Notes From a Conversation With Rand Paul
contract, the families went out before dawn.” Yen Jingchang explained: “We all secretly competed. Everyone wanted to produce more than the next person.” Self-interest and reward allowed the same farmers on the same land to grow five times the amount of food grown when everyone – and therefore no one – owned the land. NPR reported that the “huge harvest gave them away. Local officials figured out that the farmers had divided up the land, and word of what had happened in Xiaogang made its way up the Communist Party chain of command.” The farmers worried that they would be executed, but they were lucky to have taken this risk just as Deng Xiaoping was coming to power. Deng and his lieutenants were deciding to allow a little Adam Smith to creep in and give a boost to the moribund socialism that had, by that time, killed millions of Chinese. On the one hand, it is a great relief to see the horrific socialism of Mao thaw enough to allow at least some version of private property and profit to exist. Yet it is an immeasurable calamity that tens of millions of Chinese had to die before the Chinese discovered the horrors that come when a government tries to enforce complete socialism. Let’s hope today’s American socialists will realize that violence is not an aberration but a necessary tool if you want a society made “equal” by redistribution of wealth and property. Excerpted from The Case Against Socialism by Rand Paul. Copyright 2019 by Rand Paul. Published with permission from Broadside Books and HarperCollins Publishers.
By P. J. O’Rourke
In February 2014, Senator Rand Paul was considering running for the Republican presidential nomination. I went to interview him for the now (sadly) defunct ;IIOP]XERHEVH . It wasn’t much of an interview in the sense of “asking the hard questions” because it quickly turned into a conversation. Asking the hard questions is fun... as long as you have a low opinion of the person answering them. But conversations are what you have with people you like and admire. Below is a condensed version of that conversation: Ƹ.J.XV]XSFIETVIXX]KSSHPMFIVXEVMER .KIXEXXEGOIHF]XLIPIJXF]XLIVMKLX and by the libertarians,” said Sen. Paul, HIWGVMFMRKLMWS[RTSPMXMGEPGSRǼMGXMSRW This is the same message General +IVHMRERH+SGLWIRXXS2EVWLEP/SWITL /SǺVIHYVMRKXLI+MVWX'EXXPISJXLI Marne: “My center is giving way, my right is retreating, situation excellent, .EQEXXEGOMRKƹƳI\GITXRSXMR+VIRGL and said with a smile. &WJSVTSPMXMGEPTVMRGMTPIWIR5EYPWEMHƸ.R ;EWLMRKXSRTVMRGMTPIHMRHMZMHYEPWEVIMR the minority. There’s a good side to this. The QENSVMX]GERFIMRǼYIRGIHF]TYFPMGSTMRMSRƹ And, reversing Lord Acton’s maxim about TS[IVGSVVYTXMRKIR5EYPEGXYEPP]XLMROW XLIPEGOSJMXTYVMǻIWƸ&WSTTSRIRXWXS 5VIWMHIRX4FEQE[IƶVIQSVITVMRGMTPIHXLER [LIR[I[IVIMRTS[IVƹ?3IZIVQMRH[LEX LETTIRIHƳYRJSVXYREXIP]JSVTYVMǻGEXMSRƳ [LIR7ITYFPMGERWKSXFEGOMRTS[IVA Ƹ&TVMRGMTPIH,45ƹWEMHXLIIREXSV ƸGSYPHǻRHTISTPISRFSXLPIJXERHVMKLXXS GSSTIVEXISRMWWYIWƹ-IIZIRPMWXIHWSQI
"If I try to be a
pretty good libertarian, I get attacked by the left, by the right, and by the libertarians."
American Consequences
63
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