RealClearPolitics - Articles - John Stossel

• Ron Paul On War
  

  Is this case not different? Religious fanatics hate us and want to kill us because of our culture.

  I don't think that's true. It is not Muslim fanaticism that is the culprit. The litmus test is whether we are actually occupying a territory. In the case of Saudi Arabia, that was holy land.

  Many say the surge in Iraq is succeeding, that we're at a turning point now, and we are creating a model of democracy in a part of the world that hasn't seen that.

  That's the propaganda. I don't happen to believe that.

  And if in most of Iraq, some religious fanatic comes to power and has money to buy nuclear weapons, we should just leave him alone?

  The Soviets had the technology. They were 90 miles off our shore, and they had nuclear weapons there. But we were able to talk to them. We took our missiles out of Turkey. They took the missiles out of Cuba. We should be talking to people like this. It's the lack of diplomacy that is the greatest threat, not the weapons themselves.

  You say we shouldn't be the world's policemen. Isn't it our responsibility to help others?
  
  It's OK for us to personally help other people. But to go around the world and spread democracy -- goodness, no -- too many unintended consequences. It usually requires force. I think we should only do those things under the prescribed conditions of the Constitution.

  Is war ever justifiable?

  Sure. If you're attacked, you have a right and an obligation to defend (your) country. I do not believe there is ever a moral justification to start the war.

  So in World War II, we were justified?

  Sure.

  How about going into Afghanistan after Sept. 11?

  I voted for that authority to go after those responsible for 9/11.

  The Korean War?

  Totally unjustified.

  Kosovo?

  Absolutely unjustified.

  Vietnam?

  A horror.

  The first Iraq war? Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. He might have invaded the next country, and the next.

  I bet Israel would have done something about it, and I bet Saudi Arabia maybe would have talked to Israel. I think if it would have been left to the region, they might have taken care of Saddam Hussein in 1990 and we wouldn't have the problems we have today.

  What if there's genocide and terrible suffering in a country?

  It's a tragedy, and we can have a moral statement, but you can't use force of arms to invade other countries to make them better people. Our job is to make us a better people.

  You'd pull American troops out of Korea, Germany, the Middle East, everywhere?

  I would. Under the Constitution, we don't have the authority to just put troops in foreign countries willy-nilly when we're not at war.

  If North Korea invades South Korea, we should just leave it alone?

  Sure, but it's not going to happen. South Korea's about 10 times more powerful than North Korea.

  If China invaded Taiwan?

  That's a border war, and they should deal with it.

  If Canada invades Montana?

  I think that might be a little bit different. Montana probably could take care of it, but we'd probably help them out from Washington if that happened.

  That's a role for the federal government?

  Oh, sure.

• My Interview with Ron Paul
  

  What should government do?

  Ron Paul: Protect our freedoms. Have a strong national defense. Look at and take care of our borders. Have a sound currency. That was the responsibility of the federal government, not to run our lives and run everything in the economy and extend the interstate-commerce clause and the general-welfare clause to do anything they want to do.

  So defense, the military, police forces enforce contracts, and that's about it?

  That's it. We would have a court system to enforce contracts, and when people do harm to others, when they take property or injure property, or pollute a neighbor's air, I think there's a role for government to protect our environment through private-property rights.

  So keep us safe, enforce contracts, run the courts, pollution rules and otherwise butt out? Leave us alone?

  Basically that, which would mean if I'm elected, I should immediately take a pay cut. You know, because I wouldn't have so much to do.

  The Department of Education. You'd get rid of it?

  Yes. We don't need it.

  How will people get educated?

  We might get better education. The evidence shows, since the 1950s, since the federal government's gotten involved, the quality of education has gone down, and the cost has gone up.

  The federal government should have no role?

  There's no authority for it, and . they've proved themselves inefficient. The one city they're totally in charge of is Washington, D.C. Thirteen thousand dollars a year per student. They have more guns, more drugs, more violence. So there's no evidence that the government can do a very good job.

  The Department of Energy.

  We don't need a Department of Energy. It serves the interests of big business.

  Other cabinet departments? Department of Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development. You'd get rid of all of them?

  Yeah. Of course, that's not on the immediate agenda, but they're unnecessary, and we should think about what kind of a country we would have without these departments, and I think we would have a better country, and all those problems that they're supposed to solve, I think, would be lessened.

  The Commerce Department? We don't need the Commerce Department to have commerce?

  No, absolutely not.

  Homeland Security. Isn't that a role for the federal government?

  Not really, not the way that's designed. That's the biggest bureaucracy of them all. There are some parts that are OK. You know, they put the Coast Guard in there, and they put FEMA in there, and everybody's bunched together. And I think it was failure of government on 9/11, not the fact that we didn't have the Department of Homeland Security and . a national ID card, and this constant surveillance and loss of our privacy.

  Failure of government how?

  We spent $40 billion on intelligence gathering, and it didn't prevent (the 9/11 attacks) from happening. But the government was in charge of the airlines. FAA, they were supposed to inspect the people as they went on, and you weren't supposed to resist any takeovers, and (passengers and pilots) weren't allowed to have a gun. Maybe if you and I had the airlines, we might have said, "Hey, you know, we want to protect our passengers. Maybe we should have a stronger door on there, maybe we ought to give our pilots a gun." So 9/11 wouldn't have happened.

  So government creates too many rules, and the wrong ones?

  That basically it. Most of the time well-intentioned -- but good intentions will not solve our problems.

  Next week, Rep. Ron Paul talks about the war in Iraq.

• Tragedy of the Commons II
  

  And sharing can't be a basis for production -- you can't share what hasn't been produced. My point is that production and prosperity require property rights. Property rights associate effort with benefits. Where benefits are unrelated to effort, people do the least amount necessary to get by while taking the most they can get. Economists have a pithy way of summing up this truth: No one washes a rental car.

  It's called the "tragedy of the commons." The idea is as old as ancient Greece, but ecologist Garrett Hardin popularized the phrase in a 1968 Science magazine article. Hardin described a common pasture on which anyone may graze his livestock. Each person will benefit from a larger herd but will suffer only a tiny fraction of the negative effects of overgrazing. Public Choice economists call this "concentrated benefits and dispersed costs."

  That's a recipe for depleting the resource. If a herdsman were to leave a portion of the commons ungrazed, someone else would gain the benefit, so why leave it ungrazed? Soon, all the grass is gone, and the livestock die. That's the tragedy of the commons.

  There are two possible solutions. One is to put someone in charge. But that someone would have arbitrary power over the rest -- he may give his friends better terms -- and one individual can't possibly know how to plan the village economy.

  The second solution, as the pilgrims learned the hard way, is private property. Property rights unite costs and benefits. If a herdsman owns part of the pasture, he r