Banned 20/20 Interview with Ron Paul

Can't help but like the guy.

He has commanded my attention.

 

I've wanted him to be President for years now. In some states you could have written his name in on the ballot, I believe. Hopefully he makes it to the next election (he is in his mid 70's) and can get more support.

 

i voted for him in the last republican presidential primary, and if given the chance will do the same again, i just don't see how he will be able to avoid the attacks that mccain had to endure about being old, and would he survive a 4 year term.

 

This interview is from 2007. Why are you just now posting it? It is really, really old news.

 

Guy's crazy. Absolutely, crazy. Until he stops with that utterly r****ded crap with the Federal Reserve and stops playing around with racists, then I can respect him. but not until then.

 

Banned? Why was it banned? By who?

 

EVERYONE!! it's so banned that only an underground website no one's ever heard of called "youtube" has it.

 

you've only reached the tip of the icerberg. it also aired on "ABCNEWS DOT COM" (I spelled it out so the site doesn't get overloaded)

because he found it here the other day.

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread662452/pg1

 

I like him because he balances out the other side of the political spectrum. However I would never vote for him for president. He's too much of a ideologue. I want a practical president.

The big tipping point for me is the Fed stuff. The last thing I want is a bunch of citizens that took 3 months of high school macroeconomics controlling the monetary policy of this country.

 

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Ron Paul Pushes Financial Crack To America’s Working Youth
Feb. 13 2011 - 4:40 pm | 4,085 views | 2 recommendations | 185 comments
By RICK UNGAR

Speaking to his loyal minions at CPAC, Ron Paul made an offer to his youthful devotees that they could not refuse –

"Look, we are not doing such a good job being government these days. We make promises and we don’t know about the future. Would you consider opting out of the whole system under one condition? You pay 10% of your income, but you take care of yourself. Don’t ask the government for anything."

Predictably, the young in attendance went crazy in appreciation.

Why not?

Paul’s proposal has all the earmarks of those credit card offers flooding into the mailboxes of college students, promising instant purchasing power today by using debt to be paid back at sometime in the ‘future’.

How many kids at 18 years of age don’t enjoy that opportunity?

Anyone who can still recall being young knows that the ‘future’ is a pretty abstract concept. Most kids intellectually grasp that the day will come – but the day is so conceptually remote that it is certainly not something the young worry about in the present.

After all, what’s more important- spending a fortune you don’t have to impress a girl with front row concert seats or worrying about how you are going to pay for it sometime in that all too nebulous ‘future’?

Yet, Rep. Paul wants to take advantage of our youthful desire to please ourselves in the now at the cost of forfeiting the future.

If you doubt the inherent inability of the young to plan for life’s many challenges that they simply cannot relate to until they get older, consider the reality of the ‘young immortals’ – the millions of young adults who are certain that they have no need to participate in health insurance programs because they are young and healthy and expect to stay that way for a very long time. Why spend all that money on insurance premiums when they can spend it on something more relevant to present wants and needs?

The result of this thinking is at the very heart of the skyrocketing costs of health insurance in America today. With insufficient numbers of healthy people (the young) to balance the insurance pools, the pools have filled up with people more likely to be sick, putting the pools way out of balance. Of course, this translates to dramatically higher insurance premiums for everyone.

A young adult who is more capable of forward, future-oriented thinking would understand that anyone – at any age – can become seriously ill, get hit by a car or encounter some other medical disaster. But this is not how most young adults think – not because they are stupid but because it is human nature to believe that when one is young, one is somewhat immortal (if you can be ‘somewhat’ immortal.) They cannot yet see what the elderly already know looms in their future.

I can only imagine myself at 21 considering Rep. Paul’s offer. As I was absolutely certain that I would be wildly successful, hugely rich and never have need for the assistance of the government, I would have snapped up Paul’s offer in a nanosecond. Of course, I didn’t yet know what Medicare was all about – let alone understand that, at 60 years of age, I would be looking forward to the program with great anticipation despite being fortunate enough to have some money in the bank.

Even if I had been a responsible young man of 21- which is something of an oxymoron – I never could have foreseen the high costs of health care in the future, just as I could not foresee the unexpected medical conditions I would face that would drive the price of my health care coverage to stratospheric levels.

Indeed, had I taken advantage of an offer similar to what Ron Paul proposes and rejected the idea of paying into the Medicare trust in favor of putting more money into a retirement plan that would be decimated by the crash in the stock market just as I was about to need the money, I would be facing a considerably more challenging life when retirement arrives. When one considers that I got some lucky breaks in life and would still be behind the eight ball under the Ron Paul plan, imagine what would happen to those who did not get those same breaks?

Maybe a generation of people forced to realize their error when it is too late might serve as a warning to future generations who would go with Paul’s “10% plan.” But if that is the case, Paul is simply using the present generation of American youth as a guinea pig to make his point- and that is wrong on so many levels.

