of any major endorsements or anything like that--it was just that people were starved for the truth. And they believe that I was telling them the truth.

NB: I was there for that Republican primary debate in South Carolina in 2008 where Rudy Giuliani really lit into you on your opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now most Americans seem to agree with you. Do you feel vindicated?

RP: No, it makes me very sad. All they would have had to do was just accept the principal that’s embedded in our Constitution that we go to war only with a declaration of war. So it’s very sad, because all the tragedy and all the spending is for naught, and 65 or 75 percent of the people, depending on the poll you look at, say it’s all a waste. And all you have to do is look at these tragedies: Battle deaths are less now, but there’s 22 suicide attacks a day. This is a consequence of people just not following good common sense, and following the rules. When they were talking about going into Iraq, I had ‘em vote on a declaration of war in the International Affairs Committee, and they highly resented that. Of course nobody voted for that. “No, no, no we have to give the power to the president, let the president decide what to do.” He’s king, you know. That sort of thing. But it’s better late than never to wake up, and maybe we can prevent the next war. Yet at the same time, these same people are saying, when are we going into Syria? When are we going into Iran? So it goes on and on, and it never quits.

NB: Let me ask you about another issue that’s before Congress right now: the immigration reform package. It seems like we’re sort of hopelessly stalled on that. Could you give Congress a grade on how they handled that?

RP: Now, maybe they get a B for effort, but since they’ve accomplished nothing so far, they have to get a grade of failure. I don’t really expect much to come of that debate.

NB: They tried to get conservatives on board by saying, “We’re going to double the border patrol,” which didn’t seem to me like a conservative move in terms of spending. I wonder how it looked to you.

RP: Well, they don’t look at that as spending. They look at it differently when it’s spending for the military industrial complex. I think it’s a big mess. I’ve written a whole chapter on that in the last book I wrote. I don’t think I can summarize that in three sentences. There’s a motivation, a political motivation, to get people to vote a certain way. The welfare state has a lot to do with this. No other government in the world says, “Oh, come into my country, and if you would like to be a citizen, just sign up. And sign up on the welfare.” And yet I’m very libertarian on the issue. I want people to come and go. I thought the work programs in the past have been very, very good. So I think in one way we need more openness. At the same time, I resent barbed wire fences and guns on the border. So it’s a very, very complex issue, and I think the politicians make it much worse with everything that they do.

NB: Who do you like for 2016? 

RP: I haven’t thought much about that. It’s too early—way too early for that.

NB: Let me ask you about one figure in particular, another Texan—U.S. Senator Ted Cruz. Some libertarians applaud his stance, for example, on drones. But other people have said, you know, what Ted Cruz does is he puts his finger in the air, identifies issues he thinks are hot right now, and he gets close to them. They question his sincerity, I guess, for want of a better word.

RP: I don’t think I know him well enough to interpret what his motivations are or what’s inside his soul. So I don’t think I could add very much to that.

NB: As you’re leaving the stage, not altogether, but as an elected official, can you see anybody that might be there to sort of pick up your mantle in Congress? 

RP: There are several, but that’s not the way I expect things to improve in this country. We have to reverse things by reaching out to a whole generation of individuals, to educate them as to Austrian free-market economics, about printing paper money and thinking it’s wealth. Somebody has to wake up one day and say, “Well, that doesn’t make any sense.” That doesn’t make any sense, maintaining an empire. So I think the answer to this is not political. It’s education. This is also the reason I’m very much involved in the educational process and working on a homeschooling project.

NB: You’ve written a new book in which you suggest homeschooling is one solution to problems in public education.

RP: It’s not a book that is designed to just attack, attack, attack on government and local schools, because I happen to be a product of public schools. But nevertheless, the problems are much worse now than ever before. And I just think that it’s wonderful that we still have an option. We’ll have a homeschool curriculum available in the fall. The wonderful thing about homeschooling is that it’ll be very diverse, and that’s why it’s so good. Some will be Christian fundamentalist homeschooling; others will be very secular.Mine’s going to be designed to promote the cause of liberty from a historical viewpoint, an interpretation which we think has gotten buried. As far as foreign policy, we’d try to educate people on the Constitution and why nonintervention is not only good for us, it’s really what the Constitution is all about. There’ll be online teachers.

NB: We’re all wondering who the next Federal Reserve