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.

Rand Paul shifts shamelessly on defense spending to appease bloodthirsty Republicans

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Oh, those lofty presidential ambitions. Oh, the need to appeal to the bloodthirsty, warmongering Republican base.

Oh, the shame of it all:

Just weeks before announcing his 2016 presidential bid, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is completing an about-face on a longstanding pledge to curb the growth in defense spending.

In an olive branch to defense hawks hell-bent on curtailing his White House ambitions, the libertarian Senator introduced a budget amendment late Wednesday calling for a nearly $190 billion infusion to the defense budget over the next two years -- a roughly 16 percent increase.

But... but... he's a principled libertarian! He's not like the others! He actually believes in things other than some incoherent combination of plutocracy and fundamentalist moralism.

You know, except on abortion, and same-sex marriage, and now on the military, and, well, let's face it, on any other issue where those presidential ambitions require him to put aside his principles and embrace the must-have Republican position, or else.

As BooMan says, this about-face renders Paul "basically worthless." Because basically he's just like any other mainstream Republican.

"I already mock anyone who presents Rand Paul as a desirable leader or serious voice," he adds, "but from now on my abuse is going to be deafening."

Which is precisely what Paul deserves. From all of us.

Liberterrorism?

By Capt. Fogg

The notion that the Government is cracking down on freedom in general and preparing to freeze our accounts and restrict movement of money because of that elusive financial apocalypse the right wing has been predicting since Obama was elected, is the bread and butter of such opinion sources as the Daily Paul, Natural News, and Alex Jones' Infowars.com who amongst too many others to count are celebrating the false report that Chase Bank is limiting cash withdrawals and outgoing international wire transfers. 

The story lacks only truth to be shocking. You can read a more honest appraisal at Forbes. True, Chase is upping fees on certain kinds of business checking accounts, but pace the Liberterrorists, no one in Government is forcing them to do it and what we're seeing is Capitalism at work. Chase simply wants to make more money. Don't we all?

According to an e-mail from PT Shamrock.com, a Libertarian organization dedicated to misleading people about the need to get their money out of the country before the Liberals confiscate it and give it to "the takers," Chase customers have received the following letter:

Dear Business Customer, Starting November 17, 2013: - You will no longer be able to send international wire transfers.

You will still be able to send domestic wires and receive both domestic and international wires. We'll cancel any international wire transfers, including reccurring [sic] ones, you scheduled to be sent after this date. - Your cash activity limit for these accounts(s) will be $50,000 per statement cycle, per account. Cash activity is the combined total of cash deposits made at branches, night drops and ATMs and cash withdrawals made at branches (including purchases of money orders) and ATMs. These changes will help us more effectively manage the risks involved with these types of transactions.

No they haven't. Unfortunately devotees of Paul and Jones and all the other panic profiteers will take it at face value without taking a moment to check the facts. Some won't even notice the misspelling and poor wording, the urge to believe being as strong as it is. The confusion between the artifacts of free market capitalism and Federal authoritarianism continues to be the medium in which the fungus of Right Wing politics is grown -- and grown in the dark, of course.

(Cross posted from Human Voices.)

A Paul problem: Ron, Rand, and racism

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Jon Chait, New York: "Racists Love Ron and Rand Paul for Some Reason."

Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon: "Rand Paul’s team has another white supremacist."

Or there are a couple of posts I wrote last year:

-- "The ugly truth about Ron Paul"; and

-- "So is Ron Paul a racist, or what?"

Well, I wouldn't say that the Pauls are overt racists, let alone white supremacists, although Ron's notorious newsletters from way back when certainly suggest otherwise.

But it's interesting how racism keeps popping up all around them, notably these days in the sordid company they keep.

Not that it should come as a surprise. As Chait writes:

The deep connection between the Pauls and the neo-Confederate movement doesn't discredit their ideas, but it’s also not just an indiscretion. It's a reflection of the fact that white supremacy is a much more important historical constituency for anti-government ideas than libertarians like to admit.

Obviously, most of their libertarian supporters are anti-government in more general terms. But there are others among them who want the government out of the way because they want the Confederacy back in some form, including the ideology of racial supremacism that went along with it.

The Pauls can try to run from this association, but it's just too much a part of what they are, whether they and their followers like it or not.

Rand Paul thinks dog marriage is next

By Frank Moraes 

As you all know, I have major problems with real libertarians -- to a large extent because most of them have a good understanding of the problems of governing and I don't see why they don't recognize their very clear blind spots. But people who claim to be libertarians who don't understand the philosophy and just throw the word around because it sounds cooler than "conservative" are another matter. I hate them.

The most prominent pretend libertarian is Rand Paul. This doesn't mean that I don't agree with him from time to time. Hell, I agree with Rick Santorum now and then. One nice thing about real libertarians is that you can usually predict where they stand on any given issue. But not so with Paul. He is anti-abortion, for example. Now I understand that some libertarians are anti-abortion. But I don't get it. A 16-cell zygote has equal human rights to the mother? Really?!

But there are many more clear examples. He isn't, for example, in favor of drug legalization -- just cannabis. Now, I'm all for legalizing cannabis. But at this point, the argument isn't the libertarian one that people should be allowed to make their own choices. It is the (true) conservative argument that cannabis is no more dangerous than other legal drugs. At least Paul's father, Ron Paul, acts like a true libertarian in this regard.

And now, Rand Paul is making the media rounds to complain about the Supreme Court's overturning the Defense of Marriage Act. He was on Glenn Beck's show (another pretend libertarian) warning that same-sex marriage would lead to polygamy. I actually agree with him that this ought to lead to polygamy. I'm very much a libertarian on this issue: people should be able to enter whatever contracts they want with each other. But Paul brought this up as a note of caution: polygamy is bad.[1] This is clearly not a man who believes that people's lives are their own.


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Ron Paul has a point about that whole Boston "military-style occupation" thing

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm not saying he's entirely right, but he's certainly got a point:

Former Rep. Ron Paul said the police response to the Boston Marathon bombings was scarier than the bombing itself, which killed three and wounded more than 250.

"The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city," Paul, a Texas Republican, wrote [yesterday] on the website of the libertarian writer Lew Rockwell. "This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself."

Paul said the scenes of the house-to-house search for the younger bombing suspect in suburban Watertown, Mass., were reminiscent of a "military coup in a far off banana republic."

"Forced lockdown of a city," he wrote. "Militarized police riding tanks in the streets. Door-to-door armed searches without warrant. Families thrown out of their homes at gunpoint to be searched without probable cause. Businesses forced to close. Transport shut down."

And he's right to remind us of this key fact:

"The suspect was not discovered by the paramilitary troops terrorizing the public," Paul wrote. "He was discovered by a private citizen, who then placed a call to the police. And he was identified not by government surveillance cameras, but by private citizens who willingly shared their photographs with the police."

As a civil libertarian myself, I do sometimes find myself in agreement with Paul's libertarianism, even though his version of it is generally a rather extreme right-wing one.

In this case, I understood the over-reaction to the Boston Marathon bombing, particularly after the shootout in Watertown that left an MIT officer dead, but I also found it worrisome.

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