Young Americans for Freedom, which proclaims itself to be the nation’s oldest conservative/libertarian activist group, expelled Ron Paul from its advisory board in the wake of his victory in the CPAC straw poll. Aaron Marks, its senior director, said that Paul was “off his meds,” bragged that YAF is “more aligned with Obama” on national security,” said that Pual’s pro-liberty beliefs “border on treason,” and laughably accused him of “failure to uphold his oath to the United States Constitution.”
Aside from the utter preposterousness of an organization called Young Americans for Freedom expelling Paul for not being authoritarian enough on security, it is utterly demeaning and classless to suggest that a person’s beliefs, even if those beliefs are wrong, which Paul’s aren’t, are due to a physical abnormality in their brain.
Earlier, Donald Trump bashed Paul, saying at CPAC that he has “zero chance of getting elected.” Paul shot back that he has won elections 11 times, while he doesn’t know how many elections Trump has won.
And Kevin McCullough at Fox News wrote one of the most offensive editorials* I have read in a while, in which he writes of “disrespectful libertarians” who “hijack CPAC poll” and “immoral libertarianism that actually advocated for legalized pot and the redefinition of marriage to include homosexual unions.” He calls libertarianism “radically disrespectful,” “libertine,” “uber-disrespectful,” “animalistic,” and even “the worst form of political affiliation in the nation.” Additionally, he characterizes libertarianism as “combining the desire of economic greed, with the amoral desire to promote any behavior regardless of the cost to our culture” and calls it a “strange combination of policies that add up to anarchy without moral limits.”
First of all, Mr. McCullough, yes, libertarians do advocate for legalized pot. God forbid that people be allowed to decide what substances they want to put into their own bodies. And many libertarians, actually, advocate for getting the government out of marriage altogether so that all people, straight, gay, bi, and asexual, are treated equally under the law.
Libertarianism is based on the belief that people have the right to do whatever they want, as long as it does not violate the rights of anyone else. Anyone who does not recognize this as a moral theory has serious problems. So does anyone who considers freedom over one’s body, freedom from surveillance, economic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of travel to be a strange combination. Is paying lip service to private property and individual responsibility while taking away civil liberties, telling people what they can and cannot do with their bodies, and forcing them to conform to arbitrary social norms a more sensible combination?
Yes, some libertarians may have said that President George W. Bush considers the Constitution a mere “piece of paper.” Some may have expressed support for gay rights groups such as GOProud. Some may have called security measures that trample on privacy and liberty “illegal.” And some libertarians may have criticized Vice President Dick Cheney. I don’t see anything wrong with any of that. As for the alleged “pornographic calendar” handed out by libertarians at CPAC 2010, I attempted to find evidence of its existence, but the first page of results in both Google and Bing for “CPAC 2010 pornographic calendar” was filled entirely with copies of this very editorial on various websites.
If McCullough considers himself a conservative, all conservatives should be ashamed to be associated with him.
Shame on YAF, shame (at least a little) on Donald Trump, and major shame on Kevin McCullough!
Check out some good opinion pieces from Reason, the Atlantic, and LewRockwell.com.
* To be fair, McCullough does criticize Mitt Romney for supporting an individual mandate in Massachusetts, which I appreciate. But that is the only thing in this editorial that I appreciate.
