Politicians From Texas

"I think Ron Paul is probably telling the truth, nobody's listening."

"I strongly support Ron Paul, we very badly need to have more Representatives in the House who understand in a principled way the importance of property rights and religious freedom."

"Paul has a coherent political world-view and states his positions clearly and unapologetically, without hedges, and that approach naturally ensures greater disagreement than the form of please-everyone obfuscation which drives most candidates. [...] While Barack Obama toys with the rhetoric of challenging conventional wisdom, Paul's campaign -- for better or worse -- actually does so, and does so in an extremely serious, thoughtful and coherent way. [...] There have been few candidates who more steadfastly avoid superficial gimmicks, cynical stunts, and manipulative tactics. There have been few candidates who espouse a more coherent, thoughtful, consistent ideology of politics, grounded in genuine convictions and crystal clear political values. [...] There is never a doubt that Paul actually believes what he is saying [...] Paul is the only serious candidate aggressively challenging America's addiction to ruling the world through superior military force and acting as an empire -- not by contesting specific policies (such as the Iraq War) but by calling into question the unexamined root premises of these policies, the ideology that is defining our role in the world. By itself, the ability of Paul's campaign to compel a desperately needed debate over the devastation which America's imperial rule wreaks on every level -- economic, moral, security, liberty -- makes his success worth applauding."

"I love this guy. Dr. Paul is the only candidate I know of who would have signed the Constitution of The United States had he been there."

"He really lit my fuse when he continued to assert that it was our fault we were attacked on Sept. 11 … [Ron Paul's comments were] ludicrous and unacceptable."

"You know, the last two nations that the United States saved before 9/11 were two Muslim nations. So, to my friend Ron Paul: don't blame America first."

"And then there's the libertarian Congressman Ron Paul who seems like your uncle the bartender who has a Big Theory about everything: some of his ideas are brilliant, others weird. He rates a mention because his singular moment of weirdness -- proposing that al-Qaeda attacked on Sept. 11 because the U.S. had been messing around in the Middle East, bombing Iraq -- offered Giuliani a historic slam dunk... But Giuliani was having a good debate even before he reduced Paul to history."

"He is against efforts to help poor people by the federal government... Ron Paul's fundamental position is anti-American, let's be honest about it. He does not like any policy the USA has pursued anywhere in the world, or at home, for the last century or so... The Republican party is not going to take seriously, ultimately, someone who thinks we're responsible for 9/11, and who thinks we don't have serious threats around the world, and a serious obligation to help those who stand for liberty and decency around the world."

"I love Ron Paul. I didn't think he was presidential material, but Ron Paul is a guy that stands for freedom."

"By equating the Civil Rights Act, which expanded American civil liberty, with the Patriot Act, which reduced it, on the grounds that both are federal laws with sanctions, Ron Paul displays the moral idiocy of someone who declares that a person who pushes a little old lady out of the path of a bus is just as bad as a person who pushes a little old lady into the path of a bus, because both are equally guilty of pushing little old ladies around."

"He doesn't strike me as the kind of person that's tapping into those elements of American public opinion that might lead towards a sustainable move in the libertarian direction."

"I mean this is all seriousness, Ron Paul [is my pro-stock market candidate]."

"A the lot of people think like you, I dare not say I‘m one of them."

"You're working for the most honest man in Congress."

"Ron Paul doesn't just talk about being pro-life, he acts on it. His voting record truly is impeccable and he undoubtedly understands our constitutional republic and the inalienable right to life for all."

"The person of the year: Ron Paul, a physician-politician. He injected the presidential campaign with a dose of truth serum. Paul's straight talk on Iraq, and his straight talk on the Constitution, as Buchanan pointed out, and the limits of government have made him an Internet phenomena. In fact, Paul has become an independent force in the nation's life."

"After Mr. Paul spoke, it seemed half the room booed, but the other applauded. When a thousand Republicans are in a room and one man of the eight on the stage takes a sharply minority viewpoint on a dramatic issue and half the room seems to cheer him, something's going on. Ron Paul's support isn't based on his persona, history or perceived power. What support he has comes because of his views. As he spoke, you could hear other candidates laughing in the background. They should stop giggling, and engage in a serious way."

