Why America Must Be Saved

0:00Well, I'm not the only one with such a bizarre biography. Today I read in the San Francisco Examiner that Svetlana Alleluya, the daughter of Stalin, became a Catholic nun in Switzerland. So I think that's an ultimate personal disaster for that family. Well, also I appreciate that the topic of my talk today is why we must save America. When I was listening today to Peter Klein, and he was talking about enemy lines, that he was behind the enemy lines in Berkeley, I was thinking of myself, actually, that I was behind the enemy lines there, back in the Soviet Union, and over there, I believed, Like most Russians did, and most other foreigners, I would say, did, that the United States is this shining house on the top of the mountain, as Ronald Reagan presented it, until I defected to here to find myself behind other enemy lines in American academia.

1:09And I would think that the Ludwig von Mises Institute is doing a really great and unique job in solidifying their positions of freedom there. That 15 of my brightest students from Carthage College attended Ludwig von Mises universities during the last four years. And right now they, as well as their friends, are really visible and vocal on campus. Sometimes I'm trying to kind of hold them a little bit for them not to become physical at some of these classes. One of them actually became an editor of our campus paper and they have a regular column from the right. And one of our Mises and Rothbard students every week is writing this column all the time, different people, which could not even think about that in the college, say, five, seven years ago, before these kids would go and have this breath of the fresh air of freedom.

2:15Well, I wouldn't imagine myself, my own intellectual development without Ludwig von Mises Institute, to be on the side of Murray, to be on the side of Lew, Jeff, To be on the side of all of you, that was the greatest intellectual joy and I think it contributed to my own personal development. I'm kind of abhorred even by the thinking of the opportunity cost of myself coming to the United States and reading Washington Post and New York Times. I think that would be a good reason to redefect somewhere else. Well, I think that Murray Rothbard, he presented a very strong case, why America must be saved.

3:01And I think that in many of his writings and many pieces, he would say that America today is the only hope for the whole world. It's not the Hong Kong, it's not the Singapore, it's not Switzerland or Cayman Islands. The United States, which is the only today with all concessions to bondage, to all concessions to slavery were made during the last 50 years in this country, still America is probably the freest country in the world and still is the hope for people all around the world who have the vested interests in preserving and keeping freedom in this country and we We see that how many people are coming to the United States, not because of welfare handouts.

3:47Some of them come for that, but some of them are coming for liberty, for opportunity, really to make a difference in this struggle between slavery and freedom, which is going on all around the world. Well, as you know that in why I mentioned not Switzerland, not Hong Kong, I think these people should be praised for their contribution to freedom, but the West usually sells them out. I use you know in a year will be returned back to China and this I would say amazing experiment and freedom on this barren rock island will probably cease to exist well being Russian myself I'm sometimes reading Russian authors and recently I was reading Dostoevsky a great Russian writer of the 19th century and Dostoevsky Dostoyevsky made a very strong case for freedom in the 19th century.

4:44His sad legacies and his sad prophecies, unfortunately, didn't taught us anything. There's a very cynical Russian proverb that the only lesson of history that it does not teach us anything. And Dostoyevsky back in 1867, he predicted the Bolshevik revolution, he predicted the First World War as the end of civilization. He predicted that, as he would put it, the satanic pride of people, socialists, would be self-destructive of humankind, and putting themselves above the Lord, these people are actually destroying the foundations of human civilization. In his novel Devils, known in English as The Possessed, Dostoevsky insights in the human soul was completely confirmed by history.

5:36His, I would say, prophecies were kind of apocalyptic, but unfortunately they all became truth. He would say, for example, that Europe, he said, stood on the brink of moral and political catastrophe, A collapse that will be without exception general and terrible. This unhip without a church and Christianity is already practically undermined. The fourth estate, the lower classes, is rising. It will smash the door. Catholicism, having ceased to be Christian, is turning into pagan idolatry. Protestantism is fast approaching atheism. In his master, in another masterpiece, the brothers Karamazov, he wrote, The Salvation comes from the people. An unbelieving reformer will never do anything, even if he is sincere in heart and a genius.

6:28Remember that. The people will meet the atheist. He wrote that 60 years before the communist revolution. He said the people would meet the atheist, atheist was capital A, and overcome him, and Russia will be one and orthodox. Well, the Dostoevsky predictions, I would say, shed a light on another set of values. Not only I'm an economist myself, and maybe I'm kind of tired of speaking, talking about economics, and you're probably listening to economists. So I would say he is providing very good insights between the moral values of society, between the religious beliefs from one hand and the freedom of the people.

