Rand Paul: “Lady Astor was the first woman to serve in the British Parliament, the British House of Commons. In 1933, she was asked…”

“Lady Astor was the first woman to serve in the British Parliament, the British House of Commons. In 1933, she was asked at a cocktail party: Do you know where Hitler was born? And without missing a beat, she responded: At Versailles. And the point of the response was that harsh reparations from the Treaty of Versailles led to German resentment and the rise of the demagogue Hitler. It had the opposite of the planned effect. The plan was to punish Germany. The plan was to make Germany pay for the war that they had begun, but in the end, it led to the rise of Hitler. I fear many in the Senate, though they are well-intentioned, will repeat the same mistake of meting out punishment without considering the ramifications. If the authors of this bill are successful, they will confiscate Russian sovereign funds and distribute those funds to Ukraine. One could make a good argument for the fairness of making Russia pay for their war of aggression. But first one must consider this currently seized money is an integral part of peace negotiations. Once this money is seized, an important facet of the peace compromise will disappear, and Russia may well be induced to just keep fighting this terrible meat grinder of a war. What a tragedy if, in haste, the result of punishing Russia is to prolong the war. Confiscating Russian sovereign assets is essentially an act of economic war.”