and limited government; I think you’ve seen a resurgence of states’ rights under the Tea Party movement. They’re bringing it to the fore,” he said. “We absolutely welcome the Tea Party movement.” Political watchers, both in Idaho and elsewhere, are accustomed to Republican rhetoric on small government, traditional values and responsibility—both personal and fiscal—but the upswing in bimetallist language is a recent development inspired in large part by Paul himself. “Of course it was illegal to own gold in this country from 1933 to 1977, until the Helms-Paul (Ron Paul) act gave that freedom back to the people,” Williams wrote. “So to say that Ron Paul has had an influence on this movement is an understatement: He helped start it! And, of course, Ron Paul is an advocate of free markets [and] promotes the Austrian School of Economics, which has some great literature on sound money.” Williams’ nod to Paul’s advocacy of “Austrian” economics is key to deciphering much of the present-day Tea’d off mania for hard money. And to understand what Austrianism has to do with current right-wing populism, you have to go back to early April 1947, when a worried group of 36 intellectuals gathered at the snowy Mont Pelerin Resort near Montreux, Switzerland. Eight among them were Nobel Prize winners; others were historians, philosophers and businessmen. They’d been invited to the conference by Austrian-born economist Friedrich von Hayek, a student of Ludwig von Mises—the grandfather of radical free market economics. Though their backgrounds differed, the members of what would come to be called the Mont Pelerin Society shared one overriding concern: Big government policies in the United States and abroad were collectivizing society, politics and economics. Nothing less than Western civilization was at stake. While a high-powered Swiss alpine meeting of brainiacs and businessmen might sound like the beginnings of a Dan Brown novel, the Mont Pelerin Society is still in existence and serves as an international partner of other organizations that follow the laissezfaire principles of the Austrian School. Chief among them in the United States is the Ludwig von Mises Institute, founded in 1982 by Mises disciple Llewelyn Rockwell and the late-professor’s widow. Among the distinguished faculty of the LvMI, based in Auburn, Ala., is one Rep. Ron Paul. The LvMI’s viewpoint was summed up by Mises himself: “Government is essentially the negation of liberty.” A perusal through the LvMI website’s voluminous catalog reveals a consistent worldview that ownership of private property is the central pillar of personal liberty and no person or government is right to take it or threaten it in any way. That message sounds increasingly attractive to people fed up with government intrusion and an economy bloated with bailouts and entitlements. But some contend there’s an ugly side to all this hard currency, antigovernment, states’ rights rhetoric. For starters, many libertarian-minded supporters of Austrian economics—including Hart, in his January address to Tea Partiers— invoke biblical proofs to advance the cause of laissez-faire policies and sound money. Specifically, Hart cites, scriptural passages like WWW. B OISEWEEKLY.C O M
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