Liberty Maven

Ron Paul was interviewed yesterday on Antiwar Radio by Scott Horton. Ron Paul has appeared numerous times on the excellent show. This time he compares the foreign policy of Bush and Obama. Apparently, there isn’t much to like about either.

Listen to the interview below in two parts, thanks to MinnesotaChris.

Part 2

Ron Paul was interviewed by Phil Hendrie recently. They discuss marijuana legalization, Somali pirates, torture, Rick Perry secession comments, and Obama releasing the CIA memos on torture.

Listen via youtube below in two parts. Thanks to Tim Peck for sending us the video links.

In a recently released video from Ron Paul’s Campaign For Liberty Paul worries about the Somalia pirate situation and suggests using Letters of Marque and Reprisal as a solution.

In the video Paul suggests that the situation with the pirates now is similar to the way terrorists were prior to 9-11. He worries that these recent events may cause the U.S. to spend even more money on military interventionism overseas.

He offered the Letters of Marque and Reprisal solution back in 2002 as a response to the 9/11 attacks as well. Surprise! Ron Paul follows the Constitution again.  Watch his video message below.

On Monday a few of us here at Liberty Maven took the opportunity to attend a speech given by Bruce Fein at George Mason University as part of The Economic Liberty Lecture Series sponsored by The Future Of Freedom Foundation. I must admit I was  surprised at how animated and passionate Fein was during his speech. I was expecting a more subdued speech after watching him testify on Capitol Hill and seeing him deliver the speech he gave at Ron Paul’s “Rally for the Republic” last year.

He spoke without notes and hammered home the ideas of foreign policy non-interventionism. The Q and A period following his talk was in some ways better and more passionate than the speech itself. Luckily the FFF recorded the entire event and has put it online for viewing.

It’s hosted at Vimeo which sometimes presents connection problems for me, but your patience with it loading will pay off in the end when you get to watch this foreign policy expert rip apart any notion of supporting the idea of American empire.

The Economic Liberty Lecture Series:Bruce Fein from The Future of Freedom Foundation on Vimeo.

The first major event during Ron Paul’s Presidential campaign was a disagreement on foreign policy between he and Rudy Giuliani. At that time, foreign policy was the major issue of the campaign. I’ve always maintained that the only issue anyone would care about come election day would be the economy. Everything we do is based on the economy. It is always the number one issue. Of course, no one really cares much about it when the perception is that it is doing well.

Now that it is not doing well at all, foreign policy is almost an afterthought. Ron Paul has always tied the two “issues” together. Austrian economics teaches us to look at the entire picture and the long term implications of human action. Ron Paul rightly links our wasteful overseas spending to the economic problems we are facing at home. Yesterday he released another of his weekly columns on his Congressional web site. In it he focuses on America’s foreign policy of intervention and calls upon us to truly think about how we would react if another country’s soldiers were patrolling the streets of our country.

This, in my view, is his strongest argument for a non-interventionist foreign policy. It is the oldest argument in the book, the golden rule argument: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And, as always, in the end he ties it back in to our precarious economic condition. With Obama continuing the Bush foreign policy we are merely prolonging the inevitable and worsening the pain.

“Imagine for a moment that somewhere in the middle of Texas there was a large foreign military base, say Chinese or Russian. Imagine that thousands of armed foreign troops were constantly patrolling American streets in military vehicles. Imagine they were here under the auspices of “keeping us safe” or “promoting democracy” or “protecting their strategic interests.”

Imagine that they operated outside of US law, and that the Constitution did not apply to them. Imagine that every now and then they made mistakes or acted on bad information and accidentally killed or terrorized innocent Americans, including women and children, most of the time with little to no repercussions or consequences. Imagine that they set up check points on our soil and routinely searched and ransacked entire neighborhoods of homes. Imagine if Americans were fearful of these foreign troops, and overwhelmingly thought America would be better off without their presence.”

Read his entire argument here. What do you think?

What decade am I describing: The United State has chosen an impoverished, agrarian region halfway around the world to demonize and to pound into submission with its most advanced weaponry. The central governments of the region have never attacked the U.S., but we are told that militants in the area hate us and will harm us if allowed to. The U.S. strikes kill a certain number of politicized militants, along with hundreds of civilians, including, in large numbers, women and children.

