The Media Treatment of Rand Paul - Knee Jerk Reactionism by Mental Midgets

[Robot_Arm]

@jrodefeld

1. Eliminate all licensing requirements for medical schools, hospitals, pharmacies, and medical doctors and other health care personnel. Their supply would almost instantly increase, prices would fall, and a greater variety of health care services would appear on the market.

“Hi, everybody!”

Hi, Dr. Nick!"

@jrodefeld

We already spend that amount on public schools. Just taking that money and allowing students their choice of schools would be an easy way to improve the quality of education in this country. Most libertarians don’t say we should eliminate public schools. We should give them competition.

So you want to spend money to keep the public schools open, give money to students not to attend, and cut the deficit, all at the same time?

You didn’t answer my other question, either. If federal reimbursement of individual’s health care costs has destroyed the quality of health care, what makes you think that federal reimbursement of individual’s education costs will improve the quality of education?

[Bryan_Ekers]

If the situation ever became such that the Americans elected Rand Paul to the Presidency, I’d be looking at them thinking “Well, you had a nice country, there. Too bad you pissed it all away.”

[42fish]

@Bryan_Ekers

If the situation ever became such that the Americans elected Rand Paul to the Presidency, I’d be looking at them thinking “Well, you had a nice country, there. Too bad you pissed it all away.”

To be fair, America seems to have survived electing George W. Bush to the presidency, and I doubt Rand Paul could be much worse. Heck, if Congress stays in the hands of Democrats and Republicans (with one Libertarian dad), Rand Paul would almost certainly be better in that he couldn’t most of his ideas enacted.

[Fear_Itself]

@42fish

To be fair, America seems to have survived electing George W. Bush to the presidency…

That has yet to be decided; the damage he wrought has yet to be undone.

[DoctorJ]

@jrodefeld

From A Four-Step Health-Care Solution
by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, the great Austrian thinker and libertarian intellectual:

*It’s true that the U.S. health care system is a mess, but this demonstrates not market but government failure. To cure the problem requires not different or more government regulations and bureaucracies, as self-serving politicians want us to believe, but the elimination of all existing government controls.

There are two major problems that I see with returning to a more free-market health system:

1.) What people need and what they want are not always, or even often, the same. Due to some odd quirks of circumstance, there are a lot of medical providers in my small town, and the most successful and popular ones are not the ones who provide the best care, but the ones who do whatever the patients ask them to do. The secret to success is to give ridiculous antibiotics for every sniffle and to not be shy with the narcotics, benzodiazepines, and diet pills. Take a look at the deplorable “pain clinic” situation in Florida to see what kind of “medicine” thrives in the free market.

2.) Yes, it might optimize utilization if people paid out of pocket for every medical visit–but why would they do that? People don’t want to pay out of pocket on their way out. Eventually some clinics would let people pay later, then others would offer plans for unlimited care, then maybe some third-party companies would come along, deduct payments directly from your paycheck, and pay the doctor for you. It wouldn’t take long to get right back to the situation we’re in now, where patients have no economic connection to the care they receive.

[SteveG1]

I don’t know if anyone caught this yet - it’s on Huffington Post, but I found it pretty entertaining, and also a sign that we haven’t all completely lost our minds (yet):

(AP) - The Kentucky Senate, reacting to a divisive comment by Republican Rand Paul, has adopted a resolution declaring any form of discrimination to be inconsistent with American values.

Louisville Democratic Sen. Gerald Neal introduced the resolution Friday during a special session on the state budget. It was adopted without objection in the predominantly Republican chamber…

[jrodefeld]

@BrainGlutton

“The Great American Book that Refutes Rand Paul,” by Michael Lind, in Salon, about Black Like Me, by John Howard Griffin:

You know, too much is made over this issue. Rand Paul never said that he wants to repeal the Civil Rights Act. Never. He said he would have voted for it. In a small segment of a longer interview, he posed the philosophic question of private ownership of property vs government ownership and the Constitutionality of parts of the Civil Rights Act. If any of you had done your homework, many proponents of Civil Rights believed that the Constitution was an explicit impediment to government getting involved in private business. No matter how desirable an action was, the Constitution had to be taken into account. This is the question Rand Paul is raising and it is an important one.

