Senator Rand Paul almost lost the Kentucky Senate race to replace Jim Bunning in 2010. His first mistake was getting into a lecture-debate-tirade with journalist Rachel Maddow on MSNBC over the legality and the viability of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Columnist George Will correctly indicated that such forays into controversial philosophies could jeopardize any candidacy, rendering intense political controversy moot and meaningless.
Where Rand Paul learned the importance of steering a campaign narrative to present-day concerns as opposed to abstract verities, his father Texas Congressman Ron Paul has conspicuously failed — once again — to capitalize on national unrest over deficit spending and national debt, throwing out arcane phrases like "Austrian economics" and quoting esoteric thinkers like "Ludwig von Mises" when most Americans are worried about economic recovery and job growth.
If there is one major liability plaguing the libertarian factions in the United States, it is their continued inability to articulate a forceful message about the dangers of government force to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the United States. Freedom in the context of humanity and political culture requires an articulation of human nature and natural law, which in raw terms, without recognizing the tedious yet necessary political process, becomes incompatible and fruitless. Man wants what he wants when he wants it, yet these common interests among mankind create uncommon tyranny and unrest if left unchecked.
In the face of the rugged and rude realities of human nature, whose inescapable truth was not lost on the Framers of the Constitution, the naive optimism of free markets and free people free of most (if not all) government restrictions becomes ludicrous if not dangerous. For example, many pure libertarians disdain any role of the state beyond protecting rights and securing borders, a notion which ultimately fails to persuade voters if neglecting the values of tradition and limitation, issues that inform the daily choice of many citizens in this country. For many people in this country, adherence to faith, family, and freedom does not exclude permitting the state in certain instances to legislate morality, like the Civil Rights Acts and Voting Rights Acts of the 1960's. Even Conservative standard-bearers like William F. Buckley Jr. recognized the necessity of some state power to enforce minority civil rights.
Though Libertarian stalwart Senator Barry Goldwater carried his home state of Arizona little opposition, he still lost the 1964 presidential election by one of the worst landslides in U.S. History. His resounding loss formed a valuable lesson — and platform — for his party's successful successor Ronald Reagan, who understood the necessity of the medium not trumping the message nor tripping up the intended recipients.
Regarding the cultural values that inform voters, such exceptions as the right to life, a right which precludes all others, is a sanctity recognized even by the Texas Congressman along with his more mainstream opponents. Yet essential libertarians like Murray Rothbard championed the freedom of individual choice, even permitting abortion on demand. Inconsistencies like these reduce libertarianism as a political force either because of its apparently cruelty or blindness to the reality of human existence: freedom is not free, nor is it a status of the mind within the exclusive realms of academic discussion. Government, though evil to many, is still a necessity in a fallen world where men are not angels.
As long as libertarianism remains solely within the confines of intellectual speculation, candidates who evince the values of limited government to the extreme will only attract policy purists, a slender minority which commands no respect or victory in statewide or national elections. Congressman Paul is proof of the vacuity of this political regimen absent much needed articulation with a nation very much enthralled with state benefits, though less inclined to pay for them.