7:16Dostoevsky, as you can probably imagine, because of that, because he would say that only those people who believe in God, he is not referring to church. He said, I am against all statehood and churchdom in one of his notes. But, as you can imagine, he is deeply hated by not only communists, and he was hated back in Russia, but also by our liberals. One of them, Ronald Hingley, again from Berkeley, is even comparing the diary of writer by Dostoyevsky with Hitler's Mein Kampf. He accuses Dostoyevsky of, guess what, anti-Semitism, idealization of war, combined with peace-loving professions.

8:01and this is the most insane accusations I ever heard because Dostoevsky he said the true Russian should be a brother of all people. I don't think that Dostoevsky can be blamed for what the liberals and socialists did. He never was a part of organizing Gestapo's or Cheka's or KGB's. He was a person I think with ultimate love to all people. I think that his vision of the 20th century, he was predicting the 20th century, was very close to the assessment of the 20th century, which was done by Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises. Robert wrote in his Seminal History of Economic Thought, Most people, historians not accepted, attempted to think of economic and social progress as being continuous.

8:54In every century people are better off than in the one preceding. This comforting assumption had to be given up quite early when the Dark Ages ensued the collapse of the Roman Empire. His great teacher Ludwig von Mises wrote, The characteristic feature of this age of destructive wars and social disintegration is the revolt against economics. This revolt, as you know, is continuing today. Today we see government deliberately destroying the whole classes, the whole stratus of American people, of People, creating the classes of clients, creating the classes of people who are on welfare or payroll checks received from the same Department of Treasury of the United States.

9:39Today you can see that 23% of our labor force is employed by the government of the United States. Another 15% of the American population are on welfare. Moreover, I believe that the liberals, as Murray would say, I don't believe in conspiracy theories, he would say, but conspiracies happen left and right. And then he would add mostly on the left also. And you can see that some groups of American people are being targeted, I think, by our left liberal intellectual establishment to be corrupted first. You can see that, for example, I said 23% of our labor force are employed by the government, but 44% of all black college graduates are going to serve the government, 64% of black PhDs are employed by the federal government.

10:36So this, I think, corruption is still going on. We discussed today with John that how much will it take for them to corrupt practically everybody. If you would see that 23% are working for the government, another 15%, so it's about 40% of American people already became direct clients of the government, having invested socioeconomic interest in expanding government functions. How much will it take when these people would outvote all of us and would establish some and some kind of even more rude and more open socialist dictatorship in this country. Well, I would think, well, so the answer is clear and quite, I think, quite dreadful. From another hand, I would, when I was thinking about that, I thought that, no, it's not necessarily should be true, because look at the Soviet Union, look at the other countries of Soviet Bloc, where communism collapsed so suddenly and overnight, Everybody was a client of the government there, but the people, I think this human spirit still is above this idea that you should all the time be dependent on those hands who are giving you these handouts.

11:50Moreover, if you will, talk to people on welfare, which I did, because once I kind of, I would say, without any understanding what I'm doing, I bought a property in the middle of that disaster. And so I talked, and I was amazed by the fact that my neighbors, who were all on welfare, they hated the government with passion as well. Well. Why? Because welfare is a form of slavery. Every time you are getting a welfare check, you should prove to the government that you are a failure in life. You should prove that you are good for nothing except by receiving these welfare checks. and so in kind of in response they hate the problem there is that I think that left intellectual establishment also and the governments both both parties they created a system in which these people don't have much choices and that's I think that's again the slavery because how you can define slavery slavery is when people do not have choices because from one hand they face this huge welfare monstrosity which is providing them with checks from another hand to prevent

12:59Well, the spread of anti-capitalist mentality in the United States, in all western world, I was really depressed. I had like a week-long depression. I was in January in Europe and I visited the institutions. I was interested in that process of so-called capitalization. I was depressed. I had like a week-long depression. I was in January in Europe and I visited the institutions. I was interested in that process of so-called European economic integration. And I visited the institutions of European Union. You know that all European nations right now, 19 of them already are members of the European Union, which is supranational, supranational, I'm sorry, but also supranational institution in Europe.

