A moderately sympathetic story about Rand Paul, who is running as the anti-establishment candidate in Kentucky. My bias, such that I have, is to look positively upon Paul’s run for Senate, mostly because I know that when I agree with a Paul they’ll actually stick to the stance they’re taking because they actually believe deeply in the position as a matter of principle. That being said, unlike Ron Paul his son has to cater to the needs of a whole state, so he’s trimming his sails appropriately in regards to his libertarianism. I don’t know if Rand Paul will be able to manage the trick of balancing the pragmatism needed to be a bearer of a major party nomination with the ideological purity of libertarianism. Last I checked Kentucky was one of those states which was on the socially conservative side, but fiscally moderate (like West Virginia). This might explain the persistence of high Democratic registration despite the state’s bias toward Republicans nationally; local politics is a matter of disbursement of monies, something Democrats have no philosophical issues with.
Note: Last week Sarah Palin endorsed Rand Paul. Of course, she also endorsed John McCain, who is not much of a libertarian as far as his Republicanism goes. Though I think the second endorsement was a matter of personal courtesy due to their shared history.
Rand Paul is going to have a hard time in Kentucky. His comments comparing the U.S. military to Hitler will no doubt come out if he hangs in the race very long. His views (closing Guantanamo; releasing captured Jihadists back to their home country) will not sit well with Republicans. Unlike his father he seems to genuinely want to reach the mainstream GOP. His small-government views will be well-received, and I suspect this has something to do with Palin’s endorsement (talk about “goin’ rogue’).
All of this depends, of course, on Rand Paul not being assassinated by men in black helicopters under orders from the Mossad. Which happens every day, doncha know?
My first reaction was, did Ron Paul name his kid after Ayn Rand? Really? But then it turns out Rand is just his nickname and his real name is the more reasonable Randal Howard.
One of the interesting conundrums for people like Paul is that they really need to be in a third party but if they run on third party tickets they get 3% of the vote. I don’t know what chances Paul has in Kentucky but the GOP treads dangerous ground when they align themselves with some of the more “out there” paleo-libertarian types. I mean whatever you think of the likes of Rockwell or Hoppe, their views are fringe enough to make Barney Frank look as American as Apple Pie and that unsurprisingly doesn’t play well in elections.
@Don Kenner
There’s a news article on Paul’s website, dated last November, in which he’s quoted as saying he wants to keep Gitmo open: http://www.randpaul2010.com. Did he change between now and then?
http://www.randpaul2010.com/issues/ has a pretty explicit statement of views on various matters.
I’ve been trying to find out information regarding Rand Paul’s views on the war in Iraq, but haven’t really been able to find out much. His official website’s section on National Defense isn’t very helpful either. It mentions nothing about Iraq, Afghanistan, or Iran, instead just containing some vague statements, as well as a few details that libertarians will find disturbing:
“I propose a moratorium on Visas from about ten rogue nations or anybody that has traveled to those nations. I would keep this in place until our government proves they can manage intelligently our Visa process.”
So this “libertarian” thinks that simply traveling to a “rogue nation” means you should not be able to travel to the United States. Note he says “about ten rogue nations” without even naming them. The “about ten” is probably the stupidest part – he doesn’t even know how many rogue nation there are. Cuba, North Korea, and Iran could be considered rogue nations, but what are the seven or so other countries? Also, many countries have normal diplomatic relations with Iran and Cuba so people from Europe and elsewhere travel to those countries for vacation, research, and to visit relatives.
Rand Paul is a joke. He is trying to out-neocon the neocons. I can’t believe the libertarians over at LewRockwell.com are cheering this guy on.
Paul certainly isn’t libertarian in regard to abortion. From his website: “I will always vote for any and all legislation that will lead us in the direction of ending abortion. I believe in a Human Life Amendment and a Life at Conception Act as federal solutions to the abortion issue…I would support legislation, a Sanctity of Life amendment, establishing the principle that life begins at conception. This would define life at conception as law, as a scientific statement.”
In the larger statement at his website, Paul doesn’t make any exception for abortion to save the life of the mother, or abortions of badly damaged fetuses. Nor an exception for rape or incest.
@Susan
Rand’s father, Ron Paul, is also “pro-life”.
@kurt9
I know. I wonder if some people confuse the two. I think Ron had different ideas about our overseas involvements than Rand appears to be espousing on his website.
lots of paleolibertarians think that abortion violates the non-aggression principle. here’s the libertarians for life site:
http://www.l4l.org/
last i checked the founder of this group was an atheist.
@David Hume
Interesting. Libertarians for Life was an outgrowth of the original Libertarian Party, it seems, in direct response to the abortion issue.
