Rand Paul isn't a libertarian, he just plays one on TV.
The spat Kentucky's junior U.S. senator had with the TSA last week ignited a flurry of news coverage on his supposed refusal of a full pat-down and subsequent confrontation with law enforcement. Paul's spokesperson said he was "detained." The TSA said he was escorted out by law enforcement. In any case, Paul booked another flight and got through security without incident.
The response has been an opportunity for libertarians to score political points, cheerleading Sen. Paul for standing up to that big bad federal government for intruding on his privacy. And the whole debacle will undoubtedly make good stump speech fodder for Ron Paul's campaign against big government regulation.
The most ironic part of this whole story? The fact that Rand Paul was actually on his way to the March For Life, where he was scheduled to speak in favor of big government regulation of women's bodies.
For two men who claim to love personal freedom and libertarian values, it's incredibly hypocritical for those same two men to oppose a woman's right to do what she wants to with her own uterus. Especially for two men who campaigned on getting government out of the lives of private citizens.
Like most others on the left, I admire Ron Paul for his advocacy of tightly regulating the fed, ending the wars and foreign occupations overseas, and ending the war on drugs in America. And on those three issues, Ron Paul is the best candidate, by far.
But as a president, whose only real power is to sign and veto legislation put on his desk by Congress, Ron Paul wouldn't be able to accomplish any of those goals. However, the current Congress would undoubtedly approve of the rest of his platform, including privatization of education, the enabling of state-level extremism, cutting Social Security and Medicare, cutting food and drug inspection, rolling back workers' safety and wage protections, and repealing clean air and water regulations.
Ron and Rand Paul dislike big government regulation that forbids logging companies from destroying national forests, laws that forbid oil companies from drilling in the habitats of protected wildlife, or statutes that keep coal companies from dumping waste in a community drinking water supply. The small government the Paul family fantasizes about is one small enough to be incapable of regulating the private sector when it intrudes in the lives of private citizens. It's a government so small that any corporate accountability would be left up to the people, in the courtrooms. And anyone suing for pollution of drinking water, deadly prescription drugs, tainted food, unsafe working conditions, wage theft or any other wrongdoing would lose every time against corporate giants in battles of attrition, using lawyers paid for with bottomless profits.
Ron and Rand Paul won the hearts of voters with rhetoric about hearkening back to the days of the founding fathers who were guided by the Constitution they had written. But the Paul family and their right-libertarian following would do well to remember that the Constitution written by founding fathers also viewed people as property and didn't allow women the right to vote.
Politicians who claim the libertarian mantle should not only oppose government intervention in Americans' lives, but should also push for policies that protect Americans from private sector oppression. And they should be equipped with enough common sense to know that throwing out the rulebook won't make a habitual rule-breaker suddenly start playing fair.
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You assert as a given that a fetus is not a person. Prove it.
Poor people are oppressed to send their kids to poor performing schools not because of liberty but because of a lack of liberty. Poor people are kicked out of areas of economic opportunity from zoning laws. Zoning laws are certainly not libertarian ideas.
Ron Paul is not for cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Your claim that he is for cutting them is a not true. He has said he would not cut spending to those who rely or will soon rely on these programs.
The thing is, most states already deal with the issues you bring up that Ron Paul wants to cut. The states can deal with those issues much better than the federal government. It is usually the states that feel oppressed with these programs from the federal government, especially in regards to education and Medicare.
Private property is actually one of the very strongest means of protecting the environment. Someone dumps garbage or toxic chemicals on your land, that IS a crime which the government does and should protect you from. The worst logging and bad forrest management has been on public lands. The best maintained forrests are privately owned.
Why do some people have so much trouble understanding these basic facts about libertarianism and free markets? Environmental degradation is a problem of the commons. Privatization has always been the best solution to any tragedy of the commons.
U.S. Press Freedom is Now 47th in the World Published 1 hour ago
Max Fisher for The Atlantic
First off as CIC he can order immediate withdraw of US troops from war zones, and congress cannot stop him. They control the money, and must be consulted before STARTING a war, not to end one.
Second off the president has immense power over congressional acts. It is called a veto. He is the chief law enforcement officer, if he suspects criminal wrongdoing associated with the FED (which is honestly probable given the sums of money involved) he can have it investigated.
As chief law enforcement officer he can decline to prosecute, he can fire and replace prosecutors. In this way he can halt the drug war.
He has the power to pardon persons, even in mass. I imagine a president Paul pardoning essentially all non-violent drug prisoners, and refusing to allow federal prosecutors to bring charges on such matters and ordering the DEA to sit in the corner of their offices and shut up, and investigating the process by which the DEA criminalizes chemical substances, and bringing charges of violation of civil rights under color of law.
The nonsense that Paul in the white house cannot effect massive and rapid change for the better is absurd.
Wake up!!!!
Wrong. As Commander in Chief of the Armed forces, he could bring our troops home from the rest of the bankrupt countries around the world who can no longer afford the blanket of protection we have been providing for the last 70 years.
Just look at the Postal Service. They were doing fine untill a couple years ago when congress (no doubt taking money from private sector influences) passed a regulation that the PS must set aside several decades of employee benifits over the next ten years. (this was enacted after the auto-industry went bankrupt because of employee benifit packages). So now we have a Postal Service which is not only increasing it's prices, but it's severely cutting the quality of it's service, sending more business to the private sector businessmen lining your congressman's pockets.
I wish people would get through their thick skulls that Pro-Lifers don't want to regulate women's bodies, they want to protect innocent life.
Either way, it is not incompatible with a belief in minimum government and the protection of individual rights.