Two years ago today, the FoxNews Iowa Presidential Debate took place, and the subject of Iran was discussed. Dr. Paul had to defuse the nuclear warhawk Michele Bachmann.

Watch the clip below, or you can read the transcript after the video:

Bachmann: “Iran will take a nuclear weapon. They will use it to wipe our ally Israel off the face of the map, and they’ve stated that they will use it against the United States of America. Look no further than the Iranian Constitution which states unequivocally that their mission is to extend jihad across the world and eventually to setup a worldwide Caliphate. We would be fools and knaves to ignore their purpose and their plan.”

Paul: “Obviously I would like to see a lot less nuclear weapons. I don’t want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. I would like to reduce them, because there would be less chance of war. But to declare war on 1.2 billion Muslims, and say all Muslims are the same, this is some dangerous talk.

Yeah there are some radicals, but they don’t come here to kill us because we’re free and prosperous. Do they go to Switzerland and Sweden? I mean, that’s absurd! If you think that is the reason, we have no chance of winning this. They come here, and the CIA has explained it to us that they come here and they want to do us harm because we’re bombing them.

What in the world is this about the drone being in Iran? And we’re begging and pleading on how we’re going to start a war to get this drone back? Why were we flying a drone over Iran? Why do we have to bomb so many countries? Why do we have 900 bases in 130 countries? And we’re totally bankrupt! How are you going to rebuild a military when we have no money? How are we going to take care of the people?

So I think this wild goal to have another war, in the name of defense, is the dangerous thing. The danger is really us overreacting. We need a strong national defense, and we need to only go to war with a declaration of war, instead of carelessly flouting it and starting these wars so often.

Bachmann: “And the problem would be the greatest underreaction in world history if we have an avowed madman who uses that nuclear weapon to wipe nations off the face of the Earth. We have an IAEA report that just recently came out that said literally that Iran is within just months of being able to obtain that weapon. Nothing could be more dangerous than the comments we just heard.”

Paul: “There is no UN report that said that. It’s totally wrong. That is not true. They produced information that led you to believe that, but they have no evidence, there has been no enrichment of these bombs.”

Bachmann: “And if we agree with that, the United States people could be at risk of our national security.”

Paul: “If she thinks we live in a dangerous world, she ought to think back when I was drafted in 1962 with nuclear missiles in Cuba. And Kennedy calls Kruschev and talks to him, and we don’t have a nuclear exchange. And you’re trying to dramatize this, that we have to go and treat Iran like we’ve treated Iraq, kill a million Iraqis and eight thousand Americans have died since we’ve gone to war. You cannot solve these problems with war. You can solve the problems if we follow our Constitution and go to war only when we declare the war, go in and win them and get ‘em over with. Instead of this endless fighting, and this endless attitude that we have enemies all around the world.

Bachmann: “But as President, I stand on the side of peace for the American people.”

What a treat to have this video of RPI Founder and Chairman Ron Paul interviewing RPI advisor Lew Rockwell on the Ron Paul Channel. They have been the great teachers in my life — and in the lives of so many millions! And thankfully their influence continues to grow at a rapid pace. So sit back and enjoy…

RPI Executive Director Daniel McAdams is on RT Television today discussing the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. What is the democratic legitimacy of the mob in the street versus the elected parliament? His critique was of the Washington and EU reaction to the unrest, particularly of EU politicians who are leading protests in Ukraine in violation of that country’s sovereignty.

RPI Academic Advisor Mark Almond was interviewed on RT today about the intensifying conflict in Ukraine. Prof. Almond is a long-time expert on the “color revolutions.” As he points out in the interview, protestors in Ukraine are using a well-known template for color revolutions used with success, “in Serbia in 2000 and in Georgia in 2003: storm public buildings, hope to face a demoralized government.” Read the transcript of Prof. Almond’s interview here and watch the video below.

When people ask me which of the books I have written was my favorite, I respond with my first one: Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival. In it, I analyze how institutions – i.e., organizations that have become ends in themselves – have a need to structure our thinking and our behavior in order that we may dedicate our lives to their purposes. Political systems are the most pervasive and vicious expressions of this syndrome, but other institutions have learned to play this same game. The modern corporate-state is the most apparent example, wherein business corporations have managed to convince most Americans that their interests are synonymous with those of the nation-state. The song from the musical Li’l Abner reminds us that “What’s good for General Bullmoose is Good for the U.S.A.”

