Congressman Dr. Ron Paul took the 2008 Presidential Election by storm, inspiring an entire movement of young people to get involved in politics. In fact, he’s one of the reasons Connor was inspired to write the Tuttle Twins series! In this episode, Connor and Brittany discuss the importance of Ron Paul and how he helped change U.S. politics.
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Here is the transcript of our conversation:
Brittany: Hi, Connor.
Connor: Hey, Brittany.
Brittany: So I wanna do something a little different today. I know we usually talk about theories or philosophy or the way things work, but I wanted to take an episode to talk about a specific person, someone who happens to be very special to both you and I. In fact, he’s probably the reason we’re both here doing this podcast right now. And his name is Congressman, Dr. Ron Paul, I guess former congressman, Dr. Ron Paul. But when somebody says Ron Paul to you, what do you think of Connor? I know you and I have very similar beliefs about him or his views rather.
Connor: Yeah, I think Ron Paul, I hold him in the same esteem as Thomas Jefferson. Yeah. I think he is a modern founding father. Someone who really understands the words you were saying earlier, like philosophy and economics. Someone who has lived his life a way that kind of is a role model on those ideas. He’s kind of a very moral and decent person, and so he is a good role model for a lot of people and really inspirational to a lot of people.
Brittany: Very inspirational. I know. So he kind of came on the radar. He’s been around forever. And for those of you who homeschool, he’s actually been a homeschool advocate. I don’t think he homeschooled his kids, but I know the first time I heard about him coming to Utah where I used to live was actually in 2004. And I believe it was a homeschool conference where he came to speak.
Connor: Interesting.
Brittany: But I was not into him then. It was not until 2008 during the what is it, Republican presidential debates, that you had to understand that back then. Well, and now the candidates were just awful. The candidates were just awful. You had, who was it that year you had, I think MIT Robbie was
Connor: Still there, You, John McCain, Baba Ba, Baba Baba, Iran. He was wanting to, That’s right. Yeah.
Brittany: So a lot of old guys that didn’t really know what they were doing, and all of a sudden you have Ron Paul on stage who’s just telling it like it is. And I remember, I think it was the Federal Reserve actually, which we’ve talked about many times. Nobody was talking about that. No presidential candidate was even mentioned. And he just went on this rant and that really appealed to me. I don’t know when your moment was where you’re like, This is my guy, but that was mine.
Connor: Yeah. Point where during the campaign there was hashtags kind of new at the time, but End the Fed became kind of a slogan of the campaign, and all of a sudden people were understanding the Federal Reserve. Here’s this old guy who’s been talking about this for decades. No one’s been listening, no one’s been. And all of a sudden all these millennials and others are learning all about the Federal Reserve. And it was so much fun. My first exposure to Ron Paul, I was invited to watch a documentary in a library, a city library. Someone just kind of put together a little preview of it. And there were maybe 15 people there. And it was by the late Aaron Russo gentleman named Aaron Russo. He passed away some years ago, and it was called America Freedom to Fascism. And in the film, he talks about here was the ideal of America, how it was founded, and what the founders wanted, and then he kind of showcases several examples where America has shifted towards fascism.
That’s a word we can maybe spend a whole other topic about. But basically going from freedom to a lot of government control. That’s kinda the simple way to think about this documentary. And here I am in this library. I had just graduated college, I think, or I was just about to, and I didn’t know a lot about a lot especially politics and economics. I didn’t find it enjoyable, but I was kind of reading the news and stuff. And there was this guy in this documentary who just was making a lot of sense and this white-haired gentleman, and down on the little subtitle of the screen, it said, Congressman Ron Paul from Texas. And so I did what many other people have done since I googled Ron Paul. And this was 2006, So this was right when YouTube was a baby. I found some videos.
Maybe it wasn’t. Yeah, maybe, Just started. Yeah. So I somehow found some videos. I watched several of his on CSPAN, which records Congress. I would watch some of his speeches. I read a bunch of his speeches and I’ll share another example and then kick it back over to you. I spent about a year between the documentary and afterward just reading everything I could get that Ron Paul was writing. I read books that he recommended. I suddenly found myself learning about economics because he was pointing me to authors who would explain things really well. He was pointing, recommending people a really good book. So I was suddenly becoming very interested. And about nine months later, he launched his presidential campaign. I helped with it a little bit. And then I got married.
So I got married on 9/8/7, which is September 8th, 2007, which is the only reason I can remember my anniversary date, thankfully. That’s funny because it’s easy to remember is 9/8/7. And so I get married, my wife and I, we went on a honeymoon and we went to Lake Tahoe and we’re in the middle of the honeymoon. When we found out that Ron Paul, the candidate for president, Congressman Ron Paul, had scheduled a stop near my city. And so I turned to my wife of three or four days, my brand new wife, and I said Honey, can we cancel our honeymoon? Can we stop short by one day? And so to her everlasting credit and showing the foundation of our relationship ever since she agreed to shorten our honeymoon by one day so that we could zip home and make it just in time to catch Ron Paul speaking. That’s how much dedication I had at the time.
