[00:00:04] Broadcasting live from atop the Rocky Mountains, the crossroads of the West, you are listening to the Liberty Roundtable Radio Talk Show. The Fiat Money Maestro, Ron Paul talks about it, Judge Napolitano in the news, Paul Craig Roberts in the news, Paul Dragui in the news, and to break it down with me, Lowell Nelson, CampaignForLiberty.org.
[00:00:32] Welcome back. Happy to have you along, my fellow Americans. I'm Sam Bushman with hard-hitting news that I wish refused to use. Hope you had an absolutely delightful, extended Independence Day and weekend. I had a phenomenal one full of God, family, and country. Hope you had the same. Lowell, welcome to the broadcast, sir.
[00:00:53] Well, thanks for having me, Sam. Appreciate you, and I'm so glad you called it the Independence Day holiday, not the 4th of July. Amen to that, by the way. My birthday is on the Independence Day, my friend. Excellent. I did not know that. Well, happy birthday to you, sir. I turned 59 years young on Independence Day there, so. Wow, great. Getting younger every day, you know?
[00:01:22] Getting younger every day. Well, somebody passed 100 years of age just last week. Well, no, no, he passed away last week, but he was already 100 years old, and that's who Ron Paul talked about in his column, Alan Greenspan. Now, Alan Greenspan is famous because he chaired the Federal Reserve from 1987 through 2006.
[00:01:46] Now, he was the one who bailed out large financial firms, gained a pretty favorable reputation among financial firms, obviously, for doing that. And, in fact, the Fed gained kind of a favorable reputation during that time because they survived the tech bubble that burst in 2011. Of course, they helped contribute to that bubble. But Greenspan left the Fed in 2006, a couple years before the housing bubble burst.
[00:02:14] And, of course, with the bursting of that bubble began the rise of a new liberty movement, which enthralled a large number of young people. The Ron Paul Revolution was part of that movement, as was the Tea Party, the Occupy Wall Street movements from the left, Tea Party from the right. And this increased focus on the Fed, as you know, Sam, resulted in the passage of Ron Paul's audit the Fed bill in the U.S. House twice.
[00:02:43] It was H.R. 24 both times, both sessions of Congress. But the bill, unfortunately, died in the U.S. Senate both times. And so today the Fed continues to devalue the dollar. And then Ron Paul in his column talks about how this will lead to a monetary crisis, which will destroy confidence in the Fed and would be the destruction of the welfare warfare state because government won't be able to print money to pay for those programs.
[00:03:12] So here's the quote that is just a killer quote from the column. He writes, ironically, a good explanation of why fiat currency is the enemy of liberty and that gold is the friend of liberty is provided in gold and economic freedom, which is a little essay written by none other than Alan Greenspan and published in Ayn Rand's The Objectivist Newsletter in 1966.
[00:03:39] In that essay, Greenspan wrote, quote, the deficit spending is simply a scheme for the hidden confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. And those ceding the path to prosperity and liberty should embrace the wisdom Greenspan showed
[00:04:05] before he became the fiat money maestro, end of the column there. But I just thought that was interesting. You know, Ron Paul has been teaching us his whole life the evils of our fiat monetary system. And he picked up this quote from Greenspan, who actually got it right in 66, but helped the destruction of the dollar from 87 to 2006 by bailing out the big firm.
[00:04:33] It just proves he knew better, Lowell. The question is, did he just cave for money, for fame, for fortune? Was he forced into it? You know, you got to kind of wonder because even after he left, he kind of went back to some of those gold and silver viewpoints and stuff like that. Very interesting guy why he would cave and carry the ball for that agenda that he knew was subversive to the republic, at least according to his own writings, Lowell. Yeah, he knew what was going wrong.
[00:05:01] He knew it was destructive for the dollar, destructive of the country. But he still did it anyway. You got to wonder why, you know, what motivates a person to do that. He knows the truth and doesn't live by it. Well, at the end of the day, he highlighted the truth. We acknowledge the truth now. And really what I would pray President Trump would do is stand up a little bolder on this and, hey, take that article and that guideline from Alan Greenspan and point this out
[00:05:29] rather than just debating who's going to run the Fed and who gets to decide what interest rates are. Let's dig a little deeper and talk about the founding of America, the constitutional requirement of honest money, honest weights and measures, as the Bible puts it. And, you know, we need to really start there. And if President Trump and the House got together on this, we might actually push the Senate into getting something done. So let's pray for it. Let's work for it. Let's get it done, Lowell. You're absolutely right, Sam. Well, speaking of people who know what's right,
[00:05:58] I think Judge Andrew Napolitano gets it right most of the time. And he wrote a column last week that I was delighted to read and really eager to share this morning. As you know, the framers understood the dangers of democracy, and so they were careful to design into the general government non-democratic features. You say that today and people look at you askance because, you know, they think we're a democracy here. But we were designed as a confederated republic.
