You are using an outdated browser.
Please upgrade your browser
and improve your visit to our site.

Rand Paul's Flight

When you watch a media feeding frenzy of the sort currently engulfing Rand Paul, it's hard not to feel some sympathy for the target. Paul has a coherent worldview, and news reporters encountering unfamiliar worldviews tend to ignore all the subtlety of the thought and reduce them to caricature. But two of Paul's qualities make me feel that he is actually, in an odd sense, getting off lightly.

The first is that Rand is wildly evasive. He's not attempting to explain his ideology while falling victim to a sound-bite press corps. He's desperately trying to deny his ideology. Paul explicitly believes, or at least believed, that the 1964 Civil Rights Act erred in forbidding private discrimination. But he simply changed the subject over and over to avoid explaining this belief, before finally abandoning it altogether without acknowledging that he ever held it. Likewise, he evaded a question about whether he supports the minimum wage. He seems to be attempting to run a stealth candidacy.

Second, I don't think even Rand's liberal critics have properly defined his ideology. We've been calling it "libertarian," but it's much more paleoconservative. Rand's conspiratorial belief that the government is secretly creating a Nafta superhighway is distinctly un-libertarian. And while you can't fully associate him with every view of his father, for whom he campaigned, Ron Paul published a relentlessly racist newsletter for years. Rand managed to win the primary mainly by defining his ideology in vague, right-wing populist terms. The media has a positive duty to force him to explain what he actually believes.

Logo

Independent journalism matters

×

Ads help fund our journalism. Please disable your ad blocker so that we can continue striving to be the most influential magazine in Washington, D.C., with our breaking news coverage, in-depth political features, and much more.

Continue without disabling

Choose your Ad Blocker

  • Adblock Plus
  • Adblock
  • Adguard
  • Ad Remover
  • Brave
  • Ghostery
  • uBlock Origin
  • uBlock
  • UltraBlock
  • Other
  1. In the extension bar, click the AdBlock Plus icon
  2. Click the large blue toggle for this website
  3. Click refresh
  1. In the extension bar, click the AdBlock icon
  2. Under "Pause on this site" click "Always"
  1. In the extension bar, click on the Adguard icon
  2. Click on the large green toggle for this website
  1. In the extension bar, click on the Ad Remover icon
  2. Click "Disable on This Website"
  1. In the extension bar, click on the orange lion icon
  2. Click the toggle on the top right, shifting from "Up" to "Down"
  1. In the extension bar, click on the Ghostery icon
  2. Click the "Anti-Tracking" shield so it says "Off"
  3. Click the "Ad-Blocking" stop sign so it says "Off"
  4. Refresh the page
  1. In the extension bar, click on the uBlock Origin icon
  2. Click on the big, blue power button
  3. Refresh the page
  1. In the extension bar, click on the uBlock icon
  2. Click on the big, blue power button
  3. Refresh the page
  1. In the extension bar, click on the UltraBlock icon
  2. Check the "Disable UltraBlock" checkbox
  1. Please disable your Ad Blocker
  2. Disable any DNS blocking tools such as AdGuardDNS or NextDNS

If the prompt is still appearing, please disable any tools or services you are using that block internet ads (e.g. DNS Servers).