13:48I was in Europe, governed by the faceless bureaucrats, and I had a chance to chat with some ministers of Europe. There are some people like that already, the commissioners, they call it, commissioners. And I chatted with a German guy who is the commissioner for environment and consumer protection. And what I heard is really, I mean, it's just really sad. I mean, I went there with my students, some of the students would say, well, the logic of integration, probably you'll need a common army. He said, sure, we cannot admit it openly, but that's our goal, to have another bright black girl student, and she said, well, what about common language? You cannot have 12 interpreters for every soldier in the army. And he said, well, you are kind of coming a little bit faster than we do, but maybe the logic will drive us even there.

14:40They are the same and moreover it looked like these people in the European Union visited several of their institutions in Brussels and Luxembourg were like made in one huge factory. They are all faceless, they came from Washington DC and they are attacking the same kind of things. They attack church, they attack family, they attack language, they attack cultural heritage of each European nation. The most ridiculous thing, I got a press release there, that they started a new program for socialization of prostitutes in the European Union. The idea is that it's not a bad kind of thing to be a prostitute, but unfortunately a lot of people do not like them. And they do not invite them for their birthdays, but it's just, I'm not making it up, it's a birthday party, maybe Bert will invite some.

15:33He would probably get a grant from the European Union for doing that. And so they allocated 4.1 million EQs, which is about $7 million, just to socialize these people. For them, they're giving grants and they can turn in receipts for attending operas, attending all kinds of social things and stuff like that. So social engineering is rampant there. Europe was very depressing to me because in Germany, for example, with the public education they have, they have public universities, they're turning out great numbers of intellectuals. 27% of college graduates would never find job for the first two years. They're stuck in this labor market. And guess whom they would become?

16:18They would become left, communist, disgruntled people whom I think intellectual elite deliberately is making them of. So that was very sad to see and it's, moreover, why they do that? I think again Peter mentioned that, that if you introduce government regulation and this government regulation would lead to certain dislocations, then you need more government regulations to deal with the first crisis you created. So right now the idea of the European Union is that we are planning the number of college graduates, that's good, but we are not planning the number of jobs for these graduates, which is bad. So the idea is that if you create a cause, then you need another cause to deal with the cause you created before.

17:04So I would absolutely agree with Murray when he said that for the expansion of big government you need a real crisis. You need a crisis not exactly real. He said crisis can be imaginary, can be fabricated. The crisis can be real and that's what I think socialists of all tribes are trying to do today. Well actually we have the same problem in the state of Wisconsin which is all the same kind of approach that we should plan practically everything. Well, Murray, I think, made a lot of prophecies and a lot of predictions which also are coming true.

17:50Also, I think that Murray was the greatest intellectual of this century who devoted all his life in fight against socialism. William Buckley, in his obituary, if you remember, he attacked Murray that he was soft on communism. He even said that Murray was praising Khrushchev, which was the most, I would say, unforgivable thing for an intellectual, especially claiming himself to be a conservative to say. Murray gave us, I think, the deepest insights in the Marxian dogma. He attacked Marx in his seminal history of economic thought, I think, ferociously.

18:35The Marx exists only in the minds of that people who never read this book. Rothbard wrote that Marx created a veritable tissue of fallacies. Every single nodal point of the theory is wrong and fallacious, and its integument, to use a good Marxian term, is a web of fallacy as well. The Marxian system lies in absolute tatters and ruin. The integument of Marxian theory has burst asunder long before its predicted bursting of the capitalist system. Far from being a structure of scientific laws, furthermore, the Jerry-built structure was constructed and shored up in desperate service to the fanatical and crazed messianic goal of destruction of the division of labor, and indeed of man's very individuality and the apocalyptic creation of an allegedly inevitable collectivist world order, an atheist version of a venerable Christian heresy.

19:34So, Rothbard can say that Marxism is a form of religion, is a form of kind of atheist religion. He wrote that communists created the religion and declared it to be a science. Rothbard also, unlike most of my academic colleagues, he wrote that the key to intricate and massive system of thought created by Karl Marx, is at the bottom a simple one. Karl Marx was a communist, and that's again the truth which a lot of my colleagues would not even understand. The 20th century, as Rothbard said, was one of the most sad centuries in the history of humankind. 170 million people were physically murdered by their own governments.

