Rep. Ron Paul Blasts Big Business, Media & Congress

By Rep. Ron Paul

10-14-00

The other day, I made a huge "gaffe" on national television, I told the truth about the crimes of the U.S. Government.

As you can imagine, the ceiling fell in, and a couple of walls too. Congressman are supposed to support the government, I was told. 'Oh, it's okay to criticize around the edges but there are certain subjects a member of the House of Representatives is not supposed to bring up.'

I was interviewed on C-SPAN's morning Washington Journal, and I used the opportunity, as I do all such media appearances, to point out how many of our liberties have been stolen by the federal government. If we stuck to the Constitution as written, we would have no federal meddling in our schools, no Federal Reserve, no U.S. membership in the UN, no gun control, and no foreign aid. We should have no welfare for corporations or the "poor," no American troops in 100 foreign countries, no NAFTA, GATT or "fast-track," no arrogant federal judges usurping states' rights, no attacks on private property and no income tax. We could get rid of most of the cabinet departments, most of the agencies and most of the budget. The government would be small, frugal and limited.

That system is called liberty. It's what the Founding Fathers gave us. Under liberty, we built the greatest, freest, most prosperous, most decent country on earth. It's no coincidence that the monstrous growth of the federal government has been accompanied by a sickening decline in living standards and moral standards. The feds want us to be hamsters on a treadmill - working hard, all day long to pay high taxes, but otherwise entirely docile and controlled.

Well, I'm sorry, but that's not America. It's not what the founding fathers gave us.

So, on that TV interview, I emphasized not only the attacks on our property, but also the decline of our civil liberties at the hands of the federal police. There are not supposed to be any federal police according to the Constitution.

Then I really went over the line. I talked about the Waco massacre. Bill Clinton and Janet Reno claim those 81 men, women, and children, burned down their own church and killed themselves, and good riddance. So, they put a few survivors on trial and threw them in prison for 40 years.

We're not supposed to remember that the Bureau of alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms - talk about an unconstitutional Agency - rather than arrest David Koresh on his regular morning jog, called in the TV stations for a big publicity bonanza and sent a SWAT team in black masks and black uniforms to break down his front door, guns blazing. They also sent in a helicopter gunship to shoot at the roof of a church full of innocents.

The Branch Davidians resisted, and after a heartless siege of almost two months, and after cutting off food, water and electricity, and playing horrible rock and roll through huge speakers 24 hours a day, the feds sent in the tanks to crush the walls of the church, and inject poisonous CS gas.

Now, CS gas is banned under the Paris Convention on Chemical Warfare. The U.S. could not use it in a war. But it could and did use it against American civilians.

After the tanks did their work on the church, the place burst into flames and all 81 people - men, women, children and babies - were incinerated in screaming horror.

Did some feds set the fire? Did flammable CS gas ignite, since without electricity, the parishioners were using lanterns? striking one of the bales of hay being used against the thin walls as a "defense" against bullets? Or did the Davidians, as Clinton and Reno claim, kill themselves?

Whatever the truth, there's no question that an irresponsible federal government has innocent blood on its hands.

In my interview, in answer to a caller's question, I pointed out that Waco, and the federal murders at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, especially the FBI sniper's shot that blasted apart the head of a mother holding her baby, caused many Americans to live in fear of federal power.

Then I uttered the sentiments that caused the media hysteria. I said that a lot of Americans fear that they too might be attacked by federal SWAT teams for exercising their Consitutional rights or merely for wanting to be left alone.

You've never seen anything like it. For days, in an all-out assault, I was attacked by Democrats, big business, establishment Republicans, and of course, the media in Washingon - and my home state of Texas.

Newspapers foamed at the mouth, calling me a "right-wing extremist." (Say, isn't that what George III called Thomas Jefferson?"

I was even blamed for the Oklahoma City bombing. And by the way, I don't believe we've gotten the full truth on that, either.

All my opponents were outraged that a congressman would criticize big government. "If you don't like Washington, resign," said a typical big city newspaper editorial.

But the media, as usual, were all wet. Do they ever get anything right? The average congressman may go to Washington to wallow in power and line his pockets with a big lobbying job for special interest - so he can keep ripping off the taxpayers.

But that's not why I'm in Congress. It's not why I left my medical practice as a physician. It's not why I refuse a plush congressional pension.

I'm in this fight for a reason. I will not let the crooks and clowns and criminals have their way. I'm in Congress to represent the ideas of liberty, the ideas that you and I share, for the people of my district, for the people of Texas, for the people of America. That's why I'm working to stop federal abuses and to cut the government - its taxes, its bureaucrats, its paramilitary police, its spending, its meddling overseas and every single unconstitutional action it takes.

Not much of the federal leviathan would be left, if I had my way. But you'd be able to keep the money you earn, your privacy would be secure, your dollar would be sound, your local school would be tops and your kids wouldn't be sent off to some useless or vicious foreign war to fight for the U.N.

When I say cut taxes, I don't mean fiddle with the code. I mean abolish the income tax and the IRS and replace them with nothing.

Recently, I asked a famous Republican committee chairman, who is always talking about getting rid of the IRS, why he engineered a secret $580 million raise for the tax collectors.

"They need it for their computers," this guy told me. So the IRS can't extract enough from us as it is?

I won't play the Capitol Hill games with the Capitol Hill gang, denouncing the IRS while giving the Gestapo more of your money. Or figuring out some other federal tax for them to squeeze out of you.

I also want to abolish the Federal Reserve and send Alan Greenspan out to get a job.

The value of our dollar and the level of our interest rates are not supposed to be manipulated by a few members of the power elite meeting secretly in a marble palace.

The Federal Reserve is unconstitutional, pure and simple. Without the Federal Reserve, our money could not be inflated at the behest of big government or big banks. Your income and savings would not lose their value.

Just as important, we wouldn't have this endless string of booms and busts, recessions and depressions, with each bust getting worse.

I also work to save our schools from D.C. interference. Not only do the feds' new curriculae smear the Founders as "racist, slave-owning elitists," they seek to dumb down our students so they will all be equal. "Look-say" reading and the abolition of phonics has the same purpose, and so does the new "fuzzy" math, in which there are no right and wrong answers.

But ever since the beginning of federal aid to education and accelerating with the establishment of the rotten Department of Education, SAT scores have been dropping. Schools, with very few exceptions, are getting worse every year. To save our kids, we must get the sticky fingers of the feds off our local schools, and let parents rule.

And then there's my least favorite topic: the UN. World government is obviously unconstitutional. It undermines our country's sovereignty in the worst way possible. That's why I want us out of the U.N, and the U.N itself taking a hike.

After all, the UN is socialist, and corrupt. Many votes can be bought with a "blonde and a case of scotch," one UN ambassador once said. It costs many billions' and it puts our soldiers in UN uniforms under foreign commanders, and sends them off to unconstitutional, undeclared wars.

When Michael New, one of the finest young men I've ever met, objected to wearing UN blue, he was kicked out of the Army.

Not one dime for the UN, and not one American soldier. Not in Haiti, not in Bosnia, not in Somalia, not in Rwanda. I know it's radical, but how about devoting our efforts to defending America, and only America?

Rep. Ron Paul is a Republican, congressman from the 14th district in Texas

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