Students for Liberty Come Out Against Ron Paul over Russian Annexation of Crimea

Former Congressman Ron Paul, whose views are interpreted by many as wholly representative of the libertarian movement, gets it wrong when he speaks of Crimeas right to secede, Students for Liberty President Alexander McCobin wrote in a press release Monday morning, marking a split between the student-based libertarian organization and one of the causes figureheads.

Paul has said that Putin had the law on his side when sending in troops, and likened the widely-denounced Crimean referendum to join Russia to the American Revolution. He went on to accuse the United States of helping instigate the coup that led to the overthrow of Putin-backed former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Students for Liberty called Pauls reasoning reductive, and chastised him for glossing over Russias authoritarianism:

Make no mistake about it, Crimea was annexed by Russian military force at gunpoint and its supposedly democratic referendum was a farce. Besides a suspiciously high voter turnout with legitimate international observers, the referendum gave Crimeans only two choices join Russia now or later.

Its much too simplistic to solely condemn the US for any kind of geopolitical instability in the world. Non-interventionists that sympathize with Russia by condoning Crimeas secession and blaming the West for Ukrainian crisis fail to see the larger picture. Putins government is one of the least free in the world and is clearly the aggressor in Crimea, as it was even beforehand with its support of the Yanukovych regime that shot and tortured its own citizens on the streets of Kyiv.

The recent spate of anti-war activists arrested in Russia is just one of many examples that illustrate that the Russian Federation is not a free country and everyone should be very careful with showing sympathies to an autocratic leader such as President Putin.

McCobin closed by praising Rons son, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who has strongly condemned Russias actions in the Crimea.

[McCobin authored a guest editorial for Mediaite in response to Glenn Beck calling himself a "libertarian." Read that here.]

[Image via Albert H. Teich / Shutterstock.com / ID1974 / Shutterstock.com]

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Students for Liberty Come Out Against Ron Paul over Russian Annexation of Crimea