He already acknowledged that the issue has been settled long ago and he is not looking to repeal the CRA or any part of it.

What he is saying is that, if he was around at the time, he would have forced further debate on the manner of pushing through civil rights legislation and sought to either change the constitution to allow for this specific government intrusion into private business or fought to end discrimination in a different way. Many proponents at the time thought the same way.

Goldwater was the Republican candidate for president in 1964 and opposed the Civil Rights Act. Though I supported Democrat Lyndon Johnson, I admired Goldwater as a man and I was convinced that his opposition to the Civil Right Act was genuinely based on principle, and not on racism or mere political pandering. After all, throughout his career Goldwater had amply demonstrated a consistent refusal to sacrifice his cherished principles to mere political expediency. The most famous example of Goldwater’s defiant integrity was the rousing line he included in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention of 1964: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Any savvy political operator could have told Goldwater to cut this line, because it played right into the hands of his political adversaries, who were busily tarring him with the lethal label extremist—the kiss of death in American politics. But Goldwater did not cut this line, because it represented his genuine convictions. Like Henry Clay, Goldwater was that rare politician who would rather be right than be president.

But was Goldwater right? That question troubled me in 1964. It was easy to dismiss objections to the Civil Rights Act that were motivated solely by racial hatred. But it was not so easy to dismiss Goldwater’s principled line of argument, because it was derived from his ardent libertarianism. Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act because it required government interference in the way individual business owners managed their own businesses. He argued that the Civil Rights Act would take away the freedom of business owners to decide which customers they would serve and which customers they could refuse to serve—indeed, that was the whole point of the new federal law. This meant that even if the Civil Rights Act gave new freedom to African-Americans to eat in restaurants of their choice, which it obviously did, it was only able to obtain this worthy goal by stripping from business owners the liberty that they had traditionally enjoyed. The liberty of some was being sacrificed for the liberty of others—and the federal government enforced this sacrifice.

Where does this attitude eventually lead us? To a society in which we are only willing to give other people the freedom to do things we approve of, while denying them the freedom to do things of which we disapprove—and what kind of freedom is that?
Today the vast majority of Americans, including me, believe the sacrifice was worth it. Understandably enough, there is little sympathy nowadays for those racist Southern business owners who were compelled, very much against their will, to serve black customers along with white. Even Paul, in explaining his own position, made it clear that he loathed the practice of racism by business owners, and correctly pointed out that it is economically irrational to turn away paying customers simply because you don’t like the color of their skin. What got Paul in hot water, however, was the perception that he favors giving back to business owners the liberty to engage in racial discrimination. This perception has fueled the liberal attacks on him. It has been used to revile Paul as a racist and to condemn the entire Tea Party movement as a coalition of white supremacist bigots. Regrettably, this highly partisan brouhaha has obscured a point of immense importance for all of us, both liberals and conservatives—sometimes you need extremists to defend liberty, because otherwise no one else would do it.

The Civil Right Act of 1964 represented genuine progress. It offered freedom to millions of American citizens who had been denied it by the practice of segregation. Nevertheless, Goldwater was right: the new law did take away the freedom of other American citizens, namely, that of the racist business owner, who was no longer free to deny service to black customers. The federal government was essentially telling owners how to run their own businesses, at least in this one respect. It is senseless to pretend that this did not entail a sacrifice of liberty for some Americans. In the eyes of most Americans today, however, this sacrifice was amply justified by the results. But it is still important to recall that a sacrifice did have to be made—some people had to give up what they had long taken as their rights, in order that a new set of rights could be extended to others. And this was the point that Goldwater insisted on—and he was right to insist on it. Someone must always be ready to point out the cost in terms of human liberty that is often the unavoidable consequence of even the noblest political objectives.

