My son, whose first-ever vote was for Obama, now thinks Ron Paul looks better.

[Douglas Carpenter]

97. I can certainly see how a young person could be mesmerized by Ron Paul

He is fascinating to listen to. He is clearly very right about some issues like some matters of foreign policy – in fact more right than President Obama and the Democratic Party leadership when it comes to acknowledging the futility of an unsustainable global military empire.

Mr. Paul does offer a kind of utopian economic populism. In an era in which both parties have embraced to varying undying faith in globalization and so-called free markets that have produced catastrophic results, Mr. Paul’s optimistc idealism can seem like a breath of fresh air.

But when it comes to the reality of what happens if the country were to actually embrace his economics and his calls for virtually absolute deregulation – that is where he goes completely off the rails. As Mr. Krugman points out in an excellent article mentioned above http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/opinion/gop-monetary-madness.html?_r=1
Mr. Paul’s prescription would completely shrink the money supply and would absolutely guarantee a great depression. Furthermore if we were to actually privatize virtually everything in the public sector as Mr. Paul suggest – and if we were to actually deregulate virtually everything anywhere near the levels Mr. Paul advocates our whole society would truly be ruled by the most extreme form of Social Darwinism. It would truly be a step into the darkness. For the past 30 years this approach has been already tried -albeit in much more moderate forms that what Mr. Paul would want and it has failed miserably. Imagine the consequences of this already failed policy taken to a far greater extreme that what even the right-wing of the Republican Party has already accomplished.