Homeschooling, War, and Banking

A transcript of the Lew Rockwell Show episode 373 with Ron Paul.

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ROCKWELL:  Well, good morning.  This is the Lew Rockwell Show. And what an honor it is to have as our guest this morning, Dr. Ron Paul. What do you say about Dr. Paul?  I mean, he’s the great champion of freedom in the political realm, in all of American history, I would say. He certainly has done so much against the Federal Reserve, for the cause of peace, against all these horrendous wars, against the police state, against regulation of the economy, against all the terrible things the government does.

And, Ron, I noticed one terrible thing the government has done recently. They’re proposing a so-called core curriculum to try to bring all the public schools much more under the control of the Department of Education as to what they teach and, of course, their disciplinary policies, everything else about the schools.  Isn’t this another reason, maybe an increased reason to consider homeschooling?

PAUL:  When you think about this recent case where the German family that had come over here just to get freedom in the schools, they’re likely to be sent back to Germany.  But when you look at that law that prohibits homeschooling in Germany, it wasn’t written recently.  It was written under the Hitler regime in the 1930s.  So there is a reason to not allow competition.  And when you have No Child Left Behind, which the Republicans love, and now this core curriculum, which is being fought — it hasn’t gone all the way.  I know in my own area, here, they’ve been fighting it tooth and nail.[amazon asin=B00FOWA50E&template=*lrc ad (right)]

But I don’t think it’s just an accident.  I don’t think it’s these academicians who say, well, how are we going to help the children improve their education.  Some get lulled into it, I’m sure.  And some are naïve, and some may believe this.  At least the people who go along might believe it.  But ultimately, these programs are designed to get hold of the children very young.  And we do know that young children are easily influenced.  And if they are influenced from kindergarten on up, by state-run curriculum, that’s very, very dangerous.

You know, in many ways, I have been encouraged.  We do have the Ron Paul Curriculum, which I thought through thoroughly because I figured I just know how well this would work.  But I’ve come across so many very, very average people that you would never dream even think about politics — and they’re not Republicans or Democrats; they just care about their kids — they’re very interested in homeschooling.  So hopefully, it stays legal because it certainly has had a very positive effect here in the last 30 years since it was more or less authorized and condoned by the courts in the early 1980s.  I think tremendous good has come from this.  But, like I tell people, never let your guard down because I think, whether it’s core curriculum or whatever, I think there are some enemies out there that don’t want families to have a choice.

But to me, it’s a moral issue because, you know, who is responsible for the children, their education, their safety and their health?  It should be the parents.  And I think that’s what’s going on now, the argument between the state in charge of the children or the parents in charge of the children.

ROCKWELL:   Well, Ron, one great thing about the Ron Paul Curriculum, when people who have never done homeschooling think about it, it seems intimidating;  I mean, it seems like just a huge deal.  And what this curriculum does is it guides you and explains everything to you and makes it accessible to every parent who is concerned about their children’s future and is worried about what they are being taught in the public school.  And, of course, you have a book coming out explaining why homeschooling is such an important aspect of a free society.

PAUL:  The people who have been advising me on this strongly encouraged a system where it isn’t totally dependent on brilliant parents to do this.  It’s to be made easier, and the material is going to be available so you don’t have to buy a lot of books.  The children themselves learn how to help each other and teach themselves.  You know, these aren’t brand-new ideas but they are reviving some ideas that have been used in the past and are totally opposite of the conditions that exist in our authoritarian public educational system, especially when it’s run by the federal government.  [Laughing]  I argue that there’s no prohibition in the Constitution for a local community having a school, but there’s no authority whatsoever for the federal government to be involved in funding it or regulating it or devising the curriculum.  And I think a lot of people are waking up to this fact.

ROCKWELL:  Ron, one of the things I like about your curriculum is that, yes, it brings back the best of the past.  And, of course, whether we think about — eventually, this curriculum is going to go right to the first grade — that the best of the past in terms of, say, how to read as versus the horrible system that really makes almost illiterates out of so many children.  So we have all that kind of thing.  But it’s going to be cutting edge, too, in the sense that it’s going to teach a child how to give a speech, how to have a YouTube channel, how to have your own blog and what you should have in your blog and why that can be such an important contribution to your education.[amazon asin=B00CME66KA&template=*lrc ad (right)]

PAUL:  Lo and behold, who knows, if the parents are paying attention — they might pay attention because they might learn something, too, because —

[LAUGHTER]

— we all can learn something.  I could learn a little bit more about setting up my own YouTube channel.  So this is going to be wonderful.  Not only will the kids catch on very quickly, but parent might get a lot of interest.  It’s kind of like what happened in the campaign, you know.  We get young people who get very interested in the Federal Reserve, interested in stopping these wars, and they got excited.  That was transmitted to the parents.  And all of a sudden, the parents say, hey, I love what these kids — at least they’re serious and thinking about it.  And they came around on the issues.  So maybe homeschooling will work somewhat like that.