"Racism, homophobia and conspiracy theories about AIDS, Israel, the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission. Just another day in the work of Aryan Nation, USA? It sure sounds like it. But no, they are some of the ingredients in the pre-1999, pre-Internet newsletter of Ron Paul, the Republican presidential candidate who now tries to portray himself as a libertarian. [...] Ron Paul claims that the newsletter was published in his name, but written by others and he didn´t pay close attention to what was written since he was working full time. Fascinating defence. So he trusted those writers to write in his name to such a degree that he didn´t even check what they wrote?"

"I think I'm fondest of Ron Paul… He's the only person I agree with on foreign policy."

"I'll worry about Ron Paul if he gets to the general election."

"Ron Paul is one of the outstanding leaders fighting for a stronger national defence. As a former Air Force officer, he knows well the needs of our armed forces, and he always puts them first. We need to keep him fighting for our country."

"If Ron Paul gets anywhere near the nomination, I would certainly support him. He's the only one that I've seen in American politics that seems to have a clue about what's going on in the world."

"...Ron Paul was the only one who sounded like a person instead of a politician -- no small feat for a presidential candidate... He was certainly talking sense tonight."

"We'd love it if we could all just come home and not worry about the rest of the world, as Ron Paul says. But the problem is, they attacked us on 9/11. We were here; they attacked us. We want to help move the world of Islam toward modernity so they can reject the extreme..."

"I thought Mr. Paul captured it the other night exactly correctly. This war is dangerous to America because it's based, not on gender equality, as Mr. Giuliani suggested, or any other kind of freedom, but simply because of what we do in the Islamic World – because ‘we're over there,' basically, as Mr. Paul said in the debate."

"[Ron Paul is the] one exception to the Gang of 535."

"I think Ron Paul has established his legitimacy in this race."

"He's fantastic... This guy - he's a Republican - and he says listen, when I become president, I'm taking us out of Iraq, I'm taking us out of everywhere in the world, because what good has it done us being in these fucking Middle Eastern countries? Because they hate us, I'm taking us out of all these wars, and we're done. And he goes, I'm not an isolationist, I'm not afraid to use the military where it's needed. But to sit in these extended fucking wars, draining the economy - and if we stay or we leave, the same goddamn thing happens: nothing! So let's leave. And people love this guy when he talks, he makes sense."

"Mr. Paul isn't going to be president. He trails in national polls, in no small part because his lack of a proactive foreign policy makes him an unserious candidate in today's terror world.... His more kooky views (say, his belief in a conspiracy to create a "North American Union") and his violent antiwar talk have allowed the other aspirants to dismiss him."

"The question serious supporters of a real war on terror must now ask is: will continuing the fight in Iraq help reverse this trend or cement it for decades to come? Is the war making us less secure and the world much less safe? Would withdrawal or continued engagement makes things better? At the very least, it seems to me, this question should be on the table in the Iraq debate. And yet the Republicans - with the exception of Ron Paul - don't even want to talk about it. Until they do, they are not a party serious about national security."

"...he is arguing for and in fact defending the 9/11 terrorist attack, by finding a plethora of faults in our foreign policy, and in the way we handle the war on terror here in the home front and in the Middle East which he believed justified the terrorists' attacks killing thousands of innocent Americans... If we examine the reactions of pro-Paul haters of America to the published article I have mentioned, we find no brain, only emotional kicks... Another fan of Paul thought Paul was the smartest candidate because unlike the other candidates, to defeat the enemy, he wants to study and know first the enemy. No, talking of who is smart and who is not, he is not even a shadow of his nemesis Rudy Giuliani. A scatterbrain does not compare to Giuliani who is surging ahead in the polls without looking back. Sorry to disappoint a rabid fan... Paul claims to be the only enforcer of the U.S. Constitution. His followers are duped into believing that he is. He is not – he is a defiler if not a violator of the Constitution... Note that under this Act, our financial obligations to the UN, the sending of troops to troubled spots in the world at the call of the UN are, among others, mandated by the Constitution... My initial advice to him at this distance and I hope his handful of followers will get it too is, don't be a glutton for public scorn even if you thirst for public accolade as champion of the taxpayers by attacking the United Nations in violation of the Constitution. It does not make a hell of sense."

