To Get Ron Paul's Insanity, You Have To Understand Libertarianism

American Thinker ^ | 12/30/2011 | Don Feder

[SeekAndFind]

To "get" Ron Paul you have to understand libertarianism -- an ism every bit as delusional as Marxism. The National Libertarian Party, which first ran a presidential candidate in 1972, hasn't had many wins -- electing 4 state legislators in as many decades, as well as a planning commissioner here and an alderman there. Ron Paul is its greatest success.

The Texas congressman is far and away the most prominent proponent of what I like to call rightwing utopianism. Libertarianism is to authentic conservatism what Barack Obama is to 19th century liberalism.

Inspired by Ayn Rand (Ron named his son, the future senator, Rand Paul), Libertarianism was an outgrowth of 1960s campus conservatism. Like ideologues of the left, libertarians of the day were on a never-ending quest for ideological purity and the foolish consistency Emerson derided. (They still are.) Unlike traditional conservatives, libertarians came to oppose the Vietnam War and what they called "prohibitionist" drug policies. You must be consistent, libertarians lectured us. If you support economic liberty, then you must support "personal liberty" (legalized abortion, freedom to use soul-destroying drugs) and the libertarian principle applied to foreign policy -- isolationism.

During the Cold War, economist Murray Rothbard (one of the foremost libertarian theorists) once observed that if we lost the rest of the world and the Soviets invaded America, we could always take to the hills and launch a guerrilla war, a la "Red Dawn." Libertarians have never been hampered by reality.

Some libertarians drifted into anarchy, others organized the National Libertarian Party. Ron Paul was the party's 1988 standard-bearer.

I understand libertarians because I was one, from roughly 1968 (when I read "Atlas Shrugged") to 1982. I was a vice chairman of the New York Libertarian Party in the early '70s.

[elhombrelibre]

Feder points out something I've been saying about Run Paul's worldview. It's essentially dumbed down Ayn Randianism, not views she held. It's also an escapist outlook that allows its believers to live outside the difficult choices that must be made in the real world.

[blueunicorn6]

Libertarians - Democrats who don’t want to pay any taxes, but are OK with you paying taxes.

[rellimpank]

—bflr—

[mjp]

Inspired by Ayn Rand (Ron named his son, the future senator, Rand Paul)

Ayn Rand considered evasion of reality as the greatest vice a person could have. Paul evades the fact that Moslims are committed to a policy that will harm the freedom and natural rights of Americans. Islam by nature has the ultimate goal of global Islamic theocracy which is an affront to reason and objectivity. Reason and objectivity which are the things that Ayn Rand most admired.

[raccoonradio]

I've heard in the past that Ayn Rand was not the inspiration for Rand Paul's name. I know we can't always trust Wikipedia but the entry for Rand Paul gives his birth name as "Randal", he went by "Randy" growing up and his wife shortened it to Rand. Who knows.

Years ago I heard "Libertarians are Republicans who want to legalize pot"...

[hinckley buzzard]

Consistency is a virtue until it becomes inconvenient. Then, suddenly, it’s time to quote Emerson.

That is correct. Any principle, carried to its logical extreme, results in absurdity. "Consistency" btw is not a virtue in itself, only a useful principle. It has no moral standing. And as Emerson said when correctly quoted, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

Emerson was right. A man much wiser than I once said, "There are times when it is necessary to rise above principle and do the right thing." He was right too.

[tnlibertarian]

Of course, it follows that no Federal Reserve System would mean no control on the issuance of coinage.

The Federal Reserve was created in 1913. Are you saying there was no control on the issuance of coinage before that?

[hinckley buzzard]

Freedom to use soul-destroying drugs...you mean, like alcohol?

There you go chasing hobgoblins. If beverage alcohol were just discovered, with all its attendant downside risks, do you really think we would say, "Cool let's legalize it and let thirty thousand drivers a year smash their drunken brains out and kill innocent victims as well?"

Do you really?

[A_perfect_lady]

I tend to think that if consistent adherence to a maxim leads one to folly, it may be the maxim that is at fault, not the consistency. Once we decide that consistency is only useful to a point, the argument begins: where is the point? And then you might as well have not had a maxim to start with, once people start consulting their own personal idea of what is “right.”

[nathanbedford]

Liberals walk both sides of the street. On the one hand they want to ultimately control how much sugar you can feed your children and on the other hand they want to justify taxing you because society must treat those children whose illnesses like diabetes are caused by sugar.

They will not say that society has the right not to treat the drug addict who is in need of hospitalization because of his addiction. They will say that he must be treated, humanity requires it. They will even find a court which will rule that the Constitution compels it.

So the liberal sets up an obligation in society to pay welfare, unemployment compensation, Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, and then seeks to limit individual liberty because the costs run out of control.