If the Kentucky trends socially conservative, then taking a strong stance against abortion may well benefit Rand. It wouldn’t have worked for Scott Brown.
I wonder to what extent Palin’s support for Paul is based on his anti-abortion stance. (I’m aware that they appear to agree on everything else, as well.) I read an article about the rally for Rick Perry she attended, and apparently Perry’s anti-abortion stance was a big factor there as well.
@David Hume
I know about this. Even though I am pro-choice, I have actually argued this position myself.
If you want to get into debates about when life actually begins, I would say the scientific criteria would be when the CNS (central nervous system) first forms. This is usually around 40 days following conception. There is no question that the brain is the seat of human consciousness. No brain, no consciousness. To me, this is the most objective definition of when life begins.
Now that we can make both eggs and sperm from stem-cells, sometimes I think about resolving the whole abortion debate by making a genetically engineered sterilization virus and infecting everyone with it. Then everyone can have all the free sex they want and when they want to have a kid, they go to a clinic and have “it done for them”. This would actually solve a lot of social problems. For one, it would not be possible to get pregnant by accident. You would not have the problem of people ending up with kids who did not want them. Secondly, it would make people get their personal and financial ducks lined up in order before they had a kid. This would make having kids more a “future time oriented” activity than the random life event it is today. This would be immensely beneficial to society as a whole.
Fabrication of such a sterilization vector would actually be fairly easy. For one, such things have already been developed for pests (rodents and what not) that create problems for farmers and ranchers. So, it would only be a matter of making the human equivalent of one of these. Secondly, because it does not kill people, it would propagate more easily (bugs that don’t kill the host transmit more easily than those that do). Thirdly, human reproduction is an amazingly complex process, in terms of molecular biology. It presents lots of “therapeutic” targets for the vector to be designed for.
Good luck Rand. Not only are a lot of Republicans going to get elected in 2010, but a lot of them are going to be true conservatives. The tea party movement: the bucking of establishment, careerist Republicans in favor of true believers, is going to be a good thing. A lot of the reason why the GOP lost in 2006 is because the congressmen got too arrogant, caring more about keeping their on-the-job perks than doing anything constructive (the other reason was that people got wobbly on Iraq). The second Bush term was almost a complete waste. The only things conservatives got out of it was The Surge and two good justices, and we almost got railroaded with amnesty.
A year ago, people like Rand Paul and Marco Rubio would have been long shots. Now they have real chances of winning primaries. If Rand Paul can uphold ideas of economic liberty, and not fall into the trap of isolationism like many libertarians, he could win.
Ron Paul is getting challenged by some Tea Party people, or so they say here: http://washingtonindependent.com/76049/the-tea-party-goes-after-ron-paul
Thanks, Susan. I hadn’t read Rand Paul’s (current?) position on Guantanamo. I think he must have changed, unless he was misquoted originally. Both he and his father have a tendency to speak a bit off the cuff, as they say.
As you say, I doubt his anti-abortion views will hurt him in Kentucky. If he did use the non-aggression principle to support his view on abortion, it would at least introduce something different to the argument. A welcome respite from the “holocaust against the unborn” vs “a war against women” debate that so dominates this issue.
So this “libertarian” thinks that simply traveling to a “rogue nation” means you should not be able to travel to the United States.
For about 99.99something percent of travelers from places like the Middle East, that would make perfect sense. You can always write in exceptions for diplomats, businessmen and others. It certainly makes more sense than having 70-year-old blue hairs strip every time they catch a flight to Poughkipsee to visit their grandkids.
Palin is either delusional, a simpleton, or just breathtakingly cynical. How do you endorse characters like Paul, McCain and Perry unless you either have no idea what their views or you just don’t care and you’re currying favor with a number of ideological constituencies.
@kurt9 Kurt have you the book Brave New World? It describes a future where humans reproduce in a very similar way to your idea, and shows why this may not be such a good idea.
@Polichinello
Palin appears to have a great deal, ideologically speaking, in common with Rick Perry and Rand Paul. I agree with Razib that her endorsement of McCain was a professional courtesy. He brought her onto the national stage; she can’t turn around and kick him in the teeth.
There’s a pretty big gap between Perry and Paul, too.
Debra Medina has A LOT more in common with the Pauls than Perry.
A quick glance at the issues sections of Paul’s and Perry’s websites suggests that the two are on the same page vis-a-vis border security/amnesty, abortion, health care, and fiscal conservatism. I couldn’t say which of the four of these has the strongest appeal for Palin.
If Obama’s domestic agenda gets shutdown, like I think it will, and he is no longer able to move any legislation at all, or if we have a republican congress, I am perfectly content with Obama being re-elected in ’12.
