Anyone who is a Neville Chamberlain think alike IS a nutcase. Ron Paul was rightly judged guilty of being a nutcase.
OTOH, Rand Paul ought not be blamed for his father’s insanities. He deserves the chance to be judged on his own track record.
It is not libertarianism per se which disqualifies Paul the Elder. It is his idea that a competent Pentagon need wield only three rowboats, a few blunderbusses and a supply of tri-cornered hats (preferably with beanie propellers on top) and then only for domestic political displays while letters of marque and reprisal will be sufficient to deal with any threats from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Al Qaeda, etc. I can accept the wisdom that we may be a bit overcommitted but Paul the Elder inspired no confidence whatsoever on foreign and military policy.
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You seriously misrepresent libertarian military philosophy, and need to relook at it. A policy that says strong defense and staying out of other people’s business is a wise policy IMHO.
Having Chomskey be totally correct in his predictions about US overseas adventures engagements twenty years later is an indictment of our present policies of adventurism and world cop status. No I do not want our country to become a UN baby, as a matter of fact the faster we are out of the UN and the UN is out of the States the more I will celebrate.
However, sending our troops overseas to die for issues that apparently are mostly related to oil and propping up dictatorships of the most unseemly kind is not what your minimizing “a bit overcommited” implies.
I disagree with your perspective that the next candidate needs to be strongly politcally prolife. We do not live in a country that will make that a reality on a national basis, but by bringing the issue back to a very libertarian state’s rights issue, it very will could become a reality. As far as homosexual and lesbian marriage, this is a hot button issue that isnt worth its drama or damage. Marriage IMHO should be relegated to the sphere of religion and not to government.
I have been a conservative for a very long time. And I was a leftist before that so I have had the good fortune of seeing issues from both sides. I can say without reservation that there is no room in the current two party system for small government, large defense, border protection, and financial continence. Thus I am very comfortable in being a conservative within a libertarian structure.
YOU seriously misunderstand the capacity of many libertarians to care about any morals not directly bound to their individual financial ambitions. Fortress America isolationism is a verrrrry dead issue. See Chamberlain, Neville. See also the shameful American war resisters of the pre-Pearl Harbor years. That the America Firsters have a handful of eccentric supporters in the 21st century is a testament to the gullibility of a tiny slice of our population. Once Pearl Harbor had been bombed, America First folded their tents at a 12/8/41 press conference in Chicago featuring John Flynn (Executive Director of America First and Editor of the New Haven Register), Colonel McCormack, Charles Lindbergh and the rest of the leadership. Robert A. Taft became a supporter of the war. He later advocated abandonment of Europe which had rejected its chance for freedom and urged support for nations in the Third World and the Pacific Rim who had not had or rejected freedom. Ron Paul was no Robert A. Taft. His son Rand appears to be a far wiser man. Give us who were enemies of Ron Paul enough room to give you SOME of what you want by supporting Rand Paul. No guarantees but many of us intent to give him a fair hearing in the hope that he avoids the heresies of his father.
BTW, this conservative has verrrry little appetite for boots on the ground. We have technology. Death from the sky and mass destruction of infrastructure from the sky is a better route. It also allows us to avoid a lot of civilian casualties. For surgical matters, the drones do a very nice job. I remember an Islamolunatic cleric who was confined to a wheelchair but was whipping up street trash to attack Israelis being taken out by a drone. The attack was so surgical that his body was disintegrated except for his relatively unmarked head which was sitting on the undamaged seat of the wheel chair. How DO they do that? That was quite impressive. My compliments to Bibi Netanyahu! May we be governed by someone of his steel spine after Obozo is finished.
If God wanted American troops everywhere on the ground, why did He provide a world in which the US Navy has the missiles to reduce any enemy to radioactive ashes without American service casualties? IEDs don't work so well under the sea or in the air.
Small domestic government, large defense and financial continence. Three out of four ain't bad. Quit while you are ahead.
Otherwise form a Kumbaya party with Noam Chomsky, a baby-killing, devil may care libertarian party that supports the posturing of perversion as "marriage," and maybe favors recreational drug legalization and absolutely avoids anything smacking of religious conviction while worshiping only the almighty dollar.... Oh wait! The Libertarian Party already exists and beckons the bitter enders and offers all that and more! Sayonara, Mr. Galt, Mr. D'Anconia, Mr. Danneskold, and Ms. Rand!
You and I also disagree on bordermania. Seal the border. Fine first step only. Then we must welcome the generally law abiding (except for bordermania) Hispanics who simply want to be part of our country (amazing that anyone would want to be Americans after eight years of Clinton and four years and counting of Obozo). Actively respect them and learn about them, get to know them and, yes, seek their votes when they have become actual citizens. Find the remnant of responsibility in the black community and develop programming that will free their kids from P.S. 666 and give them a real and moral education in the private sector and give hope and results to their parents in exchange for their earnest effort to earn and fully participate in the fruits of the American Dream as private sector workers.
Now, the real policy differences that matter. We actual conservatives have not fought Roe vs. Wade for forty years to settle for such weak tea as a Tenth Amendment solution to Roe vs. Wade other than as a very unsatisfactory temporary expedient. Eventually, only a personhood policy will suffice. If necessary, considering the vast number of human lives already sliced, diced and hamburgerized and the potential number yet to be butchered, SCOTUS must do personhood. Let the babykillers have a daily collective nervous breakdown, be wildly indignant about nearly everything (what else is new???), leave the country with babs Streisand and George Clooney and Lady GaGa. When we have SCOTUS, then the left should be treated as tenderly as the babies have been treated for forty years.
As to marriage, America is not the Stonewall Bar nor La Cage Aux Folles writ large. We are not Canada where daily butt-smooching of the lavender left is becoming mandatory.
Religious freedom (from funding abortion and contraception via Obozocare) is also non-negotiable. It is right there in the very First Amendment.
If the country goes broke because the GOP-E and the libertarians want to join the leftist enemies in Margaret Sanger's Last Stand, so be it. Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way but the little libertarian tail will NOT be allowed to wag the big conservative dog.