20:23I'm not even talking about people who perished in wars, numerous wars, which were also started by the governments. That you can add another 110 million on the top of this 170 million. I am talking about people who perished in devilish experiments over people in the dreadful Stalinist gulag system of concentration camps in Russia, who perished in China for 44 million people. In the small country of Kampuche, 3 million out of 9 million people population were physically murdered. Can you imagine how many executioners were there? How were they here? What kind of legacy, what kind of thinking you may have after these tragic experiences? And today we see the revival, unfortunately, of the same kind of dreadful and deadly ideology in Russia.

21:13In last December, maybe if you're following the news, the communists got 24% of the votes. The other people, nationalists, which are kind of nationalists, socialists, I would say the Nazis, got another 40% of the vote. So today the majority of Russian Parliament is constituted of national socialists, nationalists, socialists, whoever. But they are all for big states, they are all big statists. For me, it's amazing to see our national security policy oriented in support of Russia from time to time. We discussed earlier today also whether the Austrian should be a part of at least any kind of dealings with the government.

22:01Well, I kind of am in the sense that every week I am flying to Washington to take part in the seminars of the Department of Defense. The Federal Reserve, fiat money, fractional reserve banking, Human Action, Man Economy and State, The Theory of Money and Credit

22:40I find that the best investment you can make in our future, you know, all socialists are talking about investments in the future, and yes, it's not in a head start program, as our president was saying, but it's to make investment, it's to help Russian government, that you should send all your money, that's the best investment for our children, as he said, for our children, to have a peaceful 21st century, and what I would say, I mean, I was outraged completely, I kind of went berserk and whatever, I thought they will call military police after me, but that's, and again I was recollecting Murray, because Murray, he would say that the major thing of the major fallacy of communism, the major threat coming out of communism and socialism of all stripes, is the idea of corrupting the human soul, corrupting the character of the people, We know that Marx came up with the idea of the new man of tomorrow, who should be kind of a selfless tax payer, probably a democratic voter and things like that, and this in America,

23:54in the Soviet Union probably a supporter of Stalin or whom not. And the idea was that these people in this future society completely governed by the state would have the ability to develop all their faculties in all directions. Murray wrote about that. He said that the idea of everyone developing all their faculties in all directions is mind-boggling and conjures up the absurd picture of a world of autistic dilettantes, each heedless of social demand for their services and products, and each dabbling whimsically and sporadically in every activity. This was exactly the case of Soviet Nomenklatura, where these autistic dilettantes, devoid of any skills, were selected on the basis of party loyalty and were ruining any sector of the economy the party would put them in charge.

24:44But I was thinking about that, that it's also applicable, completely applicable to what we see in Washington D.C. today. I'm debating the chief CIA guy who's never been to Russia. He's a chief specialist in Russia. He still believes that the Russian standard of living is about 50% of the American standard of living. I mean, just buy a ticket and go. And these kinds of people, these autistic dilettantes, are in charge of practically everything. I worked in the federal government and the government think tank called the US Peace Institute. The think tank didn't sink at all and was tanking a lot of your money there. Again, I probably mentioned that before, that the guy sitting next door to me, another peace fellow of the United States Congress, was Eugen Rostow, the National Security Advisor to Johnson, who I think was quite an eminent warmonger of all times and peoples.

25:41So that's again the same kind of thing, the same kind of thing. You can see the government bureaucrats are trying to direct not only this country, but other countries as well. You can see that right now, for example, there is something called Systemic Facility Change funds allocated by International Monetary Fund and World Bank to ruin these post-socialist economies. I was testifying a couple of times before different committees of the Congress, and that's what exactly they think. They think that if you dump a lot of free food on Russian farmers, they would actually prosper. I mean, this is the repudiation of economics. Can you imagine this weak private farming in Russia, which was devastated by 75 years of communism, right now is competing with the United States Department of Agriculture. It's just unbelievable.

26:35So what we are buying with this foreign aid is just hatred towards us. And the more we pay, the more we are being hated. Well, speaking about why must we save America, I think we must save it for ourselves, for our children as well. This country, I think it's a unique, unique experiment in human freedom. And this experiment lasted over 200 years already. And it lasted only because I think we had a limited government, the government which would not trespass on the real diversity of this nation, and today when we see the tragedies in Waco, when we see the tragedies in Ruby Ridge, and I would say a very related tragedy in Oklahoma City, that's again we see the government which is stepping on people's shoes. I mean that's the most divisive government probably we had during this century.

