-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Kiss your rights goodbye? Geoff Metcalf interviews Rep. Ron Paul on the International Criminal Court ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Editors Note: A growing number of U.S. citizens are aware that their constitutional rights are under assault. Evidence of this onslaught includes legislation that exceeds constitutional boundaries, presidential executive orders and activist judicial decisions that effectively write law rather than merely interpret it. Now, a new threat to the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens is emerging -- the International Criminal Court. A treaty signed by former-President Clinton -- that is now being reviewed by President Bush -- could easily lead to the destruction of U.S. sovereignty and constitutionally guaranteed protections, warns veteran U.S. congressman Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, -- a man who is considered by many to be the U.S. House of Representatives' leading spokesman for liberty, sound money, free market economics and constitutional government. WorldNetDaily writer and talk-show host Geoff Metcalf recently interviewed Rep. Ron Paul about the shocking truth surrounding the International Criminal Court, and what concerned Americans can do to stop it. The upcoming April edition of WorldNet magazine, WND's monthly print magazine, will be devoted entirely to the issue of the 16th Amendment, the IRS and income taxes, and will include extensive comments from Rep. Ron Paul on the subject. Readers may subscribe to WorldNet at WND's online store. Metcalf's daily streaming radio show can be heard on TalkNetDaily weekdays from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern time. By Geoff Metcalf © 2001 WorldNetDaily.com Question: Mr. Congressman, before we get into the International Criminal Court, I like to open with an off topic question. I love it when the good guys use the procedural finesses that routinely are used to bludgeon us. Recently we reported about this seldom-employed law to block implementation of medical privacy? Answer: Yes. I’ve introduced a House Concurrent Resolution that would stop the imposition of 1,500 pages of regulations that are said to be designed to protect our privacy. It’s sort of like the Bank Privacy Act back in the 1970s. They passed that bill and it did everything to invade our privacy. Now I’m a physician -- 1,500 pages to tell the doctors they ought to protect patient privacy? We never had any regulations or pages or laws. We had ethics and rules and it was understood you never released information. Q: Actually if I understand the details of this deal it really opens it up where third parties can be notified without the patient even knowing about it? A: Correct. It is actually the opposite of privacy. And a lot of the congressmen are going to be snookered into this and say, "Oh yeah, we have to protect privacy. If we don’t vote for this we’re not voting for privacy." So my job is as I see it is trying to let as many people know as possible that this is doing exactly the opposite. It literally sets up a national medical data bank and allows medical records to be used by the government. You see, they [Congress] don’t think if the government has the information that that’s so bad ... I think it is very, very dangerous. The resolution I’ve introduced would block that. Q: By the way it is important to note that if you didn't do this -- if your resolution is not effected -- if nothing happens by April 14th, baddabing-baddaboom, the bad stuff happens. A: That’s it. It’s the law and it happens. The authority was given in 1996. Unfortunately, this is one of the things that occurred after the Republicans took control of congress and Clinton went along with it. So the authority has been set up. Each year I’ve been able to block using any funds to set up a national data bank and using the social security number as an ID. But they’re progressing steadily. They’ll let me block it for maybe a year, but they keep coming back and coming back. This is a bold step -- and it’s being done by the regulators -- and I’m just hoping I can alert enough people to this problem so that Congress will wake up. Q: What if any kind of support are you getting from your colleagues? A: This was just introduced recently so I have not done a "Dear Colleague" letter. I personally have spoken with Dick Armey and Armey is pretty good on this issue. He’s helped me get the legislation passed before to block the setting up and the using of the national ID card. Q: I recently saw a statement by Donna Shalala, former secretary of Health and Human Services, that shocked me if only because I agreed with her. She said the regulations would affect the lives of every American. She’s right. Of course, what she didn’t say is it would effect them negatively. A: Yeah, but for her, it affects them in a way that the government knows more about you and -- since they believe in one health provider, one health service and one socialized system -- to them this is efficiency. This is what they need. Q: This isn’t the camel's nose in the tent. This