Rand Paul - My Kinda Guy

[mattblancarte]

http://www.examiner.com/x-40953-Politic ... ?#comments

Rand Paul will be getting my vote for the presidency when he runs in the future. Talk about well-articulated respect for individual liberties!!!

Rachel's attempt to paint him as a racist is just pathetic. I can understand that being a lesbian makes a person inherently contrarian, but geez, she could project a little less insecurity.

Why doesn't she just flat-out call the majority of private business owners racist? She has no problem that implying that there will be a slew of segregation across the private sector, given the opportunity.

[AZhitman]

http://www.examiner.com/x-40953-Politic ... ?#comments

Rand Paul will be getting my vote for the presidency when he runs in the future. Talk about well-articulated respect for individual liberties!!!

Rachel's attempt to paint him as a racist is just pathetic. I can understand that being a lesbian makes a person inherently contrarian, but geez, she could project a little less insecurity.

Why doesn't she just flat-out call the majority of private business owners racist? She has no problem that implying that there will be a slew of segregation across the private sector, given the opportunity.

Definitely a fan.

She asked stupid questions and got her a$$ handed to her by someone far more intelligent.

[AZhitman]

On a side note:

The Examiner is a pathetic excuse for a news source. May as well call it "The Enquirer".

Apparently, it's the "in" thing to call someone racist. The sad reality `is, the Left has become exactly what it railed against in decades past: The thought police.

Leave people alone, don't worry about whether they're "racist" or not, and let the free market handle itself. We don't need legislation to mandate fairness... If people perceive iniquities, they'll speak out with their dollars and their patronage. I don't need some head-up-his-a$$ bureaucrat telling me to "play fair".

[UpStar]

http://www.examiner.com/x-40953-Politic ... ?#comments

Rand Paul will be getting my vote for the presidency when he runs in the future. Talk about well-articulated respect for individual liberties!!!

Rachel's attempt to paint him as a racist is just pathetic. I can understand that being a lesbian makes a person inherently contrarian, but geez, she could project a little less insecurity.

Why doesn't she just flat-out call the majority of private business owners racist? She has no problem that implying that there will be a slew of segregation across the private sector, given the opportunity.

Hmm. You aren’t getting a lot of support on this topic and I’m not surprised. This guy (Rand) has a lot of explaining and owning up to do. He seems a little out dated in his thinking as of late, but I’m willing to listen. I have a strong feeling that he’ll be left to rot.

[mattblancarte]

Did you watch the full 19-minute interview? I think he articulated his points pretty well there, and doesn't really need to say anything more on the issue.

It's okay if I don't get any support, I'm not running for office nor am I in a popularity contest.

I disagree with Paul that businesses should be legally allowed to discriminate. However, he really didn't even present the subject in that manner, nor is he okay with discrimination in a general sense.

His arguments were purely philosophical, and really not even relevant in modern times. Anyone making an attempt to paint him as a racist (Huff post, cnn, maddow, etc.) is falling flat on their face to the fair-minded media-consumer.

Maddow is also making an attempt to say that Paul would INTRODUCE legislation that would repeal part of the Civil Rights Act, which is just absurd and irresponsible of her as a reporter/talking face.

That being said, I like Paul's attitude when it comes to personal freedoms. All I see on both sides of the political spectrum are more laws, more taxes, more entitlements, etc. Paul doesn't subscribe to that philosophy.

[n00b240]

I saw this interview and walked away from it disappointed from both sides. For one, I had never heard of this Rand Paul guy. I am a huge fan of his father. And had he gotten the republican nomination, I would have voted for him. Having said that, I was hella disappointed with his answers, he clearly dodged the question for the entire 19 minutes and gave the same dodged answer every time.

I would have liked to hear him explain himself a bit more. So I was dissatisfied with his continual dodging. Typical politician. So initially Im turned off of Rand Paul.

Rachel Maddow is a smart woman, I havent really followed her show since inception, but the times that I do she is quite circumspect in her program. HOWEVER, she should have changed the subject after the second time she tried to get an answer out of him. In law I believe they call this continual badgering "leading the witness"

It was pure s*** to see her Trying to get him to elicit an answer out of him that would be the answer that she was looking for and be in sync with her clear cut agenda, I was annoyed, and that has turned me off of Rachel Maddow.

If I was Rand Paul I would have called her out on that. But no, he gave in to her bullying, with his dodging

[AZhitman]

^ For a guy who uses the word "hella", you're pretty damn sharp.

Good to see people demanding more of these faux "journalists".

[WDRacing]

I like Rand because he's about Constitutional Law. The Constitution is awesome in how it's written because it goes to great lengths to preserve individual freedoms. Individual freedoms are THE most important thing on my list of items to consider when weighing a decision or considering an opinion.

[IBCoupe]

I like some libertarian ideas, but typically I find them to be a little too inconsistent. I'm all for limiting a government's ability to limit harmless individual actions. They lose me where I'm not opposed to a government's ability to help out people who are struggling in one way or another.

