History records countless examples of currency debasement, i.e., the steady reduction in a money's precious metal content or "backing" (principally gold or silver), followed in modern times by the introduction of fiat (unbacked) paper money, which then depreciates as governments print more and more of it to buy votes, run budget deficits, and spend like tomorrow doesn't matter.

It's a sad story that dates back at least as far as the prophet Isaiah, who condemned his ancient Israelite compatriots for turning their silver coinage into "dross." (See Isaiah 1:22.)

The dollar was "as good as gold" when Woodrow Wilson commenced America's monetary deterioration in 1913. In December of that year, he signed into law the Federal Reserve Act, which reduced the paper dollar's "gold cover" to 40 percent. It also created a central bank that would go on to cause the Great Depression and a string of recessions as it steadily inflated away at least 90 percent of the dollar's 1913 value.

In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt ordered American citizens to turn over their monetary gold to the government or face fines and imprisonment. Under Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, the silver content of the country's coinage was removed. Then in 1971, Richard Nixon ended the last, tenuous link between the currency and a precious metal by refusing to honor foreign claims on the dollar in gold.

No American president since William McKinley did anything to reverse this debauchery. Ronald Reagan was perhaps the only one to at least raise the issue—he even created a commission to explore the options for restoring a gold standard—but nothing ever came of it. The last time the federal government affirmed sound money was with enactment of the Gold Standard Act of 1900 or, even more dramatically, with the formal end of Civil War paper money inflation in 1875.