i'm tom harpur welcome to the big show. eleven thirty am in moscow these iraqi headlines syrian authorities and the opposition trade barbs over who is behind a series of deadly suicide attacks and regime strongholds that killed thirty the government also blames qatar and saudi arabia for. the new egyptian constitution not yet written but already in the middle of a scandal with calls to dissolve the paddle that set to draw it up this exactly a year after people voted for change in a historic referendum. and washington lawmakers blur a legal lines when it comes to the u.s.

freedom of assembly making it easier to throw demonstrators behind bars protesting in areas where the president or if someone protected by the secret service could be visiting is now considered a felony. coming up here all of ellen gets focus on the ongoing republican presidential race in the u.s. in one candidate in particular with a more libertarian platform stay with us. and you can see. the low in welcome across doc i'm peter lavelle the candidates the of ron paul what makes him tick why is he so popular among younger voters why do republicans sneer at him while at the same time fear him and does mainstream media fairly cover his campaign a big. kick. start. to

cross not the republican candidate ron paul i'm joined by mark williams in sacramento he is founder and former chairman of the tea party express and radio host in washington we have mark levine he is a senior fellow with the truman national security project and a talk radio host and in new york we have michael brandon dowdy he is a politics editor at business insider i'm gentlemen this is cross-eyed that means you can jump in any time you want last week we did a program on mitt romney and i got a ton of mail saying what no one mentioned ron paul once and i thought maybe i'm doing the same thing that american media is doing to ron paul so michael first of all explain to my international viewers who is ron paul what is he all about and if there were an election on you tube why would he win. well ron paul is a libertarian influence congressman from texas and he's been in congress twice as a republican and still is

a republican from texas and he's run for the president three times once in one thousand nine hundred eight as a libertarian candidate again in two thousand and eight as a republican and this year as well and he is a very different sort of politician than the run of the mill republican he's heavily focused on monetary policy and our central bank the federal reserve and how it manipulates our monetary policy and he is also a peace candidate a kind of throwback to a very old or republicanism that hasn't been around for a long time i mean it's predates the cold war in many ways and he is a very odd politician in that he doesn't do the normal horse trading that politicians in washington do where they say i vote for this if you send the money to my district or all vote for this project to help out a friend or a donor and that kind of person in character is what drives the wild enthusiasm you see for him on the campaign trail ok i think that's

a very good summation mark in fact i want to go to you but he's not going to win ok he has a very strong strong following but he's not going to win the nomination but he stays in it this is what irritates republicans doesn't it. republicans greatly and he's a walking example of why libertarianism doesn't work it's his because of what michael said ron paul is a party of one he has no real colleagues he has no support he has no infrastructure political infrastructure. been interviewing ron paul for thirty years now he and he has been very consistent over all that time he's a very literal interpretation of the us constitution but he's got a worldview which is utopian in that he believes that if we leave everybody else completely alone and subvert our own interests to theirs then they'll leave us alone which obviously in this day and age doesn't work ok mark in washington d.c. that's a fair appraisal of what we just heard of ron paul. pretty much used to work with

carson ron paul used to work in the united states congress and ron paul is known as dr no because there is never a spending bill that he like he's against all government spending what is wrong asa what is wrong with that ok what's that is what's you know everything you've heard about ron paul on this program sounds attractive i'm sorry i'm not going to vote for anybody in this election ok i don't vote but you know everything we've heard here what's wrong with ron paul in. well there are a number of things wrong from ron paul first of all a lot of americans like government spending the better driver americans like so security they like medicare they like their highways they like their bridges they like a lot of things government provides from libraries to schools to all the other things government does and ron paul pretty consistently doesn't want any government to do anything he also by the way is forest with republicans on foreign policy in fact his foreign policy probably will closely approximates the democrats but it's even

to the left of them ron paul does not want any military spending of any kind except to defend our shores and that's something that that is the main reason by the way why he cannot win republican nomination on the other things that issues of spending and lower taxes he is very much a guy in the republican in fact he's more seriously republican the republican party because republican party a lot of those people will support your marks and other kinds of government spending ron paul be very attractive to them but his isolationist school of foreign policy means that he can never win a republican nomination michael in new york it seems to me that what we've just heard here is that ron paul makes republicans the democrats will come out so identical really on most issues here ok if you look we're looking at very little differences ron paul comes out and says the different things that could be republicans like even the democrats. well he really does and i want to jump on something said before about ron paul's utopianism actually in america we've had a lot of utopianism in the past decade suddenly two wars we're going to democratize the entire middle east this kind of will sony and fervor that somehow the force of

