As the death toll from the Israel government’s air strikes increases and its military prepares for a ground invasion of Gaza that the Israeli government justifies as a response to Hamas hostilities, consider former Rep. Ron Paul’s January 9, 2009 speech on the US House of Representatives floor explaining that Israel helped encourage the growth of Hamas to counteract the Palestine Liberation Organization. Paul, RPI’s chairman and founder, proceeds to discuss in the speech the similarity between Israel’s past actions regarding Hamas and the US Central Intelligence Agency’s support for radicalizing Muslims to compete with the Soviet Union. read on...
The media is not waiting until after the November general election to blame Libertarian Party candidates for Republican Party candidates’ upcoming losses. Indeed, Libertarian candidates are already being blamed for the Republicans’ potential failure to gain a majority in of the United States Senate. The Washington Post on Sunday published an article suggesting that Libertarian candidates could “spoil” Republicans’ chances of winning United States Senate races in eleven or more states, as well as some governor races.
Following an Associated Press article last month that erroneously suggested Libertarian governor candidate Ed Thompson caused the Republican incumbent Wisconsin governor to lose to the Democrat challenger in 2002, the Washington Post article points to Republican losses in the Virginia 2013 governor race and the 2006 and 2012 Montana US Senate races to support the assertion that Libertarian candidates are spoilers for Republicans.
What proof does the Washington Post article offer to advance this empirical argument? The Libertarian candidate received more votes than the number of votes by which the Democrat beat the Republican in each of those three races. That’s it — an underwhelming “argument” to say the least. The article seems to trust that readers believe the baseless, though widely repeated, characterization of libertarianism as a subset of conservatism read on...
Ron Paul, speaking with Neil Cavuto on Fox News, explains that President Barack Obama’s proposal to spend a half-billion dollars on training and arming Syria insurgents will hurt Americans while helping the military industrial complex. Paul, RPI’s chairman and founder, also argues that the House of Representatives would do better to impeach Obama for unconstitutional actions than to follow Speaker of the House John Boehner’s plan to sue Obama. read on...
It is no secret that Boris Pasternak’s 1957 novel Dr. Zhivago influenced RPI Chairman and Founder Ron Paul. Indeed, Dr. Zhivago and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged are the only two works of fiction included in the list of 48 books at the end of Paul’s The Revolution: A Manifesto that Paul says influenced him over the years. What has long been a secret, though, is that the United States Central Intelligence Agency played a significant role in helping promote the Pasternak novel.
A peek at the influence Dr. Zhivago had on Paul may be found in ABC News and National Public Radio profiles of Paul from 2011 that report on how Paul reading in his 20s a copy of Dr. Zhivago that his mother had given him put Paul on course reading many other books that helped him develop his understanding of libertarian ideas. This reading led directly to Paul first running for Congress in 1974 and continuing to communicate regarding political topics to this day. As Paul has explained many times, his runs for political office have been motivated largely by a desire to share ideas related to freedom with a larger audience.
Might Paul’s mother not have given him Dr. Zhivago if the CIA had not boosted the book’s popularity? Without reading the book, may Paul not have proceeded in the study that led him to help build support for liberty and nonintervention in the US and abroad? read on...
RPI Chairman and Founder Ron Paul, speaking with Neil Cavuto on Fox Business this week, says that the recently revealed mass interception, storage, and analysis of images contained in private electronic communications is “another reason to get rid of the NSA.” read on...
The US House of Representatives voted Friday to require the US government to respect states’ laws legalizing medical marijuana and hemp. The move is an endorsement of the significant drug war rollbacks that RPI Chairman and Founder Ron Paul had promoted for years in the House and his presidential campaigns.
In September of 2008, Paul spoke in Minneapolis, Minnesota to thousands of his presidential campaign supporters about the war on drugs, zeroing in on his advocacy for ending the US government’s war on medical marijuana and hemp... read on...
Speaking on the House of Representatives floor on September 17, 1997, then-Rep. Ron Paul warned of the “massive buildup of a virtual army of armed regulators.” Paul, the chairman and founder of RPI, proceeded to comment in his speech that, with the number of armed federal employees approaching 60,000, the Secretary of the Interior was pushing for even the Bureau of Land Management to be armed.
With the continuing rise of SWAT over the following 16 years, the number of armed US government employees continued to grow. According to the bulletin Federal Law Enforcement Officers, 2008 of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, by September of 2008 “federal agencies employed approximately 120,000 full-time law enforcement officers who were authorized to make arrests and carry firearms in the United States,” with 255 of them working for BLM. read on...
With the Thursday announcement that Stephen Colbert will succeed David Letterman as the host of the Late Show on CBS next year, it is a good time to look back at Colbert’s in-studio interviews of RPI Chairman and Founder Ron Paul. While humor-filled, the interviews gave Paul a great opportunity to introduce his views to the Colbert Report audience on Comedy Central.
Paul’s first interview on the Colbert Report, in 2007, starts with loud applause in reaction to Colbert announcing Paul’s “no” votes on the USA PATRIOT Act and Iraq war. Paul elaborates on his pro-liberties and pro-peace ideas... read on...
Speaking with RT's Sophie Shevardnadze, RPI Chairman and Founder Ron Paul presents a masterful, in-depth critique of the US government’s actions related to Ukraine. Among many matters discussed, Paul addresses the US government’s foolhardy imposition of sanctions as part of its Ukraine policy. read on...
While United States Attorney General Eric Holder’s support for reducing some drug crime sentences promises to help some drug war victims and their families, RPI Chairman and Founder Ron Paul has advocated for decades the comprehensive solution of ending the war on drugs. Watch here Paul promote that the US government stop building “more courts and more prisons” and instead “repeal the whole war on drugs” during the 2007 PBS Republican presidential candidates debate... read on...
