When a conservative politician’s libertarian drug policy offends columnist Michael Medved, a former movie reviewer turned far-right firebrand, you know there’s trouble. Congressman Ron Paul of Texas has been freaking out his fellow right-wingers with an extreme set of hands-off social policies that include legal prostitution and drug use, up to and including heroin. “You know, it’s amazing that we want freedom to pick our future in a spiritual way but not when it comes to our personal habits,” he said on Fox News. This caused Medved to go ballistic in his column at the Daily Beast: “This addle-brained attempt to equate religious freedom with liberty to pursue profit as pimps or pushers counts as daft rather than deft.” A cute sentence, but typical of the response to the simple thought problem Paul and many others have been raising: There is no “right to privacy,” Medved announces, echoing the conservative belief that the concept of privacy was invented by Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren. There follows a long defense of “liberty,” which doesn’t, in Medved’s view, entitle you to the freedom of your own consciousness. Medved mounts a stirring attack on “Congressman Paul’s refusal to acknowledge any role for government in restricting drugs or prostitution.” So conservative icon Medved finds himself, in the end, calling for… more government regulation! This is perhaps Ron Paul’s most outstanding talent: the ability to force his fellow conservatives to tie themselves into knots.