House of Eratosthenes

Terrorists are probing America for weak spots. Once they succeed, they’ll move into high gear on this. Actually, the very reason they’re checking out our weak spots is because, shark-like, they smelled blood on the water in the first place.

The estimates that 5,000 barrels per day are being let loose in the Gulf of Mexico, may be vastly understated.

A little girl told the First Lady, right out there in front of God and everybody, that her mother doesn’t have papers.

In 2009, for every three dollars in tax revenue our government collected, it spent five.

The President of another country came to our Congress and gave a speech. He singled out one of our states and unloaded a whole bunch of crap all over it. He was not boiled in oil for this. He wasn’t yanked off stage, he wasn’t even booed off stage. Quite to the contrary, one of our two major political parties — the one in power right now — cheered wildly.

Meanwhile, our Attorney General, at last report, still hasn’t read the Arizona law he so vociferously criticizes. Our Homeland Security Secretary also hasn’t “reviewed it in detail.” This is our egghead administration…our Englightened Ones. Their coronation was supposed to signal once and for all that it’s pronounced NU-CLE-AR, and their wise policies would make us all wonderful and happy. Well, how much can their opinions be worth if they aren’t based on fact?

President Obama is replacing His Director of National Intelligence.

Should I even go into the hot new “scientific” debate about whether the planet is cooking or freezing to death?

There is an awful lot of news out there. I make it a point to crack open Memeorandum at least once a day so I can stay up to date not only on what’s going on, but on what “they” think is particularly worthy of extended discussion and analysis.

In response to the natural question “who exactly is ‘they’,” I cannot provide an answer. What is ironic is that this makes the nameless faceless “they” a lot more important, not less so. Someone is grasping for a whole lot of power, and succeeding at getting it.

See, whoever this “they” is, “they” think the one thing that is truly deserving of extended analysis is this: Rand Paul’s position on the Civil Rights Act that was signed into law when he was one year old. And not the senate candidate’s real position on it, oh no: But his ostensible position. How it could be interpreted. The faceless nameless “they” is making sure we’re all up to speed on the wild, fragile, wild-ass-guess ruminations, interpretations and inferences of yet another faceless nameless “they.”

Now if you’re not a lazy, casual consumer of news, the meaning of this is unmistakable: Rand Paul has just become a threat. Once a Republican has become a threat, we have this informal tradition that all of the printing presses and all of the airwaves and all of the web servers have to be filled with whispering. He will be incompetent or he will be evil, perhaps both. Typically, the way we decide this is with the “Pearl Harbor Rule”: If the Republican was born before the attack on Pearl Harbor, he is evil incarnate like Jesse Helms or Dick Cheney; if he was born afterward he’s a dope like George W. Bush or Sarah Palin. It’s all about fear. We need to scare the brittle man-bashing females with daddy issues into thinking the country is about to be run by their parents, we need to scare the minority advocacy groups into thinking the place is about to be taken over by the KKK. Or, we need to scare the snooty, condescending, phony-baloney intellectual atheists into thinking it’s going to be transformed into a theocracy, under the tutelage of some moron who can’t even spell the word “dinosaur” — which, by the way, he’s convinced was lumbering around 4,000 years ago doing beast-of-burden work for Fred Flintstone.

Rand Paul was born well after Pearl Harbor, yet somehow the test has been twisted around. The best way to fight him is to portray him as a racist, not as a dimbulb. I guess that just goes to demonstrate the passage of time.

James Taranto opines on the non-issue:

Taken at face value, the question itself–How would you have voted if you had been in the Senate as an infant?–is silly. It is a reasonable question only if it is understood more broadly, as an inquiry into Paul’s political philosophy. The question within the question is: How uncompromising are you in your adherence to small-government principles?

Paul gave his answer: Pretty darn uncompromising–uncompromising enough to take a position that is not only politically embarrassing but morally dubious by his own lights, as evidenced by this transcript from the Courier-Journal interview, provided by the left-wing site ThinkProgress.org:

Interviewer: But under your philosophy, it would be OK for Dr. King not to be served at the counter at Woolworths?

Paul: I would not go to that Woolworths, and I would stand up in my community and say that it is abhorrent, um, but, the hard part — and this is the hard part about believing in freedom — is, if you believe in the First Amendment, for example — you have too, for example, most good defenders of the First Amendment will believe in abhorrent groups standing up and saying awful things…It’s the same way with other behaviors. In a free society, we will tolerate boorish people, who have abhorrent behavior.

Again, Paul could have given a “straight” answer to the question–a flat “no”–that made clear his personal disapproval of discrimination while evading what was really a question about his political philosophy. Far from being evasive, Paul has shown himself to be both candid and principled to a fault.

