Rand Paul betrayed everything his father stood for

by Robert Wenzel:

That libertarians are a small minority of the homo sapiens that now wander this planet is not something that libertarians and non-libertarians would tend to dispute. We can't win elections even if we wanted to.

The majority parties are the parties of the great handouts and the great wars. The political candidates of the major parties have pollsters that tell politicians exactly what they must say to keep in reach of just over 50% of the population of likely voters.

Rand Paul is a perfect example of this. Given his pedigree, he surely understands what the libertarian positions are on all subjects and why they are important. But, yet, we see him flying off to Israel pretending to favor support for that foreign country. We see him call for the privitization of the tracking of the flying pubic, rather than the abolishment of such intrusive tracking. And we see him supporting the evil establishment senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell.

Rand is trapped in the political black hole that is sucking him in. He wants power and he thinks he is going to get it by getting closer to the center of power. But power only crushes independent streaks. It molds those who step close. Rand is not stronger than the black hole of power. The black hole is more powerful than he is. Rand wasn't even able to fight off the black hole on a minor issue. I speak of former Rand aide Jack Hunter. Rand seemed genuinely sincere when he spoke of Hunter as a decent person, but the black hole would have none of such talk. To speak so kindly of Hunter was talk crushed by the black hole. Hunter was tossed aside by Rand like a rag doll, as Rand moved one step closer toward the black hole of power.

As we get closer to the 2016 presidential elections, we will see the black hole mold Rand in many surprising ways. The seeking of power should not be the libertarian way. As I have explained before, the only use for the political process for libertarians is as an educational process. The goal should be to stick to principle and lose. The masses are nowhere near ready for us.

The most we can do at this point is be sharp, continue to study liberty in all its depth and richness and advance liberty, step-by-step, by using the levers we have at our disposal.

There are many ways to do this on many levels, even, curiously, occasionally on the political level in a strategic sense, for those so inclined --- but not by winning elections. Even if one wanted to do so, the votes are just not there for libertarian victories.