The Senate gave preliminary approval Wednesday to recognize gold and silver as legal tender in the state. But one critic suggested that maybe lawmakers should also consider allowing salt as legal tender, too....
The measure would recognize as legal tender gold and silver coins issued by the federal government — not just their face value, but also their value in gold and silver or to a collector, and exempt sales from personal gains tax. It also would order the state to study whether Utah should establish an alternative form of legal tender, such as one backed by silver and gold....
For a measure that would have would banished its proponents to the lunatic fringe only one generation ago, let alone two generations ago, its passage has been incredibly smooth. It stands as mute evidence to an amazing change to the U.S. political culture since 1985 or so. I'm quite sure Utah will go down in history for this bill.
Ron Paul's 2008 campaign had a lot to do with it, of course, but the underlying times have changed too. Rep. Paul ran for President in 1988 on the Libertarian ticket, and he got only 431,000 votes despite being endorsed by David Letterman and Timothy Leary. Twenty years later, he grabbed the spotlight as the chief alternative candidate for the Republican nomination. Times have turned to the point where it's semi-legitimate to be a libertarian, even in Washington D.C. The Ludwig Von Mises Institute and LewRockwell.com, both of which had a major hand in the libertarian explosion, have a popularity almost unimaginable in the '80s. Sadly, Murray N. Rothbard went to his final rest in 1995.
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