I would readily grant that there is a difference between over-reliance on government as a substitute to taking care of one’s self and government’s ability to assist those in true need of assistance. Encouraging behavior that inspires people to recognize the benefits, both financially and spiritually, of being responsible for one’s self and one’s family is a commendable and important objective. However, failing to recognize that America is a rich (if indebted) country that can afford to do more for those in need than what was once possible is a giant, regressive step backwards.

What libertarians such as Ron Paul refuse to understand is that life is not the same today as it was in revolutionary times – or to be more precise, as it was in the South during revolutionary times.

Libertarians are big on portraying themselves as Jeffersonians. Yet, they don’t like to acknowledge that Jefferson lived in a part of the country where life was dramatically more self-contained. The wealthy survived quite nicely on plantations where they were served by slaves and other cheap labor who provided for the owner’s needs. In return, the owners provided the bare basics of life to their slaves and employees. It all worked nicely for the plantation owners – maybe not so much for everyone else on the farm.

Ron Paul style libertarians don’t like to acknowledge that much of Jefferson’s early thinking was predicated on what worked best for him and his fellow Southerners. It wasn’t until Jefferson became president and took responsibility for the entire nation that his thinking evolved a bit.

Meanwhile, in the Northern states, society worked a bit differently. Localities took responsibility to build and operate community hospitals available to anyone who needed help. It was much more an accepted rule of society that those who did well had a charitable obligation to look after those who were not so fortunate and that charitable assistance often took the form of government operated programs.

As the nation marched on, grew wealthier and took a leadership role in the world, it was the philosophy of the North that took root, in many instances for the better. We became a country that used its wealth to bear some moral responsibility for those among us that had it a bit tougher.

Now, Ron Paul wants our kids to abrogate their responsibilities as Americans. He encourages them to avoid contributing to the pool that helps other Americans get a better education. He asks the younger generation to turn their back on the responsibility to pay into the social security system, as their parents did before them, so that an even earlier generation can look forward to some financial security in their sunset years.

Ron Paul envisions an America where it is every man and woman for themselves. He does so in the bizarre belief that most of American society could somehow exist as a wholly self-contained family unit in today’s highly integrated world. Rep. Paul would do well to acknowledge that those days passed us by a very long time ago and there is no going back.

Maybe Paul simply cannot relate to what life is like for those with fewer opportunities than he had.

There is a very revealing piece written by Rep. Paul’s wife, Carol, on the libertarian blog, LewRockwell.com.

We learn that Rep. Paul grew up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, the son of a man who accomplished a great deal despite having little education. While Ron had it pretty good, thanks to his father’s success, he was taught that it was important to work hard. He even took on jobs to acquire his spending money.

Take a look at how Mrs. Paul describes the hardships Ron faced:

"Ron delivered newspapers in grade school early in the morning. He had to put the newspapers inside the screen doors and not just throw them in the yard. And speaking of yards, he mowed a lot of lawns, and he didn’t have a self-propelled lawnmower. He paid for his first year of college with newspaper and lawn-mowing money." Via Lew Rockwell

Mrs. Paul goes on to make a pretty big deal over how Ron had a part-time job painting the school during a summer holiday and delivering furniture for a store. She tells us how he made some money in college delivering laundry and how “he even delivered mail during Christmas holidays.”

Oh, the horror of it all! Just imagine having to put the newspapers inside the screen doors rather than just throwing them in the yard – and the emotional and physical pain he must have experienced delivering the mail during the Christmas holiday so he could pay his tuition.

It’s a wonder the man survived let alone made it to the Congress of the United States!

It is possible that the Pauls could be just the tiniest a bit out of touch with the difficulties faced by millions of Americans to whom a paper route would represent an idyllic childhood, even if they had to (shudder) put the papers inside the screen door?

Is it possible that Rep. Paul views his own experience as a self-sustaining, responsibility-taking American through the prism of suburban life rather the experience of the inner-city single mother who works two, hard jobs just to put food on the table – if she can find a job at all?

What Paul is offering the nation’s working young is financial crack – enjoy yourself today but forfeit the benefits government can provide society – benefits that you might be surprised to find may become a necessity in your own life in the years to come. He encourages the young to put more money in their own pocket today by forgetting about the responsibility this generation owes to their fellow Americans, even when life goes particularly well allowing for a greater contribution to the public good.

Let’s hope Donald Trump is right and that Ron Paul can never be elected President of the United States. I would hate to see what we might become under his sort of leadership.

 

this is classic. its like the traders being pissed when their banks were bailed out that their bonuses were in jearpordy. they start to talk about how they had to work at the private schools their parents spent thousands to send them to. I'm a person of privaledge who had to work hard at those exclusive schools so give me my millions.

 

ToyCen please explain how this interview was banned.

 

I understand the desire for a smaller government, but show me an example of a country that the libertarian ideal actually works.