What I mean by "inconsistent" is this: libertarians are, as were the founders, generally distrustful of the government, as it is a large center of power. This is something I agree with. With few exceptions, however, it seems that libertarians choose to see large corporations and industry blocs as being closer to a group of individuals than to a government. My impression is that those corporate groups are just as, if not more powerful (being that they don't necessarily have to stop at an imaginary line on a geographical map) than the US government.

It's that sort of distrust that is held for large labor unions, for example, but simultaneously fails to apply to their usually corporate employers.

[Jesda]

For government to "help out" someone, it has to hurt someone else, and usually does it by force. It doesn't make magic pixie lovedust out of thin air.

Corporations and industry get their power from government. Look at defense and agriculture. Look at the subsidies that go to corn and soy and find their way into everything we eat and drink. Government is a fantastic tool for increasing barriers to entry while convincing the public that its all for their own good.

You want government to have that kind of power? Guess who manipulates it and uses it.

Labor unions are an example of voluntary association at work. Unfortunately, laws have allowed union membership to become mandatory. What people (and unions in particular) forget is that the freedom to associate also includes the freedom to DISsociate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_association

[IBCoupe]

For government to "help out" someone, it has to hurt someone else, and usually does it by force. It doesn't make magic pixie lovedust out of thin air.

You mean the dreaded taxes? As Justice Holmes put it: I enjoy paying taxes; it is the price I pay for civilization.

Corporations and industry get their power from government. Look at defense and agriculture. Look at the subsidies that go to corn and soy and find their way into everything we eat and drink. Government is a fantastic tool for increasing barriers to entry while convincing the public that its all for their own good.

What's Walmart get from the government? Chevron-Texaco? Pfeizer? Yes, there are corporations that have built themselves around the government and public services, but that's not the only way a corporation can gain power.

You want government to have that kind of power? Guess who manipulates it and uses it.

I don't believe I was saying that at all.

Labor unions are an example of voluntary association at work. Unfortunately, laws have allowed union membership to become mandatory. What people (and unions in particular) forget is that the freedom to associate also includes the freedom to DISsociate.

http://en.wakopedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_association

While that's true, that isn't the only "libertarian" complaint against unions.

[Jesda]

For government to "help out" someone, it has to hurt someone else, and usually does it by force. It doesn't make magic pixie lovedust out of thin air.

You mean the dreaded taxes? As Justice Holmes put it: I enjoy paying taxes; it is the price I pay for civilization.

Corporations and industry get their power from government. Look at defense and agriculture. Look at the subsidies that go to corn and soy and find their way into everything we eat and drink. Government is a fantastic tool for increasing barriers to entry while convincing the public that its all for their own good.

What's Walmart get from the government? Chevron-Texaco? Pfeizer? Yes, there are corporations that have built themselves around the government and public services, but that's not the only way a corporation can gain power.

You want government to have that kind of power? Guess who manipulates it and uses it.

I don't believe I was saying that at all.

It doesn't matter if you say it, that's the ultimate consequence of increasing the power of government. Your theoretical universe of benevolent power only doing good doesn't exist. Government authority is a necessary evil with built-in flaws and dangers, and to mitigate those dangers you limit its powers.

You wouldn't give unlimited powers to the police, would you? Checks and balances exist to allow it to maintain order, because when given excessive authority, someone WILL abuse it.

Wal-Mart is a HUGE lobby when it comes to labor, trade, and transportation. The same goes for every large corporation in America -- lobbying is a multimillion dollar business. Even "less evil" business institutions have to play the game to avoid being screwed by a competitor that purchases influence and manipulates the rules for its own benefit.

All of this is made possible by naive Americans who vote for politicians promising safety, regulation, and order. The more power you send to DC, the more everyone has to fight to control it. And guess who has the power to fight for it? Not you. Not me. Its large corporations and special interest groups.






Like fire in a fire place providing localized warmth, government is a tool used to maintain a level of reasonable social order. Just because it works on a small scale doesn't mean you should spread the fire to the rest of your house. Eventually, it grows large enough that it can't be controlled and before you know it, your house is a pile of ash and everyone is dead.

This is the guiding principle behind the concept of limited government.

[IBCoupe]

It doesn't matter if you say it, that's the ultimate consequence of increasing the power of government. Your theoretical universe of benevolent power only doing good doesn't exist. Government authority is a necessary evil with built-in flaws and dangers, and to mitigate those dangers you limit its powers.

I've never said that the power was benevolent; I'm not sure who you're trying to argue with now.

You wouldn't give unlimited powers to the police, would you? Checks and balances exist to allow it to maintain order, because when given excessive authority, someone WILL abuse it.

Again, I'm not sure what exactly you're trying to address.

Wal-Mart is a HUGE lobby when it comes to labor, trade, and transportation. The same goes for every large corporation in America -- lobbying is a multimillion dollar business. Even "less evil" business institutions have to play the game to avoid being screwed by a competitor that purchases influence and manipulates the rules for its own benefit.

