Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul has been drawing criticism from his libertarian followers. A recent op-ed in the New York Times, for instance, chastises him for being insufficiently libertarian. His critics are particularly upset over his “hawkish” foreign policy, accusing him of abandoning the ideal of individual liberty. The reverse, however, is true: it is the
In the 19th century the term “liberal” was transformed into the opposite of its original meaning, from pro-liberty to pro-statism. A similar corruption occurred in the late 20th century with respect to the term “libertarian.” What once stood for a defense of individual rights came, unfortunately, to stand for its antithesis—a mindless hostility to government
I’ve written on the libertarians’ use of “non-interventionism” as a deceptive term to disguise their tacit kinship with anarchists. An article last month by a senior fellow at the Cato Institute provides a good illustration. In “Will America Ever Learn From Its Middle East Mistakes,” Ted Galen Carpenter argues against taking any military action against
What the National Security Agency (NSA) has done in spying on Americans is reprehensible—and what Edward Snowden has done is worse. The government is entitled to act against someone only when there is a valid reason to believe that he poses a physical threat to others. Once such evidence exists, of course, the government must