The best way to understand how far the U.S. has drifted from its original
design is to listen to Ron Paul. He sounds like Thomas Jefferson would if he
were around, which makes him a flake and a radical to most of today's Republicans
and Democrats. But he strikes a chord with a surprisingly wide range of good
people, from techies who want to be left alone, to college kids who don't want
to support their selfish boomer parents for the next thirty years, to soldiers
appalled by what they're being asked to do.
"Classical liberal" concepts like individual freedom, limited government and
non-interventionism aren't a factor in today's politics because they conflict
with the goals of both the left and right. But post-crash they'll be in the
mix. In the meantime, we've got Ron Paul to keep the pot boiling. Here's an
interview with PBS's Judy Woodruff in 2007.
John Rubino is author of Clean Money: Picking Winners
in the Green Tech Boom (Wiley, December 2008), co-author, with GoldMoney's
James Turk, of The Collapse of the Dollar and How to Profit From It (Doubleday,
January 2008), and author of How to Profit from the Coming Real Estate
Bust (Rodale, 2003). After earning a Finance MBA from New York University,
he spent the 1980s on Wall Street, as a currency trader, equity analyst and
junk bond analyst. During the 1990s he was a featured columnist with TheStreet.com and
a frequent contributor to Individual Investor, Online Investor,
and Consumers Digest, among many other publications. He now writes
for CFA Magazine and edits DollarCollapse.com and GreenStockInvesting.com.