I just read this article at Time.com about Ron Paul, and I'm still baffled about the mainstream media's confusion about Ron Paul and libertarianism. In the strictest sense of the word, Ron Paul is not a libertarian.
...he is an extremist — partly in the Barry Goldwater extremism-in-defense-of-liberty-is-no-vice sense of the word, but also in the wacky let's-relitigate-the-currency-debates-of-the-1820s sense of the word...
Sorry, but Ron Paul doesn't really stand for liberty, and doesn't have a "real 'freedom agenda'". He's an anti-federalist, as true libertarian commentators have pointed out multiple times (here, and here for instance). That means he's only interested in restricting the federal government; he essentially is for "states rights". He's perfectly okay with a state government infringing on personal rights, as is shown with his stances on abortion and gay marriage (wants Texas to ban both). Many of Ron Paul's supporters scare me while many are true libertarians who overlook his anti-federalist stance. Yet he does stand for many things the GOP has abandoned under Bush. Go figure.
2 comments:
To be fair, it's difficult to say "I support the Constitution" and not essentially be an anti-federalist, given the current state of the Union.
True, I didn't mean to imply that I'm in favor of a large federal government. But I'm opposed to a large federal government on the principle that people should be free, not on the principle that the ability to restrict freedom simply belongs to a different government!
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