We do mean to a fault. In this matter, Paul seems to us to be overly ideological and insufficiently mindful of the contingencies of history. Although we are in accord with his general view that government involvement in private business should be kept to a minimum, in our view the Civil Rights Act’s restrictions on private discrimination were necessary in order to break down a culture of inequality that was only partly a matter of oppressive state laws. On the other hand, he seeks merely to be one vote of 100 in the Senate. An ideologically hardheaded libertarian in the Senate surely would do the country more good than harm.

I’m not sure why it’s a fault to believe in the First Amendment, and to keep standing up for it when the establishment intelligentsia comes after you for doing so. And I’m thoroughly lost on why Paul is the one on the defensive here. Who are all these people who find fault with what he said? Don’t they believe in free speech and free enterprise? Or do they believe in it only to a certain point? They think government should interfere with how a private business is run? In what other scenarios is this permissible? Do they recognize a line, and if so, are they involved in moving that line? Do they tolerate someone else moving the line?

Half a century ago it was a Woolworth’s lunch counter, in the mid 1990’s it was breastfeeding. Does the business manager have anything to say about anything, ever? Are all businesses merely subsidiaries of the all-powerful glorious federal government?

Must all ethical conundrums be resolved through federal law? Should we keep legislating and legislating until we all think the same way about everything?

Those questions, in my view, are what we should be asking; his primary victory notwithstanding, I see Paul as less of a newsworthy item, far less of a threat, than those who seek to criticize him. After all, Rand Paul has merely won a nomination. He may very well never be seated in the United States Senate. And even if he is, as Taranto points out, he’ll be one of a hundred. If he’s rigid and uncompromising as that one-out-of a-hundred, what of it? Isn’t it a logical contradiction to insist that all hundred senators must be middle-of-the-road fair-weather-friend wafflers, for the sake of moderation?

Contrasted with the younger Paul, the people who are deciding that this is some kind of a scandal, that it is worthy of more attention than the fact that the current administration’s decisions about state laws are based on a whole-lotta-nuthin’, are making their “policies” right freakin’ now. They do this by declaring what is a scandal, what is not, and that we should all fall in line and be concerned about this thing but not that thing.

We cannot unilaterally decide as individuals whether they’ll succeed at that or not. But we can certainly decide as individuals whether they’ll be met with any resistance. It’s obvious to anyone paying attention that this faceless nameless “they” is not used to meeting up with any.

Rand Paul’s position on the Civil Rights Act that was signed into law when he was one year old.

Funny how it was ridiculous to suggest that Obama may share some of Bill Ayers’ radical views on the role of government was off limits because Obama was just a kid when Ayers acted on his beliefs by attempting to kill people — but it’s perfectly ok to speculate how Rand Paul would have voted on a law that was passed when he was just a year old (or less). Not saying it’s not a fair question. Again, I question the double-standard that lets liberals off the hook for everything, and crucifies conservatives of any flavor for everything.

After all, Rand Paul has merely won a nomination. He may very well never be seated in the United States Senate.

Of course, the entire point of Maddow’s interviewing angle and the whole manufactured kerfuffle is to ensure that this never happens.

Mr. Paul should stop fearing his convictions and speak on them forcefully and concisely. Principles is what we need back in this country and its governance.
- philmon | 05/21/2010 @ 08:49
Are all businesses merely subsidiaries of the all-powerful glorious federal government?

Under Obama’s regime, they sure as hell are. In his view, their only function is to “provide jobs,” not make a profit for their owners, pursue innovation, enrich their officers, or otherwise contribute to their own well-being. He sees them simply as another organ of the state, or more specifically, an organ that the State (meaning the feds) can reach out and seize and manipulate anytime that it chooses. The concept of anything being “off limits” to the government’s meddling – is foreign to him.
- cylarz | 05/21/2010 @ 23:33
Mr. Paul should stop fearing his convictions and speak on them forcefully and concisely. Principles is what we need back in this country and its governance.

Yes, and when conservatives stand firm on said principles, we win every time. That was precisely why Reagan was so popular and why he’s still revered today. Agree or disagree, you knew where he stood, and he didn’t compromise or change his mind about his core beliefs. His attitude was that he’d been put in office to work toward certain goals – like getting rid of the USSR – and that was that. It didn’t matter what critics said in the meantime. I like Palin for the same reason, and I also respect the recent hard-boiled stance by Gov Christie of NJ.

I’m tired of all the mealy-mouth, RINO-squish equivocating and reaching-out. The gesture never seems to be returned, and the ideologues on the other side of the aisle don’t seem to bother the Left. Why we don’t consistently insist on similar purity for our leaders, is a mystery to me. They seem to garner support when they do pop up, so why don’t we see this more often?
- cylarz | 05/21/2010 @ 23:37

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The Obligatory Rand Paul PostFriday, May 21st, 2010

The Obligatory Rand Paul Post
Friday, May 21st, 2010