(by Rich Abete)

I’ve been reading lately that Ron Paul’s current Presidential bid might just be all about paving the way for his son, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) in 2016.  That is a truly frightening proposition. What makes the phrase President Rand Paul more disturbing than President Ron Paul is only one thing: plausibility. Unlike his father, Rand Paul is young, articulate, handsome, unburdened by a long record or racist newsletters, and, most importantly, not an overt wacko. In other words, he’s electable. As such, when a glaring example of Rand’s hypocrisy was reported on Monday, it became incumbent upon me to perform my civic duty and deem him our new Hypocrite of the Week (HOTW).   

They say, “The fruit doesn’t fall very far from the tree.”  Whether it be nature or nurture at work, the old adage typically has some validity. In the case of Senator Paul, he and his father, Presidential hopeful Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), can both be described as, among other things, arrant hypocrites (see HOTW#7: Deconstructing the Constructionist: Ron Paul http://jwad.org/2011/12/hotw_ron-paul/). As is the case with some libertarians, virtually all small government conservatives and all right-wing Christian leaders, “keeping the government out of your personal business” is just a hackneyed platitude that is tossed quickly out the window once your business gets really personal.

For instance, on Monday, Paul the Younger, a self-described libertarian, was detained when refusing to comply with a TSA pat-down, according to a Tweet by his father that read, “My son @SenRandPaul being detained by TSA for refusing full body pat-down after anomaly in body scanner in Nashville. More details coming.”  To be fair, the pat-downs are more than a little intrusive and Mr. Paul’s refusal to comply is perfectly congruent with his libertarian ideology that rejects government intrusion in personal business and infringements on civil liberties. What’s ironically disturbing in this case, is that Dr. Paul was en route to Washington to speak at a huge Right to Life rally, an anti-choice organization whose singular objective is to cause the ultimate intrusion into the personal lives of women and families.

Leading up to Dr. Paul’s successful Senate bid in 2010, many inconsistencies in his libertarian positions were identified that tainted his supposed ideological purity. For instance, while repeatedly decrying “government handouts” and “governmental intrusion in health care,” it was revealed that he had collected perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars from Medicaid and Medicare, programs he frequently derided.

More recently, in May of last year, Dr. Paul temporarily blocked the renewal of the The Patriot Act to add amendments that critics said weakened the law, but civil libertarians believed necessary to relieve some of the inherent infringements upon civil liberties contained in the law.  He said it was worth potentially putting the nation at risk to stop the government from “blatantly ignoring the Constitution.” But, later that day… when appearing on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News, the good doctor proposed a far more breathtaking infringement on civil liberties and trampling of the First Amendment, that, to the point, blatantly ignored the Constitution.  Specifically, Dr. Paul said that individuals attending radical political speeches should be thrown in jail!  Here is the text from the interview:

DR. PAUL: I’m not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they’ve been traveling and perhaps, you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they’ve been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders. It wouldn’t be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that’s really an offense that we should be going after — they should be deported or put in prison.

What do you call it again when you preach one thing and practice another?  Oh yeah…Duh!