PAUL, CRUZ, GRAHAM….LIBERTARIAN HIJACKERS!

These 2016 presidential candidates are selectively cherry-picking their “small government” items from the libertarian menu.

Have you noticed how the concept of “Libertarianism” is now resurrecting itself within the Republican Party?  GOP politicians that have previously only called themselves "Republicans", with no mention of being a libertarian, are now signing up also as libertarians on a regular basis.

For instance, take the Senior Senator from South Carolina, Lindsay Graham.  Graham recently said, "Libertarians want smaller government. Count me in. Libertarians want oversight of government programs and making sure that your freedoms are not easily compromised. Count me in."

Basically, the notion of small government libertarianism has now been hijacked by Republican politicians who often represent the totally opposite.

As another example, the Texas Republican Junior Senator Ted Cruz has reportedly raised millions for his presidential bid, after launching his campaign on a promise of smaller government.  But in his speeches railing on "unelected bureaucrats", Cruz spent much of his own professional life as an “unelected government bureaucrat”.  First he was an appointee in George W. Bush's administration, then he was an appointee in the Texas' state government.

Also, in Cruz's announcement speech at Liberty University , you weren’t told that this conservative school has received one of the largest amounts of government funding of any nonprofit university in America.  Large amounts of government funding doesn’t sound like “smaller government” to me.  As was recently stated in the Huffington Post, “that fact can be described with a lot of words, but libertarian probably isn't one of them.”

And as to Senator Graham’s libertarian claims, Graham has been one of the most outspoken supporters of mass NSA surveillance on American citizens. That’s small government…?  Indeed, in response to news that the National Security Agency has been vacuuming up millions of Americans' telephone calls, there was absolutely no sign of Graham's purported small government libertarianism. In as recent as 2013, Graham stated, "I'm glad that activity is going on" and he declared, "I'm sure we should be doing this."  Not exactly what you would call being in support of “oversight or smaller government”.

But probably the best example of this non-libertarian way is by the Kentucky Senator, Rand Paul.

As a junior US senator, Paul has taken some genuinely strong libertarian positions.  He is against the ongoing Drug War, against surveillance and the militarization of America's domestic police force. He also has tried to discuss the topic of being against government subsidies to corporations. He said earlier this year that "we will not cut one penny from the [social] safety net until we've cut every penny from corporate welfare" and last month he said that if elected president, he'd slash business subsidies "so I don't have to cut the Social Security of someone who lives on Social Security."

But, Paul's pledges about corporate welfare do not extend to cutting the Pentagon’s budget, which has often been a big supporter of corporate welfare for its defense contractors. As Time magazine reported last month, "Just weeks before announcing his 2016 presidential bid ... Paul is completing an about-face on a longstanding pledge to curb the growth in defense spending." The magazine noted that he introduced legislation "calling for a nearly $190 billion infusion to the defense budget over the next two years”, that’s almost a 16% increase.

As most people know, being a libertarian is being for personal rights.  That usually means that if your way of living is not infringing on anyone’s personal property or their personal rights, then you can live your own life as you see fit.  That’s basic libertarianism. 

But Senator Paul is anti-choice on the abortion issue. That's right, for all of his anti-big-government rhetoric, he supports using the power of huge government to ban women from making their own choices about whether or not to terminate their pregnancies.

Just another example of libertarianism being improperly hijacked by Republican politicians.

Copyright G.Ater  2015