I.O.U.S.A - Addison Wiggin [75]
One day, we had a personal meeting with Greenspan just to get our pictures taken and chat for a few minutes, and we knew that was coming up. So I dug out my original copy, and I took that with me, so when we were getting ready to get our picture, I fl ipped it open to his article and said, “ Do you remember this? ”
and he said he did. Then I asked him to autograph it, so he got out his pen and he was signing it, and I said, “ Do you want to write a disclaimer on this article? ” He said, “ No, I wouldn ’ t do that. I just read this recently and I fully support everything I wrote. ”
Which is interesting because you don ’ t know exactly what he means.
If he fully supports what he wrote, why was he managing a monetary system that was exactly opposite of what he wrote in 1966?
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154 The
Interviews
Q: David Walker says in his talks that he thinks we ’ ve lost our way, that the idea of what America was a long time ago and what it could be is somehow getting away from us. Is this something that rings true to you?
Ron Paul : Oh yeah, we ’ ve lost our way because the majority of people — certainly in Washington — really don ’ t care about the Constitution. The Constitution restrains government power and enhances personal liberty. We ’ ve lost our way because we ’ ve given up on our faith and our conviction and our understanding how freedom works. We don ’ t believe free markets will take care of people. Everybody has to have a safety net. Big businesses have a safety net, small businesses have a safety net, and poor people have safety nets. Medical care can ’ t be delivered by the marketplace and housing has to be delivered by government, and they never look at the problems: whether there ’ s going to be a housing bubble and whether medical care is not only getting too costly but it ’ s not improving, and whether the military industrial complex takes over the system.
Now we ’ ve lost our way; we don ’ t believe in what made America great, and that was individual liberty. We ’ ve become too dependent on government, and yet, in spite of all those negative things I ’ ve just said and how bad Washington is and how bad the fi nancial system is, in my travels around the country I ’ m really encouraged. Because so many young people today understand this and they ’ re getting information off the Internet and different sources. A lot of them get bored with this silly Keynesian economics, which is very hard to understand and impossible to get fascinated with for the average college student. So the fact that there ’ s so much information on the Internet is remarkable, to stimulate and arouse a whole new generation. In the ‘ 50s, when I was interested in fi nding this information, there was one group in the whole country and that was the Foundation for Economic Education in New York. They produced literature and you had to search for a book. There was no Internet, nothing on television that your schools didn ’ t produce. Today everything is so much better.
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So I think the undercurrent is very, very favorable and I think the next generation is not as tolerant for this acceptance of big government, and there ’ s probably two reasons for that. I think they ’ re attracted to the ideas and the principles of liberty, but also I think they sense that we have problems and they don ’ t know how they ’ re going to pay these huge debts and these entitlement burdens that are coming. They ’ re sick and tired of the foreign policy, so in some way the problems are arousing a lot of people.
As long as we do our job in spreading the ideas of freedom and emphasizing the rule of law and the restraint of government, there ’ s reason to be hopeful.
Q: How would you characterize a generation of people who live beyond their means and pass that debt along to their children?
Ron Paul : I don ’ t think people do it thinking, “ Let ’ s see, how many benefi