The purist in me recoils at Sen. Rand Paul’s latest political performance art. As Glenn Beck reports, the senator from Kentucky “took the $500,000 in savings he had from running a frugal, cost-efficient office and returned it to the treasury.”

“Hey, Senator Paul, wait a minute. You know better,” I want to shout. “That money you’ve returned to Treasury in a grand gesture doesn’t belong there, it belongs to taxpayers. Why stuff stolen goods down the maw of the federal beast, into which scarce resources only ever disappear without trace, and where everything is fungible? Rand’s $500,000 could be directed into the domestic drone program. See what I’m saying? The principles absolutist in me rejects many of Rand’s gestures. On the other hand, what American doesn’t like an action hero?! I like Rand Paul’s energy.

The question: Is this Randian energy or Brownian Motion?

Rand Paul is front-and-center in media, showing what some people like to call “leadership,” a contemptible phrase, I know. The libertarian Paul is a pragmatist, whereas his father, Ron Paul, is an idealist.

So far, I’ve been critical of Rand’s compromises, but perhaps he deserves more support? After all, have I not condemned the sin of abstraction we libertarians tend to commit, writing against the libertarian “specimen that has nothing to say about policy and politics for fear of compromising precious libertarian purity”?

Suspended as he is in the arid arena of pure thought, this species of libertarian will settle for nothing other than the immediate and absolute application and acceptance of the non-aggression axiomatic ideal. And since utopia will never be upon us, he opts to live in perpetual sin: THE SIN OF ABSTRACTION.

Ambition no doubt has a lot to do with Rand Paul’s positions, but, boy, is he a doer. The question is, is he doing the right things?

Here’s Paul putting in a good performance over the sequester nonsense:

PAUL …for goodness sakes, it was [Obama's] proposal. He proposed the sequester. It was his idea. He signed it into law, and now he’s going to tell us that, oh, it’s all our fault?
I voted against the sequester because I didn’t think it was enough. The sequester cuts the rate of growth of the spending, but the sequester doesn’t even really begin to cut spending, which we have to do or we are going to get a credit downgrade, another credit downgrade.
BLITZER: So you don’t think that the $85 billion this year, that would be the forced cuts this year, from your perspective, that’s not enough?
PAUL: It’s a pittance. I mean, it’s a slowdown in the rate of growth. There are no real cuts happening over 10 years.
Over 10 years, the budget will still grow $7 trillion to $8 trillion. He added $6 trillion to the debt in his first term. He’s on course to add another $4 trillion to $6 trillion in his second term. So, really, this is just really nibbling at the edges, and he’s saying, oh, it’s some dramatic thing where all of a sudden it’s still the rich’s fault.
Didn’t he already raise taxes on the rich? I’m having trouble even understanding what he’s talking about because he sets up this rhetoric and this sort of game of let’s go get the rich again that really is divorced from any reality. It’s his sequester we’re talking about, his bill.

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Rand Paul’s Tea party State of the Union 2013 rebuttal was the only speech worth listening to on that day. Even so, I found myself bristling at Rand’s philosophical compromises, as I went down the page and distilled the facts for you.

Rand Paul’s rose-tinted unemployment number: The junior United States Senator for Kentucky cited “official” unemployment figures, rather than real joblessness, which not even the U6 statistic covers.

Another bum note Rand sounded was on the “Balanced Budget Amendment”:

To begin with, we absolutely must pass a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution!

It’s the sort of philosophical compromise his father would not have made. As this column observed in “Dead-End Debt Debate,” “what a balanced-budget requirement implies is that the government has the right to spend as much as it can take in; that it should be permitted to squander however much revenue—now there’s a nice word for taxes—it can extract from its enslaved wealth producers.”

Ron Paul would have demanded that entire departments be shuttered, not that the bums merely bring into balance what was stolen (taxes) and what is squandered (spending).

Another misstep saw Paul call for “ending all foreign aid to countries that are burning our flag and chanting death to America.”

No. End foreign aid, period.

As for “another downgrade of America’s credit rating”: It is not a bad thing because it is well-deserved. A downgrade is a must, as no serious spending cuts have been forthcoming.

Oy! And Rand Paul supports charter schools. Educational vouchers and charter schools are a species of the publicly funded system.

In any case, certain facts presented in Rand’s rebuttal should be pretty humdrum by now:

• “The US government is borrowing $50,000 per second.”

