It?s a shame that the online version of The Atlantic?s 4 1/2-page profile of Ron Paul crops the photo that takes up a full page in the actual magazine. Web-only readers miss the fact that Paul is pictured with a copy of Mises? Human Action.
Nevertheless, readers are treated to some of the ideas that flow from a close study of Mises? work, and they learn why pundits have assigned Paul such a lofty title in the Tea Party movement:
[I]t?s what has happened since the election that has carried Paul from the fringe of American politics toward the center?or, really, carried the center toward him. Two years of economic trauma have fed a nationwide resentment. The clearest sign of this is the loose affiliation of angry conservatives, disaffected independents, Glenn Beck disciples, strict constitutionalists, and assorted malcontents who gather under the Tea Party banner. This heterodox mass distrusts the political establishment and believes the federal government has grown dangerously large. Some believe that it has usurped powers rightfully reserved for the states, rendering many of its actions illegitimate (the Constitution is the sacred Tea Party text). Above all, Tea Party followers share a profound objection to unchecked spending and expanding credit, as successive administrations and the Federal Reserve have done to the tune of trillions of dollars. This effort to stimulate the economy, they believe, has not only failed to end the recession but made it worse.
To address these grievances, Paul was ready and waiting. He is not the Tea Party?s founder (there isn?t one), or its culturally resonant figure (that?s Sarah Palin), but something more like its brain, its Marx or Madison. He has become its intellectual godfather?and its actual father, in the case of its brightest rising star, his son Rand Paul, Kentucky?s GOP Senate nominee.
