Click here to view the video on YouTube.

In a February 2003 interview on C-SPAN, Congressman Ron Paul explained his litmus test for whether or not a war is worth fighting: if you yourself are willing to lose your life in war or send your kids and grandchildren to war, then you are sincere.

Paul demonstrated incredible foresight with the Iraq War and the troubles it would provoke in the region. What other representative in Washington has demonstrated such consistency, foresight, and principle? Paul has indeed proven to be a “breath of fresh air.”

“I have this terrible habit of wanting to try to be consistent and develop a philosophy that’s coherent.” ~ Ron Paul

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People within an empire are blind to the empire itself. U.S. citizens have been trained to trust and protect their leaders, even when these leaders are escalating the slaughter of innocent human beings abroad. Is the U.S. different from previous tyrannical empires? Some claim the U.S. is defending freedom and democracy by preemptively invading tens of countries around the world. How many wars must be fought before we acknowledge the miserable strategical failure of killing other human beings in far off lands in supposed efforts to promote peace?

I am not a stubborn pacifist. But I am not a blind follower either, which is what the majority of people in the U.S. appear to be today. People blindly followed and supported George W. Bush. After eight years of horrendous atrocities abroad, torturing human beings, and Bush ignoring his own promises to stop nation building, people decided they wanted a change. Barack Obama promised change, and he even campaigned that he was “Change we can believe in.” Give people a catchy slogan and a decent speech and they’ll believe and defend just about anything.

Three years into Obama’s presidency, you can count on one hand the number of the policies Obama has ended from the Bush era. Obama has started new wars, continued torturing untried human beings, and today his administration defends the very policies he strongly criticized just four years ago. Some say Obama just needs more time. “You can’t change everything in a day, Obama’s doing the best he can!”

How long must Obama continue and expand Bush’s abominable policies before I can legitimately criticize his policies? Three years? Five years? Eight years?

No one in government has done a thing to earn my trust. “Conservatives” who preach against government intervention in our domestic economy praise the very same government when it sanctions, invades, and militarily occupies foreign countries. “Liberals” who criticize a Republican president for war crimes and the destruction of the Constitution turn a blind eye when a Democrat does the exact same things, instead giving him a pat on the back while writing a check for his reelection.

Think outside the box. Think like a human being. Would you retaliate against a foreign government that attempted to rig your country’s elections, prevented economic trade, and opened permanent military bases on your own soil? Answer that question honestly, and you will understand why “insurgents” and “terrorists” in numerous countries around the world are retaliating against the U.S. They do not do it for religious purposes, they don’t do it because we’re “free” (which is a laughable accusation in and of itself), they do it because they’ve had enough of their friends, family, and countrymen killed by an intruding foreign army.

It is sickening how quickly people jump to Obama’s defense after he assassinated three American citizens in Yemen in the past month, even a 16 year old born in Denver, Colorado. I do not care in the slightest that Obama called some of these people “terrorists.” Where in the Constitution does the president get the power to declare people “terrorists” and assassinate them?

The U.S. has not declared war on any enemy or country as mandated in the U.S. Constitution. The rule of law isn’t subject to the whim of a president or a congress. You may despise the people the U.S. government kills, but please think like an adult. Killing more people in the Middle East will in no way increase your personal safety or liberty. Heaven knows that 16 year old American kid from Colorado was a huge threat to your life, liberty, and property.

Neither Obama nor anyone in his administration has even acknowledged that U.S. drone attacks killed an innocent 16 year old American citizen. That is despicable. Those who blindly follow Obama are just as foolish and dangerous as those who blindly followed Bush.

Is this what we’ve become? Are we completely blind to the suffering the U.S. has caused? Do you really believe the people in these countries will gladly roll over to a gargantuan foreign military and a barrage of drone attacks?

I am not going to support any politician who thinks for a second that the U.S. can do whatever it wants around the world without inciting retaliation against those actions. It is the height of arrogance to think the U.S. can only do good, only be welcomed in these countries, and never do anything evil that might warrant a justified retaliation. Put yourself in the shoes of someone in the Middle East, or you will never understand.

Enough is enough. No matter what the government and the media would like me to believe, I don’t hate the people in the Middle East. They are no less human than you and I. The same institutions telling you the people in the Middle East are human garbage are the very same institutions that told our ancestors Native Americans were worthless, primitive, unintelligent human beings. I am sick of this; I am sick of war.

Let us not forget those who have been unjustly killed. Let us not forget, lest we neglect the preciousness of human life. Let us not forget, lest we become ignorant of liberty. No, we will remember. We will always remember.

“Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy; and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

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Click here to view the video on YouTube.

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We are at a decisive turning point in the story of America. We have set a course for disaster that the status quo cannot fix. We need something far beyond the world of petty party politics. These two parties have created nothing short of a nightmare in Washington. We need new answers.

I myself used to be a neocon. I used to be in favor of our wars overseas. Why should we apologize for America’s greatness? Radical Islamists had to be stopped with aggressive military force, I thought. I was sure that they hated us because we are free. I used to defend George W. Bush in his decision to invade Iraq. On one or more occasions I even defended the adoption of the Patriot Act. I’d ensure people, that “It’s for our own safety. They need it to be able to catch the terrorists.” I am not proud recanting these details, but I have to admit that there was a time when I believed these things.I think a large part of this need to defend the party lines comes from the left-right paradigm that we as a nation seem to be stuck in. We tend to think our party is correct and the other party is flat wrong. We don’t want to be mistaken for that “terrible” other party, so we buy in deeper and deeper into the ideology of our chosen party. Our party may not be perfect, but at least it’s not the other one. The other party, we tend to think, is full of knuckleheads.

As a neocon, the wars in the middle east was definitely a place I fell into the left-right paradigm. This was partly in reaction to the anti-war rallies that had become so popular during Bush’s presidency. As I watched these angry “peace” marches, I found that I just couldn’t get behind it. They seemed to be less about anti-war than they were about anti-Bush. Again I fell into the two party trap. If I didn’t agree with the Bush haters, then I felt I had to defend these endless foreign wars, right? I thought they represented America’s greatness. Didn’t we want to be great?

It is interesting to note that once Obama became president the anti-war movement practically died among Democrats. If those angry peace marches were truly fighting for principle, wouldn’t that principle still stand under a Democratic president that supports aggressive wars as clearly as Obama does? Nothing has changed in our foreign policy, yet the movement virtually vanished. Were they fighting for principle or party?

The same is true for the Tea Party movement. Where were all these fiscal conservatives when Bush was spending his trillions on our undeclared, unconstitutional wars? Where were they when Bush pushed for bailouts? Yet they are all upset when a Democrat president does the same thing. One has to wonder, are the fighting for principle or party?

Ron Paul has helped me see a new way. A way based on principle. A way based on respect and individual liberty. A way based on recognizing the innate basic rights and humanity of all people. He didn’t try to convince us that the US was evil or that we couldn’t be “great,” he simply showed us that our actions have consequences. He introduced us to the concept of “blowback;” the idea that our meddling in the internal affairs of other countries and killing their civilians, creates an understandable ill will towards the US. What if China did the same to us? Wouldn’t we be mad? Ron Paul has showed us that mutual respect and free trade (which by definition should not permit trade sanctions) would go much further to create peace and prosperity throughout the world. He showed us that there was another measure of excellence. One not based on dominance, but one based in mutual respect and freedom.

He has brought a breath of fresh air to the political arena. Instead of carefully crafted empty slogans, he says what he believes, and offers real solutions to today’s problems. He is willing to be unpopular for the sake of telling the truth. In this he is able to step beyond the left-right paradigm.

When I first saw Ron Paul on YouTube in 2007, I was pretty sure he was nuts. I assured myself that he was extreme and unrealistic in his ideas. It seemed a little naive to think that freedom could work in this modern world we live in. Surely we needed more government control than in the days of the Founders.

Bit by bit I started to come around to Paul’s point of view. Maybe we could have the freedom to make decisions for ourselves? After all, government is full of imperfect individuals, what part of them being in Washington means they know the best way to run our lives?

As others argued between a 39% income tax and a 35% income tax, Ron Paul suggested that the concept of an income tax was wrong and we should be able to keep the money we earn. He boldly stated that he was in favor of abolishing the IRS. While others argued about how to fix the economy and rejuvenate the housing market, Paul made us look deeper into the cause of these vicious boom-bust cycles. He showed us that the economy would be better off without government intervention. He put the spotlight on the Federal Reserve as the root of our economic problems as well as being responsible for funding our endless wars and occupations around the world. He was the only candidate who predicted the economic recession that came to pass the following year. When the recession came, people argued how big the bailouts should be, not whether we should even bailing out corporations as Ron Paul suggested. While others argued which countries we should invade, how many troops we should send, and how long we should occupy said countries; Ron Paul asked why we were there at all. He stated the case for a strong national defense, but called for the end of this aggressive militarism around the world. He showed us the wisdom of bringing the troops home from the various 130 countries we have a presence in around the world. He showed us that the wars are a racket and are usually used as a way to undermine personal liberties here at home. He warned us that continuing on this path would spell the end of our republic.