Brittany: That is too funny. Oh my goodness. Well, for me, I know there was a slogan we used to say, back in the day, we used to say Ron Paul cured my apathy. And I think we talked about apathy in another episode. So I’m trying to think a good way to say that. Not having strong opinions really on anything, just kind of floating.
Connor: You’re in, you’re indifferent, you don’t really care.
Brittany: It’s different. So when I was 20 to 22, I was a little bit apathetic and didn’t really wanna know what I went to do with my life. And we’ve talked on here about finding a way, finding what you’re passionate about, and finding a way to maybe make money off that and be an entrepreneur. I had none of that at this time. I was just kind of existing. And then I remember I saw, I was under the Provo, Utah overpass, near movie eight, if anybody is in Utah, know what that is. There was a black sign that said Ron Paul Revolution in red writing. And I remember thinking, That’s not a typical political sign. You know, see eagles or red and blue and you see Make America great. That kind of thing. You don’t see a revolution in red ink on a black sign. And I remember I was like, I don’t know who this guy is, but I need to find out.
And I was not even political at all. That was not even something that was on my radar. But watching him speak, he spoke with such passion. Politicians always speak in sound bites. They speak about things where they don’t really care. They’re very rehearsed. They look like they’re almost in a play or something. And Ron Paul was not rehearsed. Ron Paul would go on tangents that sometimes lasted 15 minutes, and you weren’t entirely sure what he was talking about, but you picked out the important stuff. But I remember thinking that anybody who would speak like this and who would go against everyone else on that debate stage had to be important because truth, truth is really hard to fight for. And the truth is not something you find, especially in politics a lot. But here was a man speaking truth to power, as they say, and talking about getting outta, We were at war at this time. We’re still at war, but we were in so many wars at this time. To have somebody come out, especially under the Republican stage, and say, We’re in too many wars, we need to just get out of these wars. That again, for a young 20-year-old, was huge to me. And individual liberty, there’s just so much.
Connor: A quote that many have attributed to Dr. Paul. I don’t know if he was the first one to say it, but I think he’s used it in some of his campaigns. Recognize this, Brittany’s truth is treason in an empire of lies. And I think that’s the perfect example of what you were just saying, because when everyone around is saying, Oh, things are fine, don’t pay attention to the national debt, which is skyrocketing, and we’re enslaving our grandchildren under a mountain of debt, no big deal. We’re fighting all these wars. It’s to spread freedom. It’s not to secure more oil or to topple governments or anything. And so we have this empire of lies. We’re gonna do a future episode about propaganda, how people empower and want to manipulate you into thinking the wrong things. And so here you have this empire of lies, this government built on having people not understand the way the world works, hashtag podcast name.
And then along comes someone like Dr. Paul, who as you just pointed out, Brittany speaks truth with clarity and convincing. Sometimes he’ll ramble. Any truth lover does, especially at an older age. It’s always fun but just such powerful and direct remarks about truth. And so the empire of lies, the people in charge, they consider that treason. And so here’s kind of an example. Obviously, it’s one thing to talk about actual treason. It’s another thing just to be like, Oh, you’re a trader. You’re not American, you’re not Republican enough. And they certainly treated him like that. There was one moment that I remember in particular. I know what I’m talking about. You can find this clip on YouTube, and I was so upset when this happened. Dr. Paul was on stage as a presidential candidate, and they were talking about war, which was the topic you were just talking about.
And the moderator in charge of the debate asked Dr. Paul a question. And Dr. Paul began to respond. He was trying to point out how why all these countries don’t like us. Everyone else on stage was, we need to go fight the terrorists. We need to go conquer. We need more military, more bombs, more everything, and more war. And Dr. Paul’s on stage saying, No, no, no, no. We need to stop all of this war. We need to not do this. We need to understand why they’re mad. They’re not mad at us because they’re evil and just horrible people. And these terrorists for no reason, they’re upset because we’ve been in their country attacking them, or we toppled their, excuse me, they toppled their government leader, or we destabilized their economy and caused them all these problems. And so he’s trying to help people understand there are actual reasons why these people are upset with us.
So then he goes on to say that the golden rule demands that we should treat other countries the way that we would want other countries to treat us. How would we like it? He said, If China came around and invaded America and had troops on our soil, we wouldn’t like it very much. And he can barely get these words out of his mouth. Why? Because the audience is so strongly booing him. Boo. Here he is in South Carolina, predominantly Christian, evangelical community Republican and everything else. And he’s being booed for suggesting that the golden rule is relevant, not just to us and how we treat one another individually, but to the government itself. And it was such an eye-opening experience for me to see where he is speaking the truth, right? Treason and an empire of lies. And our readers all understand and remember that The Tuttle Twins and the Golden Rule is based on these ideas. The Golden Rule, non-aggression principle. Chief Ron is the character based on Ron Paul. The book is based on Ron Paul’s Foreign Policy of Freedom, which talks about a lot about these ideas. And so we did that book to honor him because man, as crazy as it was, seeing all those people boo him, and that idea that he was speaking the truth about it became very apparent that more people need to understand these ideas because look, so many people don’t.