• “Over the past four years [BHO] has added over $6 trillion in new debt.”

• “Every debate in Washington is about how much to increase spending – a little or a lot.”

• “T]he $1.2 trillion sequester that [BHO] endorsed and signed into law … “doesn’t even cut any spending. It just slows the rate of growth.”

• “Even with the sequester, government will grow over $7 trillion over the next decade.”

• In essence, and “increase of $7 trillion in spending over a decade” is being “called a cut.”

• “[B]ig government and debt are not a friend to the poor and the elderly. Big-government debt keeps the poor poor and saps the savings of the elderly. This massive expansion of the debt destroys savings and steals the value of your wages. Big government makes it more expensive to put food on the table. Big government is not your friend. The President offers you free stuff but his policies keep you poor.”

• “Under President Obama, the ranks of America’s poor swelled to almost 1 in 6 people last year.”

• “Only through lower taxes, less regulation and more freedom will the economy begin to grow again.”

MORE.

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Anyone who’s read my columns over the years recognizes that The Articles of Confederation are my kind of founding documents; the US Constitution, not so much. To the extent the Constitution comports with the natural law it is good; to the extent it doesn’t, it is bad, in my book. Simple. That has always been my position.

Personally, I have a healthy contempt for most politicians too, even the libertarian ones—all the more so in view of the kind of empire builders they all ultimately prove to be: They see nothing wrong in using their fame and the public dime to flog their “products” and wares.

Some politicians are less sickening than others, but all fit snugly on The Sick-Making Scale.

And the people—at least those of us who’ve never fed from the “public” trough, unlike every single politician and his aide—are always morally superior to the politicians.

The reason I argue from the classical liberal vantage point, and not from anarchism, is because one is better and more logically able to wrestle with reality from the first philosophical perspective. This is not to say that I would not prefer a government-free universe than the one we currently inhabit; I would. Again, anyone who’s read my columns over the years recognizes that.

However, the paleolibertarian (at least) has to use a philosophical device that helps to anchor his reasoning in reality and in “the nit and the grit of the history and culture from which it emerged.”

Unless remarkably sophisticated and brilliant (as Hans-Hermann Hoppe indubitably is), the anarchist invariably falls into sloth. Forever suspended between what is and what ought to be, he settles on a non-committal (and idle) incoherence, spitting venom like a cobra at those who do the work he won’t or cannot do.

This specimen has nothing to say about policy and politics for fear of compromising precious libertarian purity.

Suspended as he is in the arid arena of pure thought, this species of libertarian will settle for nothing other than the immediate and absolute application and acceptance of the non-aggression axiomatic ideal. And since utopia will never be upon us, he opts to live in perpetual sin: THE SIN OF ABSTRACTION.

This mindset is not only lazy but—dare I say?—un-Rothbaridan.

Murray Rothbard did not sit on the fence reveling in his immaculate ideological purity; he dove right into “the nit and the grit of the issues,” and got dirty.

You’re not going to like what I’ve got to say, but Jack Kerwick’s “Romney or Obama: A Choice Between Two Evils?” is arguably written in this vigorous, Rothbardian tradition.

Sadly, it has been quite some time—arguably a century-and-a-half—since America has had anything even remotely approximating a federal government of the scope and size delineated by our Constitution. So, Paul supporters know—or at least should know—that if such a lost governmental structure is ever to be restored, it is not going to happen over the next four to eight years—regardless of whether our President over this time is named Obama, Romney, or Paul.
We must judge matters from where we are at. In other words, ignorance of our reality—ignorance of the immensity of our national government, say, and ignorance of the sheer powerlessness of any one person or even group of persons to scale it back to so much as a shadow of its counterpart from the eighteenth century—is inexcusable. To make a decision regarding something as momentous as the future of our country on the basis of this sort of ignorance—even if it accords with one’s conscience—is to condemn oneself. …

MORE.

While I disagree with Jack’s conclusion in this column; I wholeheartedly agree with and admire his method.

UPDATED I: I don’t vote. And, although eligible, I have chosen not to become a citizen of Police State USA. There you have it. I guess that’s “radical.” Moreover, as Loren E. Lomasky observed, “As electorates increase in size, the probability that one’s vote will swing the election approaches zero” … “[I]n large-number electorates, there is a vanishingly small probability that an individual’s vote (or voice) will swing an election … [F]or citizens of large-scale democracies, voting is inconsequential.” So obviously, I’m not with Jack on the lesser evil thing.