arms will change a culture of a region in just a few years when the culture has been there for fourteen hundred years and that way ron paul's very anti utopian and much more of a realist people to say it's an isolationist stance well maybe it is but it's also one that is a skeptical of government. using force of arms abroad as it is about using the force of. its welfare programs or social spending here in the united states in that way and that's the argument paul has been making to young people and to a lot of people that feel alienated from the two parties just as you said ok marc get back in sacramento you know i was going to go to you anyway go ahead jump in. if i might a conjecture here ron paul's true value as a candidate is in focusing the discussion and focusing all the debate in the very direction michael's talking about toward getting americans to start thinking about

what this country is and what it should be and what it was intended to be as opposed to what it's become and in that he's very valuable because he's he's was so far to the right end to the left of depending on the issue that he drags the discussion in both of those directions and it's a it's a very good thing to be sitting here and talking about whether or not we should intervene around the world particularly when we have a sitting president who thinks that the military is his own private toy to invade every anybody he decides to move a given day we need that kind of discussion in this country to be a check and balance on our government and that's that's what's out of balance in america right now the government has turned into something it was never intended to be but people fear the government the government doesn't fear the people as it should ok mark in washington what do you think about it because it seems to me i mean if you like ron paul and i just think i agree with mark that in sacramento he's shaking up things because america needs to be shaken up and its foreign policy is just encounters it's a disaster for the united states and its own security and i'm not going to i'm not

mimicking wrong paul that's my opinion go ahead. well i first i want to correct you when you say that sort of run part puts the democrats republicans together on one side and him standing apart it's understand ron paul is to libertarianism i think you have to look at both economic freedom and social freedom i would argue as a liberal democrat that the democrats support economic and social freedom economic freedom would be equal opportunity and a chance for every american to have a chance to succeed and that would include things like health care and education and other things that give poor people a chance to succeed in life republicans are very much against that kind of economic opportunity when it comes to social freedom you find the democrats a war hero well it is my listeners their knowledge either because now edgy play hard because there's been a very crude as a result of economic freedom of course it is i can source material or not it is really it is my knowledge it absolutely not age when it comes to social freedom and freedom who i have one fifty percent of what i earn is confiscated by the government and redistributed by the government no the democrats are retiring and i

think really. you know i spend my money what i spend it on the democrats of just it just need it and i must buy health insurance that's right because democrats believe that every american has a right to live and you shouldn't die in the richest country on earth merely because you're poor republican say and ron paul would agree here that listen if you can't afford health care just die get out of the way i mean ron paul opposes by the way allowing emergency rooms to care for poor people but i want to finish my distinction just real quick because as social freedom when it comes to civil rights when it comes to you know what whether you can smoke a drug whatever it is democrats support individual freedoms they say you know legalize marijuana or allow gay people to get married and ron paul stands on their side with regard to social freedoms for republicans are against those but he stands with republicans when it comes to economics he's opposed to equal opportunity he says as you just said keep all your tax money for yourself and let the poor fend

for themselves ok michael if i could go to new year if you remember of a very sort of rabid of those we have and we have michael in new york and michael yo yos watching you listening to both of them ok and i kind of see a little bit of ron paul in you thinking there you go again if i wrong. no i mean i first want to correct a slur here that ron paul just wants people to die in the street. that goes quite against his career as a physician where he didn't accept medicare or medicaid he would treat patients for free or accept whatever they could give him and he would give them health care and that's what happens in a free society people cooperate with each other rather than assuming that the government is going to take care of everyone when in fact sometimes the government can't take care of everyone where there's a bureaucratic snafu or there's no money or there has to be rationing rumpole actually provided for people himself and that's another reason why people are attracted to and i would say this that you know economic policy as as

a matter of freedom ron paul would say we need to be free to have our own currency if we want it or we need to be free to have a dollar that has a solid value and it isn't constantly manipulated and he believes that if you followed a policy of sound money things would get cheaper over time like gas instead of constantly getting more expensive as the dollar itself loses its value and frankly i think the we should return to the discussion on foreign policy because we think what is bankrupting america faster making it more insecure than its foreign policy right now ok markets like it should be clear in washington go ahead mark you know actually i had over here in washington to go ahead first go ahead real quick just because ron paul as a doctor as a physician did provide for patients he does not believe that doctors across america should do so it mandated by the government he believes that if a poor person doesn't have money to afford a doctor and can't find a doctor to treat him that poor person is out of luck all right gentlemen we got to

a short break it's a very spirited today we're going to go to a short break and after that show break we'll continue our discussion on ron paul's campaign stay with marty. came. to.

fewer chances but full of life. limited time. more optimistic. the theater where the ingenious opened their hearts to the rest of us. are the real limits. on our. world the. science technology innovation all the developments from around rush hour we've got the future covered. you can. still. feel. the. welcome back to crossfire got people about to mind you were talking about ron paul's popularity among voters. live can

still live. by gentlemen i thought to talk about two issues in this part of the program well how ron paul is changing the political debate and i think foreign policy we haven't really finished with your thing is very important i want if i can go to you what's wrong with what went wrong paul says well the united states needs to win these two wars that are very very expensive they were lost america's reputation is in tatters and the country's going bankrupt i mean what's wrong with his foreign policy saying don't do that anymore ok it seems like common sense to me . market or the market way sacramento with what he's saying oh you know there's nothing wrong with that in the context of afghanistan and iraq though those have been screwed up royally. and we should have been out of both a very long time ago. in terms of just generally speaking the reason why we have intervention around the world is because we have interests around the world and even our founding fathers wrote into the constitution the standing navy to keep the

sea lanes open so we have legitimate interests economic and military around the world what we have done here is go off the rails and try to impose our will militarily on other countries that really we shouldn't be doing i mean afghanistan is a great example there's no point to being there the whole point of going there was to give us some of the loddon allocated markets our money if i could jump in here would like either know if i could jump in but if we'd listen to ron paul it's the political elite that listen to ron paul we never win it and it would have gone into those wars that's my point here he's been consistent nobody would have gone in well you know there are areas where we needed either ok but we don't see where he didn't say there were two americas advantage of the people on the ground mark in washington what do you think about that i mean is ron paul making people think about american foreign policy because it seems to be that's what people are most attracted to is these these very expensive last wars and the learning curve is fucked. i don't know he seems to get his biggest boos in the republican debates when he talks about foreign policy people like him in the republican field when he

talks about cutting spending or cutting taxes but he talks about foreign policy specifically one of things he said recently was that united states should not have gone in to kill osama bin laden that's an extremely unpopular position i got to give ron paul credit he's got integrity he's consistent he never supports any wars or any military action unless under the constitution united states there's a declaration of war according to congress that's in the constitution but his his views on this are way out of the mainstream of the american party mark in washington what's wrong with the american government here into the american constitution what's wrong with that i think no i think america should adhere to the american constitution i really do i think though that ron paul takes the constitutional fetish a bit too far and finds for the restrictions in the constitution that are there i mean he ignores clauses like providing for the general welfare and other clauses that congress has used for generations of course congress has had military actions as opposed to war for for two hundred years so i just think it's clear that his views on this are out of step with most of the american people ok michael what do

you think about that maybe he's out of step and maybe he's leading. well he's it's both actually he is out of step and he is leading. washington it's not just a matter of one constitution or interpretation here or there i mean the american political class has a culture it shaped our elite universities it's shaped by american history and our american and we i mean both parties believe that they can manage every human endeavor they can manage how companies pay for health insurance they can manage how things are run in baghdad in kabul they literally believe that their education that their values entitle them to dictate terms to everyone on every subject that they deem important ron paul is the one out there arguing no we don't people should run their own lives a nation should run their own affairs and we shouldn't involve ourselves in them so i think it's even more than just a constitutional battle i mean this is

a cultural battle and we've seen the results in kabul and in baghdad we're seeing the results in egypt and in libya that the united states can't just control every single human endeavor on the planet we don't have the power we don't have the knowledge we don't even have the moral fiber and i mean you see presidents can't even manage to produce a budget that makes any sense in this country and yet they want to talk about it even traffic was in baghdad that the whole idea is absurd and one calls call people out and that's why he is leading and this campaign has been a huge exercise in building a movement within the republican party that follows these ideas of personal freedom of peace and liberty ok marcie in washington and mark in sacramento you both were nodding your head there mark in washington when you go to you very theory you guys agree with him on polls positions but then when i ask you about you know when we're listening to michael then you know i go to you and say but but but but i mean it

sometimes it is kind of simple isn't it go ahead mark in washington. well i agree with ron paul's positions on personal freedom i agree to drug war goes too far i believe that we should protect american civil liberties i think we should be worried about government excess in terms of earmarks in congress and so forth so i very much fear it's a personal freedoms argument and the republican party in fact is against both democrats and liberals with regard to personal freedom if they want to regulate a woman's body and decide who should get married things like that but when it comes to economic freedom which i know michael doesn't like that term i'll just call it economic opportunity when it comes for the ability of every american to achieve the american dream to grow up poor and become pres of the night states to have health care and education and food and shelter the basics of living in the richest country on earth and there democrats are on one side and ron paul republicans are on the other side because democrats believe that every american should have a chance to succeed and it should just be that if you're rich you can succeed just because you're rich so i grew up on personal freedom i disagree with him on