The entertainment industry, the mainstream media, schools, churches, foundations, and other permanent organizations have, with but few exceptions, climbed aboard the bandwagon of corporate-state-collectivism to extoll the virtues of a society structured around the principle of state-directed violence. So widespread is the practice that most people hardly recognize it.

High-school, college, and professional sports teams are awash in the symbols of state-violence. From the high-school in Richland, Washington that calls itself the Richland Bombers – whose football helmets have a mushroom cloud on them – to the many other schools and colleges whose athletic teams dress in various forms of military attire, students and other fans have their statist identities reinforced by cheering for the young warriors on the field; warriors who will soon be killing the scheduled foe in other lands. No doubt the most vulgar expression of this insanity was found in Northwestern University’s recent football game in which their players dressed in uniforms and helmets designed as American flags, with an abundance of make-believe blood spattered throughout so that students and fans would realize that more than just the outcome of a game was being played out on the field.

This same military theme has been employed by many other colleges, from the substitution of camouflaged uniforms, to players carrying gigantic American flags onto the field. Nor have professional sports been left out, as witnessed during the recent World Series with incessant showing of the troops as part of the stage props; along with flag color guards and repeated patriotic songs – in case any fans might have thought they were there to watch a baseball game!

Militarism long ago began consuming holidays. In my childhood, what is now celebrated as Memorial Day was known as Decoration Day. Our family went to the local cemetery to lay flowers on the graves of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other relatives. While the graves of soldiers were also decorated, it was the remembrance of ancestors – however they might have died – that was the purpose of this day. But no more: the militarists have turned the day into an occasion for celebrating wars. Old John Wayne movies are now trotted out, in which Wayne recreates his brave exploits in defending the back-lot of Republic Pictures during World War II.

July 4th is another victim of the war machine. What began as a celebration of independence from British rule, has become yet another conscript in the war against peace and liberty. To emphasize just how separate our liberty is from our actions, most states prohibit individuals from using fireworks to celebrate their “independence,” with the state taking over this function on their behalf. This is done in the name of “safety” and “security,” the emotional scarecrows used by statists to keep the boobeoisie huddled in collective fear at the feet of their rulers.

While an abundance of war films is available to entertain people on this day, perhaps the worst of the bunch is the old Bing Crosby movie Holiday Inn. Crosby has a resort lodge that is open on all the major holidays. On July 4th, he comes on stage wearing a large red-white-and-blue “Uncle Sam” hat, and sings a song about “independence.” On a screen behind him are pictures of soldiers, bombers being manufactured, Navy ships, more soldiers, and an occasional photo of FDR, more Navy ships, bombers flying in formation, etc., etc.

We have recently witnessed one of the more troubling corruptions that have turned “holidays” into “hostility days.” In my youth, November 11th was celebrated as “Armistice Day,” to celebrate the ending of World War I – a war that innocent minds believed would “end all wars.” End all wars? What a treasonous thought! “War is the health of the state,” Randolph Bourne reminded us, and to be against war – i.e., to favor peace – marks one as an enemy of the state! It’s enough to get the war-monger, Bill Clinton and other statists, upset with the notion of people “hating their government.”

At the school one of my grandchildren attends, an Army officer came – on November 11th – to speak on the importance and virtues of the military. Both my daughter and grandchild were troubled by this pro-war propagandizing, particularly in a school that is supposed to help children learn to live a civilized life. But the statist agenda did not end there. Some ten to twelve days later, the students put on a Thanksgiving play, which included an unabridged singing of “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Just how the school bozos managed to segue the national anthem into the Pilgrim’s first Thanksgiving – and to do so with a straight face – remains a mystery to me. I know that the details of this first celebration are a mix of fact and myth, but poetic license does have some limits. Perhaps school officials have unthinkingly bought into the statist proposition that any public celebration must have, at its core, the rejoicing over the war system. If this be the case, I would urge these pedagogues to do some elemental research. Should they do so, they will discover that the original Thanksgiving was held in 1621, an event that preceded the creation of the United States of America by 168 years, and “The Star Spangled Banner” by 191 years.

