[media-credit name=’Megan McCormick / The Badger Herald’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]

With less than a week to go before the Wisconsin presidential primary, Texan congressman and Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul made a stop on the University of Wisconsin campus Thursday night, calling for an end to the Afghanistan War as well as an end to the Federal Reserve.

According to a UW Police Department statement, Paul spoke to a crowd of 2,500 supporters at the Memorial Union Terrace. Despite the cooler temperatures, the crowd was enthusiastic chanting “End the Fed” and “President Paul.”

Paul said youth are interested in his campaign because they are going to get a “bad deal.”

“You’re inheriting a mess. You have a big debt to deal with. You have perpetual wars that never seem to end for various reasons. Personal liberty is an issue…and there’s a lot of problems,” Paul said. “But also we’re winning these arguments.”

He said he and his supporters are especially winning on arguments concerning the Federal Reserve. He said the Federal Reserve has been around for 100 years and this is the first time the country has had a serious debate about whether it should exist.

Paul also said the Federal Reserve counterfeits money and the founding fathers only wanted gold and silver as legal tender. He added the constitution does not have a clause establishing a central bank.

He said his supporters are also winning on issues such as getting out of the foreign wars because he said 69 percent of Americans said in a poll they want the military out of Afghanistan. By “fighting wars that are undeclared and make no sense,” Paul said the nation has increased its national debt by $4 trillion. 

“It wouldn’t be too difficult to figure out a solution to this if we just have a daydream for a moment,” Paul said. “What if we only had people in Washington who actually read the constitution and were guided by the constitution”?

Paul said the country has not formally declared war since World War II and if the U.S. had stayed out of other wars it would have a lot more allies and money. He added the military should not be policing the world and he would bring the troops home.

Paul also said the government cannot protect people from themselves and this belief would lead to the government regulating every personal habit. While total freedom leads to misuse, he said a mistake in government is a mistake for everyone while a mistake for an individual leads to individual consequences. He added the government allows people to think whatever they want.

“But somewhere along the way we’ve come up with this idea that we’re allowed to regulate what goes into our souls and into our brains but we’re not allowed to regulate what goes into our body,” Paul said. “I think in a free society you ought to make the decision what goes into your body. I’m so convinced this is a good idea that I would even allow you to drink raw milk if you wanted to.”

UW senior Dan Boehm said he has been a libertarian minded person since high school and he believes Paul is the only Republican presidential nomination candidate who is really working to bring freedom back to the country.

“I support Ron Paul because a) I think his ideas are spot on and b) what he says is what you get,” Boehm said. “He has had the exact same ideas for better or for worse since the beginning of his political career.”

Meg Healy, a UW freshman studying political science, said she is a strong Obama supporter and attended the rally out of curiosity. 

She said she found it interesting Paul focused on specific foreign policy, rather than just on more general political rhetoric.

“I guess I respect his consistency and his convictions behind his policies more than other candidates,” Healy said. “You can definitely tell he speaks what he believes but I disagree with what he says anyway.”