Wealth & Money Quote by Ron Paul

Ron Paul wraps a foreign-policy manifesto in the language of civic hygiene: Washington’s job is to “protect our liberty,” and everything else is mission creep dressed up as virtue. The line works because it turns constitutional fidelity into a moral alibi for restraint. By pairing “moral and constitutional obligations,” Paul implies that interventionism isn’t just misguided; it’s illegitimate, a betrayal of the founding contract. That’s a powerful move in American politics, where accusations of unconstitutionality carry a whiff of original sin.

“Coddle the world” is the tell. It’s not a neutral critique of strategy; it’s a character attack on the bipartisan foreign-policy class, casting humanitarian or alliance commitments as pampering dependents. The phrasing invites resentment: elites spend American blood and treasure to win applause abroad while ordinary people eat the bill at home. Then he tightens the vise with “no-win wars,” a post-Iraq/Afghanistan shorthand that signals experiential proof. You don’t need a white paper; you have a decade of stalemate and funerals.

The economic coda - “bankruptcy and economic turmoil” - completes Paul’s signature fusion of anti-war politics with hard-money alarm. Wars become not only tragic but fiscally radioactive, feeding debt, inflation anxiety, and a sense that national decline is self-inflicted. The subtext is a broader indictment of empire as a domestic liberty issue: when the state reaches outward, it grows inward, and citizens lose twice - first in rights, then in solvency.