From the Devil’s Dictionary:

OPTIMISM, n.
          The doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong. It is held with greatest tenacity by those most accustomed to the mischance of falling into adversity, and is most acceptably expounded with the grin that apes a smile. Being a blind faith, it is inaccessible to the light of disproof — an intellectual disorder, yielding to no treatment but death. It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious.

Unfortunately, such optimism is rampant in some libertarian circles (e.g., Lew Rockwell’s site) concerning Ron Paul’s proposed legislation to audit the Federal Reserve (HR 1207, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act).

Now, Ron Paul says that the bill has been gutted:

The bill, with 308 co-sponsors, has been stripped of provisions that would remove Fed exemptions from audits of transactions with foreign central banks, monetary policy deliberations, transactions made under the direction of the Federal Open Market Committee and communications between the Board, the reserve banks and staff, Paul said today.

“There’s nothing left, it’s been gutted,” he said in a telephone interview. “This is not a partisan issue. People all over the country want to know what the Fed is up to, and this legislation was supposed to help them do that.”

Well, you could knock me over with a feather. Did these libertarians really believe that the Fed and its supporters would simply allow their mischief to be exposed without a fight? After all, who owns and runs America? Hint: it’s not the people. No, it’s the Wall Street financial and banking firms who own and run the country to serve their own purposes. With huge amounts of money (trillions of dollars) under potential scrutiny by the congress and the people, the powers that be have begun to squash Ron Paul’s project to audit and then kill the Fed. The easiest place to start is congress. Since many congressCritters have been bought by the big money firms, they are not likely to do anything that really threatens the interests of those firms. They may sign on to a bill, knowing it will be gutted, and then vote for it so they can claim they are looking out for the interests of their constituents. BWAHAHA.

Yet we’re supposed to be optimistic that Ron Paul has achieved something momentous from the fact that his book is high on the best seller lists. Well, a lot of people buy the Bible, Atlas Shrugged, copies of the declaration of independence and the constitution. Yet for some reason, the world is not peaceful or free. Ron Paul even thinks we can and ought to change our society by obeying the constitution. This means rolling back several hundred years of amendments, laws and judicial interpretations. I’m all for it, except I know that it isn’t going to happen. We need to throw everything and every bureaucrat and politician out into the street and start over. I know that isn’t going to happen either, at least not for quite a while.

So, good luck in carrying out a meaningless, redacted audit of the Fed. And wipe those silly smiles off your optimistic faces.