Ron Paul on Anarchy

“That the socialists know their system is going to fail, so they have to use the force of the government gun to take money from the people who aren't socialists in order to subsidize their programs. Libertarianism gives full legal protection of anybody who wants to have voluntary socialism. But socialists never will endorse the idea of you having your personal liberty where you can take care of yourself and not ask for nothing from anybody else.” These are two excerpts from a 3-hour long “In Depth with Ron Paul” C-SPAN program, where a former Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) answered viewer questions about anarchy. Watch the full 3-hour In Depth with Ron Paul C-SPAN program about Dr. Paul's life and career here. The show ran on August 3, 2014. Source 1: Nate Kelly YouTube channel. Source 2: TheAnarchast YouTube channel. Translated by Jadranko Brkic.

(see video at the bottom of transcript)

Transcript:

First question on anarchy:

I want to go to this email, and this is from Nathan Kelly. And he emails in to you: would you agree that the best form of government is none at all Or put another way, the only legitimate form of governance is individual governance.

Ron Paul:

Well, I'm glad he put the last sentence on, because you always want government. Who should be the government? The perfect world, if we were all perfect people, there would only be self government. And our responsibility would be to ourselves, and that's what my goal is, to always move in that direction.

Today, to be a participant in the debate and say that tomorrow we are going to get rid of every single government – well, if one person does it and nobody else does, that's not going to work. But I think we're moving to the age where governments are much less important, and I think we should. I think that people are realizing that governments mess up. I think the 20^th century was such a horrible century that we are waking up to the fact that you can't trust government. You can't trust them to run the economy, you can't trust them to run the monetary system, you can't trust them to run foreign policy, I mean it's just a total disaster. So I think the least amount of government is the best.

I do not call myself an anarchist, but I think to have the goal of self-government is a very good goal, and if you can't have that, then as close to home as possible. And I think that's a natural tendency to have individuals and family government, local community government. And if you had a free society, we probably wouldn't have more than that. And our founders intended that to be. You know, when they wrote the constitution, I think they planted some seeds there that have grown to the point where if the constitution had worked perfectly, we wouldn't have this monster over here in Washington. It wouldn't exist. But, all the regulations and details and taxation and abuse of rules and president writing

laws and bashing the Congress for not speeding up, running executive orders and all this, that wouldn't be true. That is the trend that we have to reverse. I'm optimistic to think that we are changing the views of a new generation, the millennials are looking at this and they are seeing what they are inheriting. I think they see a mess and I think they are very open to the views of saying: yes, the biggest problem we have is way too-much government, too-much centralized government, and the more self-responsibility and self-government we have, the better.

Second question on anarchy:

Lianna Brease on our Facebook page asks:

I'm finding myself more distant from government involvement in general. Is it healthy to think like an anarchist or what are your views on anarchy?

Ron Paul:

I think if somebody is an anarchist and they totally believe in no government, and they don't use force at the moment to go and start shooting up the government so we don't have any government, that would be wrong, but to be an anarchist and assume responsibility for yourself, I think this is a great idea. And there's a lot of people, there's a lot of very close friends of mine who think political action is terrible and worthless. I happen to be one that believes that education is probably paramount. But political action can be very helpful. And sometimes political action, my elections and things and galvanizing interest is a measurement of our success on our ideas. So I think this is very important. But anarchy is not harmful to me, as long as you especially if you are true libertarian, you've rejected the use of force, I don't have to worry about you.

If you don't want to, your biggest problem of being an anarchist in the government that doesn't agree with you is that when I want to opt out they are going to come with guns. But you know, we do have instances where some people do get to opt out. When you think about the Amish and the Mennonites, I think they get exempt and ... they like to … Just think, those groups, why couldn't all of us have that opportunity? Look, we voluntarily want to get out and we want to take care of ourselves. Either an individual should be allowed to do that and get no benefits from the government, or a group can do this. A libertarian society actually gives full permission for socialism. Voluntary socialism. You know, if you want to get together, and there's been experiments with that in our history, you can have voluntary socialism. If you go together and you agree and we are running this community - large, small whatever - on a socialist scheme, you should be allowed to. But we should be allowed to stay out of that. But the problem is: it is so inefficient. That the socialists know their system is going to fail, so they have to use the force of the government gun to take money from the people who aren't socialists in order to subsidize their programs.

Libertarianism gives full legal protection of anybody who wants to have voluntary socialism. But socialists never will endorse the idea of you having your personal liberty where you can take care of yourself and not ask for nothing from anybody else.