27:35The first lady who arrogantly again I'm quoting today's San Francisco Examiner, she was asked, she was in San Francisco today, I think yesterday, yesterday she was speaking in this New Glide Church here and promoting her book, which actually is the book directed in a complete ultimate assault on family, because her point she's making there that it's the government responsibility, not the family responsibility, and she was asked by a journalist, I mean, so who is the final judge about children, whether it be the family or the government, and she's saying, well, I think everybody has a responsibility, and then she, I'm quoting her, she's saying, the government, schools, employers, and then only families, All of us are responsible for bringing our children.

28:33So that's the kind of thing I believe we should all the time expose, the any assault on liberty. And these are, in the Soviet Union, the first things the communists dealt with was families. Families were destroyed first, then came the church, 700,000 clerics were physically murdered In 1929 to 1934, they had the so-called program of godlessness. They even arrogantly were proud of the name of this program, by physically exterminating Russian Orthodox clerics. So we have the president who was speaking in Los Angeles recently, and he said, tax cut, tax cut for whom? For these people? He said, well, they will blow this money away.

29:18That's what I'm quoting him. It's better for us, he said, to invest this money into the future of these people, in the future of their children. That's what we hear. And I believe even if someone does not believe in free market, even if someone does not believe in liberty, but then just for the sake of their personal safety, I think they should get rid of this divisive government of these kind of things. Why? Because in the country with 600 million units of weapons owned by the people, the talks like that, I think, can create a real, not imaginary crisis.

30:04Well, the major point, I think the major case, the welfare state ideologues are making against free market is that the free market does not lead to equality between people and it really does not because people are different. I think we are proud to be different. We are proud to know that if you will work more than your neighbor, then you will earn more. And the system, also right now being distorted by all kinds of regulations, prevents you from doing that. But the continuing growth of this welfare state, I think, is mind-boggling and scary.

30:49Murray Rothbard devoted a lot of his attention to that. He wrote that we conclude with one of the great paradoxes of our time, that the powerful and generally unchallenged cry for equality is driven by the decidedly inegalitarian aim of climbing on its back to increasingly absolute power, a triumph which will, of course, make the egalitarians themselves the ruling elite in income and wealth as well. Behind the honeyed but patently absurd pleas for equality is a ruthless drive for placing themselves at the top of a new hierarchy of power. Again, we see that the ruling minority is trying to use all kinds of excuses, whether it's spot-at-all or whether it's disadvantaged children, to get more power.

31:44Murray actually solved this question, gave a very good, I think, answer to this question. He said that the major reasons for inequality in a free society are time preferences of individuals rearranging their consumption patterns inter-temporarily. You know that you can inter-temporarily change your consumption pattern by borrowing or lending or saving or whatnot. And still here in America, I believe that this is still the case. If you will look at 100 richest people in the United States, 86 of them came from families with limited means. So 86 out of the 100 richest people in the United States, they got their money themselves. They did not inherit them from there.

32:30So I think we have still some skeleton, I think, of the free society. We have some basics which we can build upon. Then, talking about why we must save America. Well, I'm also thinking in what sense to save? I mean, what America to save? Should we think of saving America as a unified country? Well, here we can have, I think, again, different hints given by Murray. Following the great Jeffersonian ideal of a free country, I think he made a very strong case for secession for any nation or even a group of people oppressed by a coercive government.

33:16He made a very strong case against imperialism, war and intervention. And this case, I think, today can be substantiated a lot by the evidence we are getting from all around the world. In the beginning of the century there were 37 independent countries on this planet. Today we have 204. So you can see that the multinational states, the multinational giants like Soviet Empire, like British Empire, like other empires, they collapsed during the course of the century. And today we have this, I would say, real diversity in our present world. And the people are in charge. I think that's the first step. In the United States, we can see the cultural assault is trying to balkanize, I think, the United States. It's trying to create new minorities. Why do you need to create new minorities to promote a big government? Why do you need to protect certain groups of people, to create new voters for the further assault, for the further diminishing of freedoms, or whatever is left of our freedoms?

34:23Murray regarded himself to be a part of the old right, which rejected the globalony, I would say, of the welfare, warfare state. He was, I mean, all his insights into that are very, very important, again, in keeping the real perspective on freedom. And every country which is intervening into the life of other countries, which is coercively trying to subjugate other nations, can be free by itself. And if you would see in Washington this military-industrial build-up there, this gigantic blob of divested interests on this side, Then you can imagine how many people, besides those who directly work for the government, are working for government contracts, are subsidized by the government in this or that form, who also have the vested interests in this huge state.

