The New American: Why are you running for vice president on the Constitution Party ticket?

Scott Bradley: My entire life I have been dedicated to the effort to restore limited constitutional government. I did not seek this office, and I was surprised when I was tapped by Darrell [Castle] to be his running mate. This is a wonderful opportunity that has nothing to do with me and everything to do with God and with the marvelous principles of the Constitution with which we’ve been bequeathed. We’ve got to educate the people. I think we’re looking at several generations that have passed now that have no idea about constitutional principles, how our government is supposed to work, what freedom really means, and that kind of thing. Jefferson spoke often about the need for an informed and educated people in order for freedom to work. That’s why education is so important, and I’m grateful that, thanks to this opportunity, I get to talk about the principles of liberty to lots of people, every single day.

TNA: Do you see any likelihood that either of the so-called major parties will ever reorient their platforms toward constitutional, limited government?

Bradley: A lot of people continue to embrace the two big-box parties, but I believe they will never return to sound constitutional principles. I resigned from the GOP in 2006 after being active for decades. I had served in many state GOP positions, but I came to see the GOP as a bait-and-switch program. They usually had a pretty decent platform articulating a lot of key conservative and constitutional positions, but their candidates never abided by it once they got elected. George W. Bush had a GOP Congress for six years, and during that entire time, there was never a peep about ridding the nation of the abominable, horrific practice of abortion. Despite his presidential bully pulpit and a sympathetic Congress, there was no effort to restore constitutional government. Instead, we saw an absolute divergence from sound principles, and this came from both major parties. George Washington, in his Farewell Address, pled with Americans not to embrace party politics, because in a partisan system, party loyalty always takes precedence over principle. When one party is in power, there are no real checks and balances any more, since that party will be able to work its will against all opposition. But I think there’s evidence things are starting to change, that the old system may be coming apart, and the two major parties are becoming irrelevant. You know, that’s how the Republican Party got its start, with the collapse of the Whig Party when it became irrelevant. So I think something like that may be about to happen again.

TNA: What is your position on the War on Terrorism and American military involvement in the Middle East?

Bradley: The War on Terrorism is an enigma. It reminds me of some of the things in Orwell’s writings. The whole war is a fabricated environment. James Madison warned that that a nation constantly at war cannot maintain its liberty. War destroys liberty and creates debt. It’s the most burdensome task a nation can ever undertake. That’s why the Founders did not want the U.S. to follow the pattern of constant warfare in Europe.

I believe the War on Terror is controlled and manipulated by those who stand to gain from it, politically and financially. America has the best enemies money can buy, because we help to create them. Osama bin Laden could easily have been hunted down and dispatched by a highly-trained team — which is, by the way, ultimately what happened. Yet we still spent trillions invading, occupying, destroying, and rebuilding Afghanistan under the pretext of going after bin Laden. And years after his death, we’re still there, with no exit in sight. As for Iraq, it’s now far less stable than it was when Saddam Hussein was in power. He was obviously not a good guy, but we shouldn’t have interfered in Iraq’s internal affairs. Look what it got us.

We should follow the principles of nonintervention embodied in the Peace of Westphalia, when the countries of Europe first agreed to stop interfering in one another’s affairs in the name of religion or whatever. Nonintervention made sense then, and it makes sense now.

TNA: How would you deal with illegal immigration?

Bradley: A nation must maintain its borders, or it won’t last. Again, according to the Westphalian treaty, nations are sovereign, and have a right to defend their borders. As for the constitutional basis, Article 1 Section 8 gives Congress the authority to establish standards for naturalization and also to take steps to repel invasion. We are currently experiencing and invasion of illegal immigrants. And our open-border policies make no sense in the context of the War on Terrorism. If we truly are in a war on terror, and we are unwilling to preserve the integrity of our borders, we will be destabilized. Congress has the constitutional responsibility to make sure immigration is orderly and legal. Welfare state benefits for illegals must be done away with. We seem to be more concerned with South Korea’s border with the north than with our own. Unfortunately, many in Washington seem to be more interested in using amnesty for illegal immigrants to create a voter base that will always support them and the welfare state than they are with protecting our own borders and our own citizens.