How much better it would be if the addict were permitted to indulge his addiction at low-cost presumably without the need to hit me over the head take my wallet to buy his fix. How much better it would be if he were sick from overdose to obtain treatment only if he has secured insurance.

If we cannot have both-and it looks like we can have neither- it would be a difficult choice to determine which of the two we would take if we could only have one. The question is, does the corruption and social dislocation costs caused by making drugs illegal exceed the cost of treating uninsured addicts?

Probably.

But if the liberals ultimately succeed in using the uninsured addict as a lever to require universal healthcare supported by universal taxation, that would probably cost more. It is an open question, which one forfeits more of our liberty?

[servantboy777]

I think we should legalize alcohol and maybe setup shops where we could dispense the substance.

We could call it, uh, like, uh...Pubs, no no Ice houses, better yet..bars.

Then we could legally become intoxicated and the government can tax it...yea tax it.

What a bunch of hypocrites. Alcohol is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths over the last couple of decades...and it's legal. After a hard day legislating laws to put someone in jail for marijuana, our politicians pat themselves on the back and agree to meet at the local dispensary to knock back a couple of scotch and sodas.

[JohnKinAK]

The roots of American Libertarianism doesn’t go to the 1960’s............American libertarianism finds its roots in the 1770s. Only a Big Government Statist would try to tie it to 1960s radicals as opposed to the likes of George Washington. Libertarian thought gave us our Constitution, and our Bill of Rights. Big Government Statists are destroying our Constitution. America’s founders well understood that a government’s power can be used to destroy as well as to protect; that when government uses force against its own peaceful citizens, it becomes just another criminal gang. We live in an age where every Government Agency has a highly armed SWAT team at the ready to enforce it’s will.

We currently live in a mobocracy were we argue over which Mob Boss should be elected our Supreme Boss. I no longer have any hope for the Federal Govt, it is so thoroughly corrupt that it is beyond rehabilitation. My hope now lies at the State and Local level, which is the level at which the American Libertarian thought first started back in the 1770s.

[Redleg Duke]

I really admire “Atlas Shrugged”, but in no way am I a libertarian.

[Jukeman]

Not me> That is what Ron Paul is espousing.

[GraceG]

[ Libertarianism is a brand of utopianism and not in accordance with Biblical truths. We are not perfect and as such will never act in ways of perfection. When given the opportunity, usually, one human being will act in a way which will benefit himself the most. And sometimes, it will be in a way which is harmful to another which is why libertarianism is not workable just the same as communism is not workable. ]

I disagree, a lot of the libertarian philosophy is based on the fact that humans cannot be trusted to rule over other humans BECAUSE they are flawed, thus keeping government small and limited in it’s reach is paramount if you want to keep the citizen free of tyranny.

However sometimes Libertarians act like they wanna return to the Articles of Confederation which was very flawed. I think we need to De-centralize a LOT of our government except for the parts defined in the constitution such as National Defense.

One can be a Fiscal Conservative, Social libertarian, and Hawkish on National Defense. But Paul is just off his rocker.

[freespirited]

Ron named his son, the future senator, Rand Paul

I don't think Rand was named for Ayn Rand. His full name is Randall but like a lot of people, he uses a shortened version of his name.

[GraceG]

[ I am a small-l libertarian.

What you describe is exactly why I am not an upper-case L libertarian.

Libertarians are deliberately delusional about national defense.

I don’t know why, but there is no question Libertarians are profoundly naive about the world. ]

The only thing that I agree with on Paul about National Defense is that we should have actually made a formal declaration of war when we went into Afghanistan and Iraq.

Why this wasn’t done in my opinion has a lot to do with the U.N. no doubt. But I agree with Paul that we should have formally declared war.

Yeah the naive thing concerns me, Paul says we cannot trust people in our own countries to rule over us which is correct, but then we can trust some crazy person in another country not to attack us.

Concerning foreign policy I really like the idea a foreign policy where we wait till we get attacked and then use the attack on us as an excuse to decimate the attacking country and annex it after turning it into a bombing range. Consider it a variation of MAD, only in this case it is AAD (Attacker Assured Destruction). There shouldn’t really be “preventative wars” just total defensive wars that end with the other side not existing to even regret attacking us.

[Jukeman]

Me thinks you do agree with me.

[Responsibility2nd]

Then we could legally become intoxicated and the government can tax it...yea tax it.

What a bunch of hypocrites

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I know you are talking about alcohol, but your same argument holds true for dope.

Libertarians (L and l) want to legalize dope so it can be taxed. And with more taxes comes more government.

Libertarians are the biggest hypocrites I know.

[GraceG]

Yes on the big L libertarian, it is best to have certain little L libertarian ideals as part of an ideology but not as the whole fabric of it to do so would be ignoring reality.