Freedom vs. Security

It's the age old question of government:

Freedom or security?

And Politico's David Mark caught a glimpse of Ron Paul's worldview in the very first question he asked him in the interview that was published today:

Q: With the stock market still in flux and the risk of massive financial failures growing, what’s the worst-case economic scenario you envision over the next couple of years?

A: The worst part could be that this would linger for a decade or more. In fact, a very serious recession or depression is on schedule. You cannot avoid it. Eventually it has to come, but it doesn’t have to end badly. We could take our lumps, save money, pay our bills, restore liberty, and in a year we could have the most booming economy ever. But it would take a complete change in attitude.

If we continue to believe it’s freedom, capitalism and private markets that are the problems, we’re in for very bad times.

And it’s going to be used to further undermine our individual freedoms. We’re already seeing the nationalization of many industries. We’re going to all be a lot less free. I worry more about the loss of liberty and the socializing of our country.

Don't get me wrong though. A complete deregulation would be bad. On the contrary, I firmly believe regulation is necessary. I'd start here:

The Congress shall have Power... To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures (Article I, Section 8)

Yeah. I think that sounds like a perfectly appropriate regulation that should immediately be adopted by the gang of 535. But I suspect that part about "weights and measures" would fly in the face of our unconstitutional fiat money that is destroying the dollar and America as we know it.

As our former Fed Chairman said after retiring:

"Some mechanism has got to be in place that restricts the amount of money which is produced - either a gold standard or currency board or something of that nature - because unless you do that all of history suggests that inflation will take hold with very deleterious effects on economic activity."- Alan Greenspan, October 2007

Tim White