Chris: Welcome, everyone, to this Peak Prosperity podcast. I am your host, Chris Martenson. And look, as my listeners already know, I’m an equal opportunity basher when it comes to the current political parties is Washington DC. And that’s because I go by what people and parties do, not what they say. Now, on that front, on the doing front, there’s so little difference between the parties that they are essentially indistinguishable from each other. Both parties support endless war. Both support monetary policies that destroy the middle classes today and I think all the classes tomorrow. Both are taking corporate bribes that have given us such monstrosities as a raging opioid epidemic and toxic agricultural products that are ruining ecological landscapes and human health alike. And, of course, politically, the world is fracturing in ways not seen in a very long time. Restive populations are voting for parties and independence like never before. Political disagreements are hardening like quick-set epoxy left in the sun and failing to be resolved in any useful fashion.

Well, today’s guest is someone I greatly admire, and who demonstrated that one can have both a conscious and a political career. And I’m very much looking forward to today’s conversation. It is my great honor to welcome Dr. Ron Paul as our guest. You know him as the US Representative for Texas’s 22nd Congressional District from 1976 to 1985 with a two-year gap in there. And he then represented the 14th district from 1977 to 2013. He ran for the office of US President, three times, most recently in the 2012 Republican primaries. Dr. Paul also had a long career as an OBGYN over which he delivered over 4,000 babies. He is a leading voice for limited constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, sound money, civil liberty, and a non-interventionist foreign policy. Dr. Paul, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. Paul: Well, thank you very much. It’s nice to be with you.

Chris: Well, Dr. Paul, I want to talk about the economy, monetary policy, geopolitics, generational issues with you and wow, you’ve got a new book out which touches on all those things, so let’s start there. The title of your new book is The Revolution at Ten Years. This revolution you write of, is it a movement? What is it?

Dr. Paul: Well, it’s something that was more or less started, I consider spontaneously in the campaign, ten years ago when I first ran in ’07 and for the ’08 campaign in the Republican primary. And there was a lot of excitement about a liberty message, which is what I was delivering, and the University campuses were very open to this message. But there was a lot of spontaneity to it, and in the end of ’07 on December 16th, which was a celebration, an anniversary for the Boston Tea Party, the supporters around the country were spontaneously holding rallies and saying, well, let’s send Ron more money. And it was astounding. It broke all kinds of records. I think we raised six-million dollars in one day and it was really self-starting. But that was a celebration on a message I was delivering then which you sort of outlined at the beginning.

And ten years have passed, and I thought this might be a good time to revisit that whole movement that was occurring. And things have changed. People say is there anything left to the revolution? What has happened to it? Nobody talks about it. And that’s what the book is about – to try to describe that, as far as I'm concerned, that revolution that was going there was a continuation of what was existing before that, which was started by the old right libertarians and the Austrian economists, and that it’s alive and well. But it has changed names and controls because of Republicans tried to, and made an effort to, take over, as well as the populists tried to take over. But the message that we were visiting with back there ten years ago is very much alive. And Washington doesn’t speak for us because people look to the media and to the government, and you don’t see or hear much about it.

But my goal in writing the book was to try to give people a little encouragement. I think it’s very much alive, and it’s in the area of ideas that changes the world and not a military power that goes around telling other people how to live. So this is, to me, it was a summation and a refreshing and an encouragement to all those people who are interested in the subject to take a look at where we are today.

Chris: Very well said. I attended one of your campaign rallies a long time ago, and the observation I had back then was - really struck me once I finally noticed what was happening - was that compared to all the other political rallies going on, the people that were showing up for you were markedly younger. The demographic was just a whole different bell curve, and I would say it sort of centered maybe around the age of thirty or something and it tailed off. But probably a twenty-year gap compared to other rallies I went to and I’m wondering is there a generational aspect to this revolution you're talking about? Is that a fair observation I made? And does that still hold?

Dr. Paul: Yeah. I think in the campaign it was definitely dominated by young people, a lot of people even younger than you state because I was amazed that young teenagers would come. And then they’d come to my office afterwards and I was just amazed at their age. And they started reading and studying Rothbard and Mises and understanding the Federal Reserve. Some of them came in – they were 14 and 15 - that had been in the campaign, just to visit. And I said, you have a better understanding of the Federal Reserve than most Congressmen do. But the Congressmen, they don’t pay much attention to it. So it is the young people that really was the main core of the campaign. But I kid when I go to even meetings now. I go to the campuses still. But there’ll be a lot of adults. But it’ll be mostly – fifty, sixty, seventy percent – will be college age kids and young people. I always kid that in this audience everybody is under 30.

And liberty is a young idea; historically - it’s very young. When you look at the history of the world and the universe, it’s just a few seconds of the whole history of the universe. But the history of freedom is only several hundred years old. It comes and goes, it had ups and downs, but there’s always a core left over to preserve the elements, and there’s that remnant that I appeal to and try to encourage. And the magnificent thing is the spreading of ideas. It’s easier now than ever, and it’s the ideas that change things and as we know, armies can’t stop ideas, and ideas do spread even though we get challenged now by government interference and regulation on speech and social media. We still have access. You still have a program, and that is good. And you reach people, so and the message is powerful.

I never took credit for being a sensational speaker, but I think we have a sensational message. I think the message of liberty is very American. They accused me of being unpatriotic and un American because I wouldn’t support the wars, but I tell you what. I think this fits into the tradition of what made America great and some of the beliefs we all had at the beginning of the country.

Chris: Well, I completely agree. And if we just focus this down economically for a second. One way I’ve thought about this in talking with a lot of young people and then boomers – I'm a boomer – is that the older generations, they have everything to lose unless the status quo is maintained. And they’ve paid into a system. They bought into it. The whole idea of get a house, a car, two-point five children, put money into a formerly a pension, now a 401K. But increasingly we can see that model isn’t going to work. the promises can’t be kept. But still, they want the payout. So they're really clinging to this idea that we can maintain the status quo.