"The phrase "honest politician" is an oxymoron; yet in the sense that Paul never, ever votes against his stated principles -- which are libertarian and include the belief that much of our federal government, from the IRS to the Department of Education, and the massive taxes that support it, should be abolished -- the phrase describes him... The same beliefs that cause him to vote against every single appropriations bill in Congress also carry over to his private life. He intends, for example, to refuse his congressional pension. He would not let his children take out federally subsidized education loans. He actually returns money each year from his congressional office -- some $50,000 last year."

"The title to my special order tonight is 'Current Conditions or Just a Bad Dream'. Could it all be a bad dream or a nightmare? Is it my imagination or have we lost our minds? It's surreal, it's just not believable. A grand absurdity, a great deception, a delusion of momentous proportions based on preposterous notions and on ideas whose time should never have come. Simplicity, grossly distorted and complicated. Insanity, passed off as logic. Grandiose schemes built on falsehoods with the morality of Ponzi and Madoff. Evil described as virtue. Ignorance pawned off as wisdom. Destruction and impoverishment in the name of humanitarianism. Violence, the tool of change. Preventive wars used as a road to peace. Tolerance delivered by government guns. Reactionary views in the guise of progress. An empire replacing the republic. Slavery sold as liberty. Excellence and virtue traded for mediocrity. Socialism to save capitalism. A government out of control, unrestrained by the constitution, the rule of law or morality. Bickering over petty politics as we descend into chaos. The philosophy that destroys us is not even defined. We have broken from reality a psychotic nation. Ignorance with a pretense of knowledge replacing wisdom. Money does not grow on trees, nor does prosperity come from a government printing press or escalating deficits. We are now in the midst of unlimited spending of the people's money. Exorbitant taxation, deficits of trillions of dollars spent on a failed welfare-warfare system. An epidemic of cronyism. Unlimited supplies of paper money equated with wealth. A central bank that deliberately destroys the value of the currency in secrecy, without restraint, without nary a whimper, yet cheered on by the pseudo-capitalists of Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, and Detroit. We police our world empire with troops on 700 bases and in 130 countries around the world. A dangerous war now spreads throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. Thousands of innocent people being killed as we become known as the torturers of the 21st century. We assume that by keeping the already known torture pictures from the public's eye, we will be remembered only as a generous and good people. If our enemies want to attack us only because we are free and rich, proof of torture would be irrelevant. The sad part of all this is that we have forgotten what made America great, good and prosperous. We need to quickly refresh our memories and once again reinvigorate our love, understanding, and confidence in liberty. The status quo cannot be maintained considering the current conditions. Violence and lost liberty will result without some revolutionary thinking. We must escape from the madness of crowds now gathering. The good news is that reversal is achievable through peaceful and intellectual means, and fortunately the number of those who care are growing exponentially. Of course it could all be a bad dream, a nightmare, and that I'm seriously mistaken, overreacting, and that my worries are unfounded. I hope so. But just in case, we ought to prepare ourselves for revolutionary changes in the not-too-distant future. I yield back the balance of my time."

"Imagine [...] that thousands of armed foreign troops were constantly patrolling American streets in military vehicles. Imagine they were here under the auspices of "keeping us safe" or "promoting democracy" or "protecting their strategic interests." Imagine that they operated outside of US law, and that the Constitution did not apply to them. Imagine that every now and then they made mistakes or acted on bad information and accidentally killed or terrorized innocent Americans, including women and children, most of the time with little to no repercussions or consequences. Imagine that they set up checkpoints on our soil and routinely searched and ransacked entire neighborhoods of homes. Imagine if Americans were fearful of these foreign troops, and overwhelmingly thought America would be better off without their presence. Imagine if some Americans were so angry about them being in Texas that they actually joined together to fight them off, in defense of our soil and sovereignty, because leadership in government refused or were unable to do so. Imagine that those Americans were labeled terrorists or insurgents for their defensive actions, and routinely killed, or captured and tortured by the foreign troops on our land. Imagine that the occupiers' attitude was that if they just killed enough Americans, the resistance would stop, but instead, for every American killed, ten more would take up arms against them, resulting in perpetual bloodshed. [...] The reality is that our military presence on foreign soil is as offensive to the people that live there as armed Chinese troops would be if they were stationed in Texas."

