Pat Buchanan always endorsed the GOP nominee. He never sold out.
Rand Paul endorsed the nominee. He hasn't sold out.
Pat is a paleoconservative. He actually does believe in isolationism, not just noninterventionism. Isolationism is noninterventionism, closed borders, and protectionism in trade (balanced trade or reciprocal trade). He isn't a libertarian. He only believes in about half of what we do. He's all for making laws to force morality on people. He isn't for ending the drug war, last I checked. He isn't for equality for gay people. He is borderline racist (it's not all that borderline, really) as well. He's a freakin' culture warrior. He's not on our side on many issues. He's waaaayyy better than neocons, and I respect Pat for the role he played in holding down the fort of old school conservatism until the Barry Goldwater libertarianism came back via Paul (and Paul took it even further than Goldie)...but he's no libertarian. He's in the liberty movement with one foot, and in the statist camp with the other foot.
I mean go watch him on Stossel right now...he's arguing the segregation, anti-gay stuff, and anti-women stuff of the 1950s was better than what we have now because society was more Christian and because we had a more unified "culture". Collectivist nonsense built on nationalism! He thinks interracial marriage is bad! It isn't bad or good, for God's Sake, Pat!
Rand is clearly half-a-libertarian. His other half is neoconservative, not paleoconservative...hence the Iran sanctions. He also, therefore, is no libertarian. Libertarians don't vote for acts of war like sanctions, even with silly Orwellian Amendments to those sanctions that say basically 'this act of war is in no way to be construed as an act of war'. BTW, acts of war (like sanctions) when war is not declared are unConstitutional!
These three things (half neocon/half libertarian, paleocon, and libertarian) can all look very similar to the untrained eye...that's why studying philosophy is so important.
Ron is a libertarian (who happens to be a Republican). He may be personally conservative on social issues, but he's not on economic issues, and isn't conservative in terms of legislating morality. Conservatives are Keynesians on economics (libertarians are Austrians or some form of free market), and want to legislate morality. Hence, Ron is a libertarian. Libertarians can be individually personally conservative or liberal...it's irrelevant because we don't want to legislate it. Hence, there are left and right libertarians.
Rand came across to most of us to be a Ron-esque libertarian. He turned out not to be.
If you are going to be apart of a party, you cannot completely disregard their nominees IF you want to be successful with in the parties. I want to be successful.
Any claims of this "sellout" nonsense is complete BS sensationalism, the type of rabid self cannibalism that makes everybody think Ron Paul and his supporters are nuts.
See, we don't want to have a successful Party or success with a Party...we want to have a successful philosophy. The Enlightenment wasn't a Party, it was an intellectual Paradigm Shift in society. We'll abandon this Party as fast as it abandon's our principles, or we're morons just moving incrimentally back to where we started and turning ourselves into what we fought against.
This is about principles, not some damn Party. You do not sellout your principles and endorse a Party's candidate just to play politics. Ron didn't in 2008, hence why I respect him. You want respect, stop supporting Party over principles, and stop making excuses for those who do support Party over principles.
We need cannibalism to weed out (or call out, and steer back toward liberty) those who aren't for liberty, but are for a little liberty and a lot of horrid statism. You can be a minarchist, but you have to support liberty or I won't support you or let you make excuses for those who do it. If that makes us "nuts", then I say being "sane" must mean compromise (not coalitions) and having no principles before Party politics. I don't want to be "sane" if that's what you define as sane. I want to have firm principles and educate people to our enlightened position of liberty. I'd rather lose elections and educate more and more people until society finally sees it our way, than to win a few elections by selling our souls.
Some of you want to win elections so much you'll jump in bed with warmongers and neocons and paleocons. People like me want to force them, by way of enlightened transition, to jump in bed with us instead.