TNA: What is your position on so-called same-sex marriage, now the law of the land courtesy of a recent Supreme Court decision?

Bradley: God defined marriage; mankind did not. Blackstone said specifically that God’s law is supreme, and if man’s law violates God’s law, then it must be destroyed. We are in the process of destroying the magnificent, divine institution of the family, and our society is being bamboozled into accepting this.

TNA: Where do you stand on the legalization of drugs, including the use of marijuana for medicinal uses?

Bradley: Our platform is the Constitution. I look at the War on Drugs as another fabricated war. The federal government has no constitutional authority to do anything about drugs other than perhaps interdiction at the border. Our national government actually has a very small constitutional role in crime overall. For the most part, drug issues should be dealt with at the state and local level.

TNA: What is your position on abortion?

Bradley: I am absolutely pro-life. Fifty-eight million of our own unborn have been killed since 1973. This is an ongoing national tragedy that must be stopped.

TNA: Why do you want to abolish the Federal Reserve?

Bradley: The Fed is not a government entity at all, but a private banking consortium. Since 1913 [when the Fed was founded] the dollar has lost 95 percent of its purchasing power. This is because the Fed has the power to create money out of thin air, and they’ve been doing this for over a hundred years — trillions and trillions of dollars. I have a $100 trillion note from Zimbabwe. If we allow the Fed to continue on its present course, our money will soon be just like Zimbabwe’s. The U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to coin money, not print it. The Founders knew all about paper money — they used it to finance the Revolution, and the inflation that resulted almost wiped out our economy at the beginning of our nation’s history. With an institution like the Fed, you have a small number of wealthy, well-connected people who are tapped into the inflationary system, and who profit hugely from it. But for the rest of us, endless inflation means gradual impoverishment and the loss of our standard of living.

TNA: What steps would you take to solve America’s persistent economic malaise?

Bradley: Well first, we need to completely avoid so-called free trade agreements; they are managed trade. Americans have only a small voice in these agreeements. We’ve off-shored our production and weakened ourselves thanks to agreements like NAFTA. We only have a few steel mills left, for example. They’ve all been closed down, and we get our steel from other countries. Second, we need to get rid of the Federal Reserve and go back to honest money. Getting rid of the Fed will cause a lot of short-term economic and financial stress; look what happened when Andrew Jackson shut down Nicholas Biddle’s Second Bank of the United States, which was a central bank. Biddle engineered an economic downturn to put political pressure on Jackson, but eventually, Jackson prevailed and the economy recovered. The same can happen with the Fed. Third, we need to work toward energy independence. We can’t continue to depend on oil from places like the Middle East, especially when we have plenty of it right here. This may seem like tough medicine, but remember that as soon as World War II ended, Congress got rid of most of the wartime economic controls that everyone thought couldn’t be touched because of the instability it would cause. But what happened instead was the postwar economic boom. Something similar would happen to us if we rolled back all the government interference in our economy.

TNA: Where do you see America headed in the next 20 years or so?

Bradley: America is at a crossroads right now. Half the country hates the other half. We’ve got severe economic challenges. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of the era when the Constitution was framed. Back then we had terrible economic problems, foreign enemies who wanted to destroy us, and political instability. But then the Constitution was adopted and America just blossomed. For decades after that, we flourished like no other country ever had before us. The nations of the world were in awe of us — our liberty and our progress.

Since then, unfortunately, we have strayed far from that path. So we have a choice: We can either crumble and abandon those principles that made us great, or we can reinstitute them, and reap the benefits for ourselves and our posterity. Sooner or later we will either tip over or stand up. Our purpose with this campaign is to help the nation stand up again. My hope is that we can restore those principles so that my grandchildren and their grandchildren will live in liberty.

Image: screenshot from YouTube video of Scott Bradley speaking