Ron Paul vs. the Real ‘Tinfoil Hat’ Crowd

by
Scott
Lazarowitz

Recently
by Scott Lazarowitz: The
Right To Marry



While Ron Paul
will no longer actively campaign in the remaining state primaries,
he will nevertheless continue in the delegate-winning strategy,
and go to the Republican convention. Contrary to State-shilling
media hoaxers and propagandists, Dr. Paul has NOT dropped out of
the race, and those who hope for a future of freedom should vote
in remaining primaries.

But one must
wonder why Ron Paul has not received as many votes as he should
have during this election campaign.

Well, one of
the unfortunate consequences of democracy and especially government’s
seizure of education has been the decline in critical thinking and
common sense in America.

In the mainstream
of America, the people love
the State, and they demonize those who challenge the State’s
authority, legitimacy and policies. It seems that some of those
most maligned are the libertarians, particularly the Austrian economists,
historical revisionists, anarcho-capitalists or market anarchists,
and voluntaryists.

Remarkably,
it is these libertarians whose views are closer to those of the
American Founders than the modern mainstream statists. Yet it is
the libertarians – advocating individual freedom, the non-aggression
principle, private property rights, freedom of trade and voluntary
exchange, and equality under the rule of law – who are dismissed
as “Tinfoil Hat” wearers.

Our society
has become an Orwellian, Bizarro World in which dependence, irresponsibility,
recklessness and aggression are good – and peace, independence,
responsibility and prudence are bad.

Only in Amerika
does advocating independence, responsibility and the rule of law
give one a “Tinfoil Hat” status.

Here, I will
set the record straight, that the opposite of all that is
actually the case, in government spending and monetary policy, and
in foreign policy.

Government
Spending and Monetary Policy

In a recent
debate between
Ron Paul and Paul
Krugman, Ron Paul summarized the differences between him and
Krugman: “(Paul Krugman) believes in big government … and I
believe in very small government. I emphasize personal liberties.
I don’t like a managed economy, whether it’s through central economic
planning or monetary policy, or even Congress doing it.”

There Ron Paul
described the true fiscally conservative and responsible approach
that Krugman in the past declared
to be of the “Tinfoil Hat” crowd.

Krugman
and his fellow Keynesians support increasing government debts and
deficit spending, and believe that more people should be dependent
on the government, such as “the poor,” students and the
elderly. And they advocate greater tax-thefts of the workers and
producers of society to involuntarily finance such dependence and
serfdom.

The Keynesians
and statists continue to fantasize that corporatism, militarism,
tax-thefts, debts and deficit-spending are helpful to Americans.

But when crashing
back down to Earth, we learn that those who are most helped by stimulus,
government social programs and war profiteering are the government
bureaucrats themselves and corporate special interests. (e.g. ObamaCare,
Dodd-Frank,
Solyndra,
body
scanners, etc.)

Can you get
any more “Tinfoil Hat” than the elitist daydreamers wanting
more of such government activism and intrusions?

In reality,
the State
is the true “1%,” as evidenced by the wealthiest districts
of America surrounding
Washington, D.C.

But we must
no longer allow these elitist daydreamers to continue forcing their
delusions onto the rest of us! The people have a right to know the
truth!

Government
deficit-spending and the National Debt force future generations
to have to involuntarily pay for current and past generations’ self-indulgence
and irresponsible spending habits.

Philosophically,
Ron Paul believes that if it’s wrong for your neighbors to take
your earnings from you (that is, to force you to do extra labor
to serve others involuntarily), then it’s just as immoral for government
bureaucrats and their armed police to do that.

No one should
be above the law.

And Ron Paul
understands that when you rely on funding the government through
borrowing, you are creating a moral hazard.

There’s no
“Tinfoil Hat” there – only a sound, rational belief in
protecting the rights of the individual, protecting private property
from theft and intrusion, and a belief that no one should be above
the law.

Another moral
hazard is the printing of money out of nothing. For a government
to just spend money that doesn’t exist, or that has nothing of value
backing it, is extremely irresponsible. It ought to be considered
a crime, as it is equal to actual theft and fraud.

