Political neophyte Rand Paul of Kentucky Made a political faux pas the other day. His mistake was to assume that the purpose of a reporters question is to learn. In reality, reporters are mainly interested in provoking a, "gotcha," moment. Rand certainly gave them one of those.
Rand Paul is a Libertarian. The story line from the bed-wetting left is that Libertarians are not for small government, but are, in fact, anti government. That of course is beyond silly. But it does give me an opportunity to enlighten readers of Fingerpost.
Pundits refer to political candidates as being centrist, or right of center or left of center. Did you ever wonder where those terms come from? Consider the drawing below:
When the founding fathers were drafting the Constitution they studied in depth the history of governments and the things that did, or didn't work. At one extreme there was total government control. At the other there was no government control, or anarchy. The best government, they concluded, was somewhere in between such that the people would have control of their government.
Many of us, including Rand Paul, believe that the federal government has drifted too far to the left (government control.) Our premise is that the federal government doesn't do anything well (witness the gulf oil spill.) We want to shift control to the right. At the risk of over simplifying, Libertarians want to shift further to the right than Conservatives. No one is suggesting a shift all the way to the right. Only those idiots that riot every year at the G7 summit want anarchy.
Rand Paul is a Libertarian. The story line from the bed-wetting left is that Libertarians are not for small government, but are, in fact, anti government. That of course is beyond silly. But it does give me an opportunity to enlighten readers of Fingerpost.
Pundits refer to political candidates as being centrist, or right of center or left of center. Did you ever wonder where those terms come from? Consider the drawing below:
When the founding fathers were drafting the Constitution they studied in depth the history of governments and the things that did, or didn't work. At one extreme there was total government control. At the other there was no government control, or anarchy. The best government, they concluded, was somewhere in between such that the people would have control of their government.
Many of us, including Rand Paul, believe that the federal government has drifted too far to the left (government control.) Our premise is that the federal government doesn't do anything well (witness the gulf oil spill.) We want to shift control to the right. At the risk of over simplifying, Libertarians want to shift further to the right than Conservatives. No one is suggesting a shift all the way to the right. Only those idiots that riot every year at the G7 summit want anarchy.
Fingerpost has learned the hard way that it doesn't pay to put faith in political candidates. Instead I endorse principles. Almost everyone agrees that the government will shift a little to the right in November. Let's hope that it is far enough and that it comes in time...