Also, given that Romney will take us to war at the drop of a hat, I do not know that he’ll reduce the size of the state. As I put it the other day, “Make no mistake; should he succeed in vanquishing Obama, come Nov. 6, Romney’s brand of ‘repeal-and-replace statism’—not to mention maniacal militarism and Sinophobia—will be no victory for liberty.”

I am with Jack, however, in that he is in there “mixing it up,” arguing the issues (rather than adopt the attitude described here).

In fact, some left-libertarians argue for Obama. At least they are not intellectually lazy and are arguing the issues, which is what Rothbard did. That’s my point.

UPDATE II: THOSE who refuse to “mix it up”; to get down and dirty and debate the issues, will also typically be unprepared to admit to nuance in the personalities involved. What do I mean? Recognizing that Romney may be wrong on almost all issues of policy should not prevent one from acknowledging that he’s a lovely man. As a person, he has way more merit than Obama.

Ann Romney, herself a delightful lady, is a lucky woman. Romney is a great provider, fabulously devoted to family and church, consistently generous and charitable to all those around him, and brilliant in all endeavors, academic and other. Unlike those of Obama, Romney’s university transcripts will stand scrutiny.

As I see him, Barack Obama belongs to an alien species hostile to life on earth.

UPDATE III: Mining Men are some of the most heroic workers, tied in the literary mind to great works such as Richard Llewellyn’s 1939 classic “How Green Was My Valley” (your children should have read it). It depicts the reality of mining men in an achingly beautiful way. The book haunted me for years after I had read it, as a kid. “Margaret’s Museum” achieves a good deal on celluloid.

So you read about these miners whom BHO, that alien who is hostile to life on earth, thwarts. And you wonder: Could Romney perhaps save their proud livelihood? The key being that you wonder … you wrestle with the issues.

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We all live on the “plantation”; we are all “moocher-hiddeen,” says Barely A Blog contributor, Myron Pauli.

Who Will Be Our ‘Massa’? The Mormon Or The Mulatto?
By Myron Pauli

Unless you are hiding in the Unabomber’s Montana shack and consuming rabbits and berries, we all give to and take from the government. However, some give more than they take and some take more than they give.

Just how large is the sector that depends upon government?

Children and the elderly have become virtual wards of the state – so that 50% already falls into the “moocher-hiddeen” (to use an Islamic term!). That leaves the “working age population” of roughly 25 to 65 supporting the rest. Of course, if “Joe the Plumber” has kids or elderly parents, then the government acts as a conduit from him to his extended family. Even addressing just those working age people with neither children nor parents – are they the ones who pay more than they receive? Maybe.

Remove government employees and the government contractors from that. Then you have the governmental corporations such as Fannie Mae and academia who are funded via government largesse. And what to make of GM, Chrysler, the bailed-out-financial sector, etc., kept afloat by government? Public utilities are governmentally regulated monopolies. Automobile Dealers function only thanks to governmentally legislated monopoly. Pharmaceutical firms, publishers, and the entertainment industry function on patents and copyright for their financial status. Sectors in agribusiness, health care, insurance, energy, and transportation (Amtrak!) are so heavily regulated that those employees are de-facto governmental workers even if there is a semblance of profit. The less said about lawyers and lobbyists, the better!

Truly private workers such as waiters, plumbers, and preachers are quite independent of government; but in locations like metropolitan Washington DC, nearly all their customers come out of the “oink sectors.” Even worse is that when Americans invest their money, the Roth’s, IRA’s, 401k’s, 529’s, HSA’s, “cafeteria plans” are so controlled by governmental rules that one wonders who owns the money – you or the government – or is that even a distinction?

The sad and pathetic truth is that we are all living on a large plantation with a quadrennial democratically elected “Massa” and a bureaucracy of overseers. It is to the credit of racial and religious tolerance that we can have a Mormon vs. mulatto fighting for the job of “Massa”.

The fact is that government has entangled itself from cradle to grave like a metastasizing cancer. Rhetorical flourishes aside, the only government programs downsized in the last 40 years was transportation deregulation under Carter and welfare reform under Clinton (nothing eliminated under Republican presidents), and the budget was in near-balance (ignoring raids on the “Social Security Trust Fund!”) by Clinton. I mean, this not as an endorsement of the unabashed big government Obama but merely to point out that the odds of Romney downsizing the Federal Government is smaller than the odds that the Chinese politburo will make Yom Kippur a Chinese holiday!