Someone must always be ready to point out the cost in terms of human liberty that is often the unavoidable consequence of even the noblest political objectives.
The attitude of many Americans today is to say “good riddance” to the obnoxious freedom to practice racial discrimination. This response may be understandable, but it lies upon a well-known slippery slope. It is simply too easy to say “good riddance” to those rights and liberties whose exercise we personally deplore. In many states, people once had the right to smoke cigarettes in restaurants. Today they don’t. Those who support smoking bans do not regret the loss of this noxious right in the least. Good riddance to it. Many Americans would love to ban guns as well. Because they would not regret in the least abolishing the right to bear arms, they are perfectly prepared to say “good riddance” to this right, also. Many patriotic conservatives deplore the right to burn American flags. Again, because this is a right they would never wish to exercise themselves, and whose exercise they abhor, they would be more than happy to abolish it. But where does this attitude eventually lead us? To a society in which we are only willing to give other people the freedom to do things we approve of, while denying them the freedom to do things of which we disapprove—and what kind of freedom is that?

The temptation to abrogate rights when we happen to disapprove of their exercise is so common that we should all be grateful when committed libertarians, like Goldwater and Paul, come forth to remind us to regret every curtailment of human liberty, even when—or rather especially when—curtailing this liberty is necessary to create a more just and free society. In the 18th century, the wise Samuel Johnson remarked that human liberty was such a rare thing in this world that men should always think twice before they begin to curtail it, even when they are acting with the most laudable intentions. For once liberty is lost, it seldom, if ever, returns.

Like Henry Clay, Barry Goldwater was that rare politician who would rather be right than be president.
Not all of us need to be extremists in the defense of liberty. But some must be, and a healthy democratic society should be grateful for those who are willing and determined to play this role. By simply forcing us to think twice before we curtail our traditional liberties, they may well save us from the tyranny of our own political agendas—a tyranny that seeks to deny to others those rights we have no interest in exercising for ourselves.

I cannot predict what role Paul will assume in the future of American politics. But if he can play the honorable role in our national debates that Goldwater once played, by making us think twice before abolishing yet another liberty in the name of progress, then he will have my admiration, even when I must respectfully part company with his positions, as I did with Goldwater on the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

What is so hard to understand about the fact that the issue that a consistent person would have with the Civil Rights Act has nothing to do with eliminating discrimination, but allowing the precedent that the government owns your property. Then any other uses that a person chooses for his property are subject to government interference and restrictions on the exercise of liberty.

This is a healthy debate and does not make one a bigot to engage in this discussion. Simple minded liberals, exchanging logic and reason for emotion and knee jerk reaction-ism, fail to see the complexities of this argument.

This is a necessary debate to have. The contrived character assassination attempt will not work. There are a few things that I strongly disagree with Rand Paul about. This is not one of them. You all should really think about this issue a little more before you throw around labels like “bigot” and “racist”.

There are so many pressing issues in politics that the libertarians have the answers to. Bringing up a long settled bill that will never be changed does nothing constructive to inform the voters.

[jrodefeld]

@BrainGlutton

Please tell me you’re making this up.

He supports repealing the part that gives automatic citizenship to anyone born in this country, even an illegal alien. I don’t see how this is radical. If we have an immigration problem (and we do, lets not pretend otherwise) then it greatly exacerbates that problem by saying that if you are pregnant, sneak across the border and your child is then a citizen. I have a problem with that.

[jrodefeld]

@Reno_Nevada

Nothing is particularly wrong with these points. However, there are some negative issues that would go along with these:

1. You would get periodic periods of deflation, with other periods of inflation. Most economists believe deflation is extremely destructive.

2. You would still have business cycles of booms and busts. During the busts, your poor people would be hit very hard, to the point of widespread starvation (because tax receipts would be down and the government could not borrow).

3. Your government would be prone to the “tyranny of the majority.” If sufficient numbers of citizens hate a particular group, that group will lose their rights without any government protection.

