RELIGIOSITY: THE FLIP SIDE OF RAND PAUL'S LIBERTARIANISM

Rand Paul to David Brody of Pat Robertson's CBN News, in an interview clip just posted today:

I'm a Christian. We go to the Presbyterian Church. My wife's a deacon there and we've gone there ever since we came to town. I see that Christianity and values is the basis of our society. I think that -- in some ways it's funny, 'cause people talk about laws, and they say, "Well, we have a law against this." Laws really only work because most of us don't even need the laws. You know what I mean? Ninety-eight percent of us won't murder people, won't steal, won't break the law, and it helps a society to have that religious underpinning. You still need to have the laws, I mean, you have to have laws, but I think it helps to have a people who believe in law and order and who have a moral compass or a moral basis for their day-to-day life.



It's easy to read "libertarian" as "not interested in other people's personal values," but here we see how Rand Paul's libertarianism dovetails with his thinking on religion: not only does he think Christianity is (or is partly) "the basis of our society," but he strongly implies that we wouldn't need so many damn laws if everyone were truly Christian, or at least truly religious. (And presumably that's "religious" as he sees it -- no Wiccans need apply, I imagine, or for that matter pro-choice Unitarians.)

So that's why there's nothing odd about this story from The Hill, although The Hill seems a bit confused about what's going on:

Palin hails 'libertarian streak' in GOP

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) on Wednesday night hailed what she said was a "libertarian streak" in American politics.

Palin praised Rand Paul's win in a Kentucky Republican primary for Senate earlier this week, saying that candidates like him would be key in this fall's elections.

“Seeing that libertarian streak of his -- that is what we need to balance out the leftist liberal overreach of government that’s in power right now," Palin said during an appearance on the Fox Business Network on Wednesday night. "Rand is going to be great.”

...Libertarian candidates are seen as emphasizing more free-market economic policies while de-emphasizing social issues, if not favoring more liberal ones....

Well, that may be how they're seen, but Paul and Palin both combine libertarianism and religiosity, and I'm guessing that Palin agrees with Paul that if we had a whole lot more Jesus, we'd need a whole lot less law.

And from that we go straight into the fondness for letting charities (especially Christian charities) substitute for social service agencies, and from there to the shredding of the entire social safety net, accompanied by the same sorting of people into classes of citizenship that we get freom traditional Republicans, with Christians as the only ones solidly in first class.