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comment by am_Unition
am_Unition  ·  618 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post:

Rand Paul is an idiot, yes, but it's long since gotten to the point that you've gotta wonder if he's consciously working against the interests of the American people, financed by foreign adversaries.

The idea that Donald Trump's handling of classified information is a case for repealing the Espionage Act is literally the exact opposite conclusion that any reasonable person would reach. Obviously, this is simply about catering to Trump and his base, and the Trumpists might as well be competing to craft the most ludicrous legal defense theory. "Abolish any laws that Trump has broken" ranks pretty high, I gotta say.

Most "libertarians" in the US are unprincipled reactionaries propping up a fascist leader. So, you know, diametrically opposed to most libertarian principles. If you're indistinguishable from a fascist, I don't really care what you call yourself, I'll call you a fascist. And an inability to discern and condemn fascism bodes very poorly for my assessments of your stated ideals and ideas.

And it's always rich to hear people freely denouncing the government and then complain that they somehow aren't free to denounce the government. Yes, you should absolutely be free to dissent against the State, and in the USA, you are. Past overreaches using the Espionage Act were largely corrected.

That fff.org article is an amazing read, btw. For the life of me, I can't figure out how the author gets from "I think there is prosecutorial overreach in the Assange case" to "there should be no mechanism of enforcing punishments for sharing state secrets". The only stated (il)logic is that "WW1 was bad, and the Espionage Act is related to that." Maybe the best explanation is that the author doesn't believe the state should exist at all? That's so weird, because Russia thinks the same thing about our country! When fully gamed out, the libertarian fantasy always requires a global agreement to simultaneously dissolve or at least greatly diminish every government and military in the world, and to then not attack each other. Libertarianism, the anti-globalist philosophy. The entire school of thought is bankrupt of consistency and utility. Mostly, it's a fancy multi-syllabic word to hide behind because you're tired of people recoiling when you tell them you're a republican.





kleinbl00  ·  618 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Rand Paul is a Fellow Traveller. People forget: Ayn Rand invented Objectivism as a reaction to the collectivism of the Bolsheviks. Her whole schtick was "nobody gets to take your stuff away" which makes the most sense for people with stuff. Early objectivists were understandably negative towards the Soviets but modern-day ones just see oligarchs and Objectivism, fundamentally, celebrates oligarchy.

The KGB/FSB did better with Republicans from Goldwater on because game recognizes game. Teddy Roosevelt Republicanism was about the power of the free market while Goldwater-on was about power within the free market - Bork's whole schtick was that monopolies are good unless the government has them in which case individuals are denied their opportunity to get rich.

You'd have a lot more tranquility if you spent more time looking at what they do than at what they say because the political ideology of the Right does not require anyone to speak the truth, to speak candidly, or to experience any ramifications from their speech whatsoever.