ROCKWELL:  Ron, I notice — as we move to foreign affairs for a little bit — that the evil John McCain went to celebrate Memorial Day with the so-called rebels, the al Qaeda types, funded by the U.S. and Turkey and Israel and other places, fighting to overthrow the Assad government.  He went there to celebrate Memorial Day with these al Qaeda guerillas.  I thought those were supposed to be bad guys.

PAUL:  Yeah.  You know, you wonder what the motivation is there.  We know what his foreign policy is and we know his attitude about war, because he believes all problems can be solved with aggression and use of force and telling other countries what to do.  I was thinking today about all that mess over there and how Syria has not gone well for the rebels and for our administration, our foreign policy.  But remember the statement back when they were getting ready to go into Iraq and Afghanistan that the Neo-Cons were going to remake the Middle East?  I got to thinking, they’re remaking the Middle East but it’s not what they had planned.   [Laughing]  All of a sudden, all the old boundaries are going to break down.  Maybe Kurdistan will exist and maybe that mess created out of — needlessly created out of World War I, how they just divvied up the loot and un-did the Ottoman Empire.  I think they are remaking the Middle East but it’s going to be entirely different.

The only thing I hope for — because there’s always going to be chaos, and it’s tragic — but I am convinced that the more foreigners involved in solving these disputes, the worse it is.

ROCKWELL:  Uh-huh.

PAUL:  It’s characteristic that in these countries where Christians, Jews and Muslims have lived together, and there was no foreign interference, they got along a lot better.   It was never perfect, but they got along pretty well.  But it’s only when foreigners come in and pick sides and get involved with a minor squabble and turn it into a monster, start designing their borders is when you get this instability.  And the instability of the last 70, 80 years now is coming to an end.  And who knows what will come through it?  But I can guarantee you one thing: John McCain is not going to solve the problem –[amazon asin=B00FOVD8DG&template=*lrc ad (right)]

[LAUGHTER]

— by going over there and  visiting with the al Qaeda.

ROCKWELL:  And, you know, when you think about your point about people living together, there have been successful Christian communities in Iraq and Syria since the time of the Apostles.  I mean, they survived the Muslims and every kind of war and horrible social upheaval, but now they’ve been driven out.  Now these Christians who have been there for 2000 years —

PAUL:  Yes.

ROCKWELL:  — have been driven out of Iraq.  They’re being driven out of Syria.  So this is an achievement of the Neo-Cons.

PAUL:  It isn’t exactly like the Iranians have been bad either.  Christians have lived there.  The Jews have lived there.  And yet, they drumbeat this dissent and hatred going on.  They are bound and determined that we have our way.  That is, we, the people who want to run the oil and the world and the natural resources.  They have to build these lines.  Just compare the democracy, which is far from perfect in any country that has democratically elected leaders, compare to that in Iran to Saudi Arabia.  You know?  [Laughing]  It is absolutely bizarre how people get so misled.  I mean, on 9/11, there were a few Saudis involved, 15 out of 19, and yet we invade Iraq.  It’s absolutely absurd.

People do wake up but they wake up slowly.  And I think the job of all of us who believe in freedom and limited government, that our responsibility is to wake up people as quickly as possible.  And that’s where I’ve become the optimist because of the means of information spread today through the Internet and the various opportunities we have with that.  It was never available in the history of mankind that type of technology as there is today for spreading messages, good messages, to counteract all the bad messages.

ROCKWELL:  No, and you’re certainly taking advantage of it.  And it’s why, certainly — as the bad guys would not have predicted, and maybe they predicted the opposite — that you’ve become a bigger public figure since leaving Congress.  And it is because of these new methods of communication that you’re taking advantage of.

PAUL:  Well, I can’t decide that.  Somebody else will.  [Laughing]  Because every once in a while, I read the bad stuff, too, the ones that come down pretty hard on me.[amazon asin=B00FOVCDSW&template=*lrc ad (right)]

But you know what?  This is sort of silly, I guess, but we put a picture up on Facebook just recently of me out with my grandkids picking potatoes and tomatoes at home.  And people looked at this and probably 99.9 percent of everything that was said was so positive because it was not complicated; it was a simple thing.  So there’s a lot of good people out there that care about really common-place things and family.  So I try to look at that.  And when I look at the six or eight or 10 or 15 who come down pretty hard on criticizing — they’ll criticize me personally, but I understand what they’re doing it.   I don’t think they care about me personally, but what they care about is the message that we’re able to get out, because they know how enthusiastic I am about the benefits of a free society and personal liberty and life.  Governments are so abusive to these.  How often does the government really protect our liberty?  If they protected the 10 amendments, maybe they’d be protecting our liberties.  But it seems like the job of our government in the last 100 years has been to undermine the protections that the founders had hoped to place in the Constitution.

