Tucker Carlson writes about Ron Paul for the New Republic
Tucker Carlson accompanied Ron Paul on a campaign swing through Nevada and was surprised by audience reactions.
They stood five deep at the back of the room and listened politely as the candidate spoke. Until Paul got to the part about the Fed. “We need a much better monetary system,” he said, a system based on “sound money, money that’s backed by something. The Constitution gives no authority for a central bank.” The crowd went wild. They hooted and yelled and stomped their feet. Paul stopped speaking for a moment, his words drowned out. Then he continued on about monetary policy.
Wow, I thought. The constitutionality of a central bank is not an issue you see on many lists of voter concerns. (How many pollsters would think to ask about it? How many voters would understand the question?) Yet a room full of non-economists had just responded feverishly when Paul brought it up. Hoping for some context, I went outside and found a Paul staffer.
He didn’t sound surprised when I told him about the speech. “It’s our biggest applause line,” he said.
In fact, his real passion is Austrian economics. More even than the war, Paul despises paper currency, which he considers a hoax, “fiat money.” He can become emotional talking about it.
Everybody knows the gold standard is for cranks. It’s complicated, unwieldy, and basically incompatible with the modern world. Worse, it’s boring. Paul doesn’t care. “It’s been over one hundred years since that issue has been talked about in a presidential election,” he told me with apparent pride.
…For Paul, the original sin in monetary policy took place in 1933, when FDR uncoupled the currency from gold. This removed limits from federal spending, allowing Congress an endless supply of money it could print at will, while leaving citizens vulnerable to the inflation that inevitably resulted.
Tucker Carlson’s article is an excellent profile of Ron Paul, and an overview of the reasons why anybody concerned about the future of the dollar should take notice of his presidential campaign.
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