Your points seem to me to be that we would still have periods of deflation and inflation, booms and busts and the like. We have all these problems now. A commodity standard would limit inflation and deflation. Booms and busts would be very mild compared to what we have experienced from the Federal Reserve system. All of these problems would be lessened dramatically under an Austrian Free Market system.

Your point about a government prone to “tyranny by the majority” makes no sense. Our government is always prone to tyranny by the majority. The founders warned against this. That is why they advocated a small, limited government and equal rights for all. There is a much greater chance of interest groups taking over the government and taking away the rights of a certain minority group when we have a fiat monetary system.

There is absolutely no hope for us to have a balanced budget and pay off the national debt with our current monetary system. It can’t happen. The interest on the national debt is consuming us. The only way out is destruction of the currency. None of this would happen if there was restraint on the printing presses.

An Austrian Free Market economy with a commodity backed currency is they only system compatible with individual liberty.

[Airbeck]

The simple fact is that if the CRA was passed without the part pertaining to private businesses, then the whites only lunch counters and the like would not have been affected at all and would have been able to continue business as usual. So holding this belief as he does, and you do, then why wouldn’t he just answer the question of whether he feels that lunch counters should still be able to serve whites only. This is the real life implication of his position. You cannot get away from that fact. You can go on and on about the complexities of this and the constitutionality of that, and its all well and good in theory. However, the real world happens in reality not in theory. So why was he so unwilling to say yes to that question if that is the obvious logical real world result of his position? Why wouldn’t he just answer the question?

[jrodefeld]

@Der_Trihs

Another problem with #3 is that what if some aspect of government needs to be bigger to do its job? Government (or any organization, really) needs to be at least as big as is necessary to do its job; not held to some predetermined size.

I recall an old line by George Washington, when faced with a proposal to legally limit the Federal Government to a 10,000 man army; he supposedly said that they should also require that no enemy invade with more than 5,000 men.

What size do you think the Federal Government needs to be to “do its job”? Was government big enough in 1997? I ask this because our federal government was nearly 50% smaller only 13 years ago! I am not making this up. That is the rate of increase in federal spending.

What is wrong with having a relatively limited government that CAN grow when needed but that requires a Constitutional amendment to do so? Shouldn’t there be some arbitrary limit on government power?

Since you mention the example of George Washington’s army, don’t you think we could cut dramatically from defense spending and still be safe from invasion? We spend nearly half of all the world’s countries combined in military spending.

Look at this graph: http://blog2.tshirt-doctor.com/images/def1.png

Surely you support some spending cuts here?

[jrodefeld]

@Bryan_Ekers

And a few will very specifically not follow and could, absent federal regulation, impose state penalties even harsher than existing federal ones. How does Rand Paul feel about that?

I don’t know how Rand feels about that. There are already state laws and federal laws regarding drugs. If one is being elected to the Federal government, they would work to repeal federal laws. That is what a libertarian can do. We cannot expect the federal government to overrule all states that have bad laws. Its just not possible.

If federal laws were eliminated and many states started legalizing drugs and people saw that crime actually went down (which would surely happen) and there weren’t any serious issues, more would follow. We can’t expect perfection. If a politician did this, it would be the most significant effort to repeal prohibition that there has been in history.

Its a start.

[tomndebb]

@jrodefeld

I ask this because our federal government was nearly 50% smaller only 13 years ago! I am not making this up. That is the rate of increase in federal spending.

This is silly. The amount spent is not directly proportional to the size. Many things affect spending that do not require more or larger departments. If the number of government departments is not 50% greater or the number of government employees is not 50% greater, then your claim is silly. One may argue against Keynesian economics and the need to spend a country out of a recession, but changing that argument to a claim that the government has “grown” by 50% because its spending has grown by 50% is ludicrous.

@jrodefeld

What is wrong with having a relatively limited government that CAN grow when needed but that requires a Constitutional amendment to do so?

