Actor Vince Vaughn will ruffle a lot of Hollywood feathers with a full throated defense of liberty in this Playboy interview where he takes up for federalism, bashes central banks and calls himself a libertarian.
“I like the principles of the Constitution and the republic, which is a form of government built around the law. A republic did very well in Rome until they got a lot of central power and Caesar decided he knew what was best for everyone. That type of government works if you’re looking to start welfare programs, if you’re going to conquer the world and use force a certain way. But even back then, it didn’t work. More and more people went on the dole and others went bankrupt, and businesses couldn’t afford to pay their staff.”
The thoughtful Vaughn speaks about his political awakening thanks to former Presidential candidate and longtime Congressman Ron Paul.
“Ron Paul woke a lot of people up to the fact that government can’t handle everything for you. Once you start playing that game, where does it stop? I like the way it was until 1913 [when the 16th Amendment was ratified, legalizing a federal income tax], when locally you had sales taxes and property taxes. That seems ethical to me, because I can move to a different neighborhood or area if I like the services they provide. To this day, your police department and your fire department are paid for with local taxes, and that makes sense, because you might use those. But the federal government looking into your books to decide what to take from you, that feels wrong.
Trusting the federal government to know what we need and to run things well feels like a bad idea. You see that in the foreign policy of force, where the United States decides to go into another country to make things turn out a certain way. It doesn’t work. It causes more problems. Just look at any of these undeclared wars. You’re suggesting at gunpoint that you’ll decide how things will go. The results haven’t gone well. I’ve been over to Afghanistan and Iraq. I’ve been with the USO. I’ve gone over with movies and done stuff. I care a lot about all the kids and families in those situations. It can’t be easy. But I don’t agree with a foreign policy that says you can send troops places without declaring a war and without having a plan to win the war. I would think you would look at Vietnam and suggest it wasn’t the best-laid plan.
I feel the same way domestically. If you look at America today, there’s a real want to use force for the issues people believe in. You want whatever you believe in to become law. You’re going to make this drug legal and that one illegal. I don’t think that’s the government’s job to decide. I think it’s up to the individual. We’re all different. One kid is going to start drugs at a young age. Another person won’t touch the stuff. Another person will take a puff and go to sleep. We don’t all share the same consistent behavior, and the individual should be innocent until proven guilty. They should be allowed to decide what’s in their interest, what makes sense for them, unless they commit fraud or physical force or take someone’s property.
Unfortunately for supporters of liberty, Vaughn clearly answered the question of whether or not he would ever run for public office:
No. But let’s say I did. I’m going to have a lot of people with a lot of money becoming my friends, aren’t I? Because I can write laws to benefit you. Let’s say you’re a major corporation, and I’m the politician and I can write laws. I can say which race gets a benefit and which doesn’t. That could get me some votes. Or I write laws that help your business and limit other businesses from being able to compete with you because they can’t survive all the new programs I’m putting in place. What is it they can’t afford? The health care act? Okay, I’ll vote for that and they can never reach you. But you have to vote for me.
You have to understand that America today is not capitalistic. The problem is corporatism. The government has too much authority, and it’s dangerous. It stifles productivity and freedom and prosperity and peace. I find most people nowadays are more complacent or accepting that the government can successfully do everything for us. It can’t. It can’t!
After ruling out a run for political office, Vaughn goes on to give liberty lovers a pretty good platform:
The Patriot Act? Let’s get rid of it. Undeclared wars, doing away with personal liberties—let’s understand how that has worked out historically to see that it has led to some horrible things. Once our personal liberties are gone, when an American citizen can be pulled out of his house and detained for six months without a trial, where is our country? Once those rights are gone, how do you get them back? Once the government is allowed to listen to you, how do you get that privacy back?
Vaughn then schools readers about his personal financial strategy which targets many of the same areas Ron Paul was famous for pointing out:
As I get older, more and more of my money goes straight into property. I realized that the value of money inevitably goes down over time; $5,000 today is not worth what it was in 2000. We now have these extreme business cycles that have become part of how our economic system works. It’s because we have a central bank that prints money, and now nobody knows what’s real or not. The whole system is artificially pumped up. So many loans go out, and money’s easy to get, so people grab those loans and start buying stuff. Costs go up because it feels like there’s a lot of money out there, but it’s not real. Eventually the cost of things domestically goes up, so people start buying foreign in bulk. And then they call in their notes because they want their money. Then the banks tighten up, and there’s no money to pay off the extension of loans. How many people do you know, whether they were mortgaged or had two or three properties or were trying to rent, and they can’t pay it? There’s an inevitability in that business cycle that there will be a bottoming out and a lot of people will lose a lot of stuff. God help them.
Hopefully, the Hollywood hit squads will take Vaughn’s lead when it comes to Obama-loving, Tesla-driving liberals:
I’m not against Obama and his policies. I don’t have a problem with him personally or as a cool guy. I just don’t agree with his ideals or his philosophies. I’m not a fan of central power.