Left Wingers and Libertarians are uniting around common causes?

[busterbrown]

Thats what I am reading lately and its bullshit in my opinion...But mainstream media is just swooning over Rand Paul’s foreign policy and his stance on legalization of weed...And of course much has been written of Paul’s libertarian economic policies, which many younger people have mistaken for Rand Paul supporting the legalization of marijuana.

But Rand Paul has a ton of problems starting with this one, a propensity for ignoring the history of racism in this country, to the point that States should now possess the right to determine if a Luncheonette owner should have the right to wether or not serve an Afro-Ameriacan who awaits service at his counter..

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/09/chris-hayes-rand-paul-racist_n_3570440.html

His problem with woman is absolutely huge and will have a real difficult time dancing around his numerous ant-woman votes in congress as well as his opinions on choice..

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/02/does-rand-paul-have-woman-problem

And this is only a start..But lets start getting our facts straight and immediately squash any notion that the left is interested in supporting this jerk..

[Pholus]

1. I've found that certain people calling lefties "libertarians"

do so solely as a way to try to marginalize them.

Anyway, take it as just another term of endearment like "fringes" or "Naderite" or "emoprog" or "Professional Left."

And then consider the source...

[myrna minx]

2. There is a silly and desperate attempt to conflate the two.

I'm a lefty and find Rand Paul's politics and worldview detestable - especially his contempt for women and women's issues, his abhorrent racism as well as his horrendous economic positions. If, however, he accidentally stumbles upon the right vote for his own very wrong reason, I'll happily accept his Senate vote (if say he's a no vote on a war I'm against, for example, or if he votes with the Dems for another reason), but he's no rallying call for any lefty that I know of. That's absurd.

I think people are conflating that if there's a slim sliver of overlap on the VENN diagram between Paul and the Left and the Left happily accepts his Senate vote to advance the progressive agenda (marijuana and possible anti-war votes) that that somehow makes the Left some sort of Paul devotee. That's insulting, bizarre and ludicrous.

If his broken clock twice a day gets more votes to advance a Progressive agenda, I won't turn that away, but to conflate Rand Paul with the Left is silly and illogical. Good grief.

[Wounded Bear]

3. Yeah, I sense a lot of RW posturing...

They've been labeling everything "evil socialism" for so long that anything that is bad in their eyes is automatically somehow connected with "liberal" politics.

I know of quite a few young posters on-line who seem to think Paul's economics theories are the bee's knees. Mostly I just SMH and at the naivete.

If Paul screws up and votes the right way on an issue, I'm happy to say thanks for that. But I would never vote for the asshole.

[busterbrown]

4. This is an example of what I’m talking about....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=357437

[Bluenorthwest]

5. Lots of effort is going into claiming Rand Paul is something other than a Republican

He's a Southern Republican much like the rest of them, opposed to reproductive choice, opposed to marriage equality and opposed to legal cannabis. I am very dubious of those who promote the idea that Rand Paul is somehow not a Kentucky anti choice anti gay Republican right winger, no matter if they do it 'as a Democrat' or 'as a libertarian'. Paul is a Republican, his policies are virtually identical to the GOP Platform, and he does not favor 'legal weed' no matter how many times his promoters type that he does. There are in fact a few elected Republicans who have far more 'liberal' views of cannabis than Rand Paul, no one ever voted for them because of that.
Those who claim some 'alliance' with liberals are simply trying to polish Paul's image into something he is not.

[JHB]

6. Having an overlap of concerns (re: surveillence) does not amount to "uniting"

There has pretty much always been a few areas where parts of the left and parts of the right have had overlapping criticisms of some policies. Usually they had different perspectives on the causes and solutions to whatever the issue was.


So basically, SSDD.

[sofa king]

9. I'm not even sure there is an overlap.

I would argue that libertarianism is not well thought out in theory and hasn't been practiced in the US since the first Gilded Age (this being the second). It's not a real political party, in that it has never actually practiced governance, or even participated in it on a significant national level.

This permits libertarians to hold positions that would not, in fact, hold up in the practice of their own bullshit politics.

