Like any good Republican, Rand Paul blames lack of fathers and morals for the violence in Baltimore

By Michael J.W. Stickings

You might think a supposed libertarian like Rand Paul would look at the situation in Baltimore and see something similar to what most of us living in reality are seeing, namely, yet another despicable incident of police brutality (in this case leading to murder), a long history (not just in that city but all across the U.S.) of racial and other injustice directed mostly at a hopelessly impoverished underclass that is largely black, a city deeply divided along lines of race and class, and an economic system that fuels injustice and inequality by turning large swaths of the inner-city into quagmires of despair and oppression -- and a response that, while unfortunately violent on the part of some, is nonetheless an understandable one.

Well, okay, maybe not. American libertarians are mostly just right-wing ideologues with views that fit nicely within the Republican Party, and Rand Paul, who of course is trying to lead that party on a presidential level, is no exception. Indeed his awful response to the situation in Baltimore on Laura Ingraham's radio show today was very much in line with the racist moralizing that is very much the mainstream conservative, and Republican, approach to minority issues generally, especially where blacks are concerned, and even with respect to police brutality this supposed libertarian sided with the police against those they are brutalizing:

Railing against what he repeatedly called "thuggery and thievery" in the streets of Baltimore, Paul told Ingraham that talking about "root causes" was not appropriate in the middle of a riot.

"The police have to do what they have to do, and I am very sympathetic to the plight of the police in this," he said.

As for root causes, Paul listed some ideas of his own.

"There are so many things we can talk about," the senator said, "the breakdown of the family structure, the lack of fathers, the lack of a moral code in our society."

He added that "this isn't just a racial thing."

Not that Paul really has any credibility as a libertarian, but this exposes him as a fraud -- and, of course, as nothing but yet another Republican who doesn't give a shit about the plight of black and other racial-minority Americans, the long suffering and hopeless prospects of the urban underclass, and brutality of law enforcement that is meant to keep everyone under the yoke of an authoritarian plutocracy.

Becuase it couldn't be the fact that a black man died brutally at the hands of the police, right? Or that that murder was just the latest act of grotesque violence in a long history of brutality and oppression? Or that the reaction of the protesters -- all the pent-up rage and frustration -- reflects the hopelessness and despair of their situation, and of their community, that there is actually oppression against which they are acting out?

Nah, it's because they don't have fathers, and morals, which is what Republicans always say, to their everlasting head-up-the-ass idiocy.

Welcome to Rand Paul's -- i.e., the Republicans' -- America.