It wasn’t that Ron Paul wanted to somehow go back to some mystical golden age, he simply wanted to use our foundations of the Constitution and liberty to build a new and better future. We have forsaken the principles that made America great and prosperous. We are carelessly throwing away what our Founders fought and died for. He primarily wanted a federal government that followed the dictates of the constitution. On this he has been impeccably consistent throughout his long career as a congressman.

Ron Paul finally was successful in getting me to think about principle above party. He doesn’t care what the Republican Party says about any particular issue. He doesn’t care if his views are popular. He follows the laws of the Constitution and the guidance of his own conscience. As a devout Christian he follows the golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” He follows this even in practices he personally finds to be wrong. He recognizes the individual’s right to do whatever he so pleases, as long as he isn’t hurting or coercing another individual. I am eternally grateful to Dr. Paul for bringing principles back into the political arena.

I believe we are now teetering on the edge as a nation. We have an unsustainable debt load, and our government is spending more than ever. We are precariously close to runaway inflation. We are stuck in multiple endless, un-winnable wars (because undeclared and undefined). Our civil liberties have been trampled on by both parties. The Constitution is virtually ignored. Our presidents now have the power to execute American citizens without trial and without even presenting any evidence of guilt. What we have now is not left versus right, but up versus down. We are fighting for the very continuance of our great republic. We are fighting for the principles of freedom and liberty that made America great, but are now an all but forgotten dream. What we need now is to come together, not necessarily to agree, but at least to respect the opinions of other individuals. We need to appreciate the innate human rights in each individual and to recognize that it is not our place to dictate how others should live their lives. Each has the right to live how they deem appropriate.

We can create a better world, but we need to move quickly. If we are smart enough as a nation, we will vote for Ron Paul no matter what party we identify ourselves with. What we have in Washington are two parties that are unwilling to work together, but are in fact not that different from each other. There has been no significant change in our foreign policy (and our willingness to torture people), our respect for civil liberties, and our monetary policy from one administration to the next. These are the issues that are crippling our nation today. A vote for Ron Paul would be a major step in the direction of solving these problems. A vote for anyone else is simply continuing the status quo.

I once asked a wise friend of mine which party he sided with. He replied, “I am for the people.” A simple but profound answer. Why conform to either party, when neither has all the answers. We need more of this attitude today.

Friends of all political persuasions, aren’t you tired of what we’ve been given year after year from Washington? If you’re ready to work to make a better nation, one built on honesty, integrity, and principle, then let’s vote for Ron Paul. I, for one, believe that the fate of our republic depends on it.

Please, my fellow Americans, vote based on principle.

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The first problem with this proposal is that it completely disregards how this bubble and bust came about. “Lack of regulation” did not cause the bubble or the pain we feel today. In fact, it was the federal government and Federal Reserve who were actually encouraging banks and lenders to lower their lending standards to riskier customers. The government was pushing lower lending standards in the name of equality and the right for lower income families to own a home.

In Obama’s plan banks would be forced to hold the mortgage-backed securities they create and sell to investors, with the belief that they will be more conservative with their loans if their own money is on the line. The problem with this is that it ignores how mortgage-backed securities, or the secondary mortgage market, came about. For those who don’t know, the secondary mortgage market is where a bank sells a loan it made with a customer to another business, relieving the bank of the responsibility to maintain that loan. The business buying those loans from banks may hold them in its portfolio or group them into mortgage-backed securities and sell them to investors.

This market started with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) created in 1937. Fannie and Freddie have enjoyed special privileges and treatment since their creation. They created the secondary mortgage market to give banks the opportunity to give more loans (and thereby sell them to Fannie and Freddie) and therefore give more people the chance to borrow money to buy a house.

In the 1990s, the Clinton administration continually pressured Fannie and Freddie to buy riskier mortgages from banks. This would encourage banks to sell mortgages to lower income individuals regardless of the increased risk of foreclosure involved. In 1999, after pressure from the federal government, Fannie Mae lowered some of its previous standards so it could buy riskier mortgages from the banks.

We often hear today that it was greed, deception, and lack of regulation that pushed subprime mortgages onto the market, when in reality these risky loans were being openly encouraged by the federal government. The mortgage bubble would not have been possible had it not been for Fannie and Freddie and the special government treatment they have received since their creation. Any government agency involved in the housing market (in both the Clinton and Bush administrations) was pressured to lower mortgage standards, allow lower income individuals and families to get loans, and ignore the extra risks and consequences.

