One of the happier moments for me last Tuesday was the election of Dr. Rand Paul as the new Senator from Kentucky. (Almost as happy as the defeat of Christine O'Donnell in Delaware!) I have believed for some time now (contrary to the 'liberal' loathing of Rand Paul, exemplified by the fact that Paul's Democratic opponent was one of three political contributions that recently got Keith Olbermann into trouble at MSNBC) that Senator Paul would bring a new perspective to Washington, as probably the first truly libertarian Senator, that would be salutary and useful in countering our growing leviathan state and imperial pretensions.
Senator Paul appeared yesterday on This Week with Christine Amanpour, and I thought he was particularly articulate, and indeed courageous, in asserting the importance of making across the board cuts in national spending, to include our bloated military establishment (a position that almost nobody on the establishment Republican and Democratic side is willing to make).
To see where Rand Paul gets his moxy, view this interesting video of his father Congressman Ron Paul being interviewed by William F. Buckley on the show Firing Line back in 1988. In this video (the first of four), Ron Paul makes the case for abolishing the CIA, while Buckley defends it. In fact, later in the video, Buckley comes across as fervent a defender of 'big government' as I've seen from any so-called 'liberal'. I don't know what 'conservatism' or 'right-wing' means, if both of these men are thought of as conservative or right-wing. There is something clearly askew about our political nomenclature.
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