Former Congressman Ron Paul, the libertarian icon, is launching a new institute “for peace and prosperity.” A “media advisory” posted on his Facebook page Friday explains:
The neo-conservative era is dead.
Former Congressman Ron Paul will hold a press conference this Wednesday to launch his next big project: the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. After decades in and out of the US House of Representatives leading the call for a non-interventionist foreign policy and the protection of civil liberties, Dr. Paul is launching a revolutionary new vehicle to expand his efforts. The Institute will serve as the focal point of a new coalition that crosses political, ideological, and party lines.
The Ron Paul Institute will focus on the two issues most important to Dr. Paul, education and coming generations. It will fill the growing demand for information on foreign affairs from a non-interventionist perspective through a lively and diverse website, and will provide unique educational opportunities to university students and others.
The neo-conservative era is dead. The ill-advised policies pushed by the neo-cons have everywhere led to chaos and destruction, and to a hatred of the United States and its people. Multi-trillion dollar wars have not made the world a safer place; they have only bankrupted our economic future. The Ron Paul Institute will provide the tools and the education to chart a new course with the understanding that only through a peaceful foreign policy can we hope for a prosperous tomorrow.
Paul will formally announce the Institute’s beginning at a press conference at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, April 17. Dr. Paul — the founder and chairman of the organization — will be joined on the dais by conservative Congressmen Walter Jones, Jr. (R-N.C.) and John Duncan, Jr. (R-Tenn.), constitutionally minded Judge Andrew Napolitano, Ambassador Faith Whittlesey, and Lew Rockwell, Jr., CEO of the libertarian economic think tank, the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Creation of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity is the latest front opened by the 77-year-old Paul in his war against statism, economic manipulation by the Federal Reserve, and government consolidation of all power. As reported by The New American, on April 6 Paul announced the development of the Ron Paul Curriculum for homeschoolers.
The end of militarism, the abolition of the Federal Reserve, and the end of federal control of education are consistent themes of Paul’s philosophy.
Speaking of the proliferation of unconstitutional foreign conflicts, Paul wrote in his book Liberty Defined, “I favor a noninterventionist position, consistent with what the American Founders favored and what the Constitution enshrines. I would like a policy of peace, friendship, and trade—and no intervention in any country’s internal affairs.”
And regarding the perpetual “War on Terror,” Paul explains:
If we hate racism, we must also hate war since it is war that has bred all these malignant types of racism. In our time, we observe the same happening to those of the Islamic faith. Members of both parties are demonizing these people and encouraging an anti-Islamic feeling across the broad population. Christians are being told, as in George Orwell, that “we’ve always been at war with Islam,” that Islam is an inherently warlike religion, that “they” are taking over America with their mosques, clothing, and law. This whole campaign has the earmarks of a new Cold War, and perhaps hot war, in which Islam replaces atheistic communism as the enemy of choice. What is striking about this form of racism is how little it has to do with reality. The 9/11hijackers were not devout Muslims, but we are often led to believe that they were. The government of Saddam Hussein was secular, not an Islamic state, though the U.S. attack and decadelong sanctions against Iraq were sold to Americans as a part of a “clash of civilizations” and the beginning of a long struggle against Islam. There can be no question that government elites are leading Christians and Jews to believe that the struggle against Islam is our most important foreign policy priority.
During an exchange with former New York City Mayor Rudy Guliani at a presidential debate in South Carolina in 2007, Paul declared:
Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we’ve been over there; we’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We’ve been in the Middle East — I think Reagan was right.
We don’t understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we’re building an embassy in Iraq that’s bigger than the Vatican. We’re building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us.
Paul points out that the indiscriminate droning by the U.S. government of innocent men, women, and children in the Middle East has bred more enemies than it has eliminated. As the former CIA Pakistan station chief explained to the Guardian (U.K.) about the growth of militancy in Yemen:
That brings you to a place where young men, who are typically armed, are in the same area and may hold these militants in a certain form of high regard. If you strike them indiscriminately you are running the risk of creating a terrific amount of popular anger. They have tribes and clans and large families. Now all of a sudden you have a big problem…. I am very concerned about the creation of a larger terrorist safe haven in Yemen.
Finally, when it comes to sponsorship of policies promoting economic prosperity, no one has been more active than Ron Paul.
As recounted on RonPaul.com:
For the past 30 years, Congressman Ron Paul has worked tirelessly to bring much-needed transparency and accountability to the secretive bank. And in 2009 and 2010 his unfaltering dedication showed astonishing results: HR 1207, the bill to audit the Federal Reserve, swept the country and made the central bankers shudder at their desks. The bill passed as an amendment both in the House Financial Services Committee and in the House itself.
Then, in 2012, his final year in the House, Congressman Ron Paul reintroduced the Audit the Fed bill (H.R. 459), which passed the House 327-98.
In his book, Liberty Defined, Dr. Paul eloquently summarized the interplay between peace and prosperity and the war on both waged by government: “Understanding how governments always compete with liberty and destroy progress, creativity, and prosperity is crucial to our effort to reverse the course on which we find ourselves.”
Dr. Paul is not a solitary solider in the struggle to fight back against the forces of government overreach, federal manipulation of currency, and unconstitutional foreign conflicts. For over 50 years, The John Birch Society has confronted these threats to liberty, arming patriots with a message and materials that help them achieve the same goals as those pronounce by Dr. Paul in his announcement.
Photo of Ron Paul: AP Images
Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state. He can be reached at [email protected]
