Friday, July 22, 2011

Ron Paul: Freedom is a Young Idea and We're Throwing it Away

PBS has published an excellent interview with Ron Paul, and is a must see.
The transcript provides several great quotes from Paul:

I think age is very important, and sometimes I meet people when they're 45, and they're very old. And I think it's the age of the ideas a person's presenting, and is that person able to present these ideas? Freedom is a young idea. It's only been tested for a couple hundred years. And we had a taste of it, and we're throwing it away.
But what I see others are doing, the others, especially - and many of the other candidates, they have old ideas. It's totalitarian, it's the control of government, governments policing the world, militarism, telling people how to run their lives, running the economy, telling people what they can put in their mouths and whether or not they can even drink raw milk. It's just - it's just absolutely out of control.
But the idea that individuals are free, that they have a natural right to their life and the liberty, they ought to be able to keep the fruits of their labor, that is a young idea. So I would say, people ought to go with a young idea and somebody that can express them. And interestingly enough, it's the young people that fully endorse my campaign.


Well, there's two different things. My goal would be, there's no need for the Federal Reserve. Under a presidency you don't get rid of the Federal Reserve overnight. In my - even in my book, "End the Fed," I don't say we should close the door and walk away. I ask for competition.
The footprint we're leaving now - our drone missiles dropping bombs and killing innocent civilians, launched from the United States with computers. That's not the kind of footprint I want.

How quickly would you bring the troops home?

REP. RON PAUL: As quick as the ships could get there. It's insane on what we're doing. And I'll tell you one thing about this business about the military: We just had a quarterly report, and they listed all the money that all the candidates got from the military. I got twice as much as all the other candidates put together on the Republican side, and even more than Obama got, which tells me that these troops want to come home as well because they know exactly what I'm talking about.   

I think it is. I think age is very important, and sometimes I meet people when they're 45, and they're very old. And I think it's the age of the ideas a person's presenting, and is that person able to present these ideas? Freedom is a young idea. It's only been tested for a couple hundred years. And we had a taste of it, and we're throwing it away.

But what I see others are doing, the others, especially - and many of the other candidates, they have old ideas. It's totalitarian, it's the control of government, governments policing the world, militarism, telling people how to run their lives, running the economy, telling people what they can put in their mouths and whether or not they can even drink raw milk. It's just - it's just absolutely out of control.
But the idea that individuals are free, that they have a natural right to their life and the liberty, they ought to be able to keep the fruits of their labor, that is a young idea. So I would say, people ought to go with a young idea and somebody that can express them. And interestingly enough, it's the young people that fully endorse my campaign.

Click here to watch the entire interview: