EgbertoWillies.com

Political involvement should be a requirement for citizenship

  • Home
    • Homepage
    • Login
    • About Us
    • Bio
    • Research
      • BallotPedia
      • Bureau of Labor Statistics
      • CallMyCongress
      • LegiScan
      • OpenSecrets.org
      • Texas Legislature Online
      • US Dept; Of Health & Human Services
      • US Dept. of Labor
      • VoteSmart
    • Contact Us
    • Disclaimer
    • Privacy Policy
  • Shows
    • Live TV
    • Move to Amend Reports
    • Politics Done Right
  • Books
  • Articles
    • AlterNet
    • CNN iReports
    • CommonDreams
    • DailyKos
    • Medium
    • OpEdNews
    • Substack
  • Activism
    • Battleground Texas
    • Coffee Party
    • Move To Amend
    • OccupyMovement
  • Social
    • BlueSky
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Pinterest
    • Tumblr
    • Twitter
    • YouTube
  • Sections
    • Environment
    • Food And Cooking
    • Health
    • Local News
    • Odd News
    • People Making A Difference
    • Political
    • Reviews
      • Book Reviews
      • Books I Recommend
      • Product Reviews
    • Sports
  • Donate
  • Store

Rand Paul Hearts the Russianized Libertarian Version of the Laissez-Faire System

April 27, 2022 By Thom Hartmann

The reality is that Rand Paul’s beloved libertarianism can only be realized in an authoritarian oligarchy where average people lack the resources or political power to have a real say, like in Russia

Americans of all political persuasions were somewhere between horrified and mystified yesterday when Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul argued that the US shouldn’t help Ukraine gain NATO membership because, as Putin said when he started the war, Ukraine was “part of the Soviet Union.”

Seriously — check it out:

SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): “The countries that have been attacked, Georgia and Ukraine, were part of the Soviet Union."⁰⁰SEC. BLINKEN: “That does not give Russia the right to attack them.” pic.twitter.com/N78oTcVbIt

— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) April 26, 2022

It’s easy to bash Rand Paul for being a toady for Putin:

  • His grandson-in-law, who was convicted of campaign fraud for crimes he committed running Paul’s campaign (and who Trump then pardoned), was just last month again charged with campaign fraud, this time for funneling massive sums of Russian money into the 2016 campaign.
  • Three weeks after Trump groveled before Putin in Helsinki while attacking US intelligence agencies, Rand Paul secretly flew to Moscow on Trump’s behalf and hand-delivered a private note to Putin which remains undisclosed to this day.
  • Just a few weeks after eight Republican lawmakers, (Shelby, Daines, Hoeven, Johnson, Kennedy, Moran, Thune, and Granger) spent the 4th of July in Moscow, Senator Paul made his own separate trip to Moscow to meet with Russian lawmakers to discuss “foreign relations.”
  • At that meeting, a Russian lawmaker told him he could become a real man “with a capital M” if he were to arrange some help for Russian spy Maria Butina, who’d had an affair with a wealthy associate of Paul’s.

Check out our new book “How to make America Utopia: Take away the economy from those who rigged it” today knowing you  (1) Get communication techniques &  (2) Support  Progressive message delivery.

Even the late Republican Senator John McCain thought Paul’s affection for Putin’s positions was suspicious. 

When Montenegro wanted to join NATO (which requires agreement from all NATO countries including the US) Paul blocked the unanimous consent motion in the Senate.

As you can see below, McCain came right out and said, “I’ll say it again, the senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladamir Putin.”

https://twitter.com/WUTangKids/status/1518984518392328197

Check out our new book “It’s Worth It: How to Talk To Your Right-Wing Relatives, Friends, and Neighbors” today knowing you  (1) Get communication techniques &  (2) Support  Progressive message delivery.

But the political disease Rand Paul carries goes far deeper than just his affection for all things Putin and Russia. Paul is a devotee of the crackpot “libertarian” and “objectivist” theories promoted by Ayn Rand (his parents were also big fans) and others.

Libertarians don’t believe in democracy. Which may be why it’s such a popular political philosophy among nouveau riche American billionaires.

While they’ll give lip service to elections, they’ll also be the first to tell you that even representative democracy is “mob rule” and therefore should be subordinated to the “magic of the marketplace.”

Republican Senator Mike Lee also describes himself as a libertarian and actively pushed fake Trump electors from states Biden won. With total consistency, he famously tweeted:

Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.

— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) October 8, 2020

Their argument goes something like this:

  • If the people can choose what they want, through referendums or elected representatives, they will always bankrupt a nation.
  • They’ll do this by voting to give themselves lots of free stuff, even if it means destroying the nation’s economic health.
  • Therefore nations must have guardrails to prevent the “rabble” from voting themselves all that free stuff.
  • The best of these guardrails is to allow morbidly rich people — those who have proven their brilliance, competence and wisdom by getting or inheriting riches — to control political parties and politicians through unlimited campaign financing (see: Citizens United).
  • If the people still demand free stuff and go around collecting signatures to raise the minimum wage, ban cruise ships from ecologically sensitive areas, or let ex-felons vote, do like Ron DeSantis did last July and sign a law banning citizen initiatives or referendums.  

Check out our book “As I See It – Class Warfare: The Only Resort To Right Wing Doom” today knowing you  (1) Will understand government/economy &  (2) Support  Progressive message delivery.

Libertarians think they have it all figured out. But they’re totally wrong.

As proof, just try to name even one country in the history of the entire world that has ever successfully run along libertarian lines. There are none, and never will be.

There are also no countries that have failed because of “too much democracy.”

In fact, no country in the world has ever had to dissolve itself because its citizens voted themselves “too much free stuff.” 

It turns out people are practical: even the most democratic countries in the world, like the Scandinavian nations, stick to basic “freebies” that have been considered appropriate government functions since the days of ancient Greece. 

These typically include healthcare, education, and publicly owned infrastructure like roads, public buildings, and fire departments.

They may raise taxes on the morbidly rich to pay for some of these things, but the result of that is a less severely unequal — and thus happier — society. 

And the rich people in those countries can still accumulate more money than they could ever spend in a normal person’s lifetime.

Which brings us back to Rand Paul’s affection for Russia. 

As I lay out in The Hidden History of Neoliberalism: How Reaganism Gutted America, when Milton Friedman’s “Chicago Boys” went to Russia in the early 1990s to privatize that nation’s economy, they largely hewed to libertarian ideology.

They privatized most Russian government functions, producing a bumper crop of oligarchs who run or supply everything from Moscow’s infrastructure to their social welfare programs to their military. (We’re seeing the results of that experiment in Ukraine, with Russian soldiers wearing cardboard “bulletproof vests” so the oligarchs could skim off the profits.)

The simple reality is that Rand Paul’s beloved libertarianism can only be truly realized in an authoritarian oligarchy where average people lack the resources or political power to have a meaningful say in how the state is run.

Like Russia.

So it’s entirely possible — probable, even — that Rand Paul’s apparent love for Vladimir Putin is neither admiring nor romantic: it’s fraternal. Putin, running a semi-libertarian nation, is his brother.

In other words, Rand Paul mostly loves the Russianized libertarian version of the laissez-faire system.

And has, like his father, spent a career working to impose something like it on America.

(For the “Daily Audio” of Thom reading this article, available only to paid subscribers, check the “Daily Audio” tab on HartmannReport.com.)

Originally posted at The Hartmann Report

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Click to share on Nextdoor (Opens in new window) Nextdoor
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

Viewers are encouraged to subscribe and join the conversation for more insightful commentary and to support progressive messages. Together, we can populate the internet with progressive messages that represent the true aspirations of most Americans.

Support Our Politics Done Right Store

Filed Under: The Hartmann Report Tagged With: Thom Hartmann

About Thom Hartmann

Thom Hartmann has been the nation's #1 progressive talk show host for over a decade. His program is live daily from noon-3 PM ET on commercial radio stations all across the United States, on nonprofit stations via the Pacifica Network, and on channel 127 of the SiriusXM Satellite radio network. The program is also simulcast as TV via the Free Speech TV Network, carried on DISH and DirectTV satellite networks, Hulu, AppleTV, Sling, cable systems nationwide, and everywhere else you can find FSTV. It's also live on YouTube and Facebook.

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • X
  • YouTube
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • LinkedIn

Support Independent Media

Support Politics Done Right on PayPal

Politic Done Right

RevContent


Support Independent Media



RSS Feed

  • RSS - Posts
Mastodon
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d