[00:06:27] We were a bunch of republics, right? And they designed the government to be with these non-democratic features. And Napolitano names some of them here. He says, quote,
[00:07:20] Now, we could spend a whole show on each one of those features. Yes, we could. But suffice it to say that those are some of the features, the non-democratic features built into the Constitution, our blueprint for liberty. Well, then, Judge Napolitano describes Madison's genius in the construction of the federal government. He calls it a three-sided table. One side represents the people,
[00:07:47] and that's in the House of Representatives, the U.S. House. One side represents the states, which is the U.S. Senate, and the third side represents the nation state or the presidency, which is both the head of state and the head of the executive branch of general government. The judiciary, says the judge, quote, whose prominent role today was unthinkable in 1789 was not part of this mix, end of quote. I thought that was an interesting observation
[00:08:16] that the framers didn't think that the judiciary had a big role or seat at that table. Now, in his bank speech, James Madison eloquently argued against the measure to charter a national bank because authority to create a bank was not vested in the government by the states. In other words, it was not a power that was enumerated in the Constitution, which was the compact agreed to by the states. And because it was not in the Constitution,
[00:08:46] it was retained by the states and reserved to them. So in that speech, Madison warned that expanding the federal government would diminish the power of the states and encroach on the liberties of the people in the states. And so, you know, you've got to wonder, what would Madison think? What would he have done had he been alive during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson? Now, think back, folks. That was back in the 1910, 1909, 1911, 1913, 1915 era.
[00:09:14] Well, that is when we got World War I. We got the Federal Reserve. We got the popular election of senators. We got the federal income tax, to name just a few of the problems that cropped up that surfaced in that era in Woodrow Wilson's presidency. Well, yeah, Madison would have recoiled at those things. Now, some states protect more personal liberties than does the Bill of Rights found in the U.S. Constitution. And I think we'd do well to rely on the state constitution
[00:09:43] far more often than we do the U.S. Constitution. President Reagan reminded us that the states formed the general government, not the other way around. And so, you know, the more state governance is federalized, says Judge Napolitano, the fewer differences there are among the regulatory and taxing structures of the states. This has happened because Congress has become a general legislature without regard
[00:10:12] for the constitutional limits imposed on it. And what it was supposed to be is a free market or free enterprise competition between the states where, hey, you know, you could simply say, I don't like the way, look at what Elon Musk did. He bailed from California and moved to Texas with a lot of his operations to this very point you're making. And what we do is we take out that competitive nature of the United States, that desire, that lean, that push towards freedom that naturally occurs in these type of situations, Lowell. Yeah, the laboratory, it was a,
[00:10:41] each state was its own laboratory of liberty. And so when they're not competing for liberty, then everybody does the same thing. You lose out on all the great innovations and the reasons why people would want to live and say good things right. Roundtable Live. Hold on, Lowell. What if there was one place where the boldest thinkers, the fiercest defenders of liberty, and the most innovative entrepreneurs all came together? There is. It's called Freedom Fest, the World's Fair of Liberty,
[00:11:10] and it's happening July 8th to the 11th in Las Vegas. Hear from Glenn Beck, Steve Forbes, Adam Carolla, Kennedy, and Nick Shirley, the journalist whose investigation into government fraud reached billions. Watch history come alive with a live reading of the Declaration of Independence. Witness the high-stakes mock trial of ICE. Explore cutting ideas in finance, health freedom, and entrepreneurship. And when the sessions end, the celebration begins. Comedy, film festival, live music, and the unforgettable Independence Ball.
[00:11:40] Freedom Fest isn't just something you attend, and it's something you experience. Tickets are going fast. Go to FreedomFest.com right now. Use code Roundtable100 to save on your registration. That's FreedomFest.com. Don't just talk about freedom. Live it. Where will you be this July? If you believe in freedom, if you believe in thinking for yourself, then there's only one place to be. Freedom Fest, the World's Fair of Liberty. July 8th through the 11th in Las Vegas.
[00:12:08] Join thousands of liberty-minded Americans for four unforgettable days of ideas, debate, and celebration. This isn't just an event, it's a movement. Go to FreedomFest.com now. Use code Roundtable100 for your exclusive discount. That's FreedomFest.com. Freedom. Ideas. Action. All right. Back with you live, ladies and gentlemen. Lowell Nelson, CampaignForLiberty.org with me.
