Update: The Daily Bell very kindly cites this post in their analysis of the reaction to Rand Paul (Rand Paul Disappoints):

“In any event, having decided on our topic, we went looking for more information about Rand Paul’s various political positions, only to discover that estimable feedbacker Lila Rajiva had beat us to it. After quoting the Time article (excerpted above) she writes the following on her mindbodypolitic.blog:

Oops. Which is why, gentle readers, it is ever so much better to trade your account, tend your own garden, and forget about politics and politicians, even when they seem to agree with some of your own positions. Politics and the law aren’t going to save us. Which is why I haven’t paid too much attention to the financial reform bull..er..bill that just got through the Senate on Thursday night. (- Rajiva)

Now perhaps we have a smidgen of disagreement with the above statement – though we noticed, as well, that she has softened her perspective slightly with an update via an interview with Rand Paul’s father, Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex). (Anyway, maybe Ms. Rajiva will grant us our point.) From our perspective, politics in the United States can be seen, within limits, as something of an educational venture, no matter what Voltaire wrote about tending to one’s own garden in Candide.

Ron Paul has proven to be an educator for free-market thinking, in our opinion. We hope Rand Paul will prove the same. Rand Paul has not yet traveled around the world that we know of like Candide, but he has taken on some hacks of late (in many senses of the word) and obviously resents it and has fought back. Thus while the Time article is from March, its observations may yet apply (are they accurate?) to the current dialogue in which Rand Paul is engaged.”

And my follow-up post:

“DB –

Thanks very much for the citation. I much appreciate it.

I confess I don’t know what to think about Rand Paul.

With regard to Rand Paul’s statements about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Jacob Hornberger has written a very good defense of the libertarian position on that. The Nazis must march in Skokie and my racist friends and neighbors must be allowed to bar their homes and businesses to me, if the first amendment is to be honored. The CRA is simply an exception to that purist libertarian position, an exception that at the time was correct.

However, my point is this.

If Rand then also says that the Federal government must ban abortion, hasn’t he just proven he’s no libertarian purist? And if he’s no libertarian purist, then his defense of the right to discriminate in private business becomes more suspect, in my eyes.

But even if we set aside all the social issues, which, arguably are overshadowed by our economic situation, what are we to make of his support for the nine-years-and-running Afghanistan war, especially when we take into account his refusal to decriminalize the drug trade?

Does this mean the “War on Drugs,” continues, along with the “War on Terror”?

At a time when fiscal responsibility is paramount, this is unsupportable. How can we cut entitlements (which are no such thing, as people have already paid into them – they are obligations of the government), we must before anything else cut back the funding for the increasingly bloated, corrupt, and out- of-control war machine. That is the minimally libertarian position.

If Rand cannot begin to dismantle the war machine – and perhaps, politically, he cannot, as a libertarian – then we must wait for whoever can.

The issue in 2010 is not slavery. It is debt and war. The two are intimately related, as all Austrians know.

The slaves of today are the citizens of distant countries who are starved and bombed far out of the range of our vision by the neoliberal empire.

To show to the citizenry that this is not “defense” but MURDER is the most important task at hand and it is not a legislative task. It is an intellectual one. We have to deconstruct the “War on Terror” as a propaganda effort. We have to name the names without fear or shame and shine the light unflinchingly on the lies and deceit and theft.

We must simply ignore the entire establishment, reach out to who ever will write truthfully on this, be they in government or out, in the US or anywhere else, be they in business or in entertainment or in the blogosphere, be they on right or left, whether we approve their other positions or not.

The very first thing is truth.
Only then comes liberty.
If we do not expose the truth.
There can be no real liberty.”

Update (May 21 PM):

This video of an Alan Colmes interview of Ron Paul suggests that Rand is indeed a libertarian, at least, according to his dad.  Is Rand Paul just packaging himself as a Paleo-lib/constitutionalist-conservative in order to run a more successful campaign…or?

ORIGINAL POST

Time Magazine on libertarian hopeful Rand Paul, son of libertarian star, Ron Paul:

“His [Rand Paul] success so far has the GOP establishment fighting back. In his ads, Grayson is attempting to paint Paul as a kook whose beliefs are outside the mainstream. Which may explain why on several issues, Paul is edging toward the center: Pure libertarians, he says, believe the market should dictate policy on nearly everything from the environment to health care. Paul has lately said he would not leave abortion to the states, he doesn’t believe in legalizing drugs like marijuana and cocaine, he’d support federal drug laws, he’d vote to support Kentucky’s coal interests and he’d be tough on national security.

“They thought all along that they could call me a libertarian and hang that label around my neck like an albatross, but I’m not a libertarian,” Paul says between Lasik surgeries at his medical office, where his campaign is headquartered, with a few desks crammed between treatment rooms. “Frankly, I’d rather be coming from the right than from the left like Grayson, who not too long ago was a Democrat and Bill Clinton supporter.” (Grayson voted for Clinton in 1992 before switching parties and entering politics in the mid-1990s.)”

Oops.

Which is why, gentle readers, it is ever so much better to trade your account, tend your own garden, and forget about politics and politicians, even when they seem to agree with some of your own positions. Politics and the law aren’t going to save us.

Which is why I haven’t paid too much attention to the financial reform bull..er..bill that just got through the Senate on Thursday night.