If I thought that a true-blue libertarian could win public office, I would vote for him. The problem is there just aren’t that many true-blue libertarians out there, especially here in South Carolina, where social conservatives put on their libertarian Underoos, tie the Gadsden flag around their necks, and try to fly around the Republican romper room as if their bodies could be propelled by the intellectually dishonest effluent that spews forth out of their mouths.
The thing is, libertarianism and social conservatism just don’t go together. One is an as-long-as-you-aren’t-hurting-someone philosophy while the other is an ongoing exercise in soul-killing auto-theocratic asphyxiation. And yet that doesn’t stop your typical SCGOPer from proclaiming their libertarian bona fides while protesting abortion, gay marriage, strip clubs, and marijuana legalization.
However, my own personal political philosophy lines up more with libertarianism than most so-called champions of libertarianism in South Carolina. I’m down with porn. I’m down with dogs twerking. I’m down with American Apparel ads. I’m down with the Abercrombie and Fitch catalog. I’m down with twerking dogs watching internet porn with American Apparel models while being photographed for the Abercrombie cat. So believe you me, I don’t hate libertarian principles, regardless of whatever that nogoodnik Rand Paul has to say.
See, Rand Paul went all Hulk-smash-his-crib this week because an NPR reporter had the Charles de Gaulle to ask him a question about Jack Hunter, the senator’s one-time neo-Confederate staffer and a one-time City Paper columnist.
As you know, I wrote about Hunter’s Southern Avenger problem, and I would imagine that it was a column that wasn’t well-received by the Rand camp. Instead of answering the question and moving on — seriously, Paul should have an innocuously pithy soundbite response to the Southern Avenger contro by now — the Kentucky senator said that the story had been trumped up by assholes who hate libertarianism, and not, you know, assholes who thought there was a problem that he had a neo-Confederate on his staff.
Anyhow, here’s a bit from Yahoo News’ report on Tuesday’s temper tantrum:
During an interview on National Public Radio’s “On Point,” reporter John Harwood asked Paul about Jack Hunter, a former social media director in Paul’s Senate office whose past pro-secessionist views were detailed in a June report in the Washington Free Beacon. Paul initially answered the questions, but he interrupted the reporter when he was asked to respond to an editorial in The Economist that aimed to tie libertarian figures to “racist and nativist movements.”
“Don’t you have anything better — don’t you have something better to read than a bunch of crap from people who don’t like me? That won’t make for much of an interview if I have to sit through … recitation of people calling me a racist,” Paul said, clearly agitated about the line of questions. “I don’t accept all of that, and I don’t really need to or spend the time talking about all of that. If you want to talk about issues and what I stand for, I’m happy to, but I’m not going to go through an interview reciting or respond to every yahoo in the world who wants to throw up a canard.”
Paul continued: “Why don’t we talk about Rand Paul and what I’m trying to do about growing the party, and then we might have an intelligent discussion?”
“Well, I am,” Harwood replied. “But he is someone who wrote a book with you.” (Hunter contributed to Paul’s 2010 book, “The Tea Party Goes to Washington.”
“Well you’re not,” Paul said. “You think you want to dwell on something and you want to dwell on critical articles of people who don’t like me and don’t support any libertarian ideals.”
Hmm. Rand’s going to have to develop some thicker skin if he hopes to make it through the 2016 GOP primary. Right now, it’s not looking so good.
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