In last week’s Republican debate, Ron Paul called for a repeal of laws against prostitution, cocaine, and heroin. Paul argued that our society should treat turning tricks and shooting up in the same way that we treat freedom of religion—they are inalienable rights. This kind of libertarianism in my view is deficient in its view of human nature and would comprise an unloving and degrading way to organize society. I couldn’t agree more with Michael Gerson’s critique of Paul’s libertarian approach. Gerson writes:

Sarah Pulliam Bailey has a nice round-up of material from the web about the cause of the looming government shutdown. As you may have heard by now, one of the sticking points in the debate is federal funding for Planned Parenthood—the largest abortion provider in the United States. As far as the national deficit is concerned, the funding is a drop in the bucket. Nevertheless, Republicans want the funds eliminated, and Democrats are trying to protect them. The Tea Party is ambivalent—some of them just wishing for Republicans to quit their obsession with irrelevant “social issues.” I think it’s very unlikely that Planned Parenthood would be defunded this go round.…

Once again, I think Ross Douthat has it about right. “It would be a happy thing if a brief air campaign were sufficient to midwife both regime change and a stable aftermath in Libya. But American policy cannot be based on best-case scenarios, and going halfway to war and then stepping back and hoping for a rosy outcome is something no American president can afford to do… By choosing war in Libya, [Obama] probably committed America far more completely than last night’s speech was willing to admit.”