During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the party of laissez-faire and free markets—known today as “classical liberals”—often pushed a political program that included the adoption of written constitutions. The old liberals—such as the American revolutionaries and French bourgeois reformers—thought that written constitutions would offer a substantial barrier to abuses of state power.

In 2009, Ron Paul laid out his argument against the Federal Reserve, identifying it as the primary wrongdoer behind the inflationary nightmare that has been maiming the American people’s purchasing power for decades. This is the result of easy money policies that generate boom-bust cycles within the economic order, leading to recessions weeding out unprofitable ventures.