35:27Well, I would say I don't know how to save America. I mean, Hans knows and he will tell us a little bit later. But I really believe that we still have a lot of things to save, that it's still a great country and that again explains why me and Hans and a lot of millions of other people are still considering this country as the most attractive country. And with all infringement of liberties we have, it's still, I would say, we're in a much better position to make this U-turn on the road of serfdom, of which Friedrich Hayek was talking in his road to serfdom.

36:17And it's again great to be a part of Ludwig von Mises Institute, which I believe is one of the major, or if not the major, intellectual driving force which knows the road, which knows how to get back to normalcy, how to get back to freedom. And I think we all are missing Murray Rothbard, but his legacy is, I would say, is all the time guiding us why and how we should save, I don't think even America, the human civilization at large. Robert is gone, but his power remains all about us. He is the beacon and the model, and for us as long as the printed word is available, there will be endless generations of Rothbardians.

37:20Is the World Bank and the IMF so growing?

37:50The governments of rich industrialized nations consider them to be very convenient in surpassing their parliaments. For example, last week the IMF declared that they are giving 9 billion dollars to Russia. Do you think it would pass Congress, even the Congress we have? No, it And it wouldn't, definitely. They wouldn't even talk about that. But you can do it, surpassing, bypassing the American electorate, the American people. Moreover, it was just even announcements of that, because I'm subscribing to all the garbage from the World Bank and IMF, that's why I know, because it was not even advertised on CNN or anywhere else. So what we are doing, we are committing ourselves, the World Bank, to IMF, not we, they, in Washington.

38:44I.M.F. and the World Bank, and then they dispose the money the way they like. And without, well, not the way they like, I think that the way the Clinton administration wants them to do, but that's very, very sad. So, I.M.F., World Bank, United Nations, international labor organizations, all of this, I would say, rudiments of the world, emerging world government, of the World Government, they already are employing 275,000 people, 275,000 people, in New York, in Geneva, in London, these people are already in Moscow, in Paris, they still have UNESCO and all these kinds of things, that this is international bureaucracy emerging with its own vested interests in creating the huge world government, and that's real sad.

39:34Peter mentioned today Godfried Habler. Godfried Habler, before he died, he wrote an article about international bureaucracy and that's what he said is the major threat, I think, for both for peace because it's not people that say we need the world government for the world peace. No, it's not so. You can see what the world government is already doing for the world peace. It's trying to direct the so-called peacekeepers everywhere. The Great Advocate of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, Jimmy Carter, who is on the board of United Nations Institute for Social Research in Geneva. He came up with a completely absurd idea. He said, our troops sent to Bosnia is an example of racism because we are helping white people. We should send our troops and kill a lot of other people, probably. Then it would not be racism because we are killing white people there in Bosnia.

40:27I mean, we should send them to Africa and kill black people as well. I mean, well, that's what didn't he say, but he said Africa is in a much better world situation, so we should send troops over there. And this is hypocrisy, because look what, for example, Russians are doing in Chechnya. The real atrocities are there. 200,000 people were literally murdered by indiscriminate bombing and indiscriminate artillery assault on these Chechens. And none of the great powers, governments, ever even condemned Russia for doing that. Because, again, I was debating this guy, he said Russia is our best national security asset. Best national security asset. That's the... And I don't think he is kind of a bleak and mediocre person. I don't think he tells what he thinks, because I don't think he thinks anything.

41:16But I think he tells people what he heard from his superiors. Do you believe that if the Lithuanian, Estonian, Latvian countries are going to be swallowed up again by Russia, would the United States or NATO step in?

41:51The defense secretary, the one he was recently kissing, the murderer of Chechnya, Pavel Grachov, the Russian defense minister, who is saying he is his best friend. His best friend is the murderer of Afghanistan. He was commander in Afghanistan, then commander in Chechnya. Mr. Perry recently said that the United States opposed the inclusion of Baltic states into NATO because they are indefensible. I think that's kind of an invitation for a party, for Russians. They are indefensible, so that's why we shouldn't include them. I am not a great advocate of NATO at all, but this kind of argument, this kind of thinking is just really, really sad.

