Defend the Scoundrels, Rand!
Posted by Ross Kenyon on May 26, 2010 in Commentary • 6 commentsI painfully cringed my way through Rand Paul’s recent interview on The Rachel Maddow Show today on YouTube. If this isn’t a clear example of the folly of electoral politicking I don’t know what is. If you google “Rand Paul Civil Rights” and watch the video you will plainly see a writhing wannabe politico forced to jettison speaking his mind on a simple but ostensibly ugly libertarian principle.
There is a dark side to libertarianism. As H.L. Mencken said, “the trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” Libertarians aren’t always going to get pitched softball questions about small business owners and the regulations that harangue them or taxing and regulating marijuana. We have to actively defend what is often seen as the seedy underbelly of mainstream society: queers, intravenous drug users, racists, and every other nonaggressive but atypical lifestyle.
The great unifying principle of liberty is that as long as a behavior isn’t using force or fraud, or threatening its use against others, it should not be stopped or prevented with force. If racists, sexists, heterosexists, or any other naughty collectivist ‘ist’ one can think of does not want to associate with any of their hated imagined-as-meaningful groups then it is within their prerogative to make that choice.
The ideal reaction to private prejudice should be that all responsible justice-loving people use apolitical means to ostracize and punish the bigots socially and economically. One should use one’s own freedom of association to completely disassociate from those who support the principle that one disagrees with. This has recently been occurring with the boycotts and buycotts of Arizona as a result of SB1070. I am aware of very few people who are suggesting that force should be used to coerce racists to trade or be personal friends with brown people and/or undocumented immigrants.
The only choices for trying to change the behavior of prejudiced but peaceful individuals are as follows:
1) Allow for freedom of voluntary association and disassociation to solve nonviolent problems through peaceful persuasion, and…
2) Use the government’s force to coerce peaceful people to interact with others who don’t naturally want to do so.
I understand that if Rand had openly defended the principle of voluntary association and had said Woolworth’s had a right to turn away potential black clientele from their lunch counter he might as well have proffered his withdrawal from the Senate race. He had to utilize the technique of politickin’ of always answering the question one wished one had been asked. He successfully weaseled his way out of any conclusive gotcha! quotes, but everyone basically knows where his heart is. He would side with the privacy rights of the scoundrels.
His discard of principle is troubling. A clear and succinct defense of libertarian morality and respect for peaceful voluntary association and disassociation would have been more than philosophically satisfying to the rational viewer; at least I hope it would be. It’s a consistent position, libertarianism, and how often can one say that about other ideologies? Most are based on inconsistent moral reasoning and ex post facto justifications. Ah, but there is never time to defend moral principles and its consistent application for a brief cable news interview and it would probably destroy his public life and career.
Whether Ron Paul, Adam Kokesh, Debra Medina, Peter Schiff, and all other politickin’ libertarians have had a net gain or loss for radical freedom ideologies I will leave to someone else to analyze. After all, that is a complicated question. I am only stating that the road is fraught with compromise of principle when it comes to the defense of those on the outskirts of the mainstream.
Rand, I wouldn’t have expected any differently. We are drowning in a sea of silly here trying to hide our radicalism. Come out of the libertarian closet and be radical with the rest of us if that’s what you really are. We will join you in the defense of freedom — but you will have to acknowledge that those principles logically entail abolition of the state if you’re going to successfuly articulate and defend them.
C4SS Research Assistant Ross Kenyon serves on the Executive Board of Alumni For Liberty, on the Board of Directors of the Association of Libertarian Feminists, and is an essayist with the ALLiance of the Libertarian Left. He is interested in questions of culture, being, language, and community.
I don't see any reason to consider Rand Paul a libertarian, as noted by his more-statist-than-usual stance on the Terror War – http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/123150.html
Though I would say that racism is a lot less atypical than many people would like to think, it creates a range of harm that requires a range of responses. It's one thing to hold people to different standards because of their race; it is another to actively build a government-backed system of exclusion and caste-creation that makes people targets for violence and coercion. The former would be best addressed by education and dialogue, and the latter would be best addressed by the direct action of sit-ins and marches. The historical context matters when we try to apply principles to specific cases.
If Rand Paul was not prepared to give a libertarian view on how to prevent segregation (which is not surprising since he isn't a libertarian by any reasonable standard of advocating individual liberty against coercion and authority), he shouldn't have brought it up. But he's going to play the "principled" card with one hand and support nationalist militarism on the other.
Darian: Thank you for the comments! You are certainly right. Many people have pointed out the fact that Rand's policy positions differ substantially in a number of regards from his father's and consistent libertarian principles. I also appreciate your nuance on the apolitical routes of addressing private prejudice.
The best way I have heard it put is that Rand is either a) lying for political gain and not principled or b) actually believes in his neocon positions. Neither is especially appetizing for the discerning libertarian.
Your last paragraph is definitely in line with my own beliefs. What I would ideally want is for Rand to either stop pretending to be a libertarian if he isn't really or to come out of the damn closet if he is. I detest the murky middleground of politicians.
There is certainly a third option which may seem more unlikely for Rand given his father's associations but…
Libertarianism is a broad group of beliefs and as with most libertarians of any particular radicalness… there was time when you believed less radical things and through education and time became more 'pure', 'consistent', whatever. He could just be ignorant of the logical conclusions to deontological libertarianism… or as a consequentialist feels the level of liberty he proposes maximizes utility.
Regardless… I'd much rather have individuals arguing even a misunderstanding of a liberty position than not arguing it at all and just batting around two heavily statist positions pitched by the D's and R's. The more dialog the greater the likelihood someone will get it.
huh… I don't really have much to say on the Rand Paul issues, except to note that I've never understood the attraction that the Paul family seem to have for American Libertarians.
I'm more concerned about your describing "queers" as the "seedy underbelly of society", then comparing them to heroin addicts and racists. Deeply uncomfortable, to say the least – though maybe it's just a trans-atlantic miscommunication thing…
@ewlparsons: I don’t mean anything pejorative by queer. In fact, its used quite commonly to referred to all outside of heteronormativity and traditional Western gender expression. However, in mainstream culture this can make individuals, at least in perception, as far outside the bounds of “respectable” society. I lumped them together more out of mainstream perception of those activities as things worth using the state to prevent in the minds of cultural conservatives and other statists.
I hope this is a satisfactory response for you. Seems like more of a miscommunication than anything.
Personally, I don’t think Rand Paul deserves to be defended from accusations of racism – anyone who invokes freedom of association to recognize businessowners’ rights to be bigoted while violating Americans’ right TO associate with people born in Mexico deserves terrible accusations. Rand Paul on undocumented people; emphases mine:
Apparently, Rand Paul is perfectly fine with the idea of disregarding my freedom to sell a home to, worth with, or otherwise associate with Mexican citizens; and for all his hand-waving about the Constitution, he apparently doesn’t like the 14th amendment very much.
Rand Paul’s politics are authoritarian in the worst way, and he isn’t a libertarian by his own admission; so there’s little point in libertarians defending him.