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.

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