A Paul-ing Interview

Rachel Maddow is, hands down, the smartest and sharpest interviewer on TV today. So how did she whiff so badly in her interview with that infamous crackpot, racist, ideologue, misanthrope Ron Paul? She asked him a lot of questions re his influence on the GOP, allowing him to demur that he cares not for party only "principle," she flattered his anti-war bona fides, and she positively salivated over Paul's cool ass youth brigades taking on Dick Cheney and the authoritarian wing of the GOP.

Any hard-hitting questions about reinstating the gold standard or abolishing the Fed? Nope. Any exploration of the consequences of anti-bailout, anti-stimulus, anti-health care, pro-tax cut & deregulation radicalism? Nada. Any effort to probe Paul's racist past (his newsletters from the 80s, and connections to the von Mises Society, etc.) and its links to white supremacists in the Tea Party movement? Are you kidding? OK, then how about something on the irony of a "populist" insurgency that panders relentlessly to the god-complexes of the rich and powerful? Sadly, no.

I suspect the problem here is that a lot of liberals, like Maddow, see the "libertarians" as cute little anti-establishmentarians, fightin' the good fight against creeping statism, when they are actually the driving force behind GOP authoritarianism: servile worshippers of wealth and power who flatter themselves as defenders of freedom. Freedom for the wolves, that is, which means death to the sheep. Say, football would be a much better sport if there were no rules, the referees were all on the payroll of the richest team (who always got to play home games & use extra players), and refs existed only to remove the ball from the away team. Here is right-wing economics at its most absolute and least practical. The market is God's hand, not a tool but a religion to be accepted without question. Since the reality gap is so great, democracy with its self-correcting mechanisms cannot be allowed to intrude. No intellectual reservations (from pesky academics) can be tolerated. And if it doesn't all go their way, and the Mammon God is thwarted, there must be a nefarious conspiracy afoot.

In short, rather than resisting the most fanatical and tyrannical aspects of "statism," libertarianism necessitates them. Ron Paul is one evil dude. One day I'd like to see Maddow make that devil dance.