Of all the reactions to President Obama’s announcement last week of support for marriage equality, Rand Paul’s might be the most juvenile and stupid. Speaking at an event put on by Iowa Faith & Freedom, Paul took this idiotic little shot at the president:
At the Iowa Faith & Freedom event, Paul mocked President Obama’s remark that his view on marriage was evolving. “Call me cynical, but I didn’t think his views on marriage could get any gayer,” he said.
First of all, what the hell does “cynical” have to do with anything he said there? Nothing that I can see. Secondly, what is he, a fucking 12 year old? “That’s so gay!” Seriously?
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Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe
May 14, 2012 at 1:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
yes
Brownian
May 14, 2012 at 1:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I thought this slimy little puke whacked off to the concept of freedom. What the fuck is he doing opening his fucking little Ayn-hole about marriage anyway?
Mr Ed
May 14, 2012 at 1:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So the “libertarian” shows his true colors or his wiliness to pander. “government should provide goods and services that individuals or corporations can’t, such as a military and keeping gays from marrying.”
Raging Bee
May 14, 2012 at 2:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yes, seriously. That’s about as serious as Rand Paul is able to get. I’m sure he’d be happy to team up with Mitt Romney to try to cut Obama’s hair too.
Doug Little
May 14, 2012 at 2:08 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I have never seen two more contradictory terms separated by an ampersand before.
jimmiraybob
May 14, 2012 at 2:36 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, riddle me this, what comes first? The 12 year old boy or the Ayn Randian Libertarianist impulse?
laurentweppe
May 14, 2012 at 2:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Seriously: that’s called “knowing your audience”
d cwilson
May 14, 2012 at 3:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The 12 year old boy:
What’s funny is that I always thought the difference between libertarians and regular conservatives was that libertarians smoked pot and didn’t give a shit what you did in the bedroom.
democommie
May 14, 2012 at 3:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I must admit that my dyslexia kicked in for a moment there. I read, “What, is he fucking a 12 year old?”, and I thought, “Shit, that’s the connection between Paul and Bek, 12 year olds!”.
Rand Paul is a piece of shit, which is not a surprise given his ancestry.
lofgren
May 14, 2012 at 4:11 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As far as I know, Rand Paul has never claimed to be a libertarian. He’s been quite clear that he is a conservative.
Here’s how I parse that, assuming that Paul said what he actually meant:
“Call me a cynic, but I think that Obama has never had a problem with gay marriage. During the 2008 campaign, he didn’t need the enthusiasm because he had the base excited already and gay rights advocates sufficiently appeased with his pledge to end DADT, so he took the politically convenient non-position to avoid offending moderates who were fed up with George W. but uncomfortable with gay marriage. Now he needs something to fire up the base so he’s throwing them a bone with a pointless position on an inevitable matter that will most likely be decided by the courts anyway.”
The other alternative, of course, is that Rand Paul is a bigoted moron. But what are the chances of that?
harold
May 14, 2012 at 4:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I actually thought that libertarians really were libertarians right up to the George W. Bush administration. I thought they had insane economic ideas, but based on sincere if twisted principle, and that they had about the same views I did on civil rights. Boy, was I transiently fooled by their hyper-Orwellian schtick.
Then I learned that they are mainly, with a few possible exceptions (but I don’t know of any) just mean, greedy right wing authoritarians who are even one degree more dishonest than the right wing authoritarians who at least call themselves “conservatives”.
If you want to change my mind, there is one thing you can do. You can say, “I am a libertarian, and here are the election cycles in which I actively opposed authoritarian theocrats of the Republican party”. And by “actively opposed” I mean took some action that might have reasonably been part of a realistic effort to keep them out of power, such as voting for and/or donating to their strongest opponents.
I’ve seen many, many too many “libertarians” defend and apologize everything the Republicans do.
If you, to quote what one libertarian (in a government funded graduate school program) told me, “prioritize economic liberty”, and then implicitly define “economic liberty” as “whatever Republican economic policy is”, you are a not a libertarian, you are a greedy right winger voting for authoritarians because you think it will save you a dime in the short term. Have the decency to use an accurate term to refer to yourself.
