in our own government and in our money. We are a litigious welfare society gone mad. Everyone feels compelled to grab whatever he can get from government or by suit. The "something for nothing" obsession rules our every movement, and is in conflict with the other side of man's nature – that side that values self-esteem and pride of one's personal achievement. Today the pride of self-reliance and personal achievement is buried by the ego-destroying policies of the planned interventions of big government and replaced by the "satisfaction" of manipulating the political system to one's own special advantage. Score is kept by counting the federal dollars allocated to the special group or the congressional district to which one belongs. This process cannot continue indefinitely. Something has to give – we must choose either freedom and prosperity or tyranny and poverty.

I guess that the reason Europe is doing better than us is that it is so "non-interventionist."

Uh, am I in the right place?

Sadly, yes, because it's all about you isn't it?

Man . . . talk about over-simplifying the issue. <_<

Isn't that what politics is all about?

It's fighting the war of independence all over again, constantly worried about central government interference being the source of all evil while ignoring the evil that appears at a grass roots level.

The truth is there's a mixture of evils from above and below, and to concentrate on only some of these evils will allow the others to flourish.

Countries that have no central government at all are generally filled with death squads and warlords, with backwards economies and a very poor quality of life. Countries with absolute centralised power are frequently very similar. We should be aiming for somewhere in the middle to avoid the problems of these extremes.

People that believe in all problems being solved by big government are deluded, but so are people that believe in all problems being solved by small government. Humans aren't inherently good or evil, they're inherently humans, and are just as capable of selfish acts as a government or lobbying group.

If you give lots of power to high level branches of government, they will become corrupt and do bad things, but the same thing happens if you transfer power to lower level local organisations. I don't want to give any specific examples because that could drag this thread elsewhere, but there are plenty of cases where local councils, individuals and national governments have all behaved as tyrants. Any measure of power at any level will eventually produce some form of injustice.

There is no easy answer to the problem of power causing corruption, I don't think anyone should pretend there is.

The only practical thing we can do is try to balance one power against another and hope the evils cancel each other out, which is why practically every successful stable country has strong and separate branches of government (legislature, executive and judiciary) with the makeup of each strongly influenced by the votes of individuals. Hopefully, no single branch can step out of line too much because the other branches will stop them.

Sadly, it seems so.

Nice speech though.

Hell with Ron Paul. I'm voting for Hillmitt Huckobamacain.

Maybe if we get enough of them in there together the whole executive branch will end up deadlocked and immobile.

. . . one can dream.

Crazy Ron? He's from very near where I live. We've long known about him. He's one of the Klan's favorites. He's so far out there he couldn't find his way back with a searchlight. Read his newsletters from over the years. He now denies any knowledge, but he's been putting out racist crap for decades.