They might also be reminded that the occasion of that first Thanksgiving was to celebrate the acts of production that made possible the survival of those who considered these successes a worthy reason to rejoice. It would be another 312 years until the celebration of one’s work efforts as a source of sustenance would be discarded and replaced by the system of federal “food stamps.” Furthermore, those who reportedly gathered for the first Thanksgiving were family members and friends – including Indians – who regarded themselves as having a common purpose in rejoicing their accomplishments. It was not until 200 years later – in the mid-19th century – that the aforesaid Indians were looked upon as hindrances to the “Manifest Destiny” that had become the purpose of the United States of America to advance. I suspect that the red-white-and-blue enthusiasts of those subsequent years paused to “give thanks” and ‘honor the troops” of the 7th Cavalry who bravely slaughtered the helpless and harmless Indians. Perhaps these Thanksgiving Day festivities were also accompanied by the playing of “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Reprinted with permission from LewRockwell.com.

Watch Ron Paul Institute Director Daniel McAdams and other guests debate the P5+1/Iran agreement on RT’s Crosstalk with host Peter Lavelle:

Judge Andrew Napolitano, an RPI Advisory Board member, explains on Fox News last week that the US Congress can restrain the National Security Agency’s mass spying by cutting the NSA’s budget. “The recourse is to persuade Congress to clip the NSA’s wings by taking some of its budget away from it—and that almost happened a few months ago, and it may happen after the first of the year,” says Napolitano.

Watch the three minutes news segment here:

RPI Chairman and Founder Ron Paul, in an interview Thursday with John Stossel on Fox Business, explains that the United States is in the middle of an intellectual revolution powered by the “message of liberty.” Paul points to grassroots opposition preventing a US government attack on Syria as a manifestation of the revolution.

Watch the 6 minutes report and interview here:

We gathered last weekend at Dr. Paul’s house in Texas to hand over the keys to the famous 1979 Chevette “green pea” to generous Ron Paul Institute donors Jonathan and Nita Cole. Readers will recall that this is the car that made then-Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill see red when Paul’s then-chief of staff Lew Rockwell had the House photographer take a picture of it parked next to the Speaker’s gas guzzler as he was calling for rationing for everyone else.

In addition to the Chevette, Mr. Cole was given some related memorabilia, including a signed photograph of the Chevette next to O’Neill’s limo, the press release issued when the photograph was taken — signed by then chief of staff Lew Rockwell — and magnetic Ron Paul campaign signs to go on the side of the car.

The car was delivered to Mr. Cole with the original Texas 22nd Congressional District plates that Dr. Paul used when he drove it around Washington, D.C. — including when he packed it full of six people to go watch the Ronald Reagan inauguration! Being small and having Congressional plates, Dr. Paul told Mr. Cole at the handoff that the car could be parked just about anywhere without any trouble.

A video was shot of the handover ceremony which will be put up on the RPI website shortly. In the meantime, below are a few photographs of the handover ceremony.

Though Dr. Paul has no more Chevettes to auction off to benefit his Institute for Peace and Prosperity, we at RPI very much rely on our readers and supporters to allow us to keep promoting Dr. Paul’s freedom philosophy of non-intervention and peace. Please consider becoming a member of the Ron Paul Institute for as little as $50.

Mrs. Paul hands over photo of Chevette and limo.

Handing over the keys to the Coles.

“It started!”

Driving away.

We gathered last weekend at Dr. Paul’s house in Texas to hand over the keys to the famous 1979 Chevette “green pea” to generous Ron Paul Institute donors Jonathan and Nita Cole. Readers will recall that this is the car that made then-Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill see red when Paul’s then-chief of staff Lew Rockwell had the House photographer take a picture of it parked next to the Speaker’s gas guzzler as he was calling for rationing for everyone else.

In addition to the Chevette, Mr. Cole was given some related memorabilia, including a signed photograph of the Chevette next to O’Neill’s limo, the press release issued when the photograph was taken — signed by then chief of staff Lew Rockwell — and magnetic Ron Paul campaign signs to go on the side of the car.

The car was delivered to Mr. Cole with the original Texas 22nd Congressional District plates that Dr. Paul used when he drove it around Washington, D.C. — including when he packed it full of six people to go watch the Ronald Reagan inauguration! Being small and having Congressional plates, Dr. Paul told Mr. Cole at the handoff that the car could be parked just about anywhere without any trouble.