Isn't the government, then, just a tool? Does the fact that these large corporations will buy the support of the US government make the corporations any more trustworthy? Doesn't this sort of relationship indicate that the large corporations have more power than the government? Shouldn't there be, then, no double-standard among libertarians regarding the government and large corporations?

All of this is made possible by naive Americans who vote for politicians promising safety, regulation, and order. The more power you send to DC, the more everyone has to fight to control it. And guess who has the power to fight for it? Not you. Not me. Its large corporations and special interest groups.

Like fire in a fire place providing localized warmth, government is a tool used to maintain a level of reasonable social order. Just because it works on a small scale doesn't mean you should spread the fire to the rest of your house. Eventually, it grows large enough that it can't be controlled and before you know it, your house is a pile of ash and everyone is dead.

This is the guiding principle behind the concept of limited government.

The house is getting bigger, and central air is really efficient.

[Jesda]

Stop. Breathe. You're going in a circle. You keep asking questions about what libertarians tend to believe and how they view corporations, and I keep trying to explain it to you. I don't understand what you're objecting to.



You want government to "help out" once in a while. On the federal level, it doesn't "help out" unless it takes resources from someone else and gives them to you. That taking is determined by a system that consumes resources on a large scale (by taxing economic activity) and then offers to redistribute them. Guess who controls most of the means of redistribution? Corporate interests.


You have the freedom to solicit a business, or not.
You have no freedom of choice when a large enterprise uses the system of rules and regulations to force you to fund its existence.

Much of what you eat comes from ADM or ConAgra. Did you choose to buy corn and soy from those companies? No. Instead, you unknowingly choose to elect jackasses to congress who use your tax dollars to subsidize the business interests of their wealthy friends.

Corporations aren't inherently benevolent, but through bigger government, you legally solidify the power of a handful of very large enterprises, driving out competition and harming your freedom of choice. I feel like I should draw a flow chart.


The immorality of the use of force is the heart of libertarian theory. You can apply it to both civil and economic issues.

[IBCoupe]

My criticism of most libertarians: real-world inconsistency. They distrust public centers of power, but often don't show the same for private centers of power.

Too often, libertarians build a theoretical world where everybody gets what they deserve, and they strive for that world. It's a nifty ideal, but too often, that world fails to accommodate such real life principles as inheritance, ignorance, and random chance. What results is a group of people who appear to the rest of the population to be either stupid or callous, indicating that either they don't know how these factors affect the real world, or don't care. I tend towards the former; absolutist ideals are silly, and libertarian absolutist ideals are no less silly. I typically prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt - ignorance over a$$.

Let me just make sure I'm getting what you're saying. If I'm wrong, correct me.

1. A federal government can't ever be helpful without hurting some (assuming that we're only talking about social welfare programs and not administrative agencies).
You're implicitly drawing a distinction between how the federal government operates and how local government operates, and I'm wondering why. There are only seven states in the Union that have no income tax, and they certainly do levy other taxes, especially against businesses. Texas and Wyoming are the only States in the Union without either a personal or a business income tax.

2. Large corporations use the government to steal from us.
Once again, is this supposed to suggest that these corporations are any more trustworthy than the government? Once again, does this justify a double-standard? And a slightly new question: is a large corporation actually going to miss your $20 a month? I suppose it will miss it in aggregate if everyone stops buying from them, but then, isn't that the same thing we could say about government abuses and those "jackasses" we keep electing? And once more: how does that jive with the popular double-standard?

3. Government is to blame for complicity with large corporations.
Seems to me that it takes two to tango.

I keep asking the same questions over and over again because you keep failing to answer them. "A" for effort, though: you've done a bang-up job of explaining the relationships between private and public centers of power, but you haven't actually gone so far as to explain why one center of power is, for lack of a better phrase, "more dangerous" to individual liberty (especially when we start to consider other real-world issues, like a private center of power's ability to affect your life without your cooperation in it, even absent government involvement). Yes, the largest corporations cooperate with the largest parts of our government, but that's not something inherent to large or centralized government.

If we were to drastically reduce the size of the federal government and move to a less centralized system, it's possible the problem of corruption and lobbying would only shift outward, if they're not already there. A smaller public center of power will still be bought by private centers of power; it's just that the competition among those private centers of power will be greater - there'd be less federal government to buy, but more people wanting to buy what little there is. Does that actually improve the things you're talking about?

What we need is a smarter, more active voting populace. Which is what brings me back to one of the things I pointed out as something libertarians often miss: ignorance. Most libertarians will freely admit that the only way a deregulated system works without massive injustice is if there is equal access to information. We can only begin to allow Burger King to start putting arsenic in its burgers if everyone it serves is aware that there's arsenic in them. And libertarians have this idealized notion in their head that everyone does have equal access to information, or that they could without some kind of centralized regulation of information/education.