Kevin Patrick for House of Delegates

"In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold [editorial: as during the 1930's to the 1970's in the US].

If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard." --- Ludwig von Mises

Sound money, either backed with gold (or gold and silver, as is my preference) is an insurance against the possible assault of civil liberties, which means taking away economic freedom and confiscating wealth via taxes and inflation. A true free market exists when two things of value are exchanged without force or coercion, voluntarily, and by mutually consenting parties. It is clear that is not how our economy works today.