Therefore, even an apparent overlap, like surveillance, is unlikely to exist in actual practice, should libertarianism ever again be practiced.

Libertarians may oppose government surveillance, but their own political theories seem to permit and even encourage everyone to spy on everyone else for personal gain. In a libertarian world, there would be no regulatory body or laws in place to prevent your electronic devices from constantly spying and reporting on you, and no way to stop that information about you from being freely traded.

And sure enough, when you go back to the libertarian late-nineteenth Century, was there an FBI? No, there was a private corporation that kept files on everyone, the Pinkerton Agency, totally outside of Constitutional restraint.

So whatever the libertarians say about surveillance and rights to privacy, remember that they're making it up as they go along.

[beerandjesus]

7. I don't see why it's so outlandish to make common cause with Libertarians....

...in fact, I think it's foolish NOT to.

I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone on here who would vote for Rand Paul for much of anything. But American politics USED to be about compromise and building coalitions. We on the left genuinely agree with the libertarians on some things, and to pretend we don't, in the interest of some kind of "purity", seems to me infantile and self-defeating.

Let's fight for more, but take what we can get in the mean time!

[busterbrown]

10. “Use to be about compromise” Maybe about 20 years ago...

You can not compromise with tea bagger republicans and you must know that.. Rand Paul, stands arm to arm on issues of Austerity Cuts, LGBT Rights being 0, States Rights superseding any Fed Laws and of course destroying any regulations which could get in the way of Corporate and Banking industry greed..

So where can we compromise and with who....?

Please don’t mention Foreign Policy or NSA Spying.....Their only policy with regards to these 2 entities is to do the opposite of what Democrats (Obama) favors.. Every one of the Tea baggers/Republicans who are against NSA spying claim that Obama is the one responsible, completely ignoring its genesis being 911 and the Bush Administration.. Might be a couple of exceptions but you won’t find a single one in the House..

[winter is coming]

8. I don't know any lefties who have any interest in supporting Rand Paul.

Decriminalizing marijuana seems to be a popular position on the left, but that's not enough to make Paul seem palatable.

[busterbrown]

11. My concern is not the left.. Its the uninformed middle..n/t//

[winter is coming]

12. So the uninformed middle would know/care about what the left and libertarians are doing because? nt

[busterbrown]

14. If you talk about no more wars, smoking pot (Govt. leave us alone) flat taxes...

Out of my hair as far as my small business is concerned.. You see low informed hear what they want to hear and they will certainly hear this rot out of Paul’s mouth..Because it’s “cool” and will" certainly make my life better” .. People who only care about themselves want whats good for them.. Screw everyone else..

[Jamaal510]

13. I'm not so sure if

Rand is so much about legalization as the media wants us to believe. If you notice, he has never proposed anything that would call for actual national marijuana/drug legalization. In addition, he recently backed a bill that would call for a crackdown in areas where 420 has been legalized:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/14/rand-paul-backs-bill-that-could-lead-to-crack-down-on-states-where-voters-legalized-weed/

To me, this guy seems to be all over the map on this issue.

[anti partisan]

16. He's a professional politician

He knows the GOP base isn't for legalization and he wants their support. He also feels he's been marginalized by the tag "libertarian".

I doubt he's anything but pro-legalization, but unlike his father he has no spine and will cave into pressure because he wants to ascend the political latter.

Also, that bill I think was intended to be used more for immigration than going hardcore drug warrior.

Ron Paul has many wrong and misguided beliefs but I always felt like he meant what he said. Don't think the same can be said about his son, but they're probably a lot closer ideologically than one would think.

[struggle4progress]

15. The Libertarians are following the strategy Greenwald laid out right after the 2010 election:

try to strip progressives from the Dems and hope they're vote third party

Ultimately, it only helps the anti-regulatory big business crowd -- the folk who want to end environmental protection, the folk who want to bust unions, the folk who don't want any meaningful oversight of Wall Street, the folk who want to eliminate the social safety net, the folk who want to privatize government functions like police and jails ...