What is wrong with that idea is that any event that would require a rapid growth would never be handled in the time that it would take to arrange for a Constitutional Amendment–to say nothing of the irrational approach of passing new amendments on every occasion when a change was necessary.

[jrodefeld]

You are confusing yourself at this point, which is not too surprising given the absolute cluster**** of an OP with which you started out this merry little exercise. My post you are responding to was referencing the Libertarian response to Rand Paul and how they have turned on him for being insufficiently rigorous in his stated postions. How closely Rand Paul hews to right thinking classical Libertarian dogma is of little consequence or interest to me. The main thing that interests me is what comes out of his mouth in terms of statements about his beliefs and positions.

Having said this, it is amusing to me that in 2010, and wanting to be political players vs being the butt of political science and economics professor’s jokes, that Libertarians maintain this almost dainty sense of purity.

What do you believe? Do you have any sort of strong moral or philosophic underpinnings to your political beliefs? Or do you simply support the flavor of the week politicians? The problem in politics is that nobody believes in anything. For example, I admire Bernie Sanders much more than any empty suit politician with an R or a D in front of their name. Although I don’t believe Socialism is a viable system in the real world, I respect the man for sticking to his convictions and not selling out.

Similarly I like and respect Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader. I agree with these men on a number of issues. They are consistent and principled.

The reason I responded to your post was that I am criticizing libertarians for their insistence on ideological purity at the expense of political success. Ideological purity and consistence is important, but that has to be balanced with political realities.

You impute to me the insistence that you can’t pay politics and and be good Libertarians. Again you are confused. I maintain no such position. I’m happy to have you enter the fray.

Your attitude that you will have to press your rose scented kerchief against your nose, and repress a disgusted shudder as you hoist up your philosophical petticoats to enter the mud wrestling pit of politics, and possibly compromise is telling of just how utterly puerile your attitudes are with respect to dealing with the complexities of the real world.

Here is the issue. I generally have very little faith in the political process to enact change. If change is going to come, it has to happen from the bottom up. The people have to be so fed up they will understand the issues and hold their congressmen accountable. It is an educational effort as much as anything. I maintain that the Austrian School is correct in their theories and axioms and that the Constitution is worth defending. I vote for candidates based on how closely they adhere to these principles.

What is the alternative? You can live in the “real world”, in which case you will compromise to the point that the dollar collapses and the middle class is wiped out and this country desolves into chaos, or you can take a moral stand for once.

Its up to you.

[jrodefeld]

@Chimera

Oh come on! Surely they can get elected to the legislature and keep their ideological purity and not vote for anything against their principles, right?

Which means that they won’t cast a single vote.

And they’ll spend their entire time in government frustrated and sterile, producing NOTHING because their unwillingness to compromise on anything renders them incapable of cooperation and participation.

But at least they’ll have the comfort of their convictions.

The whole country is moving in a libertarian direction. Our representatives are beginning to wake up. Electing a few true libertarians into government would send a massive signal to our political class. There are new coalitions forming. The populist Congressmen and Senators will be working for the people while the sellouts will be working for the banks and special interests. A libertarian can work within the system, stick to their principles, spark debate and get things done.

Ron Paul is doing this as we speak.

[jrodefeld]

@Czarcasm

A good friend of mine wrote something on Rand Paul, mentioned on this website.

This is tired and predictable. I personally am pro choice but I understand and respect people who are pro life. What is it that makes a pro life person someone you would never vote for? Some libertarians are pro choice, some are pro life. In fact, leaving the issue of abortion up to the States is the Constitutional position. That is what Rand supports. Though he won’t do anything to touch the abortion issue. We have so many more important issues to deal with than abortion. Give it a rest.

[Airbeck]

Well I guess I’ll have to take your non answer as an answer then. Evidently when you or Rand don’t want to answer a question you just pretend that it wasn’t asked and just answer something else instead. Makes it easier to keep your beliefs intact when you can just ignore any challenges to them I suppose.