The very reason why many politicians didn’t want equal treatment and oversight for Fannie and Freddie was because they thought it would take away the GSEs’ ability to “commit” to riskier customers. The government was pushing “affordable housing” by lowering mortgage standards in any way possible, rejecting the market’s natural rates of risk, and ignoring the risks involved with increased loans to people who clearly couldn’t afford them.

No one in government pushing these practices believed they were adding to an unsustainable and deadly bubble, and no amount of government regulators would have had the nerve to ignore what Congress, the President, and the Federal Reserve were all pressing for. The push for decreased mortgage standards for lower-income people gradually spread into decreased standards for the mortgage industry as a whole. Subprime mortgages were not the only portion of the mortgage market that crashed, many “prime” mortgages faced high foreclosure rates because of the spillover of decreased lending standards.

Obama’s plan assumes that forcing businesses in the secondary mortgage market (mainly Fannie and Freddie) to own part of their own mortgage-backed securities will solve the problem. If the government suddenly has to jump into the secondary mortgage market to ease and control the industry, why are we not simply allowing Freddie and Fannie to compete on the free market, suffer the consequences of unreasonable practices, and go bankrupt if necessary? Instead allowing Freddie and Fannie to fail because of their poor practices, the government nationalized the two corporations last year. The secondary mortgage market would not have been possible had it not been for the government’s unending support for Fannie and Freddie. Rather than look at the root cause of the problem, Obama is taking an issue that the government essentially created and sustained and using it as an excuse to increase government regulatory power.

People rarely ask how banks suddenly got the money and ability to loan to people who obviously should not have gotten loans. In response to the bursting tech bubble and weak economy, then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan lowered the Fed’s interest rate to 1% for a full year starting in 2003. Greenspan kept rates artificially low for one purpose: lower rates mean banks can borrow more money, which they can loan out to more people (who otherwise couldn’t have gotten those loans) who will go out and spend those dollars. Lower interest rates encourage spending, borrowing, and discourage saving; if they are held at artificially low levels that money will drift to areas that it never would have gone before. By keeping rates at unsustainable and artificially low levels, the Fed gave banks the money and opportunity to loan cash to people who otherwise never could have gotten it (i.e. subprime mortgages).

The Federal Reserve’s easy money and cheap credit policy played a huge part in giving banks the chance to take advantage of their lowered lending standards. Lower lending standards coupled with the artificial credit from the Federal Reserve put the subprime mortgage market in full gear. Without the Fed, the banks could not have gotten that cash in the free market. It is frightening that the practices employed at the Fed, which were so instrumental in causing today’s mess, are now being looked upon as the solution. The leaders of the Fed are the very people who ignored the bubble forming from their own policies.

In 2005 Ben Bernanke said that rapidly rising housing prices “largely reflect strong economic fundamentals.” At the same time Greenspan said the housing market was merely experiencing “froth,” not a bubble, and would only correct in local markets. Why in the world would we want to give more power to the Fed and the people who manage it when they continually ignore the consequences of their easy money policies and denied for years that the housing bubble was unsustainable and irrational? Why are we listening to the people who helped create the problem, ignored the problem for as long as possible, and suddenly feel they have all the answers that will lead to massive economic damages if not put into place?

The fact that they see the same policies that brought us into this mess as the perfect solution should caution everyone about their judgment. Artificially low interest rates and cheap credit may boost the economy in the short-term – even for a few years as it did after the tech bubble burst until 2007 – but they will guarantee another bubble of this magnitude and a more disastrous bust several years down the road.

Because of the policies endlessly pursued by the Fed and the government over the past year (artificially low interest rates, bailouts, increased intervention) do not be surprised to see excessive malinvestment in the years ahead, a period of artificial wealth (just as the tech and house bubble “wealth” proved to be nonexistent after their respective bubbles popped), and a painful collapse.

Obama’s new regulatory plan is nothing more than a continuation and massive expansion of the exact policies that brought us to this point. More government and central control will not solve problems that they themselves were strongly supporting when the economy seemed to be in great shape. Obama’s plan simply hands buckets of gasoline to the arsonist watching the fire he started.

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Did we even have a complete correction in 2000? With a central bank making the calls of monetary policy, I’ve realized that we cannot know whether the correction was actually sufficient enough to clear out all the malinvestment and bad management decisions. Think about it: interest rates were sharply lowered, credit was injected into the economy, and before too long the economy was back on its feet again (thanks in part to the new housing bubble). Just because the recession may have been weakened by the Federal Reserve’s intervention, it doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t have negative consequences later on. In a true free market where the market would control money and credit, this would be much easier to analyze. We do not have that convenience though, because we have to live with and analyze the actions of the select, unelected few who call the shots.

