Devoted Ron Paul fans, how many times has this happened to you?

You’re sitting around your high-tech survival bunker that you built in order to ride out the coming race war (also known as “the tin-foil covered basement of your mom’s house”). When you’re not too busy going online to view badly edited YouTube videos about how the Federal Reserve is sapping America’s precious bodily fluids, or spamming online polls and forums to show the sheeple how much support Dr. Paul really has despite the mainstream media only reporting biased polls that show him closer to Duncan Hunter than Rudy Giuliani, or playing World Of Warcraft and musing about how much better our economy would be if it was unfettered by the federal government and instead was run by hot Night Elf chicks, or showing off your “Revolution” shirt down at the local mall, you’re wondering how else you can show the world that you love Ron Paul so, so very much.

Well, up until this week, you could have expressed your Ron Paul love and your dislike of the Federal Reserve at the exact same time by buying “Ron Paul Dollars”.

Those of you who hate freedom and want to fuck our Constitution in the nostrils may be scratching your heads and saying “Ron Paul dollars?! I’m still freaking out about the fact that Richard Nixon’s going to eventually show up on a dollar coin, and now you’re telling me that the U.S. Mint is putting Ron Paul’s face on a dollar? Am I having a stroke?”

Not exactly.

The Ron Paul Dollar was actually created by the folks behind the “alternative currency” known as the Liberty Dollar.

The Liberty Dollar is the brainchild of self-proclaimed “money architect" Bernard von NotHaus, who back in 1998 came up with the idea of creating his own money. Unlike Federal Reserve Notes, von NotHaus’ money would be backed by actual silver and gold, just like the good old days. He then started a website and started selling Liberty Dollars in both coin and paper forms at a rate of $100 in Liberty Dollars for $107 in actual United States money, and offered a discount rate for people willing to pay (in Federal Reserve Notes) to become “Liberty Associates”. He also urged people to start using his new “voluntary private currency” at local merchants, and gave helpful tips on how to convince those merchants to accept Liberty Dollars:

But isn’t that, like, really rather spectacularly illegal?

Well, yes and no. While the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the sole power to “coin Money and regulate the Value thereof”, von NotHaus hedged his bets by never referring to the Liberty Dollars as “coins”. He also attempted to circumnavigate federal counterfeiting law by refusing to say that the Liberty Dollar was “legal tender”.

Of course, he did refer to the Liberty Dollar as “real money” and “currency” on his website, which inspired the U.S. Mint to issue a warning last year that Liberty Dollars were not in fact neither of the above, and that using them as circulating money was a federal crime.

Von NotHaus then sued the U.S. Mint, and started offering to send $20 Liberty Dollars to anyone who donated $20 to cover his legal costs…but only if von NotHaus eventually won the lawsuit.

Then in July of this year, as Ron Paul fever was sweeping the Internet, von NotHaus announced he was issuing special gold, silver and copper Ron Paul Liberty Dollars:

Apparently von NotHaus used the word “honest” once too often, since this week FBI and Secret Service agents followed the scent of irony back to the Liberty Dollar headquarters, located in what I’m sure is quite a lovely strip mall in Evansville, Illinois, and raided it on federal counterfeiting and money laundering charges. The feds also raided the Liberty Dollar production and storage facilities in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho and in addition to seizing the dies used to make the Liberty Dollar coins as well as the gold, silver and platinum that theoretically backed up the value of the paper Liberty Dollars, they seized over two tons of newly-arrived Ron Paul Dollars.

It’s worth pointing out that the Ron Paul campaign isn’t behind the creation of the Ron Paul Dollar. Or as von NotHaus said in his initial press release:

But fear not, faithful Ron Paul supporters! Even though the Ron Paul Dollar may have been stolen from your freedom-loving hands by the evil federales, maybe if you get enough of your fellow Constitution-restoring buddies to sign a petition, Dr. Paul can pay for his campaign ads in Linden Dollars!

With a tip of the tin-foil hat to TinyHobo