ROCKWELL:  Ron, what about Mr. Bernanke and what’s going on with the Fed?  What’s happening and what do you see ahead for us?

PAUL:  I don’t see how they can do anything other than more of the same.  You know, early on, I read some free-market economists in the ’70s.  When this happens, they said, well, every time there’s going to be a recession, to get out of it, you will need more government spending, more debt and more inflation of the money supply.  And I believe that that prediction has held up.  Just think, this has been the worse recession — depression for many — since 1971.  And look at the spending!  Look at the deficit!  Look at the inflation!   And that’s all they know.  And this pretense that they’re going to self step off is just totally nonsense.

[LAUGHTER]

ROCKWELL:  Yeah.

PAUL:  Maybe they’ve admitted, well, when they begin to unwind, it will only be treasury bills.  But they’re not going to sell their mortgages.  Of course, the mortgages are worthless that they bought.  And who owns a treasury bill that makes less than 1 percent a year for five years?  I mean, nobody invests in that.  The banks buy this stuff.  And where do the banks get their money?  The Fed creates it out of thin air.  It is such a farce, and yet it’s pretty amazing that it’s held together by this delusion that people have and the markets love.  So I think it’s going to last a while longer.  And the Fed’s going to keep printing and they’ll keep buying.  There will be downturn and they’ll keep doing it.  But the end stage will come when it will be out of control and they admit that prices are going up.  They are going up, but not enough to the point where that’s a number-one concern of the people.  But, you know, we see housing prices going up rapidly and medical care costs and all these things, a tremendous amount of inflation.  But that’s the deep concern.  And the world, they’re still buying dollars.  They’re still taking our dollars and selling us stuff.  So the Fed will continue to do what’s happening.  So there will be a market phenomenon when the attitudes change and people lose confidence.  But every single day, of course, we get closer to this particular date.  But it will come, and nobody knows when it will come, but I suspect this will go on for several more years.[amazon asin=B00CME5U16&template=*lrc ad (right)]

And Bernanke will be replaced, maybe with Yellen, and she’s not going to change anything.  All central bankers do the same thing.  They facilitate big government.  They print money and take care of the banks and finance wars and welfare.  So there’s no way that’s going to change until the currency is destroyed.

ROCKWELL:  You know, thinking of inflation, of course, one area of vast inflation has been higher education.  And you were able to work your way through college, something that’s pretty much impossible for kids today because the federal government’s subsidization of education has increased prices so dramatically.  And, of course, it’s also had the effect of — they want to have everybody go to college, which has made the value of a college degree diminish.  So more and more kids are thinking, “Well, maybe I shouldn’t go the regular college route; maybe I shouldn’t end up with a big debt.”  And maybe you’ll help those kids some day by having a Ron Paul curriculum for college.

PAUL:  Well, that’s always possible.  But I think we’ll start with what we have.  But I think that is going to be the wave of the future because nobody’s going to be able to afford the college.   And they’re at the point now where the biggest personal debt right now is student debt.  It’s approximately a trillion dollars.  And they’re not getting very many good jobs.  Maybe jobs have perked up a little bit now but that’s not going to last.  And so many are unemployed or underemployed.  How many college graduates are working at McDonald’s?  They say there’s a bunch of them, you know.

ROCKWELL:  Yes.

PAUL:  So the Liberal believes that if you pump money into something, you get more of it.  The hard-money people realize that if you create money out of thin air and you pump it into housing or medical care or education, you don’t get more high-quality education.  What you get is higher prices and much lower quality.

ROCKWELL:  Well, Ron Paul, thanks for the fight that you continue to wage.  And there are even more exciting announcements coming up about things that you’re doing to educate everybody in the ideas of freedom.  And it’s great to have you on the show today.  And all I can say is keep it up.

PAUL:  Thank you, Lew.  Good to be with you.

ROCKWELL:  Bye-bye.

Well, thanks so much for listening to the Lew Rockwell Show today. Take a look at all the podcasts. There have been hundreds of them. There’s a link on the LRC front page. Thank you.

Podcast date, May 28, 2013