Ron Paul: Palin Can't 'Rein in the Empire'

     Former Republican and Libertarian presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul on September 2 called the Republicans’ vice presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a “good person” but said she would be unable to “rein in the empire.”

     Paul delivered his criticism of the candidate and the government she would aim to reform after delivering a speech at the libertarian “Campaign for Liberty” rally. The event in Minneapolis was designed as an alternative to the Republican National Convention taking place in nearby St. Paul, Minn.

     As for Palin, “she’s a good person but I don’t think she can, uh, rein in the empire,” Paul told the Business & Media Institute (BMI) of the vice president pick Sen. John McCain’s campaign has touted as a “maverick” and “reformer.”

     Paul, an advocate for an isolationist foreign policy, told BMI that Republicans should “follow their hearts, follow their brains” and vote for an idealistic candidate in November.

     “I think politics should always be idealistic,” he said. “I’m involved in politics and I’m an idealist.”

     In his speech, Paul called for a return to “hard money” economics and bashed government institutions like the Federal Reserve.

     “We’ve got a system of government that has been encouraged by a school system – the economics taught in the school system – it’s never a free-market policy of hard money economics. It’s always Keynesian, soft money economics that are wrong.”

     Paul has launched the “Campaign for Liberty” to educate people on his platform that seeks to abolish the Federal Reserve, repeal the Patriot Act and withdraw from foreign entanglements. And economics, he said, needs to be taught with a hard-money approach.

     Paul’s ideas are based on his principles of a strictly limited federal government and an active private market.

     It’s an idea even that could even benefit the environment, he said, suggesting that government policies seeking to protect the environment often end up mismanaging it. In a free-market system, Paul argued, the basic rule that people can make their own life choices as long as they don’t interfere with other people would apply.

     “People have a right to their property, their air and their water,” he said. “Liberty is not license. We don’t have the right to do any harm to our neighbor.”

     “A true revolution will impact not only the Republican Party, but the Democrat Party and the Independent Party,” he said.

     Paul said the message he brought to his audience was one he hoped would revolutionize the way a young generation thinks about the roles of the individual and the roles of the government.