{"id":4918,"date":"2010-10-19T08:21:45","date_gmt":"2010-10-19T08:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=4918"},"modified":"2010-10-19T08:22:12","modified_gmt":"2010-10-19T08:22:12","slug":"rand-paul-probably-not-an-atheist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/rand-paul-probably-not-an-atheist\/","title":{"rendered":"Rand Paul is probably not an atheist"},"content":{"rendered":"

In defending his criticisms of Jack Conway’s behavior the liberal columnist Jonathan Chait says the following about Rand Paul<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Is Rand Paul misleading the electorate about his religion? Sure. But he’s not running on a religious platform. It’s Conway who’s making religion an issue. I think an atheist, which is what I’m petty sure Paul is<\/strong>, ought to be able to run for office without having his belief system publicly interrogated.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps Jonathan Chait has some inside information, but it seems that all he’s going on is Paul’s admiration of Ayn Rand<\/a>, whose Objectivist philosophy is necessarily<\/em> atheist. The problem is that Rand Paul is not an Objectivist, and his father is not an Objectivist. The Paul family variant of radical libertarianism probably owes more substantively to Murray Rothbard<\/a> than Ayn Rand. Like Rand Rothbard was a secular Jew, but, unlike Rand he exhibited a philo-religious attitude. In particular toward Roman Catholicism, the faith of his wife. The broader paleolibertarian movement<\/a> which is strongly associated with Rothbard’s followers, in particular Lew Rockwell<\/a>, is not atheistic. On the contrary many paleolibertarians are religious, often Roman Catholic such as Rockwell himself. Paleolibertarianism explicitly supports and values “bourgeois virtues,” of which religion is one, as necessary preconditions for a free market order.<\/p>\n

Jason Zengerle has a more informed take<\/a>:<\/p>\n

What it says is that, unlike so many politicians who cast themselves as outsiders, Paul is the real deal. Time and again throughout his life\u2014first as a student at Baylor; then as a renegade ophthalmologist who tried to secede from the specialty\u2019s leading professional organization in protest of its membership rules; and finally as a Senate candidate who ran against the state\u2019s Republican establishment in the GOP primary\u2014Paul has demonstrated a profound lack of respect for authority and institutions. In this, he\u2019s very different from the typical Republican senator. And if Paul makes it to Washington, it stands to reason that he\u2019ll display a similar attitude toward the powers that be in the Senate Republican caucus, occasionally making Mitch McConnell look like Dean Wormer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note:<\/b> I am aware that Rockwell disavowed the term paleolibertarian in 2007. But it is still a pointer to a real phenomenon of populist right-libertarianism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In defending his criticisms of Jack Conway’s behavior the liberal columnist Jonathan Chait says the following about Rand Paul: Is Rand Paul misleading the electorate about his religion? Sure. But he’s not running on a religious platform. It’s Conway who’s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[459],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4918"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4918"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4921,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4918\/revisions\/4921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}