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.

Going, Going…Gone!

Congratulations and a big “thank you” to Jonathan Cole, whose generous donation of $15,100 to the Ron Paul Institute won him a piece of Ron Paul history — the “green pea”! We will be sure to bring you photos of the handover ceremony with Dr. Paul and Mr. Cole. Thank you to everyone who participated and thank you to all RPI donors.
——————

In 1979, when I was headed to DC for my first full term in Congress, I bought a car to keep there. It was a 1979 Chevrolet Chevette. But this compact 4-door soon proved to be controversial. Tip O’Neill, the powerful House speaker, was advocating gasoline rationing for the rest of us, while he was chauffeured around in a Lincoln, all at taxpayer expense. And no waiting in gasoline lines for him, nor paying for it: he had his own pump in the House garage.

So my little car—which I paid for myself, of course—was parked next to the Tip behemoth for a cheeky photo. Well, you would have thought I was Ed Snowden. There was a huge blow-up. Tip even levied the ultimate punishment: he blocked pork-barrel funds for me, which I was not seeking anyway.

So this little car has some history to it. Yet it has only 69,000 miles on it. It was repainted after my youngest daughter used it at college, and has been garaged for the last 10 years. But it starts and runs, and is as cute as when Tip wanted to bomb it.

And you can own it, and aid the cause of peace and prosperity at the same time. The person who makes the highest pledge of a tax-deductible donation to the FREE Foundation by October 15, 2013, and redeems it, will own this historic little vehicle. The proceeds will be used to fund the work of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. That’s the one that outrages the neocons, so you know it is important.

We’ll have a nice turnover ceremony at the FREE office in Clute, Texas, that we’ll photograph, and I’ll also present you with a Congressional license plate that was actually used on the car.

So drive history forward, and make your pledge, mailing it to FREE, 837 W. Plantation, Clute, TX 77531 or email it to free1776@comcast.net or phone 979.265.3034

See you in the driver’s seat.

Don’t miss RPI founder and CEO Ron Paul’s great performance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno last night (9/26). Special highlight for RPI readers, where Dr. Paul praises President Obama for being willing to talk to the Iranians and to reconsider his desire to attack Syria. A pro-peace message on US network television!

Do not miss Ron Paul’s extensive interview on the Charlie Rose show. He gives the best yet definition of his personal philosophy, called “non-interventionism,” which also is the philosophical framework of his Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. He also offers important insights on Syria and his amazing new education freedom book.

Watch the extraordinary full interview with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad conducted by RPI Advisory Board Member Dennis Kucinich for Fox news.

Here is a nice highlight reel from Dr. Paul’s Sept. 10th Ubben Lecture at DePauw University. According to the university’s website, the crowd was standing room only, and Dr. Paul received three standing ovations.

“I don’t think the government should intervene in our personal lives.  I don’t think the government should intervene in our economic lives.  And I don’t think we should be intervening in the affairs of foreign nations when it’s none of our business.”
-Ron Paul at DePauw University

When Russian President Vladimir Putin took his American counterpart to task in a recent New York Times Editorial over Obama’s invocation of the standard neoconservative boilerplate “American exceptionalism” to justify an aggressive US foreign policy, US neocons shrieked in unison. How dare he, they cried.

But to the neoconservatives, American exceptionalism has nothing to do with civil liberties, personal freedom, limited government, free markets, and the like. It is only the exeptionalism of the US sword, going abroad to seek monsters to destroy. It is only the exeptionalism of military might to force the world to follow US dictates.

Putin pushed back against this kind of false and ahistoric American exceptionalism and, likely because his argument made so much sense to the average American who is sick of war and aggression overseas, the neoconservatives suffered fits of convulsions and intestinal distress. Neoconserative Senator Robert Menendez, who has long dreamed of another Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, felt like he “wanted to vomit” after reading Putin’s words. House Speaker John Boehner felt “insulted” by Putin. John McCain felt his intelligece insulted by Putin’s comments.

What did Putin say that caused Washington such fits? He reminded the US, founded as it was generally on Christian principles, that the Creator did not make exceptional nations, but rather created all men in His own image:

I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.

Not long ago, Ron Paul was asked to explain his view of American exeptionalism. Why did he seem to disagree with the neoconservatives who would invoke this term as the bloody shirt was once waved in the days of old? Here is Ron Paul’s view of the real American exceptionalism, rooted in a patriotism that seeks not to force our way of life on others at the barrel of a gun, but rather to do our best, acknowledge and work on our shortcomings, and endeavor to set an example of the kind of peace and prosperity that can be achieved in a free society that respects individual liberty:

Listen to Ron Paul Institute Academic Advisor Hillary Mann Leverett on the always-terrific Robert Wenzel Show discuss the intricacies of the Middle East. Ms. Mann Leverett is a rare breed of international affairs expert: she knows the region like nobody else, her expertise both inside and outside government is unquestionable; yet she retains a realistic rather than messianic view of what should be the US role in the world. How lucky her American University students are to have such a professor! And we greatly value her friendship as well.

Don’t miss Ron Paul on the Geraldo Rivera radio show on 9 Sept.