Rand Paul's fake libertarianism

Rand Paul likes to claim that he is a libertarian. He's all for the rights of the in-duh-vid-uals. Protect peoples' rights and let people prosper without interference from big gub'mint! People are smart! They hate anyone trying to tell them what to do. So government? Stay out of it! Fair enough. If that's what you believe, it's a bit socially Darwinistic for my liking, but if you're truly against government, so be it. If you think government shouldn't be sticking its nose in anything and should be small, well, we'd disagree, but I can respect that.

Exxxxxxcept, sometimes he's not for freedom. For instance, while he's supported a bill preventing the feds from prosecuting people for medical marijuana in states where it was legal, he's also played to the social conservatives by claiming he doesn't think marijuana should be legalized. C'mon Rand, either you're for freedom or you're not.

Gay people getting married? If you're for freedom, surely you're in favor of that? Right? Not in the case of Rand Paul. To him it's icky. Doesn't sound very live-and-let-live. That's not the worst of it though. In this case, the hypocrisy goes even deeper. He's willing to allow states to regulate marriage. But that is only because he believes it's the best way to ensure that marriage is defined as one-man-one-woman. So rather than allowing people to marry freely, Rand would actually use government as a weapon to enact his legislative agenda. Again, how is this man considered a libertarian? Maybe there were some asterisks in the Bill of Rights that I didn't catch? (Everyone had the right to free speech except for black people? Maybe that was in small print?)

Abortion. Allowing women self-determination over their bodies seems like it would make Paul's libertarian views on this pretty clear, right? Certainly he would want women to be able to control what they did to their bodies. Nope. Wrong again. He authored the "Fetal Personhood Bill" which defines life as beginning at conception. It would outlaw all abortions. Kind of the Anti-Libertarianism. Planned Parenthood gives him a 0 percent rating and the National Right to Life Committee gives him a perfect score. Hmmm...I'm sensing a pattern in unprincipled libertarianism.

He's also in favor of a massive increase in military spending. Again, doesn't seem like that would be the position of someone who wants a smaller government. But our Rand is a libertarian because...uh.....FREEEDOM!!!!!!

Drones? You wouldn't think that someone in favor of less government would like them. But again, Rand defies expectations. It's pretty clear that Rand likes the mavericky-impression generated by the term libertarian, but not so much its implications in real life. I'm not a fan of knuckle draggers whose unapologetic Christian conservatism would make the United States an analog of Iran, but on the other hand, at least I know where those legislators stand. That's what they want. Rand Paul likes pretend he's one of a new breed of Republicans, but he doesn't even have the courage of his convictions, as well as having icky Republican convictions.

complacent Obama fans

There are many WASP-y Obama supporters out there for whom the election of President Obama was not particularly significant insofar as he represented a rebuff to the insular, secretive, big-business friendly W presidency but too much, because he wasn't George W. Bush. Too many people voted for President Obama simply because they were so (understandably) sick of the increasingly brazen corruption which typified W's leadership.

However, voting for someone because they aren't the worst guy ever isn't much of an endorsement of the new guy. It's not saying much to remove us from the seventh circle of hell and improve things a little bit. If those are the standards by which we define success, well, our "leaders" will continually fail to reach the standards of ethical, responsible leadership which the people of America should expect. But worse than the damning with faint praise is the fact that President Obama has doubled down on the secrecy of the Bush administration by abrogating his promise that he would veto any bill upholding telecom immunity. Obama has empowered the same financial advisors who facilitated the treasonous too big to fail bailouts at the end of Bush's second term. And we continue to bomb our "ally". With friends like that, who needs enemies? That brings me to this. Too many of my nice, urbane, yuppie college friends are not sufficiently upset, if they bought into the claims of Obama that he would change things, that he is much too content with same as it ever was. He hasn't empowered people, but is run by the same interests that have run politics in the US for a long time. Fine, if you want to criticize Bush, totally reasonable, but is Obama living up to the hype? When you promote yourself, and win awards for a campaign promoting change, you should be more than just talk.