Rand Paul shows you can fight the system or join it — but not both

By David McElroy · August 23, 2013

If Rand Paul weren’t the son of his famous father, how many libertarians would be enthusiastic about him? He would be one of the less-offensive members of Congress, but he would ultimately be just another politician who’s defending the fundamentals of the status quo.

When Rand Paul ran for the U.S. Senate and his father, Ron Paul, retired from politics, many long-time Paul supporters saw the son as the natural successor to the man they had idolized for years. As much as I admire certain things about Ron Paul, I couldn’t support his candidacy, as I explained two years ago. What’s worse, no outsider candidate of the Ron Paul sort has any chance of being elected president running with libertarian principles.

Ron Paul was the ultimate outsider as a member of Congress. His fellow congressmen called him “Dr. No” because he voted against anything that wasn’t specifically authorized by the Constitution. He didn’t compromise and he didn’t play political games. He spoke the truth as he understood it and people thought he was a nut. And he left with a bang, asking a series of questions that statists are still ignoring.

His son is taking a very different path. Anyone who expected a principled libertarian has to be badly disappointed by Sen. Rand Paul.

I’m reminded of this (again) because of Paul’s recent comments about Bradley Manning. Speaking at a Cato University event, Paul said he doesn’t have any sympathy for Manning, who was just sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking classified documents revealing what many of us see as war crimes committed by U.S. forces in Iraq, among other things.

Instead of acknowledging the role Manning played in letting us know what the U.S. government has been doing in our name (and with our money), Paul is taking the official government line.

“There do have to be laws to protect some secrets,” Rand said, according to DL Magazine. “I think if you’ve got the, you know, the plans on how to make a nuclear bomb that is a state secret. If you give that to the enemy, that is being treasonous. Even if you reveal it, you just have to have laws against that. What Manning did was just willy-nilly, just released millions of pages of things and I think some people have said there is potentially some harm from that. You know individual agents that could have been killed or put at risk from this. So there is a problem with that. So I just can’t support that.”

If you’re a part of the establishment — and see yourself as protecting that system and its laws — his position is a reasonable one. But if you see the government’s actions as immoral and if you believe that such evil has to be uncovered, you don’t honestly care about the legislation and the rules of such a corrupt system. You simply believe that the truth about such evil has to come out — no matter how it happens.

When people inside the governments or military of Nazi Germany or the communist Soviet Union realized the immorality of what they were a part of and decided to fight the system, they frequently turned to exposing information to the world about their systems. Doing that was illegal in their systems, but those of us on this side praised them for their courage and morality in fighting the evil acts of out-of-control governments.

Why do we praise those who exposed evil-doing by other governments, but Paul is willing to defend the letter of the law when it comes to defending the Establishment in this country that’s guilty of outrageous conduct? It’s simple. He’s a part of that system.

You can be an outsider or you can be an insider. You can’t be both. You can’t defend the system and the laws that allow it to hide its evil deeds while also claiming to be fighting for freedom and what’s right. Those two are incompatible.

Rand Paul is another of those who believes he can change the system — at least incrementally — by becoming a part of it. But when you become part of the system, you’re corrupted by it. You keep compromising and going along with more and more of what’s wrong, just in little ways at first. When you’re in the belly of the beast, you naturally have to defend its laws and its rules — even if those laws are covering up gross abuses.

You eventually have to decide which side you’re on — the side of “obeying the law” or the side of doing what’s right.

Paul has chosen to join the Establishment. He’s not a libertarian. He’s certainly not fighting the state. He’s joined the state. Even though there are things I like about him at times, he’s just as much the enemy as the rest of them. He chose to join the system. He no longer has the moral authority to fight it.

That should sadden and disgust those of us who have held his father in such high regard over the years.

Share on Social Networks

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Related Posts