Matt Welch Interviews Sen. Rand Paul
On Oct. 23, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) gave a major address in front of the Center for National Interest, a "realist" foreign policy think tank founded by Richard Nixon. As he did in a similar February 2013 speech in front of the conservative Heritage Foundation, the libertarian-leaning presumptive 2016 GOP presidential candidate attempted to sell his foreign policy vision to fellow Republicans as being in the tradition of Ronald Reagan and Caspar Weinberger, representing a middle path between the near-absolute anti-intervention of his (unmentioned) father and the hyper-interventionism of the Washington establishment.
Four days after this latest foreign policy speech, Reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch spoke with Sen. Paul over the telephone to flesh out his notion of realism, and probe some limiting principles on taking the nation to war.