Ron Paul for President?: Pros and Cons

Ron Paul for President? While, to my knowledge, he has not garnered a strong showing in any of the poles, he has succeeded in making a name for himself as kind of "gadfly" for the Republicans. God knows they need one.

My question is this: just how rigid is his adherence to libertarian principles? It's one thing to argue that government interference in this or that affair will more than likely make a problem worse, its quite another to say that the gov. always makes things worse, or that gov. is only legitimate within the narrow limits of enforcing private contracts and protecting basic rights. It is here that Libertarianism as an economic and political philosophy seems to be incompatible with Catholic Social teaching. Gov. does not merely exist to serve the individual, but developed to protect and sustain larger social units such as the family and religion. Government has its role in protecting or promoting the common good as well as protecting private property and choice. For the contemporary Catholic facing a secular government more centralized and powerful than ever before, the temptation to view large government as a bane to Christian life is tempting, but misleading. The real problem with our current government, is not so much that it is powerful and centralized (although reasonable people can differ on how powerful and centralized our government needs to be), but that it misuses this power by tolerating or even promoting social evils. Libertarians, including Ron Paul, frequently wish to limit the government's involvement in drug use, traditional marriage, prostitution and pornography, not because they consider these things good or harmless to the individual, but because they fail to appreciate the social consequences of such things in other spheres of human life. Catholic teaching, on the other hand, teaches that such things not only harm the individual but undermine the larger social groupings that make legitimate freedom possible. In the case of pornography, the most desirable course of action would be to convince the purveyors and users of it to change their ways. But with human nature being in its fallen state, such efforts are bound to be limited in their outcome. A level of coercion is needed to protect those who would be affected negatively by pornography through no choice of their own (or without sufficient knowledge of its evil).