Rand Paul says that the only way the poor can be free is if they are liberated from the servitude that comes with having food.
National Review Online reported on Rand Paul’s conversation with a group of students at the University of Louisville:
“There’s a philosophic debate which often gets me in trouble, you know, on whether health care’s a right or not,” Paul, in a red tie, white button-down shirt, and khakis, tells the students from the stage. “I think we as physicians have an obligation. As Christians, we have an obligation. . . . I really believe that, and it’s a deep-held belief,” he says of helping others.
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“But I don’t think you have a right to my labor,” he continues. “You don’t have a right to anyone else’s labor. Food’s pretty important, do you have a right to the labor of the farmer?”
Paul then asks, rhetorically, if students have a right to food and water. “As humans, yeah, we do have an obligation to give people water, to give people food, to give people health care,” Paul muses. “But it’s not a right because once you conscript people and say, ‘Oh, it’s a right,’ then really you’re in charge, it’s servitude, you’re in charge of me and I’m supposed to do whatever you tell me to do. . . . It really shouldn’t be seen that way.”
Let’s follow Paul’s ideology to its logical conclusion. Poor people are enslaved when the government provides them with food or housing assistance. Thus, inn order for the poor to be free, the government must take away all assistance so that the poor are free to be homeless and starve. That is Rand Paul’s definition of freedom.
Rand Paul views any benefit that the people receive from the government that they fund as a form of servitude. Unemployment insurance is slavery. Medicare is slavery. Health insurance for children, and medical care for pregnant women are both slavery. In Sen. Paul’s view, the government only gives people things in order to enslave them.
Paul’s views are no different than Romney’s 47% comments, or the Republican belief that Americans only support President Obama because they want free stuff. Rand Paul dresses up his rhetoric in the language of libertarianism, but he is really just the same old far right ideologue with some new buzzwords.
Sen. Paul is offering a less refined version of what Mitt Romney offered the country in 2012. But Rand Paul is more extreme than Romney because he really believes what he is saying.
Behind all the talk of civil liberties is an ideology that believes government food assistance is slavery.
Standing with Rand could get millions of Americans a life of hunger, homelessness, and poverty.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
