Saturday, May 14, 2011

Gold Standard and Secession in the News

How times have changed! 

Just a couple years ago, any talk of returning the United States to the gold standard was dismissed and even scoffed at as some kind of crackpot tin-foil-hat theory.  However, having seen the results of allowing the Federal Reserve to print money at will and pay the government's bills in increasingly devalued paper - thus stealing from the citizens and putting us at risk of Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation - the idea of restraining the government suddenly sounds good - even among more mainstream economists.

Also, secession was, until recently, a discredited idea as a means to restore home rule and local control to people.  In this case, we're seeing a left-wing secession movement - which flies in the face of the stereotype that secession is some kind of right-wing code word. 

Hopefully, we're seeing an awakening of Americans from the left and the right who understand that liberty and fiscal responsibility are not things that belong to one side or the other, and that neither the left nor the right should place their cherished freedom in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats.  In these terribly divided times, the things that should unite all Americans are the facts that we want to be left alone, we want to raise our families as we see fit, we do not want people sitting in marbled halls hundreds of miles away telling us how to live, taking our hard-earned money from us, and printing money to systematically destroy the value of that which we work so hard to save. 

Smaller and more responsible government is a better way to go.  Staying out of debt and actually encouraging savings and investment instead of mindless borrowing, printing, and consuming is a better way to go.  And it doesn't matter whether one is a left-winger, right-winger, something in between, or neither!

If you want to see the real-world effect of allowing the Federal Reserve to print paper money, click here.

1 comment:

joel in ga said...

"The Union, next to our liberty, most dear."