is the camel backing in and soiling the rug. A: It is really bad. But medicine has really gone downhill a good bit in the last ten years. It’s very, very expensive -- quality is down and privacy is disappearing, choices are not there -- this is just one more bold step. I’m hoping we can stop this. But if not, the only thing left for us in medicine would be to be able to get these medical savings accounts where people can opt out and just get out of the system. And if you wanted to go out and pay your own doctors and insurance at least you would get your money back off your taxes. That to me is the only thing because we’re not going to reverse this. Just look at the burden it would be to say: Why is the government involved in medicine under our Constitution? Q: Why is the government involved in education? A: Yeah, both these things. Yet look at the bold steps forward this year with education. I think it is over and done with. There’s no more fight. At least Republicans -- up until this last election -- the platform and the president were always going around saying at least we say we’re against the Department of Education and that we don’t believe the federal government should be involved. Q: A few years back, a platform of the Republican Party called for the elimination of the Department of Education. A: Up until this year. I was there on my first tour of duty in Congress when it was passed and that was with Carter. When Reagan ran in '80 that was -- remember he was going to get rid of the Department of Education and the Department of Energy and he quickly forgot about it once in office. But we've always had it in our platform up until this last year. But Bush said, no take it out. We need more money in education. He’s increasing the budget. He’s already asked for about an 11% increase. The Democrats love all the increases. There will be no cuts. I’ll bet you this budget could be 15% higher than it was last year. Q: I found it amusing when the president acknowledged that in Washington-speak, a cut isn’t really a cut -- it’s just a reduction in the increase. A: That’s the terminology and you don’t even see many episodes where they actually reduce the proposed increases. It’s all gimmicks. Like talking about this huge surplus. That is just so much deception -- even by their own standards -- with this downturn in the economy all those numbers are absolutely worthless. Q: I don’t remember who said it -- I think it was someone from the Fed -- but just recently they acknowledged that if you used general accounting procedures that are required of corporations, there is no surplus. A: There is no surplus. In fact if we were held to the same standards as an insurance company and talked about social security system income, the managers of the fund would all be charged with fraud. We should be charged with fraud -- the people who are supposed to run this program. Insurance people would be put in jail if they ran their program like social security because there are no real assets there. It’s all in government debt. So that means some future taxpayer has to pay for every single penny that goes out -- every single penny that goes out comes from some current taxpayer. Q: I apologize for the digression but I love it when the good guys use the same kind of procedural finesses that the masters use to control us. The primary reason I wanted to talk to you was to discuss the International Criminal Court. Please explain to our readers just how bad this would be. A: It could be a disaster. It could mean that once this is institutionalized that someday down the line -- maybe in the next generation -- we would have one court. And they would be a world court. Already we know that the World Trade Organization preempts state law and federal law and we have to abide by it -- with environmental things and labor -- and that’s why sometimes the left comes in and joins us. Q: There have been two or three times in my career where I have gone overboard on some issue and with NAFTA and GATT I admit to having gone totally ballistic. In both cases -- but NAFTA is even worse because you have executive committees meeting in secret; you don’t even know who they are, they make a decision but you may not know what it is, but you can’t litigate it and you can’t go to congress and legislate against it and with the WTO at least they are out in the open with the bad stuff -- but the whole concept that someone somewhere else can do something and we don’t have the constitutionally guaranteed protections is an abomination. A: This is the whole principle. The principle is established there that the so-called free traders in Washington strongly endorse this. Now this is going over into the criminal areas. Who know what? There will be a U.N. tax, a U.N. ban on owning weapons and all kinds of things that may come up that our American citizens can be called in court -- which means that if there is a riot in some city, they say that’s genocide, so therefore they are going to have the U.N. Army come in and arrest these people -- this is what it could come to. I just don’t think it’s quite that bad today or tomorrow, but I