The weak central governments within whose borders we operate have no ability to stay in power on their own, but are dependent on U.S. manipulation to hold up their political “leaders,” who routinely invite the U.S. to continue its assistance against their “insurgent” forces. Our President announces that in addition to the mechanized attacks on civilian areas of the region, he is significantly increasing U.S. ground forces, with a resultant rise in American troop deaths a certainty.

Have I describe the late 60’s and early 70’s, or today? Hard to tell, unless I add one more fact: The American public, including, in its entirety, the left, is entirely silent on the intervention. That makes it easy, doesn’t it? The period of time in question is right now. The target of our intervention is the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the President is Obama.

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It’s been a long time since we’ve posted a grassroots video for Ron Paul here at Liberty Maven. A new video has been released that needs to be spread far and wide.

The creator takes Ron Paul’s recent “What If” speech to Congress and tunes it up a bit. I have to admit watching Ron Paul deliver the speech on CSPAN is inspiring for someone like me, but I’m pretty sure non-Paulites have a tendency to zone out while Paul is talking.

This video changes that. It is mesmerizing and enhances Paul’s speech to the point that you really take in the meaning of his words. I thought Paul’s speech was pretty good when I first heard it, but after watching this I think it could be one of Paul’s best speeches ever.

Well, enough of my own yammering. Just watch it below and spread it around.

Ron Paul delivered an excellent speech at CPAC this afternoon. He received a lot of applause and cheering for many of his lines. There were some obvious skeptics and shaking of heads in the audience as well, but overall he was on his game and hit all of his talking points and then some.

He talked about his bill calling for more Federal Reserve transparency. He claims it is getting bipartisan support in the Congress. That would be a great first step. He also spoke about abortion, foreign policy, and individual vs. groups with respect to liberty.

There were a few lines that I loved. It reminded me of the many rallies during his campaign in 2007 and and early 2008.

Watch the entire speech below.

Ron Paul was interviewed yesterday on Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton. Horton’s interviews are always interesting and that is especially true when his guest is Ron Paul.

They discuss the escalation of the war in Afghanistan. Obama has promised 17,000 more troops and is expected to ok at least 10,000 more in the coming months. Questions are beginning to be asked…  will Afghanistan be Obama’s Iraq, Vietnam, or worse?

As the escalation mounts we will likely see the antiwar left’s support of Obama wane completely if it hasn’t already. This proves yet again that Obama’s foreign policy is no different than Bush’s. Only the locale has changed.

Listen to the interview here.

D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h

Quote of the Day: “The idea that people lose their property but are never charged and never get it back, that’s theft as far as I’m concerned.” — Texas State Senator John Whitmire

Subject: Highway Robbery

If you happen to travel through east Texas, avoid Tenaha, especially if you’re African American. The Tenaha police may stop you and rob you, without even charging you with a crime. They even took $4,000 from a great-grandmother.

Tenaha, a town of 1,000, has used its robbery proceeds to build a new police station, and buy a second police car to extend its legal crime wave. But perhaps it’s unfair to single out Tenaha. Police departments all over America are doing the same thing, committing not only robbery, but also acts of terrorism.

Apparently, no one is safe. Just ask Cheye Calvo, the Mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland . . .

County police mistakenly targeted the Calvo home as a marijuana drop-off point. Police invaded the home, bound the mayor’s mother-in-law, and shot the family’s dogs. The Calvo’s were cleared of all wrongdoing, but the police won’t admit it made any mistakes.

Radley Balko reports that the use of SWAT teams and no-knock raids has soared, even when there’s no evidence that a targeted home poses any threat. These aggressive raids allow police to surprise the suspect and find as much valuable property to seize as quickly as possible.

Law enforcement agencies then auction off this property and spend the money on themselves, even when the victims they robbed are never convicted of any crime. Instead, the victims must prove that they are NOT guilty of a crime.

Proving a negative is almost impossible. That’s why innocence is presumed in free societies, and the state bears the burden of proving guilt. Civil asset forfeiture turn this principle on its head. It even forces victims to prove that their property was never used in a crime.

This means that most seized property is never returned, even to people who are completely innocent.

The asset forfeiture laws give police a huge incentive to steal as much as possible. They also create a conflict-of-interest. Police make more money seizing the proceeds of drug sales than by preventing drug sales. This contradicts the supposed purpose of drug prohibition.

But it gets worse . . .

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