I could not help but to see the paradox in Jim McCormick’s article "Paul’s plan needs further scrutiny" (Opinion, Friday). It seems clear before getting halfway through the article that McCormick needs to further examine Rep. Ron Paul’s, R-Texas, plans and the social movement for freedom that the campaign has tapped.
While I cannot respond to the claim that Lyndon LaRouche is supported by brainwashed students, I can speak about the libertarian movement. McCormick seems to premise his comments on the assumption that Paul’s supporters are followers of Paul, but this cannot be further from the truth. Paul’s ideological support stems from the Austrian school of economics pioneered by Carl Menger and carried forward by Ludwig Von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Murry Rothbard, Lew Rockwell, Robert Higgs, Thomas DiLorenzo, Hans-Hermann Hoppe and more. The overarching ideology is a philosophy of individual rights and free markets. Libertarianism is a full, unshaken belief in liberty, and libertarians strive for a free peaceful world where all individuals have the best opportunity to fulfill their dreams.
After extensively studying the ethical and practical justification for state actions, the libertarian finds that state interventions leads to unseen consequences. Taxes are involuntary by their very nature and hold back economic growth. Fiat money necessitates unnecessary government regulation of the money supply that leads to bubbles, malinvestment and the business cycle of boom and busts.
Communities, not government, should take the charge to end social ills. The faulty concept that rests at the heart of government action, which Milton Friedman is quick to point out, is that people can do well with someone else’s money.
The libertarian stance on foreign policy is that empire building is unnecessary and dangerous, and power projection will invite unneeded conflict. Thus, military intervention will jeopardize the U.S.’s position as an honest broker and will invite waves of anti-Americanism, laying the foundation for terrorism rather than attain a movement for freedom.