A video was shot of the handover ceremony which will be put up on the RPI website shortly. In the meantime, below are a few photographs of the handover ceremony.

Though Dr. Paul has no more Chevettes to auction off to benefit his Institute for Peace and Prosperity, we at RPI very much rely on our readers and supporters to allow us to keep promoting Dr. Paul’s freedom philosophy of non-intervention and peace. Please consider becoming a member of the Ron Paul Institute for as little as $50.

Mrs. Paul hands over photo of Chevette and limo.

Handing over the keys to the Coles.

“It started!”

Driving away.

“It felt like I was in a big video game. It didn’t even faze me, shooting back. It was just natural instinct. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!”— Sgt. Sinque Swales, reflecting on a firefight in Iraq

It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly is responsible for the growing spate of police shootings, brutality and overreach that have come to dominate the news lately, whether it’s due to militarized police, the growing presence of military veterans in law enforcement, the fact that we are a society predisposed to warfare, indoctrinated through video games, reality TV shows, violent action movies and a series of endless wars that have, for younger generations, become life as they know it—or all of the above.

Whatever the reason, not a week goes by without more reports of hair-raising incidents by militarized police imbued with a take-no-prisoners attitude and a battlefield approach to the communities in which they serve.

The latest comes out of New Mexico, where cops pulled David Eckert over for allegedly failing to yield to a stop sign at a Wal-Mart parking lot. Suspecting that Eckert was carrying drugs because his “posture [was] erect” and “he kept his legs together,” the officers forced Eckert to undergo an anal cavity search, three enemas, and a colonoscopy. No drugs were found.

In Iowa, police shot a teenager who had stolen his father’s work truck in a fit of anger and led cops on a wild car chase that ended on a college campus. When 19-year-old Tyler Comstock refused orders to turn off the car despite having stopped, revving the engine instead, police officer Adam McPherson fired six shots into the truck, two of which hit Comstock. Members of the community are demanding to know why less lethal force was not used, especially after a police dispatcher suggested the officers call off the chase.

And then there was the incident involving 13-year-old Andy Lopez, who was shot dead after two sheriff’s deputies saw him carrying a toy BB gun in public. Lopez was about 20 feet away from the deputies, his back turned to them, when the officers took cover behind their car and ordered him to drop the “weapon.” When Lopez turned around, toy gun in his hand, one of the officers—Erick Gelhaus, a 24-year veteran of the force—shot him seven times. A field training officer for new recruits and a firing range instructor, Gelhaus seems to subscribe to the philosophy that an officer should ensure their own safety at all costs. As Gelhaus wrote in a 2008 article for S.W.A.T. magazine:

Today is the day you may need to kill someone in order to go home. If you cannot turn on the “mean gene” for yourself, who will? If you find yourself in an ambush, in the kill zone, you need to turn on that mean gene. Taking some kind of action – any kind of action – is critical. If you shut down (physically, psychologically, or both) and stay in the kill zone, bad things will happen to you. You must take some kind of action.

While some critics are keen to paint these officers as bad cops hyped up on the power of their badge, I don’t subscribe to the bad cop theory. The problem, as I explain in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, is far more pervasive, arising as it does out of America’s obsession with war and all things war-related, which is reflected in the fact that we spend more than 20% of the nation’s budget on the military, not including what we spend on our endless wars abroad. The U.S. also makes up nearly 80% of the global arms exports market, rendering us both the world’s largest manufacturer and consumer of war.

Then there’s the nation’s commitment to recycling America’s instruments of war and putting them to work here at home, thanks largely to a U.S. Department of Defense program that provides billions of dollars worth of free weapons, armored vehicles, protective clothing and other military items to law enforcement agencies. Ohio State University’s police department recently acquired a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle (MRAP), a hyped up armored vehicle used on the battlefield to withstand explosive devices, land mines and other sneak attacks. The university plans to use its MRAP for crowd control at football games. Indiana University is also in line for an MRAP, as well as dozens of police departments across the country.

Keep in mind, once acquired, this military equipment which is beyond the budget and scope of most communities finds itself put to all manner of uses by local law enforcement agencies under the rationale that “if we have it, we might as well use it”—the same rationale, by the way, used with deadly results to justify assigning SWAT teams to carry out routine law enforcement work such as delivering a warrant.

