It's almost enough to make you feel sorry for Rand Paul. Within hours after winning the GOP Kentucky Senate primary, he ignites a firestorm over whether he supports the Civil Rights Act, opposed as he is to government interference in decisions made by private businesses, like the decision to only serve white people. Then he ties himself in knots trying to explain that he opposes discrimination and isn't a racist, while still sticking to his libertarian guns.
Charges of racism aside, what's clear is that Paul believes very strongly in a philosophy that is, when it comes to the actual questions of governing, rather juvenile. That's what Sen. John Kyl, one of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate, was getting at when he told The New York Times, "I hope he can separate the theoretical and the interesting and the hypothetical questions that college students debate until 2 a.m. from the actual votes we have to cast based on real legislation here."
It's all well and good to say that government ought to do almost nothing, so long as your dorm roommate hasn't thought any more about government than you have. But once you have to start answering detailed questions -- as you do when you run for Senate -- the things you want government to do start piling up. The early convert to libertarianism will say that government should do nothing but national defense and policing. But then you ask, who's going to pick up the garbage? OK, he'll say, they can do that too. Who gets called when there's a water main burst? OK, that too. Who makes building codes, so that when we have an earthquake all our houses don't fall over? OK, that too? What about food inspections, so our kids don't die of e.coli poisoning? OK, maybe that too.
What you're left with is that the libertarian doesn't want government to do anything, except a whole bunch of things he happens to think are worthwhile. Which makes the philosophy distinctive only in degree, not in kind. There are plenty of things liberals don't think the government ought to do. It's just a question of what you put on each side of that line.
Since it's rather simple for his critics to come up with important and popular things the government does, someone like Paul is going to find himself in a Catch-22: Either he turns away from the philosophy he has espoused to this point, which makes him look like just another pandering politician, or he takes really, really unpopular stands, like saying private businesses ought to be able to ban black people from their premises.
And you know who has been pretty quiet about this? The good folks at the libertarian magazine Reason, ordinarily a smart and provocative group. They've danced around the issue a little bit (see this post, for instance, arguing that Jim Crow was really an infringement on economic freedom, and therefore ... well, I'm not really sure), but don't seem to be quite sure whether they should be defending Paul.
Non-politician candidates are all well and good (Paul is an ophthalmologist), but Paul's biggest problem right now is that though he espouses this philosophy about the role of government, this seems to be the first time he's given much thought to the philosophy, or to government. That may not be too much of an issue if you're just yelling at a rally ("Tell the government to keep its hands off my Medicare!"), but it's a bit more problematic if you actually want to be the one writing the laws.
-- Paul Waldman
