Wait, Déjà Vu Anyone?

In case you have been out of the loop, here is a quick summary of the political events that have occurred on the right side of the aisle these last few days:

1. Elections Occur on Tuesday, Rand Paul takes the Republican nomination for Senate over Trey Greyson, who was “favored by the establishment.” 

2. Antiestablishmentarian ‘conservatives’, libertarians and others celebrate the coming of the populist resurgence in American politics. 

3. Rand Paul is in trouble.

Yes, Rand Paul is taking some heat for his stance on myriad issues (most from before most of us at TheLobbyist were born) including the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act among others.  Now, my link above is to the Salon and the piece(s) written about these matters, which may not be completely fair because they do not have a knack for being impartial if you get my drift.  Nevertheless, it is the best way to better understand your views; by taking in and understanding the most penetrating criticisms levied against you or your beliefs and learning from them (Madison’s contributions to the Federalist Papers were best at this in my opinion). 

I am not going to get into this Federal government vs State government, civil rights vs. libertarian, right vs. wrong stuff though.  I want to point out a coincidence I noticed:

At the liberaltarian dinner, many of the liberals persuasively argued that the pool of freedom isn’t fixed such that if government takes more, then there is necessarily less for the people. Many government interventions expand freedom. A good example would be the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It was opposed by libertarians like Barry Goldwater as an unconstitutional infringement on states’ rights. Yet it was obvious that African Americans were suffering tremendously at the hands of state and local governments. If the federal government didn’t step in to redress these crimes, who else would?

This was written by Bruce Bartlett almost exactly a year ago.  I am not quite sure where Mr. Bartlett stands these days, probably more as a liberaltarian as a matter of fact; but I always enjoy a good coincidence.  Especially when the 1964 CRA was a point that Will Wilkinson at CATO also delved further into:

I think part of the problem is that if you hold up the Civil Rights Act as an example of libertarian success, most libertarians will deny that you are one. I think both the Civil Rights Act and the women’s movement did in fact lead to tremendous net increases in liberty. I think Bruce makes an excellent point. Federal intervention, while certainly limiting freedom of association and trumping more local jurisdictions, resulted IMO in an overall increase in freedom. That many traditional libertarian conservatives, such as Goldwater, seem to have been willing to sacrifice a great gain in overall freedom in order to maintain status quo levels local self-rule seems to me to betray a commitment to ancient ideals of liberty as community self-government in conflict with the modern idea of liberty as freedom from coercion.

All of this, a great dialectic between libertarians and liberaltarians, nearly a year before this current Rand Paul situation hit the fan. 

-rj