Rand Rising

The rise from obscurity of Rand Paul has the media in full frenzy, attempting to understand and explain what it all means. Problem is that there aren't many libertarians in American newsrooms, and any who are there are still in the closet, so you have reporters and pundits trying to explain something they either don't understand or view with hostility. Most of the coverage, not surprisingly, has been simplistic, snide or stupid. But in culling through items to post on LLO's news aggregators, I picked out a few pieces that make worthwhile reading.

There's a little of that liberal media bias, but not too much, in this Time Magazine piece about how the Pauls (Rand and father Ron) are shaking up the political scene. Newsweek offers a surprisingly refreshing take on the subject, by asking whether Rand Paul's ideas are any more wacky or outlandish than the left-wing dogmas that dominate in Washington -- which is a very good question, since we have ample proof that left-wing ideas don't work.

But most recommended is this Politico piece by the Cato Institute's Bob Levy, which not only puts Rand Paul's controversial statements on the Civil Rights Act into context, explaining why his position is more defensible than critics allow, but also offers a nice precis on what libertarianism really is, and isn't, for people who aren't sure.

Here's the section that deals with libertarianism, as a philosophy:

"Of course, the media have used Paul’s forthright if impolitic pronouncement (on the Civil Right Act) as an occasion to disparage his libertarian — that is, classic liberal — philosophy. Not surprisingly, critics either do not understand or willfully distort basic libertarian principles. For starters, libertarians are proponents of limited government. We are not anarchists.

My colleague David Boaz sums it up nicely: “A government is a set of institutions through which we adjudicate our disputes, defend our rights and provide for certain common needs. ... What we want is a limited government that attends to its necessary and proper functions. “Libertarians support limited, constitutional government — limited not just in size but, of far greater importance, in the scope of its powers.”

Ideally, government’s role is to foster an environment in which individuals can pursue happiness in any manner they please — provided they do not impede other individuals’ rights to do the same. Regrettably, government does much more — and much less — than create a congenial civil environment. It burdens transactors with confiscatory taxes, favors politically connected special interests, coerces parties to engage in unwanted transactions, transfers assets and incomes without consent from one party to another and depletes our financial and human resources by undertaking foreign interventions that bear little relation to America’s vital interests. Those are the excesses of government that libertarians struggle to rein in. In addition, and perhaps least understood, a vital aspect of personal liberty is the freedom not to participate. In that regard, libertarianism is the antithesis of collectivism.

Anyone who prefers a social order that sacrifices individual liberty to attain equal outcomes is free to leave my libertarian world and form the collectivist society he favors. But he may not compel me to join. Libertarianism does not foreclose collectivist arrangements as long as participation in those arrangements is voluntary. By contrast, collectivists will not endorse libertarian enclaves within a collectivist system. Just try refusing to support the welfare state. People who believe a deregulated free market leaves us worse off can create a hyper-regulated marketplace, shackled by government to their heart’s content. They would not extend the same opt-out choice to me.

The essence of collectivism is force. The essence of libertarianism is choice."

Don't Smoke the Kristol Meth

Whatever else Republicans do in trying to pull themselves up off the floor after a much-deserved drubbing, they ought to avoid like poison the political counsel of Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol, who would have the GOP abandon what shreds of principle it has left in a pointless quest to regain power.

I say "pointless" because that's what power is without principle -- as the GOP aptly demonstrated in the last 8 years.

Kristol, in two recent New York Times columns, unmasks himself as a non-con rather than a neo-con -- meaning he has nothing in common with conservatives except an empty label. It's the Kristol Republicans who helped sever the party from its traditional moorings, leading directly to the disaster at hand. Cut adrift, party insiders fell victim to every seduction that power can offer, from pork-barrel pigouts to reckless acts of nation-building, with Kristol cheerleading from the peanut gallery. And the party will be dashed on the reef, never to recover, if it doesn't disregard this new siren song.

Several weeks back, ably filling in for regular New York Times Columnist Paul Krugman (meaning that I couldn't tell their columns apart), Kristol argued that Republicans must abandon their slavish belief in free markets and free enterprise if they want to regain power. Wearing Adam Smith neckties is fine for the dweebs that hang out at Heritage Foundation events, Kristol all but said. But these ideas just aren't trendy at the moment -- and they certainly aren't worth losing congressional races over!

Kristol yesterday delivered another broadside -- and another dose of bad political advice -- arguing this time that Republicans no longer can win on the limited government platform. That, too, is passe in Kristol's view. Just as conservatives and libertarians must acknowledge that free markets and free enterprise need to be managed by the wizards in Washington, we must give up on the archaic idea that government should be modest in mission and power. "I can’t help but admire some of my fellow conservatives’ loyalty to the small-government cause," Kristol sneers. "It reminds me of the nobility of Tennyson’s Light Brigade, as it charges into battle: 'Theirs but to do and die.' Maybe it would be better, though, first to reason why."'

Most who ascribe to freedom philosophy already know the "reason why," Bill. We've thought the matter through and decided that political and economic liberty are practically and morally superior to their antipodes, statism and socialism. Kristol's attachment to these ideas is obviously more tenuous, conditioned on whether they help or hinder his party of convenience. I would rather see the Republican Party lose elections than see it lose its soul.

Remove economic and political liberty from the old-line Republican platform, as Kristol advises, and the platform will collapse. What will be left then, except a malleable mish-mash of "position statements" tailored to win congressional races but detached from any over-arching economic, political or moral philosophy. Knee-jerk support for Israel does not a party platform make, contrary to what Kristol and other neocons (oops, that's non-cons from now on!) seem to think.

Republicans don't need to repudiate these timeless ideas; they need to rediscover them, revive them, re-fashion them in a way that works in a modern context. If that takes years, and means they're out of power for a while, so be it. That will give the statists and collectivists the time they need to make an even bigger mess of things -- setting the stage for a revival of popular interest in the limited government virtues our founders espoused.