Pee-Wee Strikes Again

Attentive readers may have noticed that I am no admirer of Ron Paul. In fact, I once dubbed him the Pee-Wee Herman of the Republican Party. Paul illustrates, in my view, the dark side of libertarianism. The Achilles heel of Paul’s brand of libertarianism is foreign policy. You could describe him as an isolationist, but I think he is worse than that: during the Bush administration, his antiwar rhetoric took on a vicious quality.
Today Paul showed once again why he is outside of the conservative mainstream. The House of Representatives voted 402-1 to congratulate Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo on his Nobel peace prize. The one Congressman who voted No was Ron Paul.
Was the vote purely symbolic? Of course; which makes Paul’s No vote even worse. For an American politician not to favor freedom and democracy abroad, even in principle, is simply perverse.