Reginald Selkirk
May 14, 2012 at 4:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Coincidentally:
How the Ayn Rand-Loving Right Is Like a Bunch of Teen Boys Gone Crazy
Area Man
May 14, 2012 at 6:01 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@10:
No.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/05/04/im-very-serious-about-running-ron-pauls-son-says/
That’s not to say that he isn’t a hypocrite, like his father. Most of what passes for libertarianism is just class warfare disguised as a political philosophy, an attempt to make serving the interests of old rich white men look hip and iconoclastic.
Homo Straminus
May 14, 2012 at 7:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
harold@11: “…ith a few possible exceptions (but I don’t know of any)…”
I assume you mean in the active political sphere? Ed has mentioned, cribbed from, and quoted Radley Balko enough times that surely you must realize he calls himself libertarian.
He is libertarian in the way I think a lot of us are, in thinking wasteful programs (such as military spending) should be recognized as such and cut; corrupt politicians, lawyers (particularly prosecutors), police officers, and others in positions of authority should suffer the consequences of their actions just like you or I; and that the government shouldn’t be in the business of prosecuting morality or (generally agreed to be) victimless crimes, e.g. paying for sex.
Which, by the way, what the hell? If you pay a guy to sleep with you in private, it’s a crime. But if your buddy is there filming it, it’s ok? America, I don’t even know you any more.
harold
May 14, 2012 at 7:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Reginald Selkirk –
And the comments section of that article is already jammed with “shocked” whining about the unfairness, claims that the author didn’t “deal with Ayn Rand’s philosophy”, etc. Needless to say, at least one authoritarian religious fundamentalist is in there, making clinically paranoid claims of persecution because followers of an anti-Christian atheist were insulted (in other words, he’s an authoritarian theocrat but he knows perfectly well that the “liberty-loving” Randroids are his allies).
The only question I would ask a Randroid would be –
“What would it take to convince you that you are wrong”.
This will sound extreme, but I think that these people are somewhat similar to hypothetical starving North Koreans who believe the propaganda and are loyal to the regime.
The wingnuts are mainly not, for better or for worse, currently enduring physical suffering as a result of their beliefs. So far, the chickens have roosted only on the weaker and less advantaged.
But I do think a substantial swath of the US population is damaged in this way.
I don’t know if it is possible to take a person totally committed to what they perceive as a self-serving (even as it does not really serve them well) ideology, to the extent that they already have been denying reality and deliberately cocooning themselves for years, and them somewhat show them reality. How could you? What can you do to convince people who deny basic scientific reality?
And if you could, what would happen? I suspect you might be able to do it, unethically, with some kind of a Clockwork Orange style deprogramming, but then what would happen? I suspect that a full blown dissociative episode might result.
lofgren
May 14, 2012 at 7:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I was thinking of that column where he says that he is not a libertarian, but a “constitutional conservative.” A cursory google search turned up mostly denials of the libertarian label and accusations of it by his opponents. Even the quote here could be construed as meaning that he has libertarian leanings without actually indicating he supports most libertarian beliefs.
harold
May 14, 2012 at 7:28 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Homo Straminus –
Radley Balko seems to me to be a guy who was brought up to be “conservative” and who is slowly grasping the fact that he is not a right winger.
Unfortunately, the term “libertarian” provides an easy out for him.
He isn’t as repellent as the 99.99% (my approximation) of people who use that term, who all turn out to merely be right wing reptiles who for social convenience want to euphemize their status; people who are probably “libertarian” if they’re desperately seeking approval in a hipster cafe in Austin but “conservative” when they’re desperately seeking approval in a white guy sports bar in Dallas (Texas examples used for convenience only).
Still, the only reason for him to cling to the term “libertarian” is so that he can try to justify support for failed, reality-denying, deeply unpopular, inhumane economic policies, even while being decent on human rights.
If he’s going to admit that human rights are better than authoritarianism, why can’t he admit that a certain level of regulation for the public good, social safety net, and protection of the environment is empirically and theoretically superior to craze robber baron fantasies slapping away the gruel bowls at the orphanage?
If anything, “libertarian” economics are in one way even stupider than authoritarian politics. I despise authoritarian systems, but at least they can be stable. Laissez faire economics hasn’t even got that advantage.
Michael Heath
May 14, 2012 at 8:23 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
lofren writes:
Rand Paul has claimed to be a libertarian. Here’s one instance in 2009:
Of course the two ideologies aren’t mutually exclusive. All the powerful libertarians appear to be both and share the same thinking defects along with an aversion to facts and experts – but I repeat myself.