What you people have to realize is that McCain is as liberal as any democrat on economic policy. He was even more of a believer in the global warming scam than either Obama or Hillary Clinton. He also wanted some form of national socialist health care as well. The reason why we are lucky to have Obama as president rather than McCain is that McCain would have been more effective at moving legislation through congress than Obama and we would probably have some form of national socialist health care along with climate change legislation.
McCain as president would have been a far worse disaster than Obama.
See, the thing is that all three candidates in ’08 (McCain, Clinton, and Obama) were liberal with regards to economic policy and the role of government in society. So, the choice was to vote for the candidate that would be least likely to move legislation. This is why voted for and urged all of my friends to vote for Obama.
I think there is a certain amount of delusion among many republicans and other right-leaning people. There have been 6 GOP presidents since FDR. 5 of them (Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Bush I, and Bush II) have been liberals with regards to economic policy. Only 1, Reagan, has been an economic conservative. This is not a good track record. This suggests that it is delusional to believe that economic conservative policies will automatically result from having a republican president.
If we are to have an economic liberal in the white house, I for one would prefer that they be a democrat, as long as there are enough economic conservatives in one house of congress to prevent them from passing any damaging legislation. If the GOP grabs a majority in one house of congress (and the other being very close), I think we are perfectly fine with Obama in the white house for a second term. He is essentially Carter II. This is good because it means he can’t do anything and that’s precisely how we want it.
The other reason why we are better off with a democrat in the white house is due to the nature of the GOP. When in power, the GOP tends to be more effective at moving legislation than the democrats. This is because the GOP traditionally has better party discipline than the democrats. However, the GOP, like the democrats, is a “big tent” party that is comprised of political factions with agendas not limited to economic conservatism. This guarantees that any candidate that gets selected to run as president is unlikely to be an economic conservative (hence Reagan as the only economic conservative president in living memory). But because the GOP has more party discipline and because GOP candidates tend to be better qualified, in terms of experience, than democrat ones, a GOP president is likely to be more effective at moving legislation through congress than a democrat president. Since, by definition, the GOP is unlikely to be an economic conservative, he or she will likely pass legislation more damaging to the economy and economic freedom than the democrat and, thus, have the same effect as being a democrat anyways. I cite Eisenhower, Nixon and Bush I as examples of this. Then, as a result of the damage, the GOP (economic conservatives and all others) get punished in the next election. I cite ’74, ’92, ’06, and ’08 as examples of this.
So, for all of these reasons, we are better off with a democrat president than a republican one, as long as he or she is unable to move legislation (e.g. the Carter effect).
There is another reason to prefer divided government. One of the delusions of our time is the belief that government can solve problems. Government is bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is incapable of any kind of problem solving. It can only do damage (by restricting and inhibiting the actions of individuals who do want to do things on their own). Since government can only do damage and cannot do anything positive, the best government is the one that governs least. In this day of age, this means one where power is split between the two parties and no legislation can move.
Rand Paul has obviously modified a few of his positions to be a bit more “mainstream GOP” but a Republican should never run the risk of being the candidate in the race that’s softer on national security and law and order. That opens the gap for your centrist Democrats to jump in and lure over independents.
With regards to the electoral feasibility of the Lew Rockwell school of libertarianism, go to LewRockwell.com and you will find articles calling the U.S. Army a force of evil, calling for secession, berating Sarah Palin not for being an idiot but for supporting Israel etc. Paul supporters better hope that Rand isn’t easily linked to such loonies.
With regards to the GOP as a conservative vehicle, there isn’t a better one available, and I’d rather get a guy who does 30% of what I want and 20% of what I hate than a guy who does nothing of what I want and 80% of what I hate. In a deliberative democracy one needs to be acutely aware of the reality that seldom will the population embrace an ideology with such vigor that you can make far-reaching, radical changes even on the back of electoral success. The American system in itself is designed to chip away at any such ambitious agenda anyway. This is true for conservative ideology and its agenda as much as it is true for their liberal equivalents. Outside of more audacious measures transcending the current system, you just have to live with the fact that the best option is most likely merely an acceptable or tolerable option, not one you actually fully embrace.
@Mike H
My point is that the GOP is not a particularly good vehicle for conservatism. Out of 6 GOP presidents, only one of them was conservative. The last two GOP presidents, Bush I and Bush II, were effectively democrats with regards to economic policy. I believe the interests of conservatives (economic conservatives) can be best achieved through divided government, but with the preponderance of Congress being GOP. The best government is one that governs least. This can only be assured through divided government.
Anyways, the GOP is far more effective as an opposition party than it is as a ruling party.
BTW, I am well aware of the loopy views of the Lew Rockwell types. I don’t pay them any attention.