economics ok mark in sacramento look like you're going to burst they're going to. give mark is delusional it's liberal democrats who vote law seems sex marriage in california it's liberal democrats who refused to legalize liberal democrats l a four and you know it's liberal they want to do i mean it's a liberal democrat standing marijuana party is barely an idea here there's there's there's like a half a dozen republicans in these state. it's the democratic party that wants to confiscate the money that anybody earns beyond whatever the democrats think they should earn what ron paul signifies here is actually very much the tea party message in that the government has gone beyond its bounds we have a war going on in this country right now a civil war going on in this country between the people who should be running the government and the elites who think they're better than the rest of us and who are running the government they don't want to let go of it these old fossils these old

dusty old white guys are going to sit there until they die or fossilize they have they. i think that they are in charge the democrat party the republican party at least no conspiracy that they should run every aspect of all of our lives ok michael in new york if i go to you also believe that she won every aspect of the lives of the rest of the world ok michael if i go to you how is ron paul changing the political discourse in the united states how is he changing it when we talk about conservatism liberalism even libertarianism mean is this campaign a defining moment or a moment or a beginning of a defining moment in how americans talk about politics. i think it's the beginning of a defining moment i mean our political discourse is controlled by the media by large scale institutions think tanks and by direct mail groups operating in suburban virginia and ron paul for the first time is really building an infrastructure to disseminate his ideas in the long term and you know in this

campaign he's going out there state to state finding out who are the people that are sympathetic to his ideas whether they were publicans whether they're independents whether they're libertarian party people identifying them putting them on a mailing list sending them literature about the campaign for liberty these other organizations that they're building or college organizations that they're building and really trying to institutionalize these ideas in this movement so that they last even beyond his own political career and maybe some of these mailing lists are going to be used by his son in a future run i mean we've seen the power of using a presidential run to build a movement and that's extremely important in taking these ideas out of the air and putting them directly into our politics so he's been a tremendous success doing that mark in sacramento what do you think about that i mean the market i'm sorry ron paul certainly is not going to be elected president of united states but what will his legacy be in this election is he changing the

way people are thinking about politics particularly young people. at the risk of people around the world not understanding the metaphor he's a johnny appleseed of political ideas he's running around planting these ideas that will later spread out i mean i have i adopted some pretty libertarian views myself thirty years ago when i first started arguing with him about politics he's very much educating americans especially young ones about the process and getting them involved and that he's absolutely invaluable he is as i said he's taking the discussion to a new level here is one that's needed mark in washington i think it's a very good observation that mark in sacramento made is because it least people are getting active people getting involved in the process again it's good to see young people wanting to get involved the process because you can you can have the occupy wall street movement and you can vote ok so i mean it's a nice mixture isn't it. i think ron paul represents a very loud very passionate minority of americans that don't fit neatly into

republican or democratic camps and i don't think one party ron paul frankly belongs in the republican party nor the democratic party because when you hear him talk you'll find half the time republicans cheer half the time democrats cheer or maybe i should say a third a third because a third of the time people just questor heads and say what he brings a monetary policy no candidate ever brings a monetary policy he believes in the gold standard which is a throwback a hundred years ago neither party supports that so he has some ideas for one party some from the other and some that are frankly his own he does represent a third force in american politics i think the libertarian force will always be smaller than the republican or democratic force but i'm glad he's out there and i'll tell you one thing about ron paul the man has integrity he doesn't change his views to fit the winds the way mitt romney might do this then believe what he says i think some of it is wildly off the law but i give the guy credit for being consistent michael what do you think about that in third force we just heard from mark in washington is this to get the beginning of something because we've seen third party split in the past you know and because of the way the system is built

now it's almost impossible for something new to arise maybe ron paul has the answer to that. well it's tough i mean the republican party itself was once the third party in american politics and the galvanizing issue of slavery made it into the not only a major party but the ruling party during the civil war i mean you could take something you know a major financial crisis again or something else to make these ideas even more relevant i think mark in washington is right there that this is a minority view right now and that also ron paul is collecting people who maybe didn't have libertarian views those who are just sick of the system as it is they don't feel it's ok for the sake of the system as it is you know if it is shown that no gentleman thank you very much would run out of time many thanks to my guest today in washington sacramento and in new york and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at the scene x. time and remember.

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