Noadi
May 14, 2012 at 10:18 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
There’s a difference between Libertarian and civil libertarian. I think a lot of us here would describe ourselves as libertarian in the sense of being civil libertarians who are concerned with personal liberty, free speech, reform of the legal system and law enforcement, for trimming the military to a more reasonable level (instead of spending almost as much as the rest of the world combined), against political corruption and true government waste (as opposed to wanting to cut programs that are beneficial such as healthcare, education, science and medical research, etc.).
Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven
May 14, 2012 at 11:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And most of us are honest and reflective enough to acknowledge that the term “libertarian,” without the additional adjective, has been completely hijacked by the narcisso-capitalists for at least a generation or two, and therefore criticism aimed at “libertarians,” without qualifying adjectives, is overwhelmingly not targeted at us.
Most of us.
Homo Straminus
May 15, 2012 at 12:11 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
harold, thank you for your response. I know it’s a cop-out to say I agree to disagree, other than saying that *I* don’t know why he identifies as a libertarian, and unless and until it’s for the reasons you say, I have to discount your characterization.
Azkyroth, FGTO: “And most of us are honest and reflective enough to acknowledge that the term “libertarian,” without the additional adjective, has been completely hijacked by the narcisso-capitalists for at least a generation or two, and therefore criticism aimed at “libertarians,” without qualifying adjectives, is overwhelmingly not targeted at us.”
It’s a bummer, really.
harold
May 15, 2012 at 8:18 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Homo Straminus –
On one hand, I don’t mean to be insulting to the guy.
On the other hand, I only know of two contemporary uses of the term “libertarian”. (Note that I am very much a “civil libertarian” as described by Noadi above.)
No-one in the thread has disputed its very frequent hypocritical use by people who actually actively support right wing authoritarian politicians.
Its sincere use, which I have discovered to be remarkably rare but perhaps not non-existent, is still a reference to someone who is non-authoritarian on civil liberties, but who claims to favor absurdly unrealistic and inhumane economic policies. Even the (seemingly rare, in my observation) sincere version comes across as misanthropic, short-sighted, and mildly sociopathic to me.
I don’t actually see even the “sincere” version as truly sincere until it comes from someone who needs help from society but opposes safety net, workplace safety, or environmental regulations on principle. “I could never need social welfare, so I oppose all social welfare in order to avoid the trivial tax payments associated with it” is both venal and irrational (grounded in self-serving, implicitly narcissistic biases, because even very wealthy people actually rely on cooperative institutions, and would not at all necessarily be the ones who would thrive, if anyone would, in a post-apocalyptic scenario).
The day I see a libertarian renounce all benefits of “coerced” cooperation and parachute naked and unarmed into the wilderness to make it on their own is the day I’ll see a truly consistent libertarian.
That said, Balko is a guy with a lot of good ideas, and my critiques of both the actual philosophy of libertarianism, and of hypocritical use of the term, are not intended as personal insults directed toward him.
Prediction – at this point it would be unsurprising if a “libertarian” shows up and starts playing tiresome word games, basically refusing to define precisely what they mean by the term, while simultaneously declaring all accurate critique to be unfair and inaccurate, relying on toddler-style contradiction rather than providing valid rebuttal to the critiques. In fact, it would be characteristic for such a person to show up late, in hopes that they could post something after everyone else has abandoned the thread, thus creating a most silly sensation of “having the last word”. Hopefully that won’t happen, but it would not be surprising.
democommie
May 15, 2012 at 8:52 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Prediction – at this point it would be unsurprising if a “libertarian” shows up and starts playing tiresome word games, basically refusing to define precisely what they mean by the term, while simultaneously declaring all accurate critique to be unfair and inaccurate, relying on toddler-style contradiction rather than providing valid rebuttal to the critiques.”
But, Harold, I don’t even LIKE libertarianismness. {;)
harold
May 15, 2012 at 9:21 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Democommie –
That prediction was not intended to apply to any regular posters here.
It’s simply something that tends to happen whenever “libertarians” are criticized.
fastlane
May 15, 2012 at 12:32 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And there’s also this:
http://www.care2.com/causes/rand-paul-points-gun-at-obama.html
That Rand Paul, such a joker.
Ing: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream So I Comment Instead
May 15, 2012 at 1:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Civil Libertarian is buying into the meme that being liberal is bad.