Well, Richard Nixon, Orange County born disspells myth to that OC was really that conservative in the old days. Eisenhower was probably the last President that stood up to Mexico and deported a lot of Mexicans which helped Texas and Cal to become more middle class. Unfortunely, Ronald Reagan gave into business men in Los Angeles, Orange County, and the Central Valley to legalized hispanics which cause a demograhic shift from consertives and libertarians and more to liberal dems snce hispanics have lower income and educational levels which means the state has to support them. As for Ron Paul’s son Kentucky is more lower middle class white and has a higher than average poverty rate similar to Mexicans in Ca than most whites in other states.
The highest income tax bracket in the U.S. during Eisenhower’s presidency was 70%. Also, Americans had to get an “exit” visa to travel internationally during the 50’s. Nixon not only had his wage and price controls, he created the EPA, DEA, and a host of other alphabet agencies. He hired (economically) far-left John Connolly to be his economics adviser, who implemented policies that resulted in 10 years of stagflation. Nixon was arguably more of a statist than either Kennedy or Johnson. Neither of these two men were conservative (economically) at all.
@Taylor
It is not a good idea to mess around with reproductive liberty.
Rand Paul is a sympathetic candidate and seems competent, but I think any endorsement from Palin is a death sentence at the moment. John Yoo’s a perfect example of dumb statements that backfire: http://lawblog.legalmatch.com/2010/02/03/free-speech-academic-freedom-and-people-who-make-studying-difficult/
Am I the only one having Sarah Palin overload? If the GOP puts her up as a candidate, you can kiss conservatism goodbye. In my opinion she does not have the intellectual depth to be taken seriously. I think she’s fine as a party leader, but PLEASE don’t support her to run, and it looks like she’s talking about it.
We need some new blood, someone with brain power. I’m thinking Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, maybe even Scott Brown. Michelle Bachman is very good. Just PLEASE not Sarah.
Count me among the overloaded. The yokel shtick is tiresome, but it seems to have enormous appeal for a lot of people.
We need some new blood, someone with brain power. I’m thinking Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, maybe even Scott Brown. Michelle Bachman is very good.
Oof. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Mike H. wrote:
“With regards to the electoral feasibility of the Lew Rockwell school of libertarianism, go to LewRockwell.com and you will find articles calling the U.S. Army a force of evil, calling for secession, berating Sarah Palin not for being an idiot but for supporting Israel etc. Paul supporters better hope that Rand isn’t easily linked to such loonies.”
I agree 100% with your assessment of the lunatic Rockwell and his odious band of anti-Israel minstrels. But I can’t help but remember Ron Paul’s 15 minutes of fame, when he was on various infotainment shows like John Stewart, as well as the cable news and Sunday morning gab fests. I never once heard anyone ask Ron Paul about his possibly sucking on the crack pipe of the Lew Rockwell Institute for Libertarian Anti-Semitism. I believe it was The New Republic that had to remind us of all the unsavory things previously spewed out of the Paulian orifice.
Will Rand Paul also be able to use 14 of his 15 minutes before the hammer of sanity comes down? My Zionist task-masters want to know.
Ron Paul was cut major slack by a lot of the mainstream media because he was against the Iraq War and pretty openly against Bush. The Ron Paul campaign was really driven by the fact that barely anyone in the country supported Bush at that point (in fact a lot of people even on the vague Right despised him) but if you listened to the “mainstream” GOP candidates you wouldn’t really have known it. So there was a huge pool of disaffected, angry right-leaners and Paul and Huckabee rode that wave, Paul grabbed the younger, less religious, more libertarian group and Huckabee the fundies. Both got fairly positive press in spite of some of their more extravagant views because they weren’t in bed with the Bush/Cheney White House.
Whoa, did somebody say Anti-Semitism? I’d better completely disavow whoever they smeared with this hysterical accusation!
Actually, state taxes were lower under Eisenhower than Reagan since the welfare state had expanded a lot and state governments expanded their spending even thogh federal rates dropped under Reagan. And Reagan as governor of California actually increase taxes, but as President he did better than the others mention except for his immirgation policies which greatly expanded the welfare state in states like California and texas. Case in point in Orange County Ca only 15 percent of students were on the free and reduce lunch program in 1980 and now its 43 percent since about 44 percent of the student body is hispanic and many come from low skilled hispanic immirgant families, thanks to Reagan’s legalizing their parents and grandparents in 1986.
@cynthia.curran
Nevertheless, a 70% income tax rate is quite confiscatory. There is no excuse for this. Also, one had to have an exit visa to travel outside the U.S. This is the reason why Creek and Watson received the noble science prize for the discovery of DNA that Linus Pauling should actually have received. There is no excuse for these either in a free society.
I stand by my previous comments with regards to the most effective approach to defending conservatism (economic conservatism).