"From the Great Depression, to the stagflation of the seventies, to the current economic crisis caused by the housing bubble, every economic downturn suffered by this country over the past century can be traced to Federal Reserve policy. The Fed has followed a consistent policy of flooding the economy with easy money, leading to a misallocation of resources and an artificial 'boom' followed by a recession or depression when the Fed-created bubble bursts."

"I am convinced that there are more threats to American liberty within the 10 mile radius of my office on Capitol Hill than there are on the rest of the globe."

"Although it is obvious that the Keynesians were all wrong and interventionism and central economic planning don’t work, whom are we listening to for advice on getting us out of this mess? Unfortunately, it’s the Keynesians, the socialists, and big-government proponents. Who’s being ignored? The Austrian free-market economists — the very ones who predicted not only the Great Depression, but the calamity we’re dealing with today. If the crisis was predictable and is explainable, why did no one listen? It’s because too many politicians believed that a free lunch was possible and a new economic paradigm had arrived. But we’ve heard that one before — like the philosopher’s stone that could turn lead into gold. Prosperity without work is a dream of the ages."

"Our presence will serve as an incentive for al Qaeda to grow in numbers and motivate more suicide bombers. An indefinite presence, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan, will continue to drain our financial resources, undermine our national defense, demoralize our military and exacerbate our financial crisis. All this will be welcomed by Osama Bin Laden, just as he planned it. It's actually more than he had hoped for. [...] The war in Afghanistan and Pakistan will be much bigger, unless the dollar follows the path of the dollar-based world financial system and collapses into runaway inflation. In this case, the laws of economics and the realities of history will prove superior to the madness of maintaining a world empire financed by scraps of paper. Our military prowess, backed by a nuclear arsenal, will not suffice in overcoming the tragedy of a currency crisis. Soviet nukes did not preserve its empire or the communist economy."

"This is the big one."

"Question: ...you believe the Fed shouldn't exist... make the case. Ron Paul: First reason is, it's not authorized in the Constitution, it's an illegal institution. The second reason, it's an immoral institution, because we have delivered to a secretive body the privilege of creating money out of thin air; if you or I did it, we'd be called counterfeiters, so why have we legalized counterfeiting? But the economic reasons are overwhelming: the Federal Reserve is the creature that destroys value. This station talks about free market capitalism, and you can't have free market capitalism if you have a secret bank creating money and credit out of thin air. They become the central planners, they decide what interest rates should be, what the supply of money should be... Question: How does the gold standard solves that? Ron Paul: It maintains a stable currency and a stable value. If the Fed concentrated more on stable money rather than stable prices... They push up new money in stocks and in commodities and in houses, and then they have to come in to rescue the situation. They create the bubbles, then they come in and rescue it, and they do nothing more than try to do price fixing. Capitalism depends, and capital comes from savings, but there's no savings in this country, so this is all artificial. It creates the misdirection and the malinvestment and all the excessive debt, and it always has to have a correction. Since the Fed has been in existence, the dollar has lost about 97% of its value. You're supposed to encourage savings, but if something loses its value, why save dollars? There's no encouragement whatsoever. [...] Gold is 6000 years old, and it still maintains its purchasing power. Oil prices really are very stable in terms of Gold. [...] Both conservatives and liberals want to enhance big government, and this is a seductive way to tax the middle class."

"The do-good liberal who said we have to take care of everybody -- and they are well intentioned -- the more debt they run up to give to the poor, the poorer the people get because they cannot keep up."

