Rand Paul And The Craven Fascism Of Republicans

The libertarian dream means absolute unaccountability. But only for those at the top.

Rand Paul and Donald Trump. Image via CNN

NOTE FROM BEN: Apologies for the absence of our “F**king Mondays” column yesterday. I’ve been dealing with some health issues but should be back up to speed next week!

by Justin Rosario

Once upon a time, there was a thing called “libertarianism.” It was an ideology of maximum personal freedom achieved by drastically limiting the role of government in our lives. I was introduced to the concept by former Texas Congressman and three time presidential nominee, Ron Paul.  

In my experience, people who are overtly hostile to the concept of government, paying taxes, public education and health care etc, have a habit of being selfish assholes. They also, it turns out, have a tendency to be racist as hell. Ron Paul was no exception.

If you’re not familiar with Ron Paul’s racist past, allow me to refresh your memory courtesy of The New Republic. They helpfully highlight some of the low points of a newsletter Ron Paul put out back in the 80s and 90s. It’s…awful:

“A Special Issue on Racial Terrorism” analyzes the Los Angeles riots of 1992: “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began. ... What if the checks had never arrived? No doubt the blacks would have fully privatized the welfare state through continued looting. But they were paid off and the violence subsided.”

The November 1990 issue of the Political Report had kind words for David Duke.

This December 1990 newsletter describes Martin Luther King Jr. as “a world-class adulterer” who “seduced underage girls and boys” and “replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration.”

I encourage you to read the rest of the article to see just how horrid Ron Paul’s newsletter was, because believe it or not, it gets worse.

When Paul was running for president in 2012, he swore up and down he had no idea his newsletter was racist. The Washington Post revealed this to be nonsense:

People close to Paul’s operations said he was deeply involved in the company that produced the newsletters, Ron Paul & Associates, and closely monitored its operations, signing off on articles and speaking to staff members virtually every day.

"It was his newsletter, and it was under his name, so he always got to see the final product. . . . He would proof it,'' said Renae Hathway, a former secretary in Paul's company and a supporter of the Texas congressman's.

Hardcore libertarians almost always couch their demands for “freedom” in terms of meritocracy. Just by coincidence, they always seem to believe that they will rise to the top of said meritocracy.

In theory, libertarianism should support a woman’s right to choose. It should back Black Lives Matter to the hilt. It should be willing to die to defend the LGBTQ community from laws designed to marginalize them. It should be violently hostile to Christian Nationalism and fascism. All of these are expressions of overbearing government intrusion into the lives of its citizens — the one thing libertarianism is fundamentally opposed to. In theory.

In practice? American libertarians do the exact opposite. This brings us to Ron Paul’s son, Rand Paul.

Rand Paul, the pro-fascist libertarian

Steve Benen took some time over a Maddowblog to remind us that Rand Paul used to be strongly opposed to unrestrained presidential power. So much so that he spent over 12 hours railing against just that on the Senate floor:

Two years earlier, however, Paul held the floor for more than 12 hours. Taking advantage of John Brennan’s nomination to lead the CIA, the GOP senator demanded to know, “Does the president have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?”

…

But, the public was told at the time, the GOP lawmaker felt it was all worth it because of his deep, principled concerns about the scope of government power. Paul, ostensibly a prominent voice of his party’s libertarian wing, was compelled to take a stand against the possibility of a president having the power to use military force, on American soil, against a civilian citizen.

But as always, when a Republican wails about too much government power, what they mean is “too much power when Democrats are in charge.” How do we know? Because Rand Paul’s outrage over a president having the power to kill American citizens on American soil appears to have evaporated. 

Rand Paul was asked for his reaction to Trump’s claim that he could order Seal Team 6 to kill his political opponents and that presidents are totally immune from any and all prosecution. As a libertarian, Rand Paul should have been appalled. Instead, he crawled on his belly and licked Trump’s jackboots:

“It’s a very specific legal argument, and I’m afraid I’m just not up on it enough to be able to comment,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a libertarian-leaning critic of executive overreach who once mounted a 12-hour filibuster on the Senate floor to warn about the threat of drone strikes against U.S. citizens on American soil.

It’s actually not a very specific legal argument at all. Especially if you’re a small-government libertarian. Should the president have unrestrained power? The answer is always “no.” The entire point of the Revolutionary War was that we wouldn’t have an unaccountable supreme ruler with absolute power. To suggest otherwise should make any libertarian who actually believes their ideology violently ill.

Wouldn’t you know it, though? Nary a peep from libertarians, certainly not Rand Paul. If you’ve been paying attention to Rand Paul for a while, this should come as no surprise. I wrote about his “magical” about-face in 2018:

One of the more "mysterious" reversals in Washington since the illegitimate election of Donald Trump has been Rand Paul from loud critic of Trump to sycophantic ass-kisser.

…

People have been wondering what Putin has on Paul. Was his email hacked? Do they have a Rand Paul pee-pee tape? How did this fierce critic of Trump become a Trump stooge?

I explained then that Rand Paul discovered his deep and abiding love for Donald Trump after it became absolutely clear that Trump was owned by Vladimir Putin. 

What still holds true is that Russia is almost everything the American right aspires to. In Russia, there is no free press. There is no free speech. There are no free elections. Oligarchs control everything and plunder the resources of the country for themselves, leaving scraps for the public. Rich white Christian men are the apex predators and they can do whatever they want with no repercussions. 

This is the libertarian dream. Absolute unaccountability. But only for those at the top. 

Rand Paul absolutely has an answer to the question about Trump’s claim to absolute power as president. He is all for it. Rand Paul, the small-government libertarian, fully believes that the President of the United States (as long as they are a Republican) should have godlike power. So do his fellow Republicans. So does the Republican base. The same people who were once the “small government” Tea Party now fully embrace authoritarian fascism, the largest, most oppressive version of government imaginable.

They all believe the same thing about the Supreme Court too. As long as it is dominated by right-wing extremists, the right believes the Court should control America by judicial fiat. The second the court flips back to Democratic control a decade or less from now, there will be Republican calls for term limits and restrictions on the power of SCOTUS. Rand Paul will be among the loudest voices demanding a return to limited government power.

The bottom line is that there is no such thing as the conservative wing of the Republican Party. There are no libertarians in the GOP. There are the fascists and the people turning a blind eye to fascism as they profit from the grifting free-for-all of right-wing politics. Rand Paul is just more obvious. and infinitely more hypocritical, about his support for fascism than the others. 

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