[00:12:37] We're talking about the money maestro. We're on Paul, LouRockwell.com highlights. Alan Greenspan knew the truth about honest money, except he did wrong while he was the Federal Reserve Chair, but his writings show that he knew the truth. With July 4th, 2026, Andrew Napolitano breaking down that, President Lincoln and others violated states' rights, made states subservient to Washington. And we're talking about this real issue that Americans
[00:13:06] need to celebrate our independence, folks. That's what the real key is here. Highlighting this important reality. The states need to compete with one another for liberty, for lower taxes, business-friendly environment, et cetera, et cetera. When we federalize everything, we take away those incentives, those opportunities, Lowell. That's right, Sam. And it's a sad deal because people who are sent to Washington nowadays, they don't follow,
[00:13:34] they don't adhere to the Constitution because, and this is what Thomas Jefferson warned too. He said, you know, when the federal treasury becomes a federal trough, you know, so like states are feeding, feeding it like pigs at the public federal trough. Well, and the people recognize that's the case, then they're only going to send people to Washington who can bring home the bacon, so to speak, which is not what they're supposed to do, right? The federal government was supposed to be so little, so minuscule,
[00:14:03] that it wouldn't even occupy a thought, you know, any space, any mind space in the minds of the residents here in America. But it has grown, it is way 100 times bigger than it ought to be, maybe 1,000 times. In fact, the framers, they feared a government of 3,000. Guess what today? The feds employ 3 million people, and that's just direct employment. They probably indirectly employ 30 million. So it's,
[00:14:31] we've gone in the wrong direction, but, you know, recognizing a problem is the first step to fixing it. We are recognizing it, and now we're taking steps to fix it, and we've got to cage this animal, put it back in its constitutional cage, and understanding the Constitution is the first step. We've got to understand it. We've got to read it, and that's what we'd like to do here at the Independence Day celebrations is to understand it better and to celebrate the victories we have, the victories of liberty,
[00:15:02] and decry the times and the occasions when liberty gets squashed, because there are many of those occasions too, unfortunately, but we have to be careful. We need liberal application of the principles that made America great, ladies and gentlemen, for America's great restoration, great preservation. It's all up to we, the people, you and I. Americans, though, sadly, seem to be not really celebrating our independence as they should,
[00:15:32] but our captivity in many cases, Paul Craig Roberts highlights, kind of a sobering column, Sam, suggesting that we really don't know what we're celebrating when we celebrate the Independence Day holiday. He writes this, quote, in America's independence celebration, many kegs and cases of beer and stronger drinks along with drugs will erase all concerns with reality, end of quote. Now, Roberts didn't really elaborate on that point,
[00:16:02] but I believe his reminder really is a sufficient indictment of many Americans who do not take time to contemplate the miraculous miracle that is the American experiment. Quote, the founding fathers of the United States were familiar with Greek and Roman history. They understood that democracy without strict borders degenerated into mob disorder and decline. And to prevent this, America's founding fathers restricted voting to male property owners or people
[00:16:31] with a stake in the system, end of quote. And unfortunately, Sam, as you know, this restriction has been removed by progressive governments over the years. Of course, I'm not opposed to female property owners. I just happen to agree that only the people who are taxed should be the ones who get to vote in a way their tax dollars are spent. Well, in real estate, we call it skin in the game, Lowell. Skin in the game. Those are the people that should be voting and the rest of them should not. I mean, how can you, if you expect
[00:17:01] a homeless person to vote on whether or not he gets money from the government, free money from the government, of course he's going to vote for it. But he doesn't have any skin in the game, so why should he be a voter? It doesn't make sense to me. But it's kind of the reality we live in is that everybody gets a vote and now even the illegals get a vote. So we're in deep doo-doo, but that's another problem altogether. And let's be clear, it's not against anybody. What we're really saying though is, hey,
[00:17:31] you need to stake in the system so that you don't vote yourself largesque out of the treasury, so that you don't try to pull the lever of government in your favor, in other words, in the favor of the few at the expense of the many. And that's really a critical component. You know, we've disassembled a lot of our checks and balances moving us closer to a democracy, which I don't like to see. You know, the founders understood this and they basically put checks and balances and everything. And so the people couldn't vote for their senators.
[00:18:00] The state legislative bodies voted for their senators. What's the big deal with that? It's less of a populist vote and it's much more of a, everybody gets a seat at the table. The people through their house representatives, the states through the senators, et cetera, et cetera. The people through the president, but yet the president has the electoral college as well. See, everything had that overlay of checks and balances. People are realizing what a mistake it was to give the senators a popular vote instead, Lowell. Well, they sure are, Sam,
[00:18:29] and that dovetails with our next column by Paul Dragru talking about the 17th Amendment. We actually have people in the U.S. House today who want to repeal the 17th Amendment. And by the way, this is the fourth time in just about 20 years this has happened. There's more and more people that are seeing the wisdom of states being represented in the U.S. Senate. And so they're, you know, urging the repeal of the 17th Amendment.
