Influential Idaho libertarian Ralph Smeed in Texas for cancer treatment Submitted by Dan Popkey on Wed, 07/14/2010 - 9:38am.

Ralph Smeed, a mentor to Gov. Butch Otter and other conservatives and one of the great political characters of his generation, has pancreatic cancer and is being treated in Houston.

Smeed, 88, co-founded the Center for the Study of Market Alternatives in Caldwell in the 1970s. He's spent decades proselytizing about thinkers including 18th-century Scottish economist Adam Smith and 19th-century French economist Frederic Bastiat.

He's most famous for his electronic readerboard in Caldwell, near his FarmCity Agri-Business Park, which features pungent commentary on current events under the heading, "Making Statism Unpopular."

In addition to Otter, Smeed played a leading role in the careers of former U.S. Sen. Steve Symms, R-Idaho, and U.S. Rep. Helen Chenoweth Hage, R-Idaho.

Smeed is being treated at the Burzynski Clinic, which offers alternatives to chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. Smeed was first referred to the MD Andersen Cancer Center by his longtime friend, Ron Paul, the Texas physician, Republican congressman and former Libertarian presidential nominee.

A former columnist at the Idaho Press-Tribune, Smeed's well-known crusty wit was engaged when he spoke with the Statesman on Wednesday: "It's too early to say here at the clinic, but not all the idiots are in the news media -- some of 'em are in medicine."

Smeed reported that Burzynski now prefers to call its treatments "integrative" rather than "alternative."

"Whenever the liberals get in trouble, they change the vocabulary," he said. "By golly, I don't know who invented 'alternative,' but now they're calling it 'integrative.' But we're going to bring alternative back -- we're looking for an alternative to Obama."

Smeed was diagnosed in Idaho after complaining of stomach pain, but choose Texas after consulting with Paul, said Maurice Clements, who co-founded the Center for Market Alternatives with Smeed. Clements and former state Rep. Elizabeth Allan Hodge traveled to Texas with Smeed about 10 days ago, said Clements, who has since returned. Hodge remains with Smeed.

Dr. Stanislaw R. Burzynski discovered peptides and amino acid derivatives in the human body that control cancer, not by destroying cancer cells but by "correcting" them, according to the Cancer Cure Foundation. Smeed is being treated with the substances, called antineoplastons. The treatment has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

"They've had success with pancreatic cancer," Clements said. "Not 100 percent, but pretty good. We're hopeful that this will turn out to be a positive experience."

Allan Hodge is collecting prayers and good wishes for Smeed at elizabethallanhodge@gmail.com.

Read more: http://voices.idahostatesman.com/2010/07/14/idahopolitics/influential_daho_libertarian_ralph_smeed_texas_cancer_treatment#ixzz0vz1TjoTu

   It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men. � Henry L. Mencken, 1926.

   In the United States at the present time, the principal ...increase of State power ...  point to ... the centralization of State authority.... Practically all the sovereign rights and powers of the smaller political units ... have been absorbed by the federal unit.... State power has not only been thus concentrated at Washington, but it has been so far concentrated into the hands of the Executive that the existing regime is a regime of personal government ....  

   The pressure of centralization has tended powerfully to convert every official and every political aspirant in the smaller units into a[n] ... agent of the federal bureaucracy. This presents an interesting parallel with the state of things prevailing in the Roman Empire in the last days of the Flavian dynasty, and afterwards. The rights and practices of local self-government, which were formerly very considerable in the provinces and much more so in the municipalities, were lost by surrender rather than by suppression. The imperial bureaucracy, which up to the second century was comparatively a modest affair, grew rapidly to great size, and local politicians were quick to see the advantage of being on terms with it. They came to Rome with their hats in their hands, as governors, Congressional aspirants and such-like now go to Washington.  � Albert J. Nock , 1935