Should money be backed by something?

I always thought it should. I'm not an economist. A book I'm reading by William Still opposes this view. William is also critical of the Fed.

He points to a country in the English Channel called Guernsey. He says they don't back it with anything but just increase the money supply, in relation to the population. He says they're quite prosperous. He takes the position that gold and silver or any commodity could be manipulated and blames the Great Depression on the Fed contracting the money supply.

This is a compelling view, but I get kind of lost when he argues for the US government taking control of the banking. This is contrary to Austrian economics which stands for everything being privatized and having competing currencies. I think at this point in the game (in history) our congress can't really be trusted to take control of anything. This is, in principle, an authoritarian view of banking/money printing.

William Still points a few fallacies in Ron Paul's monatary position which is completely opposite of the view stated above. He says he's also invited Ron Paul for an interview/discussion and RP has not returned his calls. I would really like to see them two talk and hash the issue out. They do agree on one thing, that the Federal Reserve is an unconstitutional private bank with a monopoly. On William's website he does support Ron Paul.

I find both arguments fascinating and it's quite sad our corporate owned media doesn't have more coverage of this most vitale issue to the economy.