[00:19:00] Representative Keith Self, who's a Republican from Texas, just introduced a joint resolution to repeal the 17th Amendment saying, quote, the current system has given us six-year politicians more focused on national ambitions in the institution of U.S. Senate than on the states they serve, end quote. And also this, our founding fathers designed the Senate to protect state sovereignty and act as a check
[00:19:28] on federal overreach. If senators were supposed to represent their states, then the states should choose them. Repeating the 17th Amendment will restore that constitutional balance and make the Senate more accountable to the people of Texas than every other state in the Union, end of quote. You know, if Texas can do it, so can we. Now, as you know, Sam, this arrangement where members of the U.S. Senate were chosen by state legislators, it was part of the Great Compromise where people
[00:19:58] of the several states were represented by members of the U.S. House and states of the Union were represented by members of the U.S. Senate. We talked about that just a few minutes ago with James Madison and the three-sided table. This was part of the anti-democratic, this is one of the anti-democratic features of the U.S. Constitution. Now, this arrangement protects the citizens in less populous states while at the same time representing the citizens
[00:20:26] in the more populous states. But the 17th Amendment disrupted this delicate balance. Quote, it weakened state governments while contributing to the steady expansion of federal power at the expense of the states. End of quote. Not only did it remove a democratic prevention, which we needed because we're moving closer to a democracy which we don't want to see the founders warn against that. Not only are we removing that from a populist or a people point of view, but it gave the states
[00:20:56] a lot more authority and power that were small, right? And it separated the states and the general government making sure that everybody understood the general government was the creation of the states and must serve the states, not the other way around. And that balance has been tampered with this amendment as well. Yes, absolutely. Our U.S. senators were supposed to protect state sovereignty and obviously if senators that were selected
[00:21:26] by the legislature, if they went to the Congress and voted to forfeit states' rights, they would not last long in the seat. I mean, they'd be removed in a heartbeat of the states. And so, in order to restore the sovereignty of the states is one of the key things we need to do. We have to resurrect this arrangement where our U.S. senators are selected by state legislators and they go to Washington, D.C. to protect the sovereignty
[00:21:56] of the states. We'd have a much stronger union of states if we were to make that happen. Well, so back to the column. It turns out that in 1906, the publisher William Randolph Hearst, who had control over several newspapers and magazines around the country at the time, he hired David Graham Phillips who is a fiction writer, and hired him to write articles popularizing
[00:22:25] direct elections. Basically, it was propaganda and it took a few years for it to catch on but by 1913, they successfully approved the 17th Amendment. In other words, it took them five or ten years to brainwash the public but it's going to take quite a few years for us to... it took way over a hundred years for someone to come up with this scheme to subvert America as well. Yeah, yeah, it takes time but with continual efforts... The reason I brought it up
[00:22:54] is because America operated just fantastically without it, without the 17th Amendment. In other words, where the states were represented by their legislators who then put people on the national stage representing their sovereignty. Yeah, in fact, you can say that about a lot of bad things that happened in 1913. We operated great without the income tax. We operated great without the 17th Amendment. We operated great without World War I. I mean,
[00:23:24] there are a lot of things that went wrong in 1913. In fact, Thomas Massey said if we could just repeal the year 1913, the United States would be in much better shape today. Amen. This is critical, though, because they're working on this right now. People realize what a mistake it is and they're working on it now and there's actually a few supporters. I mean, we needed to get a lot bigger, but this is an opportunity where people have realized the error and right now people are asserting a correction. Lowell,
[00:23:53] we need to back them, support them. Yeah, Burlinson of Missouri, Clyde of Georgia, Paul Gosser of Arizona, Andy Harris in Maryland, Scott Perry in Pennsylvania, Clay Higgins in Louisiana, Sherry Biggs in South Carolina, and Michael Cloud in Texas. But join them, folks. No one from Utah yet. Come on, man. Let's get it done, Lowell. Yeah, I'm going to text my legislator today and ask him to
[00:24:22] co-sponsor this baby. God bless you. Lowell Nelson, everybody. CampaignforLiberty.org. We'll chat soon. Great work, sir. Thank you, Sam. Good to be with you. Bye, man. CampaignforLiberty.org doing a phenomenal job as always. Get involved. Become a member today. I'm Sam Bushman. This is the one and only Liberty Roundtable Live. God save the republic of the constitutional United States of America. America.