Having just listened to Ron Paul’s farewell address to the Congress this past week, I had a couple of thoughts I thought I might share here.

It is amazing how powerless truth seems to be when it is not accompanied by appropriate and desperately needed charisma. The TRUTH of Liberty is one thing, but the CHARISMA of Liberty is quite another. In short it is clear that both truth and Charisma are required: “My words are Spirit…”

The importance of the element of charisma is well illustrated in Adolph Hitler. Without truth, but with a lot of charisma he was able to focus the known world of his day on absolute tyranny.

The unique beginning of America is that its founders had both truth and charisma, and they had both together with a willingness to die for the truth. In our own day we are drowning in a sea of media/entertainment, dominated by debauched charisma, and virtually absent of truth.

These are surely thought provoking days. It is a shame when education no longer concerns itself with how to think, but only what to think? :-/ In short we are living in a time and place when education has become an extension of media.

As I thought a little more about this I was reminded of my old friend Phil Crane.

Where integrity in Congress is concerned Phil Crane was Ron Paul’s predecessor. He not only had integrity, but Phil also had Charisma. I got to know Phil quite well back in the 60s and 70s. He wrote the forward for my book, “Inflation: The Ultimate Graven Image,” published in 1982. That book was born out of an insight that came to me in 1974 at a C.M.R.E. (Committee for Monetary Research and Education) meeting in Washington DC. The insight was: “Inflation begins the moment that government calls money something else.”

Phil was the main speaker at that event. He was introduced by Henry Hazlitt, the best known and read conservative of his day. Henry’s little book, “Economics in One Lesson” is still available today, and exposes much of the media talk about the consequences of hurricane Sandy for the foolishness that it is.

As it happened my pocket recorder was running that evening in 1974, and I have since digitized the remarks of both Henry, and Phil. Phil Crane had just gotten the Bill through Congress restoring gold ownership to the American people, and that was pretty much the focus of the evening. The audios of both Phil’s and Henry’s remarks are now available on the Media Page of the blog – found on the top tool bar.  Just scroll down to the 1974 Phil Crane speech, and the Henry Hazlitt Intro.

Bless You Today!

Love!