42:38Is the Lausanne Hill Four going to end?

43:08The war, I would say, of which that people considered as a religious war, and that, unless these people would be independent, saying Chechnya, they would never cease to struggle for that. And I don't blame them. I mean, in 1944, Stalin sent all of them to Kazakhstan. Forty percent of all Chechens died on the way. They put them in cattle cars, and they would not open them until they would reach Kazakhstan. So there were corpses all over. I wrote a book with Ruslan Hasbalatov, who was a speaker at Russian Parliament. He's Chechen himself. He made this tree, being a boy, and he said there was, they were like out of 200 people in a car, they would put in a cattle 200 people.

43:54They had water and food for the first three days, and that was it. And no facilities. And so can you imagine the miasmas, the corpses traveling with children in a jammed kind of In Bosnia I would say that definitely not because of this plan, I mean the plan which was signed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is just a blueprint for disaster. I mean blueprint for disaster, they created a new Lebanon there, they will have rotating governments, can you imagine, rotating governments? What are the odds of this, the odds of the situation developing in World War III?

45:01Well, I would, the major thing I would think, with whom? I mean, who would be part of that? I think right now our politicians and military in Washington are enjoying some kind of monopoly on power, in the sense that they will probably go after Bosnia somewhere else, and they would kind of hold it. It's like every morning, they would read the paper and think where else to send our troops, and that probably would go on. Russia can be a source of World War III, not because of their willingness to do that, but because they had 30 right now, and the CIE thought 6. Then it turned out to be 30. Right now they dismantled the major bulk of them, so it's 11,000 nuclear warheads. With the army falling apart, they still have, they're spending 27% of their GDP on the military.

45:58So it can become a danger just because we never know, because as Winston Churchill, I like to repeat and repeat his famous statement that Russia is the only country in the world with unpredictable past, so we cannot predict the future for them at all. China is growing rapidly.

46:50comes, but you can see that even limited property rights, when the people can keep what they earn, made China, I mean, at least that parts of China, prosperous. And the same socialist system which they have in northern China, right now people are running around China themselves. I mean, there are a lot of northern people are migrating to the south. Then I think the Chinese, what they did, they kind of relaxed socialism in the countryside. In Russia, it's still socialism is in place in the countryside. Still the land, all land in Russia belongs to the government, publicly owned. Even the so-called reformists cannot even think of denationalizing land. Land, they would say, it's our common thing. And so it's all in tragedy of the commons. I mean, yeah, if you have something in common, then we'll have a disaster.

47:38So that's one thing. Another thing is that in Russia, the reformed circles, they never occurred. The property rights are not in place. They privatized about 40% right now of their economy, but then they declared property rights null and void. To have a title for property, in a sense that you can be a private entrepreneur in Russia, but your title on property in Russia is the same as your title for property on wetlands in the United States. It's the same simple thought they have, their craving for power, nothing else. That's behind these motives of Russian officials to keep Chechnya.

48:26They all the time attacking Chechen people as being murderers, as being criminals, what not. It wouldn't be nice if all murderers here would move, I don't know, to Delaware and succeed from the United States. I mean, who would care? That would be great. But they are trying to keep them in. Why are they trying to keep them in? Because Russia actually is an empire. And that's what our Department of State is keeping us in complete ignorance about. Russia is a multinational state of 20 so-called autonomous republics. You know, the Soviet Union had 15 so-called 15 Union Republics which all got their independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, and 20 Autonomous Republics, so they had 35 different national, I would say, kind of semi-statehoods.

49:14And then 15 were let loose, got their independence, because Stalin in 1936, drafting Soviet constitutions, he made this distinction. 2015, our union republics and then they can go. He wrote that not for the real thing, he wrote it for the people like Roosevelt in the United States to learn and rejoice how free the Soviet Union is. If someone would even think about being independent in any republic, autonomous or union republic, they would be shot inside immediately. But today we see this strange approach that it looks like nobody in Russia believes in Stalin's The United States government believes that these 20 republics inside Russia are Russian internal affairs, that we should respect Russian borders, things like that.