Brittany: Well, and it was interesting because you had newscasters, so you have debate moderators, I guess is what they’re called. Then you have newscasters that kind of talk about the debate after. And I remember everybody saying in 2008 and 2011 and 12, just saying, Oh, this guy’s a joke. What a quack. Crazy. Nobody’s gonna take him seriously. And then the poll numbers came in. So after every debate, they would do a poll. And this was when text messaging wasn’t brand new, but it was newer. So this was the first time where you could do a presidential poll by texting Ron Paul or John McCain to a number, and then they would tally the poll numbers. Well, the hilarious thing is everyone is laughing at Ron Paul. They’re saying, No one’s gonna vote for this old man. He was winning every poll. And they had to show these polls on the news, right?
Because they were the ones conducting them. And you see, was it Hannity? I can’t remember who it is. You have one of ’em who’s looking at the results and just saying, There’s no way this is right. There’s no way this is right. But there were people like you and I at home thinking, this is the first time in my life I know that I ever cared about politics. It was the first time that I ever cared about anything, actually, other than myself, to be honest. I was young. I didn’t really know how the world worked. I didn’t have this podcast to listen to. So thinking it was big,
Connor: You think about the candidates that are running for president right now in the two major parties here, you have Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Nothing to get really excited about. And so people who support one or the other, actually most of them don’t actually really love their candidate. They just really do not like the other candidate and don’t want them to win. And so it becomes this kind of lesser of two evils argument where, Oh yeah, my guy’s not great, but the other guy’s, but doesn’t even. So I’m gonna vote for my guy. Ron Paul was so different. Here was someone that so many of us were not, we weren’t just, Oh, I hate everyone else. And so this is my guy, cuz he is better. Here was someone that’s like, My gosh, this person would be amazing as president. This is who we need.
I can actually support this person. It was such a different feeling than what so many of us are used to in politics. Tom Woods who’s a friend of the podcast, always kind of pokes fun at the people who also ran for president at the time, showing where are their followings, where are the people to whom you can credit the legacy of Mitt Romney or the community that Newt Gingrich built or any of these other people. You look at the impact, Yeah, Ron Paul didn’t win. He didn’t win. Let’s just obviously, however, the lasting, Okay, let me put it this way. The Tuttle Twins would not exist at all were it not for Ron Paul. Period. And so here now you have over a million books being read all around the world, dozen languages. We’ve got a podcast, we’ve got a game, we’re doing a cartoon, we’re doing all these things because in my case, just one person was inspired and educated by the efforts of Ron Paul, Brittany, you’ve done some amazing writing, you’ve met all these people, you’ve worked with great organizations, put out all this amazing content, help all these people learn. You wouldn’t be here. Absolutely. If it were for Ron Paul,
Brittany: Not even a little bit, I would be somewhere doing something completely different. So he completely changed my life.
Connor: So I talked to Dr. Paul about this once. I think I was on his podcast a year or two ago. And we were talking about this idea that during the campaign, or especially as it was winding down, he would often get questions from people, Hey, what should I do? Right? What’s next? What should we do from here? And he would always say, kind of as a libertarian, right? He’s like, I don’t know. I’m not gonna boss you around. You go figure it out. He like, I don’t know what to tell you. And then he turned to me and he said, on this podcast, he’s like, Connor, I never in a million years would have come up with, if you asked me that question. I never would’ve said, Go start a think tank and write children’s books. It just wouldn’t have been on his radar. And yet so many of us, in all of our own roles and capacities and skill sets and locations and communities have been inspired to then go find our path in life because someone like Ron Paul kind of woke us up and said, We need to do something about it. So very, very inspirational.
Brittany:
Very inspirational. And again, the reason I do anything I do today is because of Ron Paul, because of seeing an old, almost 80-year-old man on TV as a 22-year-old being like, You know what, I’m excited for the first time in my entire life. So it’s crazy how much one person can change your life. But yeah, Ron Paul is one of the most moral, I think you said, moral and a man of character, which you don’t really see anymore, especially in politics.
Connor: Well, we will link on the show notes page to some of Ron Paul’s books that Brittany and I enjoy and would recommend also his Ron Paul curriculum. A lot of homeschoolers look into that curriculum as one of the options. So make sure you go to tuttletwins.com/podcasts. Scroll down, find this episode look up the show notes, and enjoy. Make sure you’re subscribed. We’re on all the different channels. If you go to tuttletwins.com/podcast, you can find the links to all your favorite podcast outlets and apps. Be sure and give us a review. We always appreciate reviews and it helps spread the word and boost the kind of engagement and awareness. And so take a moment, head over to iTunes or Stitcher or wherever you’re listening, and we’d really appreciate a review to help spread the word, Brittany. Until next time, talk to you later.
Brittany: Talk to you later.
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