In much the same way that community police departments have been finding homes for retired military equipment, they’re also providing jobs for returning military personnel. As PoliceLink reports: “As the competition for coveted law enforcement positions increases throughout the country, police and federal recruiters have the luxury of picking and choosing the absolute best and brightest individuals. More often than not, police chiefs, sheriffs, and recruiters are turning to military veterans to fill these positions as they staff the next wave of warriors in the war on crime.”

In addition to staffing police departments with ex-military personnel and equipping them with military gear, the government is also going to great lengths to train local police in military tactics. For example, civilian police train alongside military forces at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, California, making full use of their weapons and equipment. The collaborated training exercises help police incorporate military techniques into their skillset, including exercises in how to clear and move up a stairway, position themselves as snipers and take aim at opposing snipers, and clear a room. With such military training a.k.a. indoctrination in the works, it’s little wonder that police officers increasingly look upon American citizens as enemy combatants.

Even those police officers who are not formally trained in military tactics are at a minimum being given greater access to more powerful firepower. In Boston, for example, the police department is preparing to train 99 of its patrol officers in how to use semiautomatic rifles, which would become standard fare in police cruisers. “It’s almost like we’re moving away from being community policing officers to being Navy SEALs,” stated Jack Kervin, president of the Boston Police Superior Officers Federation. Indeed, as the Boston Globe reports, the Boston police have long been angling for more powerful weapons, dating back to 2009, when they “were slated to receive 200 M-16s from the US military and had planned to train dozens of patrol officers and members of specialized units such as the bomb squad and the harbor patrol to use the weapons.”

Last, but not least, there’s the overall glorification of war and violence that permeates every aspect of American society, from our foreign policy and news programs to our various modes of entertainment, including blockbuster Hollywood action movies and video games. Indeed, thanks to a collaboration between the Department of Defense and the entertainment industry, the American taxpayer is paying for what amounts to a propaganda campaign aimed at entrenching the power of the military in American society. As Nick Turse, author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, points out, “Today, almost everywhere you look, whether at the latest blockbuster on the big screen or what’s on much smaller screens in your own home – likely made by a defense contractor like Sony, Samsung, Panasonic or Toshiba – you’ll find the Pentagon or its corporate partners.”

Nowhere is this indoctrination more evident than in the recent sci fi/action movie blockbuster hit Ender’s Game, in which a 10-year-old boy, seemingly training for war with battlefield simulations, is in fact waging war against enemy forces. Couple that with the recent release of Battlefield 4, a first-person-shooter video game that allows users to wage war against the enemy using a phalanx of military weaponry and gear, and you have the military’s core strategy for recruiting and training future soldiers, who will in turn eventually become civilian warriors, a.k.a., police officers, in the government’s war on crime.

Incredibly, the relationship between the military and the video game industry (one aspect of the military-entertainment complex) goes back decades. America’s Army, the first military-developed video game, was released to the public for free in 2002. It has since “become a more effective recruiting tool than all other Army advertising combined.” A main focus of the game’s producers is to get it into the hands of young, impressionable people. As Marsha Berry, executive producer of the third game in the series put it, “We wanted kids to be able to start playing at 13. If they haven’t thought about the Army by the time they get to 17, it’s probably not something they’ll do.”

Taking recruitment one step further, Col. Casey Wardynski, the creator of America’s Army, now serves as superintendent for an Alabama school district with its own cyberwar curriculum, operated in partnership with the U.S. Army Cyber Command, which provides high school students with a fast-track to the army, complete with full-time mentoring by West Point. Indeed, the military’s targeting of youth, down and out due to financial crisis and dwindling education budgets, has gotten more aggressive, with military personnel establishing curriculums in high schools in order to recruit students straight out of high school and into the army.

Getting back to the question of who’s to blame for Battlefield America, as we are coming to know it, whether it’s militarized police or a militarized culture, it’s a little like the chicken and the egg debate. Whichever way you look at it, whichever one came first, the end product remains the same. Clearly, the American homeland is now ruled by a military empire. Everything our founding fathers warned against—a standing army that would see American citizens as combatants—is now the new norm. In other words, it looks like the police state is here to stay.

Reprinted from Rutherford Institute.