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Comment by duringmath | Hacker News Reader

We need more libertarians in congress, they err on the side of civil liberties and work to stop the deluge of bad laws.

Liberties like abortion rights for example?

Or not that kind of "liberty" then. (Paul favors a federal ban on abortion - throwing doctors and mothers in jail for miscarriages and other medical emergencies that can't be adequately explained to the local abortion police). That's "libertarian" apparently

Abortion is a pretty contentious issue for both big and small l libertarians. Generally it is not a litmus test for a person's libertarian-ness like it is for democrats and republicans.

Although the libertarian party doesn't speak for all - here is a decent summary: https://www.lp.org/libertarians-on-abortion/

> Generally it is not a litmus test for a person's libertarian-ness like it is for democrats and republicans.

That litmus test will misclassify 18% of Democrat/lean Dem and 38% of Republican/lean Rep. As a litmus test for determining party affiliation, it's shit.

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opini...

> Generally it is not a litmus test for a person's libertarian-ness

Well sure, if you define "libertarian" as "hypocritical bro who wants the government to not touch his own personal things but feel free to go nuts on women, minorities, bailing out huge banks I make use of with taxpayer money", the abortion issue is not much of a litmus test.

Otherwise calling abortion a "contentious" issue for dictionary-definition libertarianism, that's something libertarians would think to make themselves feel better about supporting the most intrusive government overreach imaginable.

Realistically everyone has to "sell out" a little to get elected to office

The idea that Rand Paul is a libertarian is pretty absurd.

He's a decent facsimile.

That's not a gotcha for libertarians because libertarianism has a whole philosophy around the use of violence, which abortion would fall under. That is libertarians do not consider there to be a right to violence except in cases of self defence. Thus it is consistent to be libertarian and not consider abortion rights to be legitimate.

are you familiar with a procedure called a DNC ? Have you ever known anyone who had a miscarriage? Are you aware that the DNC procedure is now vaguely illegal in many states and that entire maternity wards and OB/GYN practices are literally leaving states like Texas to avoid accidental liabilities? That mothers undergoing medical emergencies are being forced to writhe in painful, life threatening scenarios for hours, as their baby dies through natural causes in any case, as doctors are now terrified to intervene?

Do you know any of this?

I think if you are completely ignorant of modern medicine, you should probably sit down before commenting on what "abortion" is and what the actual effect of anti-abortion laws is.

sources:

https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/20/rural-hospital-texas...

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/16/health/abortion-texas-sepsis/...

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/07/1161486096/abortion-texas-law...

etc etc

This particular libertarian has accepted large donations from ByteDance. Though I think the decision he made was ultimately correct, it's very likely he wasn't doing it out of principle, but because he wants to keep getting bribes.

We should make buying politicians illegal, so that we can see their actual character.

Isn't it more likely that he's just being consistent with his prior principles, and bytedance donated to him knowing that he'd be a reliable ally and thus wanting him to remain in Congress?

Almost certainly not. It's not very likely for him to be voted out, and companies don't "hope" their dollars go toward what they want.

Of course they do. All political donations involve "hope" because you can't directly control what a politician says or does with money. You can only fund allies and then hope or assume they remain allies. In the case of Rand Paul it's a pretty good bet he won't suddenly turn on them, because his principles are consistent with what they want, so it makes sense to make big donations.

I choose to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one.

If this was a democrat, would you still give the benefit of the doubt?

I simply can't trust the word of a politician that's arguing in favor of the company that bribed them.

It's not about dems or repubs it's just that 2 parties can't possibly represent all the diverse groups and agendas in this country and a libertarian option would go a long way to remedying that.

But like you said whether it's on principle or not the reason for his objection is beside the point.

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