The Paul File Continued (Updated)

The following is an addendum to my recent NewsReal posts about Ron & Rand Paul’s disgusting relationship with radicalism and their dangerous misrepresentation of facts on all things national-security and foreign-policy related:

During the 2008 Republican National Convention, Ron Paul held a counter-event, & the campaign invited crackpot Jesse Ventura to speak there. Ventura’s tirade about what “really happened” on 9/11 was met with wild applause by Paul’s audience.

On 9/11 Truther Alex Jones’ show in 2007, Paul claimed, “if you have a 9/11 incident or something like that, they use that to do the things that they had planned all along.”

In January 2008, Paul’s Midland County, MI, campaign coordinator was one Randy Gray, who happened to moonlight as “a longstanding active and vocal organizer for the Knight’s Party faction of the Ku Klux Klan.”  The campaign did not comment on the controversy, but did scrub all traces of Gray from their websites.

A Special Message to My Special Friend Marcus

I made a new friend recently!  He goes by the screen name “Marcus Brutus,” and attended my school, Hillsdale College, some time ago.  Unfortunately, thanks to our disagreements about Ron Paul and the War on Terror, we didn’t exactly hit it off.

“Marcus” wants me to know that he fared much better academically than he supposes I did: “I’ll ask [Hillsdale President] Dr. [Larry P.] Arnn at the next fundraiser if you’ve had a chance to examine that desk of his yet…my name is on plaques at Hillsdale, and yours isn’t.” He doesn’t think I have much “intellectual cultivation,” or that I’d make it “as a secretary for any office in any level of the federalist society in [his] chapter.”  Why, my heart positively shatters! (I don’t presume to be some great scholar, and I confess that I haven’t a single plaque to my name, but in my defense, I’m not exactly dead weight.)

His intellect, by contrast, is highly cultivated, and it’s very, very important for him that his readers know just how much, via seemingly-endless references to Scripture, English history, ancient Athens, and such.  Since graduating, he professes to have had quite the accomplished career—Marine Corps, Iraq, application to the bar, even some time spent in Israel.

Unfortunately, I don’t think “Marcus’s” way of going about things is doing him any favors.  In the spirit of friendship, allow me to humbly offer my fellow Hillsdalian some helpful advice.

Why Is Sarah Palin Endorsing Ron Paul’s Son?

Y’know what I love? Devoting several hundred words to defending somebody, then watching that person turn around and do something stupid.  But sadly, that’s exactly what just happened with Sarah Palin.  Via the Other McCain, she has endorsed Rand Paul in Kentucky’s GOP primary for the 2010 Senate race.

Yeah, the son of that guy.  Rand may not come across as droolingly-insane as Daddy Dumbest, and in fact is a little more hawkish (he supports Afghanistan), but his foreign policy judgment is still foolish and simplistic, including opposition to the Iraq War and paranoia over the military-industrial complex.

(For what it’s worth, there’s a website dedicated to tearing down Rand as “Too Kooky for Kentucky.”  Not having followed the race until now, I can’t vouch for its substance, and I have to admit that I get a LGF-esque “guilt-by-association” vibe from some of their stuff, but there it is.)

What does Palin think of the fact that Rand’s foreign policy views differ from her own?  Does this mean victory in Iraq isn’t as big a priority for her after all?  Is she at all concerned about giving mainstream credibility, however indirect, to Rand’s deranged father?  What is so important about this race that it’s worth the PR headaches of associating yourself with the nuts of the party?

If it’s merely because Rand’s an “outsider” like she is, then maybe, just maybe, liberals are more right about her intellect than any of us would like to admit…