True enough. But Enlightenment thinkers including John Locke (the other one, not the one on LOST) in his “Second Treatise on Government” (1692) offered language alluding to basic rights to life, liberty and property. These ideas and their further development by others were influential both to French revolutionaries and to American ones as well. There is much in parallel regarding ideas of citizenship, duty, and inalienable rights. But that’s off the topic.
The topic was pointing and laughing at the Pauls and their apologist **jrodefeld **for reasons detailed above.
Wait, I though we were pointing and laughing at jrodefeld for (a) constantly asserting that the Pauls believe things* directly contradicted by their own website and/or (b) professing that the Pauls’ dissembling about their views is a-ok because at least they aren’t typical politicians.**
*e.g., legalizing marijuana, getting gov’t out of the marriage biz
**because those typical politicians are always going around lying about their beliefs, dammit!
Apparently the REAL Libertarians are not too pleased with Rand Paul’s philosophical wavering. Their insistence on ideological prurity at the near complete expense of electability is …well…interesting. These dudes are hardcore about their ethos, almost manically so. They’re like the Taliban.
Which is a major reason why I think they would be utter disasters if given power. They do make me think of the Communists; once in power, they’d hold to their ideological purity no matter how unworkable their ideals turned out to be in practice.
I believe he said Rand Paul’s public positions are wrong on all three issues.
Ideological purity is important to plenty of voters, although I guess you could argue it’s more important to minority parties because they tend to hate the system and don’t want to compromise their values. And I don’t like the Taliban comparison. It’s a big stretch to compare a group that wants to curtail government power with a group of theocratic madmen who pass anti-music and pro-beard laws and beat women for going to school or leaving the house without a male to watch over them. And to be honest there are also some indications the Taliban are willing to compromise, at least at gunpoint.
This is a direct contradiction of the fourteenth amendment, and any fool who thinks it can be changed with legislation cannot reasonable be called a constitutional scholar. Once again Rand Paul demonstrates he is no libertarian, but a right wing opportunist exploiting populist fears of brown immigrants.
Is this fair? Does he say it should be done through legislation? I actually support the idea. It’s one thing if you are in this country with a work or tourist visa, but why should a kid born to people who are here illegally automatically be a citizen? It’s a historical quirk.
Rand Paul is either ignorant or lazy or both. Anyone born in Canada (since the relevant legislation was passed in 1977) is a citizen, but I guess only America exists to Rand and the voters he wishes to cultivate.
Because that is what it says in the Constitution. Libertarians are originalists in that respect, so advocating a position that contradicts the Constitution is hardly evidence of libertarianism.
I don’t see what difference that makes. If you want “the originalist” view, you have to go the origin. The guy who wrote it. It’s no surprise that other Senators had other ideas about what it meant.
Frankly, the term “originalist” is used around here without much understanding of what it actually is-- as if there were some objectively knowable “original” meaning that can be teased out by reading the papers of the various legislators involved. But that’s hogwash. The papers often tell us contradictory things, and they never tell us anything about legislators who voted, but left no commentary behind.
OK, let’s not even get into what the Constitution says and what the “original” intent was, because that’s a debate that can go on forever.
Let’s just focus on what Rand Paul said. Seems to me all he’s saying is that he wants to change the definition of who is a citizen in order to exclude the children of people who are here illegally. That is hardly controversial, and hardly unusual for most countries. But even if it were, what’s wrong with wanting to change the constitution? Are you trying to say that a Libertarian would never want to amend the constitution if he disagreed with a part of it?
So the people who wrote it and voted on it are useless to determine what the “original” intent was? Thank god we have you and Rand-fucking-Paul around to clear it up then.
In the context of the portrait of libertarianism posed by the OP, yes, that is what I am saying. The OP has consistently portrayed Rand Paul as a constitutional scholar who sees the Constitution as a suicide pact that is inviolate. I don’t know if that applies to all libertarians, but my comments are directed at the OP and his portrayal of Rand Paul and his particular flavor of libertarianism.
