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 THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 571, May 23, 2010 "The old order is clearly dying and a bright, raucous, energetic new disorder being born as we watch."
Why Rand Paul's Primary Victory Isn't Fixing Everything
Special to The Libertarian Enterprise Rand Paul just won his primary in Kentucky for the USA Senate. So now he'll get GOP support, presumably, and lots of military contractor money for his campaign. Why would defence contractor companies like Boeing and Lockheed eagerly contribute to his campaign? Because Rand Paul is a jingoistic war monger with very poor policies on civil liberties articulated on his web site. He has conveniently (for him) removed his Afghanistan statements from the list of issues visible on his home page. It is not clear to me how voting for a declaration of war makes him any better on the issue of an unjust war in Afghanistan. His position on Afghanistan is obvious from www.randpaul2010.com/2010/02/rand-responds-to-attacks wherein he says he thinks attacks on civilian population centres, which is what he means by "terrorist bases" should have started sooner. You know, because so many Saudis were on the planes that were involved in the attacks on 11 Sep 2001. Heh. On that same page, Rand says "I do not support eliminating all federal laws or penalties on marijuana." He says some other things that show his strong authoritarian streak. You might want to read it. But if you want to trot out the old tired arguments "he's better than the other guy" and "the perfect is the enemy of the good enough to get by" and so forth, go ahead and eat the shit and die. I could pull up the Youtube commercials for Rand Paul 2010 showing his enthusiasm for lots of marching and flag waving. So he has the greatest enthusiasm for sending young men and women to foreign countries to fight and bleed and die and, you know, kill civilians, go door to door to search their homes for guns, man checkpoints, and do the other things the military is going to do in the USA under a Rand Paul term in office. But I'm sick of militarism. So go find the videos yourself, you care that much. Curiously, what I cannot seem to pull up is any career for Rand in the military itself. Sure he was too young for Vietnam and arguably a bit on the older side for Desert Storm. But he seems to have neglected to serve at all in case Grenada or Lebanon became big clusterfucks like Afghanistan has. So it is all the "exclusive we" with this guy. "We have to go over there and show those bastards" but he, of course, does not have to do any time in uniform. No crawling through ditches for Rand Paul. It is all so tedious. Yet another politician who promises more than he can provide is leading the campaign for "liberty" toward a more authoritarian state. If your philosophy is libertarian in your view and you agree with Rand on the issues of border policy and abortion, then your philosophy really isn't libertarian. kthxbye Similarly, Ken Buck, the campaign for "liberty" poster child in Colorado, isn't going to fix anything. He's an associate of Dick Cheney going back to Iran-Contra, he's a drug war prosecutor, a gun crimes prosecutor, and a war enthusiast. Ron Paul isn't fixing anything by endorsing Lamar Smith and chucking Stephen Schoppe under the bus. Ron did us no favour by endorsing Kay Bailey Hutchison. Ron's positions on abortion and border policy leave much to be desired. But at least he is consistently against both wars and against overseas bases. Nor is Peter Schiff fixing anything by explaining his intricate reasons for wanting to bomb Iran.
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