This fiat money
printing causes inflation. It is a sneaky, backdoor way of
government bureaucrats and their “private” banking cartel
associates to get easy money right away to spend – while causing
price inflation of everyday necessities, which makes it more difficult
for those in the lower and middle classes to afford to provide their
daily needs, especially in food and energy.

Through this
backdoor inflation-tax, the Primary Dealer Big Banks are virtually
stealing from the poor and middle class. This is not just
a real moral hazard, but it also should be considered a crime.

So the truth
is, those who advocate these schemes of debts robbing future generations
and fiat-money printing robbing the current population are really
the true “Tinfoil Hat” wearers of our time.

For more on
these issues, see Murray Rothbard in Taking
Money Back and Repudiate
the National Debt, and Hans-Hermann Hoppe in Why
the State Demands Control of Money. (And more information here
[.pdf], here,
here,
here, and here.)

And here is
an important interview
of Ron Paul covering monetary policy, the business cycle, government-stimulated
artificial inflation and bubbles, and the role of government in
private economic matters.

By the way,
unlike clueless Krugman and Bernanke et al., Ron Paul predicted
the housing bubble and economic downturn of 2007-2008, as
did many amongst the Austrian school of economic thought. That
was based on their knowledge of history, and understanding of cause
and effect, as well as the moral hazard that results from excusing
people from personal responsibility and the rule of law.

In economic
matters and monetary policy, Ron Paul wants to bring the government’s
budget back down to only funding that which the Constitution authorizes,
and eliminate the tyrannical IRS (and most of the other dirty three-letter
words in Washington).

Ron Paul also
wants to repeal the Federal
Reserve Act of 1913,
repeal legal
tender laws and allow for competing
currencies.

Unthinkingly,
many people believe that those proposals are of a Tinfoil Hat variety,
whereas it really is the status quo of monetary serfdom that only
real Tinfoil Hatters would support.

Forcing the
entire population to only use the one government-issued, government-debased
currency is very authoritarian and dictatorial, and it violates
the people’s right to freedom of exchange.

People have
a God-given right to choose any medium of exchange they want, and,
unlike the chaos that the current central
planning monetary dictatorship causes, a
natural order would result from a society of monetary freedom.

And regarding
the government’s control over the nation’s banks and the people’s
wealth and savings, why can’t an individual or group who wants to
serve one’s community own and operate a bank? In a society of freedom,
there would be no central government bank (and thus no revolving
door between a “Federal Reserve” and the dreaded private
sector), banks would compete for the people’s business, and the
currently legalized fraud of fractional
reserve banking would not be allowed under the rule of law.

More important,
in such a society of freedom, those bankers who engage in risky
and irresponsible investment and lending practices would be held
accountable and would not be bailed out by taxpayers involuntarily.
Those local banks with the best reputation would attract more customers,
while the irresponsible ones would be forced out of business or
be sent to jail. A system of freedom would also reward consumers
who take responsibility for their own banking choices, too.

As Jacob Hornberger
noted just recently, we need to separate
banking and state.

Only real Tinfoil
Hat wearers would support an authoritarian, top-down central
banking authority and a cartel of government-controlled “private”
banks who can get away with crimes of theft, fraud, and “bailout”
extortion-looting.

Foreign
Policy

On foreign
policy, I still can’t believe the number of people who actually
“boo” Ron Paul’s suggestion that we apply the Golden Rule
to foreign policy.

Now, a lot
of people have this false “Tinfoil Hat” view of Ron Paul
and libertarians in foreign policy mainly out of ignorance of actual
history, as well as lacking skills in critical thinking.

Unfortunately,
too many Americans simply believe the propaganda
that government bureaucrats tell them, as repeated to them by the
State’s
lapdog media stenographers.

Besides ignorance,
a problem with many Americans is their belief in American exceptionalism
– that the U.S. government may trespass on foreign lands with military
bases and occupations against the will and approval of the actual
inhabitants of those lands, but foreign governments may NOT trespass
and occupy OUR lands. This long-ingrained moral relativism has reinforced
many Americans’ narcissistic, communistic self-appointed role as
rulers of the world, as owners of the entire world’s territories.

It is this
attitude of American covetousness that has contributed to so many
people viewing as absurd Ron Paul’s asking how we would like it
if a foreign government invaded our territory and occupied
our lands. The question is not so absurd, when you consider
all the aggressions and provocations committed by the U.S. government
against foreigners.

