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jct74
04-04-2013, 03:33 PM
great read, check it out!


On Rand Paul and the Libertarian–Statist Divide

Why establishment Democrats and Republicans fear Rand Paul

By Michael Ames
April 4, 2013, 1:11 pm

When Rand Paul commandeered the senate floor last month to protest the government’s remote-controlled-death-machine program, he proved that distant political factions have more in common than we’re often led to believe. The antiwar left saw the filibuster as a challenge to the violence and the innocent dead left in the drone program’s wake. The antigovernment right rallied around Paul’s pointed question about whether a hypothetical Hellfire missile might just leave a crater where your neighborhood Starbucks once stood. Rush Limbaugh called him the future. Code Pink activists brought him boxes of chocolates. #StandWithRand was, for a moment, the most popular Twitter topic on the planet.

In this one act of political theater, Paul also accomplished what his father had been unable to do during thirty-seven years in politics: he brought an American Civil Liberties Union position into the Republican Party mainstream. But the stirring tale of Rand Paul, tousle-haired libertarian prince, didn’t last long. Even as Twitter carried on about his #PaulNighter, the adults in Washington came to the bipartisan consensus that the junior senator from Kentucky was out of his depth.

...

What sort of strange creature is this? How did a psychopathic skunk-bird and his crazy salad make so many powerful people feel threatened? The answer is plain: Rand Paul is his father’s son, and regardless of the massive recent shift in public opinion about drones, Washington has not warmed to the Paul family’s fight against federal power. Rand may be the smoother messenger and the more willing to compromise of the two, but as Ron Paul’s biographer Brian Doherty told me, Rand “is living up to his father’s legacy in ways that are so significant . . . it’s surprising how much the Republican Party is rallying behind him.”

...

The left-versus-right paradigm won’t fade overnight, but it is being joined by a new struggle that, on a variety of issues, pits populists who have grown skeptical of government’s ability to solve big problems against confident corporate and state planners. If Rand Paul and the Liberty Movement continue to challenge the Republican establishment on drones, drugs, and defense spending, and if the Democrats blithely carry on as champions of the status quo, this reshuffling can only gather speed. It may be starting on the local and state level, and it may not yet be finding expression in these terms, but the fight between the libertarians and the statists has begun, and it’s coming to an election near you.


read more:
http://harpers.org/blog/2013/04/on-rand-paul-and-the-libertarian-statist-divide/

Christian Liberty
04-04-2013, 07:14 PM
What sort of strange creature is this?

I know, he's a libertarian who opposes pot legalization! That's got to be the strangest creature that has ever existed... Oh wait...

The media is just confused. They've been stuck around neo-progressives* claiming to be "Conservative" for so long that they don't know a real conservative when they see one. And so they slap the label "Libertarian" on even though it makes no sense in Rand Paul's context.

Otherwise this was an amazing article... and I guess I can't really expect the media to know the difference between a (real) conservative and a (real) libertarian.

Here's a hint, conservatives support the constitution as an end-goal and may support more restrictive laws at the local level. Libertarians support the constitution (If they support it) only as a pragmatic means to get to a position of liberty across the board, and do not support laws against victimless crimes at any level.

Other than that bit, awesome article, although I suspect the mainstream GOP has more tricks up its sleeve to kill Rand than some of us might like to think.

Origanalist
04-04-2013, 07:32 PM
I know, he's a libertarian who opposes pot legalization! That's got to be the strangest creature that has ever existed... Oh wait...

The media is just confused. They've been stuck around neo-progressives* claiming to be "Conservative" for so long that they don't know a real conservative when they see one. And so they slap the label "Libertarian" on even though it makes no sense in Rand Paul's context.

Otherwise this was an amazing article... and I guess I can't really expect the media to know the difference between a (real) conservative and a (real) libertarian.

Here's a hint, conservatives support the constitution as an end-goal and may support more restrictive laws at the local level. Libertarians support the constitution (If they support it) only as a pragmatic means to get to a position of liberty across the board, and do not support laws against victimless crimes at any level.

Other than that bit, awesome article, although I suspect the mainstream GOP has more tricks up its sleeve to kill Rand than some of us might like to think.

Oh it's coming. Just wait for the election cycle. The problem is, if he keeps going at the rate he is it's going to be too little too late. Then I guess we will see what he is really made of.

Christian Liberty
04-04-2013, 08:13 PM
Even though I'll criticize him on occasion when I feel its warranted, Rand Paul is absolutely brilliant and is the second best thing to ever come to the GOP after his father. Rand Paul does indeed know how to play the game... I'm honestly not convinced that that is going to be a real, workable strategy for long, but if anybody can do it, Rand can. I wholeheartedly support him for President in 2016. The chance of getting anyone else anywhere close to as good as Rand in 2016 is nil. I'm a bit disappointed in his concessions to interventionists and drug warriors by only going halfway in opposition to their policies, but unless he gets worse on those issues I'm willing to overlook it. He's still miles ahead of the other viable candidates on those issues.

That said, I am absolutely confident that the GOP will not let him win. They simply won't. While I realize that Mitt Romney would have won the GOP even if they didn't cheat, they still did. Do you really think they won't do it again if Rand Paul is ACTUALLY going to be the candidate? Honestly, a Rand that moves close enough to the establishment for them to let him win is probably a Rand that we in the liberty movement would not want to vote for anymore. I'd rather him fight and lose than to become one of them.

Then again, for some reason I can't quite explain, talk radio seems to like Rand, even though most of them (Maybe not Beck, I'm not as sure about him, but certainly Limbaugh and Levin) are neo-conservatives. I don't necessarily see why they like him, but they do. Perhaps the semi-real conservatives and real conservatives will actually be forced into war with the establishment. Who knows, maybe Rand can kill the establishment (I'll settle for this statement being metaphor). I doubt it, but you never know. In any case, its worth a fight. Why not?

Origanalist
04-04-2013, 08:17 PM
I'm waiting for the snakes to turn and bite, and hoping they don't know something I don't.

Christian Liberty
04-04-2013, 08:20 PM
I'm waiting for the snakes to turn and bite, and hoping they don't know something I don't.

Not sure exactly what you mean here. Honestly, I think the people who think Rand has a realistic chance underestimate the establishment. I honestly think that a Santorum or a Romney would endorse Hillary before they'd endorse Rand Paul. Hillary is more philosophically similar to them than Rand, so it really isn't much of a stretch.

jtstellar
04-05-2013, 11:07 AM
Then I guess we will see what he is really made of. .. you still haven't figured that out?