50:02And so they have 20 of these republics, they have about right now 110 nationalities living in Russia. I would think that they had like three empires, Cuba, GDR, Poland, Hungary, and what not. And that empire collapsed in November 1987. Then the Soviet Empire itself, the evil empire, collapsed in December 1991. And right now we see the dismantling of the Russian Empire. And because this is the first shot in this kind of revolutions, that's why Yeltsin wants to come on them as hard as he can. And that's why a lot of nationalists, I mean, when you have a war like that, I mean, you can, they have emergency powers right now, the President Yeltsin has all power he can have, and that's a good excuse for beefing up the big government again, to have a national draft, national service and things like that.

50:57The only thing is that you will see that it's not only socialism which failed, but this kind of ideology, this kind of statist approach is failing because Russians, I mean Russia, with about, what, hundred times more people than Chechnya, cannot do anything there. I mean, you can see that the war is going on and on and on, and the Chechens, the freedom fighters there, are not giving up at all. War and Change in the Military, too, after Yeltsin's murder?

51:50October 1998. That's the guys when we're discussing things. That's what they think. They think they know everything. And then after that, they would say it didn't happen because of this and that. Yes, right now, Russia is is in a period of a very painful transition. Russia is a good example why we should save America not to be Russia. See, because that's the and the saddest thing about socialism and all kinds of government intervention, That is creating a way of no return. I mean, some people would say, why the transition is taking so long? Why it's? Well, because of vested interest there. But from another hand, the country was consistently ruined for 75 years. Consistently ruined for 75 years. Ruined not only economy, not only ecology, but the human beings were ruined or corrupted by the government. Families were destroyed. So the people, it's for me, it's amazing when I'm meeting Russian officials, I had a dinner last Sunday back in Wisconsin with some of them, and it's amazing, you can talk them out of their life-long system of beliefs in 20 minutes.

53:01In 20 minutes you can just... I made a speech about free market, things like that, they all agreed, completely, they were pretty cheerful about that. But I wouldn't... yeah, the only problem is that I wouldn't trust them for long, because the next guy they would meet maybe would be a socialist or a fascist, And then again they will turn them upside down. Why this is so? No vested interest, no interest in anything. And this is very sad. That makes it very unpredictable. Communists right now are making come back because the so-called reforms failed. There were no real reforms, so nothing failed. But unfortunately for a lot of Russian population, they saw that they already had rampant, unmitigated capitalism. The Capitalism. They already have the free market, Detroit, and it failed. And this is very sad. This kind of mentality.

53:51So they hope right now with Communists and Nationalists. And we see right now that this Nationalists were very anti-Communists until recently. Right now they are merging together in some kind of National Socialism, which we call Fascism or Nazism. And the communists, who by definition of Marx should be internationalists, right now are accusing Jews and accusing Georgians, accusing whom not, foreigners, whom not, in everything, which is, I mean, even Father Marx would not approve of that. And so again, you see this rise of nationalism, and these people want to keep Chechnya, they want to keep everything, moreover, they want to expand. Mr. Zhirinovsky, one of the leaders of nationalists, he recently wrote a book called The Final Thrust to the South, saying that right now Russia should forget about Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Baltic states, they should go and conquer Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkey, Constantinopolis, liberate Constantinopolis from Turks. That's insane. And also the next Alaska is on the hit list. Yes, he said Alaska should be returned back also.

55:00so that's them

55:23they have some social democrats who kind of I would say I'm not as murderous and bloodthirsty as others, but they are social democrats of the worst kind as well. I worked with Grigoriy Yavlinsky, who is kind of the hope of so-called democratic Russia, and he is a social democrat with all welfare, state delusions and whatnot. He is against Gulag, against extreme nationalists, whatever. He got 5% of the vote during last election. So that's the only, I mean, he is at least kind of decent or whatever. at least not he would not murder you immediately at least so that's the the choices but there are a lot of right now intellectual changes was we had two russians at the austrian scholars conference in in auburn one of them was just really amazing he has his own think tank on his own money he works for lazar ferrer he is a single person he doesn't have any any any other he said more Bernard de Juvenel, the Ethics of Redistribution, The Theory of Money and Credit

57:23The Theory of Money and Credit

57:53They got the ill-gotten money because they were kind of communist bureaucrats or whatever. And they looted the treasury, they looted their own people, they became rich. Right now they're thinking about property rights, about sending their children to good schools and to feel themselves safe. I think that it's very interesting that this elite of practically mobsters slash communist officials, What after they got this money, they want property rights, they want the rule of law and they all invested in Western Europe and in United States all the money they got because they don't trust Russian government.