think the principles are there and the standards are there for that to happen some day. If it is established and sitting there and you have certain circumstances and conditions and a different president, who knows what could happen. At least this president is saying he doesn’t want to have anything to do with the International Criminal Court. But at the same time, we don’t know that he’s going to express to the world that he’s going to rescind the signature that Clinton put on the ICC treaty. Q: Those of us who care about liberty and freedom and are constitutional absolutists end up fighting all these skirmishes with various congressional types over various challenges to our freedom and liberty but the growing conventional wisdom is what is really going to bite us in the butt isn’t what you and colleagues talk about but rather through treaties. Isn’t this International Criminal Court a classic example of how that can happen? A: I think so. I think they are systematically undermining the concept of nations. In a way, it is very similar to the way it happened in our history from the very beginning of our country how they systematically undermined the principle of an individual state. There were the dramatic changes that occurred during the Civil War then of course with the grandiose social schemes of Roosevelt so every year... Q: Well your colleagues may not know it but we do still have the 10th Amendment. A: Yeah, but they know it and they don’t care about it and they don’t follow it. So they reinterpret that -- and they don’t want to be reminded about it -- but, of course, if they did it, I don’t think I’d be voting by myself so often. I look at the 10th Amendment very seriously and my oath of office. Q: Do you ever pause coming out of the cloak room sometimes and wonder "Gee, wouldn’t it be cool if the guy sitting next to me was Louis McFadden or Charles Lindbergh’s dad or someone like that?" A: I think it would really be great and I’m always looking for them, and I do get some help on occasion. It’s just that it’s not consistent across the board. It will be hit and miss and they don’t have a sound principled philosophy. If you get to and you explain it to them then, "Oh yeah that makes sense." Then one or two or three will vote with me. But the next day they say it will be impractical for their district or they’ll say "I don’t understand it that way. This is necessary." Or something like that. Q: Let me ask you this because it’s basic and a pet peeve of mine. You and your colleagues all swear an oath "to preserve and protect the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic." That oath means something. How can a congressman twenty seconds after he puts his hand down and removes his hand from the bible, set about to introduce, author and lobby for legislation that is specifically designed to undermine, abrogate or trash the very document they have just sworn to “preserve and protect”? A: I guess they buy into this argument that we live in a different age and a different time. Q: They just took the oath twenty seconds ago for crying out loud! A: I know they take the oath and they rationalize -- another argument I hear is, "Well, yeah, I tend to agree with you but that means you’re just voting your own philosophy and you’re overly rigid and we have to vote our district." Which means, "We have to vote the money that put us here. We can’t be overly rigid with our personal views -- like we believe in the Constitution." Q: This isn’t a case of being overly rigid. Frankly if you were really to start picking nits here, if one of your colleagues were to violate his oath of office wouldn’t they technically be at least guilty of perjury or fraud if not treason? A: Well they would be but it’s not likely to end up in court. But you’re right! You’re technically right. They're immoral and I think it’s unconstitutional and it’s illegal -- of course, sometimes it’s legal because laws get passed but it certainly isn’t constitutional. I believe strongly that we should do what we say when promised. We should have a moral code. But it’s very important as a legislator that you believe in the rule of law because there are certainly things in the Constitution I could improve upon but ... Q: Yeah, but the problem is the law they believe in is the "Golden Rule: The guy with the gold makes the rules." A: Yeah that’s it. But they don’t wait and say, "We should change the law" -- so, once you say, "Well we should allow the president to wage war because we live in difficult times and he needs to be able to wage war ...” Q: Or, more realistically, because "We don’t want to make the decision and have to take the heat for it."? A: Or, if you do it once, you can do it anytime. Once you do it it’s sort of like taking your first drink. You’re right -- it does blow my mind to think how much the Congress gives up: how much authority to the President, to the Executive branch and to the Judicial branch -- and they just seem to go out of their way to give more authority to the Executive branch. *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. 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