Below The Beltway: Ron Paul On Legalizing Drugs And Prostitution
Doug Mataconis over at Below The Beltway hosts part one of six interviews between John Stossel and presidential candidate Ron Paul.
First item: Drugs, Gay Marriage, and Prostitution. Paul's answers can be summarized briefly as that drug use is distasteful, but a state issue, marriage is a matter between an individual and his church, and prostitution is A-OK -- and none of these items are a concern of the federal government.
Paul caps all of this off with a slap at American-style conservativism, and I'll explain briefly:
I think when you defend freedom, you defend freedom of choice and you can't be picking and choosing how people use those freedoms.
So, if they do things that you don't like and you might find morally repugnant, I, as an individual, I don't make that judgment.
So, I don't believe that government can legislate virtue. I can reject it personally, and preach against it -- whether it's drugs or prostitution. But my solution comes from my personal behavior with myself, and how I raise my children, but whether it's personal behavior or economic behavior, I want people to have freedom of choice. (emphasis mine) Russell Kirk, often cited as the founder of modern-day American conservativism, argued the converse -- that it was indeed the business of government to legislate virtue among citizens and punish vice.
Naturally he had a different definition of "virtue" than what we might consider today (by it, he means moral and civic virtue, not sexual virtue), but the ethos of virtue was one of his principle condemnations of the libertarian movement, whom Kirk criticized as being "libertine" rather than libertarian.
While Kirk may have been attacking the libertarian tendency towards hedonism rather than principled actors, Ron Paul (I believe) knowingly chose the phrase "government can't legislate virtue." He's separating himself from the conservative movement.
Towards what is the question we have yet to ask... but we'll find out in the next five parts.
Sorry to be drooling over the Ron Paul Movement as of late, but I find the entire discussion (or what should be a discussion but what certain members of the Paul movement are turning into a adolescent temper-tantrum) regarding which direction the Republican Party should take -- whether it is conservativism, evangelicalism, fusionism, moderatism, libertarianism, or classical liberalism -- to be fascinating.
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1000 Needles 
2 Comments:
As for Paul's comments and the proper orientation of the Republican Party, we must remember that the allegiance of libertarians and conservatives comes on the grounds of constitutionalism.
Generally speaking, keeping the federal government out of "moral issues" is a good idea, unless those morals (e.g., the right to life) are specifically guaranteed by the constitution.
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