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Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

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Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#91
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably Rand Paul, like many Republicans (and no small number of Democrats), accepts the idea that people can exercise their rights through government-registered entities which they own, called "corporations". These are entities without intrinsic rights, but a well-known intellectual framework called "corporate personhood" which dates back to some of our earliest jurisprudence in this nation says that you treat th…

While not debating the facts of your statement, I would contend that the only legitimate exercise of an owner's rights in the context of a corporation are to seek profit through commerce. Political speech, religious beliefs, and other "personhood" concepts are already granted to corporate owners as individuals.

> I would contend that the only legitimate exercise of an owner's rights in the context of a corporation are to seek profit through commerce.

Not all extant corporations are made to seek profits. There are nonprofits out there for a variety of charitable causes, social-justice causes, and other activities which often have a nontrivial component to them. I believe the ACLU is a corporation, for instance -- the EFF as well, and Amnesty International. We've seen many of their free-speech activities on this site. What provision shall we make for these activities and organizations in an alternative legal framework?

More generally: if an arbitrary profit-seeking corporation doesn't have first-amendment rights, why do newspapers specifically have them? (Or are we abandoning freedom of the press as well? That'll take some Constitutional doing, naturally.) Assuming that it remains, why should Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation or Bloomberg's Bloomberg have rights that Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway doesn't? And where and how should we go about drawing a line between "press" and "not press" organizations in a complicated world where, for instance, an Internet-technology firm like AOL has bought a major news entity, Time Warner?

Outside speech questions specifically, if a corporation does not have first-amendment protection to speak as it chooses, does this mean the government ought to be legally compel its choice of speech? (e.g. endorsing specific politicians, policies, etc.) Is it protected from search and seizures by the Fourth Amendment? (Or, hell, from quartering troops by the third?)

These questions may or may not have good answers. Either way, these narrow margins can hardly contain a proper treatment of the matter. I'm just throwing a few monkey wrenches into the problem, as your comment was simple and straightforward, but the consequences of the proposed legal regime are complex and wide-reaching. :P

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Rand Paul is not a libertarian (this is a concept promoted by the media to make him seem radical), your understanding of abortion issues is quite off. The real debate about abortion is over when life that deserves protecting begins. There is nothing else anyone disagrees with. If the fetus was an animal PETA would be the only ones having issue; if the fetus was dead noone would have issue with removing it. Some…

I don't think Rand Paul is a libertarian (I was simply responding to the parent). As for abortion, even if you consider the fetus a "person," I don't see how a libertarian would make a good case for the government to force the mother to continue to sustain and provide for it. > Removing regulation over social issues from government IS a very libertarian philosophy. Delegating to the states is very different from remo…

> I don't see how a libertarian would make a good case for the government to force the mother to continue to sustain and provide for it.

So all neglect laws should be removed?

> The libertarian thing to do would be to ban such regulation.

That requires a constitutional amendment. Those are not easy to get passed.

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#93
post #30

This is not surprising. Rand Paul, similar to his father Ron Paul, has very libertarian political views which means they prefer no government involvement, not just in the Internet but anywhere. This is not as good as it sounds. For example, he doesn't support FED in controlling money supply. But FED was instrumental in making USD the most stable currency in the last 100 years. He doesn't like energy regulations and b…

Please leave your anti-science anti-intellectual comments outside of hacker news. "FED was instrumental in making USD the most stable currency in the last 100 years" - baseless argument. comparing fiat money to fiat money says nothing about efficacy of fiat money. "Too bad when California deregulated their energy market..." - http://www.tylervigen.com/ Furthermore, where does this money appear from? If the government…

"third-trimester abortions" - Excellent straw man. How about his proposed personhood legislation? https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s583?utm_campaign...

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#95
post #55
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No explanation in this comment either

http://www.ontheissues.org/senate/Rand_Paul.htm Some of his positions: Life begins at conception. Endorsed Liberty Candidate: End the Federal Reserve. Women won the "war on women": they're no longer downtrodden. Punishing the rich means the poor lose their jobs. Blacks look who's in prison & conclude cops out to get them. EPA regulations cost $15 trillion in 2012. Exit the UN; maintain US sovereignty. Defund, repeal,…

How is social security not a ponzi scheme?

The returns generated depend on finding new investors in the scheme, if current investors pull out the scheme cannot return promised benefits to current investors.

This is pretty much the precise definition of a ponzi scheme and why the scheme faces certain bankruptcy with out a significant rise in births.

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#96
post #30

This is not surprising. Rand Paul, similar to his father Ron Paul, has very libertarian political views which means they prefer no government involvement, not just in the Internet but anywhere. This is not as good as it sounds. For example, he doesn't support FED in controlling money supply. But FED was instrumental in making USD the most stable currency in the last 100 years. He doesn't like energy regulations and b…

I don't think it's fair to call someone who advocates against abortion and same-sex marriages a libertarian.

So Ron Paul (anti-abortion) is not a libertarian? I think this is news to Ron Paul, all of Ron Paul's congressional staffers and campaign volunteers, r/libertarian, mises.org, reason.com, Cato, Students for Liberty, IHS, FEE, FFF, antiwar.com, every libertarian podcast and radio show, and libertarians everywhere. /s

While pro-choice is the view held by the majority of libertarians, there is a large minority of libertarians that are pro-life and they are accepted as libertarians by almost all libertarians.

If every libertarian who disagreed with the libertarian majority on one or two issues were disqualified from being a libertarian there wouldn't be any libertarians left.

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#97
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Constitutionally, the president doesn't control a state religion, abortion, marriage, etc. The Establishment Clause is pretty clear that states should not and cannot enact state religions, and its up to the federal government to enforce that. The fact that Rand Paul is clearly biased by his religion makes him distinctly un-libertarian.

Actually, the Establishment clause does not make it clear, and in fact, only prevented the US Congress (not the states) from establishing an official religion. It wasn't until the supreme court Incorporated the establishment clause in 1947 that states were prevented from establishing an official state religion. In fact, at least six states had official religions at the time of the founding. http://en.wikipedia.org/wi…

Yes, it's true that the Establishment Clause did not originally apply to the states.

However, since incorporation via the Fourteenth Amendment, the majority of precent applies it to the states as well.

(I've written dozens of papers on the Establishment Clause.)

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Constitutionally, the president doesn't control a state religion, abortion, marriage, etc. The Establishment Clause is pretty clear that states should not and cannot enact state religions, and its up to the federal government to enforce that. The fact that Rand Paul is clearly biased by his religion makes him distinctly un-libertarian.

The Establishment Clause prohibits the Federal Congress from establishing a national religion; the 14th Amendment on the other hand has been interpreted to establish a universal standard of morality for the nation as decreed by the Supreme Court. One might say the 14th Amendment and the Establishment clause directly conflict. And the 14th Amendment has won.

Most contemporary opinion, including the vast majority of applicable precedent, holds that the 14th Amendment made the Establishment Clause applicable to the states.

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said libertarians can't be religious. Rather, it's a fundamental tenant of libertarianism that you should not use the organ of government to enforce your religious views on others. On numerous occasions, Paul has referenced religious motivations for creating social policies. For example, he is opposed to same-sex marriage because it "offends him." Paul is not a libertarian. He's just a standard anti-Federalis…

Do please show me where he's proposed banning same-sex marriage and not simply stated his personal distaste for it.

Here's one source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/28/rand-ditche...

My favorite quote from that (showing how intellectually dishonest Paul really is): "The First Amendment says keep government out of religion, not religion out of government."

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