I bring this up because we obviously do still have market forces at work. Despite regulation, intervention, and manipulation on the part of the government and Federal Reserve, the underlying powers of the market do not disappear for good. Today the stock market has been sent to levels prior to the correction of 2000, and I can’t help but speculate that part of this is because investors are starting to understand more deeply the consequences of credit manipulation from the Fed, as well as an inflationary monetary system.

Over time, we as a nation have subscribed to the Keynesian belief in economics that you must spend and inflate your way out of economic hardships. This is the root of our largest problems today. Some of the key principles of capitalism are saving and investment, but over the past century we have gotten the mindset that it is the government’s responsibility to manage and influence the economy. It is this belief in inflation and debt financing that has caused us to get so overwhelmed by a correction that is beyond the hands of government and central planners.

What if, by lowering interest rates to artificial lows in 2000, Greenspan prevented, or rather delayed, areas of the market that didn’t fully correct? What if providing such cheap money was one of the primary reasons for the largest and most irresponsible bubbles this nation has ever seen? A small group of central planners, if they worked 24/7, could not get close to controlling the marketplace in a more efficient and responsible manner than a capitalist free market. With the key influence of money and credit out of the hands of the consumers and investors, I find it very hard to believe when people blame our problems today on the “free market”.

No matter what political, economic, or social systems are in place, the forces of the free market are always at work. This is why every nation that has tried its way with a fiat monetary system has not lived to see its lasting success. No piece of paper guaranteed by a government and central bank can take the place of gold and silver, the only items consistently and universally accepted as currency in all of human history.

Every attempt at government and central planning is an effort to go against human nature. Capitalism is not about “greed” as many have made it out to be. Capitalism is the only economic system that supports, rather than discourages, the profit motive. Capitalism is a consumer driven economy, which leads to lower prices and higher quality products. In a true free market capitalist society the regulation of the market, not the government, is unleashed in full force. The ability of free choice and individual responsibility will outweigh any government bureaucracy’s ability to regulate.

The government and Federal Reserve do their best to limit individual responsibility and ability. Over the past year we have been forced to bailout massive corporations and essentially the whole government-managed banking industry. If these were such pressing matters, why not leave it up to the people to decide whether or not these corporations were “too important to fail” and deserved money of which they had earned not one penny? If it was such a pressing matter, there was nothing stopping people from sitting down and writing a check for the Treasury to distribute to its banking buddies.

We have lost the ability to make our own decisions with our money. Talk about taxation without representation: over the past year, the Treasury Secretary and Federal Reserve Chairman (formerly Hank Paulson, now Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke), two unelected officials, have handed out trillions of taxpayer dollars. This past December, former president George W. Bush ordered an “emergency” bailout of the auto industry. Rather than let these mismanaged auto businesses fail, reorganize, and come back as a stronger entities, the taxpayers are being forced to pay the bill for stupid mistakes made by the businesses. In other words, if we decide to not buy their crappy vehicles, we’re forced to bail them out with our taxpayer dollars.

The regulatory abilities of the free market are starting to rev their engines. The monetary dictatorship of the Federal Reserve cannot manipulate credit and destroy the value of the currency without serious repercussions. Bailing out failed and irresponsible business decisions won’t eliminate the problems of mismanagement and malinvestment. Nationalizing industries will not lessen the pain felt by the consumer during this economic crisis, nor will increased regulations.

Countless times our officials have gone with short-term solutions that ignore the laws and history of economics. They go for the route of more government intervention and involvement in the economy. Many people today can’t comprehend a system where the government wasn’t responsible for getting the economy out of a recession. Somehow people fail to see that this is not a problem caused by lack of spending, but lack of saving. It’s pretty simple: Congress encouraged businesses to hand out irresponsible mortgages that they knew people couldn’t afford, people took these irresponsible mortgages they knew they couldn’t afford, and both sides of the party went deeply into debt. But rather than take the signals of the recession that we need to cut back on spending and increase our savings, the government has gone on a spending rampage in the past year, the likes of which the world has never seen. Not to mention that this is money we do not have, which only means it will come through more borrowing and inflation of the dollar.

The free market has been put off and suppressed for a good amount of time now. However, like I said, its forces can and will never completely disappear. Human nature, common sense, and the yearning for individual responsibility will eventually outwit and overpower all regulatory and deceitful agencies keen on destroying those very principles and natural laws. History shows there are no exceptions.

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