And when I
refer to most Americans as ignorant, many of them actually don’t
know such facts of history as our government having started a war
against Iraq a first time (even though Iraq was of no
threat to us), in 1991, and intentionally destroyed Iraq’s civilian
water and sewage treatment centers. Those actions, along with the
sanctions and no-fly zones on Iraq, led to the deaths
of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis throughout the 1990s.
And all this led to widespread anti-Americanism throughout the Middle
East.

Prior to that
during the 1950s, on behalf of the British Empire and its covetous
craving for Iran’s
oil, the U.S. government and its CIA staged a coup and overthrew
the Iranian Prime Minister Mosaddegh, and installed the Shah of
Iran for the next 25 years. The U.S. government supported the Shah’s
tyranny, and that led to the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The Iranian
population knew damn well that the U.S. government was the main
supporter of their tyrant leaders.

Just look at
this
description of the Shah’s notorious torture and spy regime,
and how
it compares to America’s current
police state of NDAA, NSA spying, torture regime, the DHS and
the TSA.

Unlike the
Tinfoil Hat wearers, Ron Paul understands that when you go
across the street and provoke your neighbors, trespass on their
property and steal their stuff (and murder their family members),
they will try to retaliate against you.

Dr. Paul wants
to dismantle the Leviathan militarist and police state apparatus
that are turning us into the Soviet Union.

The real
Tinfoil Hat wearers support keeping or even expanding
the current Leviathan nightmare.

Now, do people
really believe that if we close down the foreign U.S. military
bases and bring the troops home, stop initiating wars against others
who were of no threat to us, and shut down the Nazi-like, Soviet-like
police state at home, that we would make ourselves even more vulnerable
to terrorism?

Sorry, the
opposite is true. Our government’s aggressions, intrusions, and
provocations are what really have compromised our security and made
us vulnerable to terrorism.

After all,
during the 1990s Ron Paul actually
foresaw the increased probability of terrorist attacks on our
soil, based on the U.S. government’s provocations overseas.

Only Tinfoil
Hat wearers would think that you can provoke your neighbors but
think they wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) fight back.

The truth is,
the main purpose of post-Cold War militarism and the “terrorism”
charade has been for certain special interests to profit from the
labor and savings of the American workers and producers. (For more
on that, see this, this,
this,
this,
this,
this,
this,
this,
this,
this,
and this.)

Conclusion

While the Ron
Paul campaign will probably be accused of “stealing” Republican
national Convention delegates, it is really the Ron Paul campaign
who are following the rules of primaries and state conventions
in their accumulation of delegates.

But it is the
Romney people who have been committing the shenanigans,
and are the true alleged cheaters
and alleged vote-stealing fraudsters.

Some people
just crave political power and artificial financial
advantages over the people, while Ron Paul wants the opposite:
Freedom!

There is a
reason why so many people are enthusiastic about Ron Paul: Because
they believe in freedom, and Ron Paul is the only candidate who
has said that he wants us all to have our freedom.

The younger
crowd amongst the Ron Paul supporters have a very good understanding
of the dwindling freedom and prosperity we have in America, and
it is they who will have to suffer many, many years in the future
of the kind of Total State-controlled, impoverished society that
the Obama and Romney statists are giving us, and the young people
know it.

But the Tinfoil
Hatters want it all to continue, and at these young people’s expense,
to which the young people reply, “Up your nose with a rubber
hose!”

For those whose
only real familiarity with Ron Paul is from the propagandist mainstream
media and the neocon talk radio blabbermouths, here are some of
Dr. Paul’s own writings and speeches:

Hundreds
of articles by Ron Paul (Three of my favorites: Paper
Money and Tyranny, The
End of Dollar Hegemony and What
Really Divides Us) and Ron
Paul’s many books promoting freedom, peace and free markets

Here are some
of Ron Paul’s books that are available for free online:

And there are
these more recent books:

May
17, 2012

Scott
Lazarowitz [send him
mail] is a commentator and cartoonist, visit his
blog.

Copyright
© 2012 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in
part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

The
Best of Scott Lazarowitz