So when “Tea Party Conservatives” start bitching about Obama endangering their Medicare, it is because the addiction to government is nearly universal. Some of us on the plantation may be more productive than others, but we all live under the rules and, regrettably, most inhabitants (or inmates) generally support the system.

A few libertarian “nutcases” like Paul or Johnson may point the other way, but even most billionaires are as happy to have the Warfare-Welfare state as the poor. Who do you think pays for the TV commercials and the spin doctors and the political “think tanks” – Christian coalminers and Hispanic gardeners, or guys named Koch, Adelson, Soros, and Spielberg?

Nothing short of a major non-violent libertarian revolution” (Constitutional restoration) is needed – but until then, we can all stick our hand out for our share of the public gruel.

******
Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.

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After days of listening to the eminence grise of American opinion makers, it is clear to me that, left and right, Republican and Democrat; all are agreed and united in stupidity: The Arab world has erupted once again because of our pole dancers, our potty-mouthed entertainers, our loud and loutish politicians, those of us who insult Jihad’s muse (Mohammad); you know, the stuff that makes us “free”—to the exclusion, of course, of the IRS that hounds us to the end of the world, the alphabet soup of regulation agencies that prosecutes and regulates our best and brightest to the gills, the War on Drugs that claims our property and freedoms, a welfare state that one analyst likened “not [to] a principality, but [to] a vast empire bigger than the entire budgets of almost every other country in the world,” and a warfare machine that, much to the delight of the same stock characters, who deploy such similar stock phrases, has gobbled up so many of our men and so much of our wealth.

From the War Street Journal to the White House web journal; the empty heads who’ve invested huge egos (and out-of-control Ids) in a false, foolish storyline are singing from the same hymn sheet.

Ron Paul isn’t. “Bribing some countries and bombing others” equals big time blowback:

In Libya we worked with, among others, the rebel Libyan Fighting Group (LIFG) which included foreign elements of al-Qaeda. It has been pointed out that the al-Qaeda affiliated radicals we fought in Iraq were some of the same groups we worked with to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya. Last year in a television interview I predicted that the result of NATO’s bombing of Libya would likely be an increased al-Qaeda presence in the country. I said at the time that we may be delivering al-Qaeda another prize.
Not long after NATO overthrew Gaddafi, the al Qaeda flag was flown over the courthouse in Benghazi. Should we be surprised, then, that less than a year later there would be an attack on our consulate in Benghazi? We have been told for at least the past eleven years that these people are the enemy who seeks to do us harm.

MORE.

“‘Islamikazes’ in Our Midst” put the whole “they hate us because of our liberties” debate thus:

“While it is far from a sufficient one, our adventurous foreign policy is a necessary precondition for Muslim aggression.”

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…the Republican National Convention did provide Americans with extraordinarily important information about Mitt Romney and the sort of leader he is likely to be …he is also a rules lawyer who is more than willing to smash the spirit of the game while rewriting its rules any time it appears to suit his interests. From keeping important party figures such as Ron Paul and Sarah Palin off the podium to refusing to recognize the duly-elected delegates from Maine, from changing the party rules on the fly to indulging in a Soviet-style vote count in which only votes for Romney were reported, it is clear that Mitt Romney is even more inclined toward authoritarian rule than Barack Obama has ever shown himself to be.

The problem with assertions made above in “Romney’s Fair Warning,” by Vox Day, my WND colleague, is that they are … assertions, in which Day skips a crucial step. This step would involve showing that Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee are one and the same thing, and that the candidate is involved in the bureaucratic machinations of the party executive.

This is quite possible, but unproven in the column; Day has been too quick to collapse the distinction, at least in so far as administrative matters go, between the purview of the Republican Party politburo and that of the candidate.

I mean, did the candidates running at the time have a hand in what the National Republican Senatorial Committee did to Christine O’Donnell?

Again, it is quite possible that Mitt Romney agreed with party leadership’s decision to bar the most controversial speakers from the 2012 RNC. But it is unclear that Romney was behind it. Assertions absent proof don’t cut it in journalism.

If anything, there is evidence that the “Romney campaign’s [decision] to feature a video tribute to Paul [was] because he likes Paul.” There were rumors on the campaign trail that the two candidates and their wives had become fast friends. And why not? Politics aside, both ladies are gracious, lovely women with family and faith on their minds. (See also “Romney and Paul: BFFs?”)

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