Paul, named for libertarian radical writer Ayn Rand, favors shutting down the IRS, the Fed, the American military presence overseas, the Department of Education, and much of the rest of the federal government.
http://blog.newsweek.com/...
The reason that libertarianism remains theory and not practice is because it immediately falls apart when applied to the real world outside of a fictional novel or two written at the height of the Cold War and Red Scare.
Poppa Paul's insurgent run for the Republican nomination in 2007 hit the wall of reality and quickly disappeared only to be reborn as the Tea Party Movement in 2009.
It was the most convenient philosophy to grasp onto to morally justify their intense hatred for the current President of the United States of America.
We saw this happen in 2008 with Ron Paul. In December 2007, the New Republic ran a piece on Paul by Tucker Carlson, the most glowing of several fun pieces it ran about him. Weeks later, the magazine ran an exposé by Jamie Kirchick of racist passages in newsletters that went out under Paul's name. "If you are a critic of the Bush administration," Kirchick wrote at the top of his article, "chances are that, at some point over the past six months, Ron Paul has said something that appealed to you." Hint, hint -- it was fun to indulge the libertarians for a while, but the time had come for good liberals to take them seriously.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/...
The acorn of modern American Libertarianism is Ayn Rand.
Most people on the street could not tell you one thing about who she was. She was the intellectual support for the John Birchers and other Commie Hunters of the Cold War Era.
She is the Teabagger Goddess.
Ayn Rand born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum; b. February 2 1905 – d. March 6, 1982, was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism. Born and educated in Russia, Rand immigrated to the United States in 1926. She worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood and had a play produced on Broadway in 1935–1936. She first achieved fame in 1943 with her novel The Fountainhead, which in 1957 was followed by her best-known work, the philosophical novel Atlas Shrugged.
Rand's political views, reflected in both her fiction and her theoretical work, emphasize individual rights (including property rights) and laissez-faire capitalism, enforced by a constitutionally limited government. She was a fierce opponent of all forms of collectivism and statism, including fascism, communism, socialism, and the welfare state, and promoted ethical egoism while rejecting the ethic of altruism. She considered reason to be the only means of acquiring knowledge and the most important aspect of her philosophy, stating, "I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows."
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
In fact, Ayn Rand was a cult-like leader, whose pseudo-philosophy continues to mesmorize adolescents and the semi-literate with brave heroic fiction about oh-so-righteous capitalist free marketeers.
She is more L. Ron Hubbard than Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson himself said this plainly: "Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the Covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment... laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind... as that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, institutions must advance also, to keep pace with the times.... We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain forever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
Ayn Rand was no prophet. She was a bitter woman that failed in Hollywood, blaming everyone but herself, but managed to write down a wish fantasy of how the world should be instead of what it really is.
I encourage you to take a gander and read some critiques of libertarianism.
http://world.std.com/...
Ayn Rand Paul is an empty suit filled with ideas from his crackpot father, Ron Paul, who is a strict disciple of Ayn Rand.