[jrodefeld]

@42fish

(1) I never said he wrote them; I said he allowed them to be published under his name
(2) As a reminder, the question I responded to was not “Show Ron Paul is a racist” but “Name something Ron Paul did that was stupider than Sarah Palin” (paraphrased, 'cause I ain’t going back through this thread for the exact wording). Is it your contention that allowing racist statements to be issued in your name (regardless of wether or not you wrote them) is in fact a brilliant tactic?

No, it was a mistake. This hardly proves that he is “stupider than Sarah Palin”. I assumed you would find something he actually said in a book, article, speech he gave, or an action he took that would cast doubt on his intellectual accomplishments or integrity in any way. You haven’t come up with anything, so you resort to the guild by association thing. If you come up with something better, let me know.

Why not actually read his articles here:

http://www.ronpaullibrary.org/

[jrodefeld]

@tomndebb

You also display stunning ignorance and a very shallow understanding of economics. **“Honest money” cannot possibly compensate for unregulated financial game playing. ** It can’t be done.
And there is no evidence, anywhere, that under a reliance on some imaginary “honest money” the situation would improve dramatically. If you want to pretend that governments and finaciers behaved ethically in the days of hard currency, then you have eliminated yourself from consideration as a serious participant in this discussion.

What is so hard to understand the link between “unregulated” secret money creation and the excess gambling and derivatives market that created this problem? The very close alliance between big government and big business is due to the fact that all the money goes to Washington and all the special interests swarm on the town to get their bailouts or get taken care of. Is this such a difficult concept to grasp?

As to whether or not governments and financier behaved ethically in our earlier history, or course they didn’t. Throughout history governments and financiers have behaved unethically. What I am saying is that by removing the power of the printing press it severely restricts their ability to do harm to the larger economy.

Under a commodity standard government is relatively small and business cannot get bailed out. To make money, business has to actually produce something of value. If they fail, they go bankrupt. There is no artificially created moral hazard that encourages reckless behavior.

There is no reason to believe that they would. On the other hand, how does changing the basis of money automatically mean that they would behave ethically? We would still need regulation, it would simply be over a different set of rules.

I think we differ on our definition of regulation. We need anti fraud laws, enforce contracts, and prosecute corporate crime to the fullest extent of the law. And allow bankruptcies to form. Other than that a free market would provide the fairest system and most ethical distribution of goods and services. It would be very “deregulated” as compared to our current economy. That doesn’t mean we tolerate corporate crime.

What makes you distrust the Free Market the way you do?

[jrodefeld]

@tomndebb

The law of unintended consequences dooms this one.

It takes a serious investment in time and money to become a Medical Doctor. If we deliberately create a situation in which pay will fall, we will actually wind up with fewer people entering the profession. We have already done that to a certain extent. One reason why so many M.D.s are foreign and many are women is that men, still culturally perceiving themselves to be family breadwinners, have increasingly chosen to avoid the field of medicine on the grounds that they will never be able to repay the debts while supporting a family.

This is a pretty poor rebuttal of my argument for Free Market health care. I think you can do better than that.

The idea that if we allow any true competition in medical care doctors wouldn’t want to enter the profession is ludicrous. The licensing hurdles and regulatory burden is keeping doctors away from entering medicine in the first place. Did you see this article about how under Obama’s health care plan there will be a 150,000 doctors shortfall over the next decade? Doctor’s don’t want to work under this kind of system.

U.S. Faces Shortage of Doctors

Eliminating all serious credentialling will merely increase the number of homeopathic and similar quacks into the industry.

Nah. It just means that the quacks who can come up with the biggest advertising budget will swamp the actual practitioners who know what they are doing.

See above.

Who are you to say who is a quack and who is a legitimate doctor? What are your qualifications? There are many alternative doctors, herbalists, acupuncturists, chiropractors, homeopaths and others who are very good and are helping a lot of people. Given the current system the Pharmaceutical Lobby and conventional medicine doesn’t want to lose customers so they lobby for regulation to drive these people out of business.

Plus, in a free society people should be able to seek any kind of medical care they want regardless of whether or not you approve.