Happy Columbus Day! 515 years ago Christopher Columbus and his crew started the process of Europeanizing the Americas. The Norse had tried it 500 years before, but they lacked firearms and sufficiently devastating diseases to which the natives had no immunity, so they failed. I suppose we could debate the pros and cons of the Europeanization, but instead I'll just note that it happened, whether anyone likes it or not.
The U.S. Presidential campaign, which seems to have already lasted for years and years, is getting kind of interesting. Oh, no - the main Demopublican and Republicrat candidadates are all boring, and all speak in carefully polled sound bites, and who really gives a rat's ass which one gets the nomination anyway? But there is that one...
Ron Paul. Dr. No. He voted against the war in Iraq, back when it mattered, before the invasion. He voted against the USAPATRIOT Act. He voted against every unbalanced budget. He voted against every gun control law. So, what's not to like about him? Hardly anything. Oh, I might not agree with him about abortion - but I don't really have an Official Abortion Position anyway, so I really don't care.
So, I like Ron Paul. I'm going to vote for him in the California Republican primary. I'm no longer a Republican, but we California independents get to choose a party for the purpose of voting in its primary. But do I want him to win? No, I do not. I want him (us) to scare "them," but I don't want him (us) to win. Why? Well...
I have become sadly convinced that the United States has embarked upon an economic course which must end in catastrophe. We run trade and Federal budget deficits in the hundreds of billions of Dollars, every year. Foreigners, especially our "friends" the mainland Chinese, finance these deficits for us, so we can continue to buy the trinkets they make, so their economies can continue growing. On top of that bizarre fact, our money itself is a fiat currency based entirely on debt. Our debts are our assets, and our assets are our debts. And both continue growing at an astounding rate, year after year. And the Chinese, Japanese, Arabs, and assorted other foreigners go on supporting the whole crazy game by providing us with trinkets, automobiles, oil, and God knows what all else, all paid for in these Dollars which don't even exist except as electronic blips representing both debts and assets, and the whole process is enough to make you wonder just how long it can all continue.
The thing is, no one knows how long it can last. The U.S. system of fiat money, fractional reserve banking, and the mixed economy welfare state has been created over the past 74 years and the U.S. population and economy has become totally dependent on it. It would be possible to change U.S. foreign policy and military policy without doing extreme damage to the United States. In fact, a Paulian foreign policy (identical to the Washington-Jefferson foreign policy) would be very beneficial to the United States. But it would not be possible to undo the fiat money, fractional reserve banking, mixed economy welfare state without causing a deflationary Super Depression, far worse than the Great Depression.
If we try to do away with fiat money and go to some sort of gold standard, as advocated by Ron Paul, the result would surely be a deflationary Super Depression. But if we continue down the road we're on, the result will surely be an inflationary Super Depression - a depression marked by both hyper-inflation and a collapse of business, as people lose confidence in the Dollar and revert to barter. Now, the thing to bear in mind is that whoever is in power when this eventually inevitable Super Depression strikes us will take the blame for it. This isn't fair, because the people who really will be responsible for it will be the politicians (and their supporters) who created our fiat money, fractional reserve banking, mixed economy welfare state, dating back at least to the beginning of the New Deal. The people who passed all those nutty laws, and the voters who voted for them precisely because they did vote for all those nutty laws - those are the people who will be responsible for the Super Depression. The poor bedraggled loser politicians who happen to be in office when the Super Depression starts will not be any more responsible than all their predecessors, dating back to 1933. That being the case, I do not want people with libertarian ideas to be stuck with the blame for the Super Depression. I want the people who are the political and intellectual heirs of the New Deal (of both major parties) to take the blame.
So while I certainly do want Ron Paul and his supporters to shake up the political system, I definitely do not want them (us) to win. A Paul Presidency would be a tragedy for the future of freedom in the United States. The damned fool voters would blame libertarianism for the Super Depression instead of the fiat money, fractional reserve banking, mixed economy welfare state that is going to actually cause it.
