Rand Paul’s audacious new sham: A phony religious epiphany

[DonViejo]

Paul's new strategy to lure backers involves a strange appeal to Christians. Here's why he's living in fantasy land

ELIZABETH STOKER

Evidently sensing that the Republican Party may be in some kind of crisis, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., argued at a recent fundraiser that the GOP should embrace the tenets of his pet political philosophy, libertarianism. But Paul didn’t just suggest a conversion from long-held Republican values to libertarian ones; rather he tried to make the case that libertarian values are already consonant with the moral systems that underpin many foundational Republican positions. One of his main rhetorical goals was, therefore, making Christianity and libertarianism seem compatible, to attract traditionally Christian GOP supporters to libertarian ideas.

Even leaving aside the bizarre gesture of pure convenience to Christianity, which seems to have been brought in here as a post-hoc rhetorical flourish to do little more than sweeten the libertarian pot, Paul didn’t make a great case for the actual compatibility of Christianity and libertarianism.

“Libertarian and liberty doesn’t mean libertine,” Paul claimed at the gala for the American Principles Project, referring to the tendency of libertarians to prefer government not intervene in various spheres of life, often including the realms of marriage, contraception and abortion. Paul was unclear as to whether he believes the state should have a role in the regulation of marriage and abortion, saying instead, rather cryptically, that “Freedom needs tradition to give it its balance and its stability, its sense of family and community, but tradition needs freedom to invigorate it and give it spirit and excitement.”

If what Paul intends to say here is that Christianity and libertarianism are amenable to one another because Christianity provides the moral compass libertarianism doesn’t have – that is, that one can protect marriage and defend against oft-objected to practices like abortion through the selective reference to Christian values by otherwise libertarian political agents – the question is: Why would someone with such a commitment to Christianity ever commit themselves to a political philosophy without a similar commitment?

more
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/21/rand_pauls_newest_libertarian_sham_why_his_new_strategy_is_just_a_phony_gambit/

[Blue Idaho]

1. I wonder who he stole this from?

Last edited Mon Feb 24, 2014, 11:03 PM - Edit history (1)

The guy is incapable of having an original thought so obviously a staffer must have found this load of tripe on some blog somewhere...