Gary North’s Reality Check (Nov. 16, 2012)
On January 7 of this year, I wrote an article on the idealism of younger voters who flocked to Ron Paul’s campaign for the Republican Party’s nomination for President. It is posted here: http://www.garynorth.com/public/8940.cfm. My opinions have not changed. I am convinced that there is a bond between him and voters who are 60 years younger than he is. I can think of no other nationally known American politician in history who has bridged this gap, but with only a minority of hard core voters, ages 30 to 77, in between.
This has something to do with bills that are coming due. The younger voters are expected by the older ones to “pay their fair share.” This means staying in the multiple Ponzi schemes that constitute modern politics all over the West. (http://www.garynorth.com/public/10280.cfm)
The oldsters today expect younger workers passively to pay all of the bills that were run up by politicians in the name of voters who got into these schemes early. But the younger voters will not comply. They can’t. The bills are too large. All Ponzi schemes die. They are actuarial impossibilities. Uncle Sam is really Bernie Madoff, but on the scale of hundreds of trillions of dollars, not a piddly $50 billion.
For now, the politics of guilt keeps younger workers paying into the schemes. Younger voters have the votes to kill off these schemes, but there are two crucial missing factors: (1) personal economic pain sufficient for them to consider cutting off these programs; (2) an understanding of a moral philosophy that justifies this decision to kill the programs.
Ron Paul’s philosophy of non-interventionism at home and abroad is the moral philosophy most suitable to an age-based, non-violent, political revolution. Think of it as this: a revolution of pulling the Ponzi schemes’ plugs.
Note: this is not just an American political scenario. It is universal in the West.
Ron Paul’s influence has already crossed national borders. His foreign policy is clear: “The United States government should leave foreigners alone.” This message appeals to foreigners all across the globe. But this raises a question: “Why does he hold this view?” The answer: the philosophy of non-interventionism. Some foreigners then draw a correct conclusion: “This principle crosses borders.” The philosophy spreads.
Ponzi schemes appeal to older voters, who have paid individual pittances into them and want collective fortunes out of them.
For as long as young people do not look at the economics of Ponzi schemes, they go along with them. But, deficit by deficit, reality intrudes. The systems are going broke. If the government funds them forever, younger voters will go broke. Today in Greece, Spain, and Portugal, the only factor that keeps young voters from being expropriated by these Ponzi schemes is unemployment. Half of them can find no jobs. They have no futures under the present regimes. They are beginning to figure this out.
But they do not know why they are locked out. They have never been taught free market economics. Their teachers in tax-funded schools had no incentive to teach free market economics, for free market economics helps people to understand and identify Ponzi schemes.
The reason why Ron Paul’s message crosses the Atlantic is because of three things: (1) he has identified the Ponzi schemes, (2) he has called them into question morally and statistically, and (3) the Internet.
THE POLITICS OF “NO”
Ron Paul’s politics was always a package deal. It was the politics of “no.” It rested on two assumptions: (1) the principle of non-intervention; (2) the obligation to vote “no” if the proposed legislation was not authorized by the U.S. Constitution. Simple. Direct. Easily understood. Universally ignored.
Ever since 1865, there have been only three elected Washington politicians who held this position: Ron Paul, President Grover Cleveland, and Congressman Howard Buffett (Warren’s father).
The politics of “no” is a self-conscious reversal of all politics. Traditional politics is based on the practice known as logrolling. A politician approaches a colleague. He promises to vote for the colleague’s bill if the colleague will reciprocate. The two bills must be non-controversial in each man’s district. But most bills are. There are thousands of them introduced in every term of Congress. This is the politics of “yes.”
Ron Paul reversed the arrangement. He refused to vote for boondoggles introduced by his colleagues. In return, he never asked them to vote for boondoggles for his district. He never introduced boondoggle legislation for his district. This arrangement had not been heard of ever since Howard Buffett left office in January of 1953.
The politics of “yes” is based on this justification to the folks back home. “I will bring home the loot.” The politics of “no” is based on this justification to the folks back home: “I will keep out the looters.”
The politics of “yes” is the politics of guns in people’s bellies, either to stop them from doing something or to force them to open their wallets. The politics of “no” is the politics of having the government’s agents put their guns back in their holsters.
(To finish the article, click the link.)
I agree with Ron Paul's positions. The problem for me is that his positions are so radically different from what our economy looks like today that I have to wonder what the transition would look like. If he can't provide a very credible, detailed and easily understood presentation on this transition, then what he provides is only a dream. If this presentation exists, I am very interested in seeing it. Help me find it please.
"Infowars is calling on patriots to start a movement to draft Ron Paul as the head of a brand new effort to restore the Republic, restore the bill of rights and opt out of the counterfeit America the banking elite has subverted and fashioned to serve their own interests."
fritz, RP was the only candidate that had a real plan, in dollars and cents, on how to do it. It was on the campaign website for the world to see. http://c3244172.r72.cf0.rackcdn.com/wp-content/up…
I don't think the average Joe Blow, in the street and in the media, has a clue as to how great a man walked among us these past 35 years. They will know, more and more, as time goes on.
I'm in my late 50's and I don't believe my children and grandchildren should "pay their fair share". There is no "fair share" anymore since everything entrusted to the government has been squandered by the Boomer Generation. The % of social security taxes went up in the 80's in order to build up the trust fund for when the Boomers started retiring, but Clinton and the Gingrich-led Congress of 1996 stole what was left in the trust funds to "balance the budget" and pretend there was actually a surplus. I don't expect to get a dime in SS when I retire, which is looking more and more like a pipedream anyway.
All these young people will be the ones to suffer they wont no what the good old days were like All they will no is what we tell them They will be prisoners of the Goverment that will make them work for them and give all there money to the goverment and live where your are told to live eat what your are alowed to have and If you are lucky you might get to see a doctor if you are real sick I truly feel sorry for them I will be gone but they will have to sufer and they are to dumb to realize what is happening to them
I wouldn't say young people are dumb. They know the score. It's our generation the Boomers that let them down. When I hear Boomers wax nostalgic about how much freer and less regulated we were "when I was a kid", they conveniently forget that it's the Boomer generation that has turned America into a tax-riddled, bankrupt police state.
A prophet is never understood in his own time, in his own land.
The kids coming up now are not going to take being shaken down to pay for programs their parents and grandparents put in place, programs they themselves will never benefit from.
They'll revolt.
People who prepared for the eventual demise of the welfare state will be comfortable. Those who did not will work until they die.