"You can't save free markets by socialism, I don't know where this idea ever came from. You save free markets by promoting free markets and sound money and balanced budgets. The whole reason why nobody wants to address the real problem is, we're spending a trillion dollars a year overseas running an empire, and it's coming to an end. This country is bankrupt, and we won't admit it. Eventually though, the dollar will go bust, and we will bring our troops home, and we will live within our means, but we ought to do it sensibly, rather than waiting for the collapse of the dollar, and this is what we're doing, we're on the verge of destroying our dollar. And then, you think we have problems now, problems then will be a lot worse, it'd look like the Weimar Republic, or a third world nation. And a lot of people know that, and they're scared to death, but we don't need to be making the problem worse by just propping up everything with more government programs, more inflation, and more helicopters, it won't work."

"We've lost the south, that was one of the biggest fallacies. We went in there and we served the interests of one of our enemies over there, the Iranians. We propped up the Shiites, we overthrew the Sunnis, and the British didn't hold, they left. So there's more peace and less killing in southern Iraq, because all of a sudden we've allowed local control to develop more naturally. Warlords and local people are in charge, and they're more allied with Iran. But this is not a catastrophe, that's why we should deal with the Iranians in a more respectful way: if they had more control of the oil they'd want to sell, what they're gonna do with it, drink it? That's why the balance of power and the idea of self-determination should be worked out by them, not by us. As long as we do it, there'd be resentment and that is the source of the hatred towards us."

"Let me see if I get this right. We need to borrow $10 billion from China, and then we give it to Musharraf, who is a military dictator, who overthrew an elected government. And then we go to war, we lose all these lives promoting democracy in Iraq. I mean, what's going on here?"

"What is moral about demanding even more needless sacrifice of American lives merely to save face with the mistake of invading and occupying Iraq? Doesn't it seem awfully strange that the Iraqi government we support is an ally of the Iranians who are our declared enemies? Are we not now supporting the Iranians by propping up their allies in Iraq? If Maliki is our ally, and he has diplomatic relations with Ahmadinejad, why can't we? … Why should we not expect many of the 80,000 Sunnis we have recently armed to someday turn their weapons against us, since they, as well as the Mahdi Army, detest any and all foreign occupation? … Since no one can define winning the war, just who do we expect to surrender?"

"With the election behind us, our country turns hopeful eyes to the future. I have a few hopes of my own. I congratulate our first African-American president-elect. Martin Luther King, Jr. certainly would be proud to see this day. We are stronger for embracing diversity, and I am hopeful that we can continue working through the tensions and wrongs of the past and become a more just and colorblind society. I hope this new administration will help bring us together, and not further divide us. I have always found that freedom is the best way to break down barriers. A free society emphasizes the importance of individuals, and not because they are part of a certain group. That's the only way equal justice can be achieved."

"Question: If you could pick one cause that has gotten us here, what'd you say it is? Ron Paul: Easy money. The Federal Reserve artificially lowering interest rates, deceiving the people, the investors, the savers, into believing that there's a lot of savings out there, and that we should invest more, build more houses, more cars. It's the malinvestment, which is every bit as dangerous, from the inflation of the money supply, as is the high prices that usually come."

"A nation without secure borders is no nation at all. It makes no sense to fight terrorists abroad when our own front door is left unlocked."

"What is seldom discussed in the immigration debate, unfortunately, is the incentives the US government provides for people to enter the United States illegally. As we know well, when the government subsidizes something we get more of it. The government provides a myriad of federal welfare benefits to those who come to the US illegally, including food stamps and free medical care. Is this a way to discourage people from coming to the US illegally? [...] Immigration reform should start with improving our border protection, yet it was reported last week that the federal government has approved the recruitment of 120 of our best trained Border Patrol agents to go to Iraq to train Iraqis how to better defend their borders! This comes at a time when the National Guard troops participating in Operation Jump Start are being removed from border protection duties in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas and preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan! It is an outrage and it will result in our borders being more vulnerable to illegal entry, including by terrorists."

"We quadrupled the TSA, you know, and hired more people who look more suspicious to me than most Americans who are getting checked. Most of them, they just don't look very American to me. If I'd have been looking, they look suspicious.… I mean, a lot of them can't even speak English, hardly. Not that I'm accusing them of anything, but it's sort of ironic."