“They claim prosperity but the appearance of economic health is created by war expenditures, waste and extravagance, planned emergencies, and war crises. They have debauched our money by cutting in half the purchasing power of our dollar.”

“We shall always measure our foreign commitments so that they can be borne without endangering the economic health or sound finances of the United States. Stalin said that ‘the moment for the decisive blow’ would be when the free nations were isolated and were in a state of ‘practical bankruptcy.’ We shall not allow ourselves to be isolated and economically strangled, and we shall not let ourselves go bankrupt.”

Not Ron Paul, but the Republican platform of 1952.
Can’t support all of it, obviously, and it’s full of maddening and crazy things (most of which the GOP still supports, apart from the surprising reference to a constitutional Equal Rights Amendment [!]) but it’s still interesting; I wonder if they really meant it when they spoke of “the realization of our aim of a dollar on a fully-convertible gold basis.”

Thanks to Roger McCaffrey.

The Best of Tom Woods