Ron Paul as Hypocrite?

Walter Block
LRC Blog
Thursday, June 21, 2012

The latest unwarranted attack on Ron Paul is that he is a hypocrite: he opposes social security, and yet accepts checks from that organization for his own personal use.

Ron responds, plaintively, that he opposes fiat currency, and yet has some of it in his wallet. He favors the privatization of the post office, and yet mails letters through that system, and accepts mail others have sent him through the US Post Office. He also uses government highways, even though he would like to see this service privately provided. (See my book on that subject, for free, here)

But the story goes deeper than that; far deeper. This is only the beginning of Dr. Paul’s hypocrisy. This evil hypocrite also eats food, despite the fact that the government subsidizes agricultural products. He also wears clothing, ditto. And, sinner that he is, he also lives in a house. But the statists are also busily subsidizing housing, not least by lowering interest rates to unwarranted levels. Does this man’s hypocrisy never end? No. This is only the tip of the iceberg for this scalawag. Why, the man gives lectures to tens of thousands of students at public universities, and private ones, too, that accept government funding.

I could go on and on in this vein, but I think that a mainstream journalist, even of the meanest intelligence as virtually all of them are, can now see where I am going with this. It is impossible to live in the present day U.S. without being involved, in numerous ways, with the state apparatus. Does this mean that we are all precluded from advocating the free enterprise system, private property rights and the marketplace? Evidently it does, at least for some folk. For shame.