thefreelioness:

By yours truly, in light of libertarians treating libertarians like republicans treated libertarians in the last election.

Read More

What we have here is a failure on too many in the Liberty movement to realize that there are many ways to skin a cat, and only one way to boil a live frog.

The issues Rand has chosen to go astray on are social ones, despite both equal marriage and ending the Drug War continuing to grow in support among the populace.  The War on Drugs is also economically detrimental to our country, its spending problem, prison population, and racial discrimination in the law system.

Rand agrees with you 100%.  But there are issues with your assertions.  1)  Rand is a federal official running for a federal position, therefore we should only judge him based on what he will do federally (within his power).  2)  Rand is speaking before Evangelical IOWAN pastors, he is tailoring his message to them, in a way that reflects the authority he would have as President.

When Rand says that he will not use his FEDERAL office to force the State of Iowa to legalize drugs; that is a Constitutional position.  Rand can end the FEDERAL war on drugs, he can stop FEDERAL raids on cannabis dispensaries, and he can end mandatory FEDERAL minimum sentencing laws on drug charges.

Rand can tell this group of Teocon pastors that he will not force cannabis on them, and next week go to the University of Iowa and say that he will end the federal war on drugs.  This is because ending the Federal war on drugs means that the State of Iowa can continue to ban drugs (10th Amendment).  Federal officials do not have Constitutional authority to ban drugs, but neither do they have the authority to force the states to legalize drugs.  Rand is NOT running for Governor of Iowa (in which case you could bash him on this issue.  This is an important distinction.  He can say he will end the federal war on drugs and yet tell these pastors that in Iowa cannabis will remain illegal.  He can say both these things because they are both 100% accurate and reflect his platform and the authority of his office.  Just because this Brad Sherman from Iowa “heard” Rand say something, it doesn’t mean Rand said that; it means Rand is tailoring his message correctly to his target audience.  You got to love a politician that can fit in on a college campus and a room of Evangelical pastors.  That’s what I meant by my “dreadlocks” comment earlier.  Don’t bash Rand because he’s feeding people a small dose of Liberty they can actually digest, rather than a huge amount that will turn them off and cause them to reject him.

The question on this issue is ultimately, do you want to boil the frog or not?  Are you willing to accept someone who will exercise his office according to the power delegated to him by the Constitution?  Can you accept a politician tailoring his message to different audiences, while speaking from THE SAME PRINCIPLE?

One of the largest libertarian themes endorsed in the last election was the refusal to settle for the lesser of two evils.  It was the willingness to “waste” our vote on a candidate that we really believed in and that really represented us. 

Yes, this applied between Romney and Obama because neither of them represented anything other than an acceleration of the status quo.  Rand Paul is proposing using the office of the Presidency to move us back towards becoming a Constitutional Republic.  He will not bring about Libertarian utopia in one term.  He is going to enact a realistic and sensible path for bringing us back to the vision of the Founding Fathers.  He will close military bases overseas, he will end the Federal drug war, he will cut the budget, roll back senseless regulations, reign in the Surveillance State, drones, etc.  How can we honestly be opposed to a candidate who will do all these things?  Ron Paul always spoke of a “transition phase”, why are we crucifying Rand for actually wanting to implement it?

Jeffrey Tucker said it best, he will support anyone who will bring us closer to our goal.  Would you rather vote for someone who can win now, or wait 40 years and hope that a “pure” candidate can win?  Because the Libertarian party has been around for 50 years, and it’s still getting <2% of the vote.  You can fight that fight, but I’m not going to, and I won’t accept people being attacked for recognizing that your fight is the LEAST realistic method for bringing about true and effective change in our lifetimes.  You believe we’ve passed the point of no return, that’s fine, but I don’t. So please don’t attack us for proposing a realistic path from our current tyranny to Constitutional Republicanism.

 I still believe in the message of the great libertarian thinkers of the past and the role-modeling of our recent role-model, Ron Paul.

Me too.  I love Ron Paul.  Ron Paul supports Rand Paul.  You don’t think they’ve strategized about this for years privately?  Ron Paul is the message, Rand is the messenger.  Ron’s strength and weakness is the same, he says exactly what he believes to whoever is willing to listen.  That is good and bad.  It’s good because some of us listened and GOT IT; bad because it turned off people who simply couldn’t handle all of it at once (how many people said, I like Ron, but not on X?).  Rand’s greatest strength is taking his father’s philosophy and making it palatable to people his father turned off.  We can’t fault him for that.  The author of this Reason article did a great disservice to the Liberty movement today by taking a message that was meant for 12 Iowan Evangelical pastors and extrapolating it to apply to how Rand would rule the office of the Presidency.  We are our own worst enemy in not understanding what Rand is doing.  It is our best vehicle to bring about a true peaceful revolution in this country.