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A few nights ago, Dr. Rand Paul won the Kentucky primary race against Mr. Trey Grayson and became the Republican nominee for one of the Kentucky US Senate seats. Up until that point the story in the media had been more or less sweet on Dr. Rand Paul. They reported quite fairly on his popularity, his stances on issues and his surprising rise in the Republican Party despite the establishment support for Mr. Trey Grayson. They even at times seemed genuinely excited at the prospect that an honest, principled individual might actually beat a neocon who was supposedly more aligned with the party platform. The day after he won the primary, however, the media attack dogs came out in force.
The establishment seems to very much dislike Dr. Rand Paul, judging by how much they've been demonizing him after his victory. And this time, they had to dig deep to do it. They had to go back to a land long ago and far away, when America was still perhaps a semblance of what the founders meant it to be. All the way back to 1964. Once there, they asked Dr. Paul whether or not he would have voted for the Civil Rights Act that was passed back then.
Who cares? It was almost fifty effing years ago. He was just a baby at the time. Even if he was magically transported back so that he was his present age back then and a senator, those were different times. The country had different problems back then. We were trying to deal with an inequity that affected and possibly harmed human individuals on both sides of that particular issue. What's it matter how he would have voted? What's it matter what stance he would have taken? He wasn't there and anything he would or wouldn't have done is pure conjecture. It's a stupid debate. You might as well ask him if he would have voted for Augustus to become first emperor of Rome or if he would have helped stab Julius Caesar to death. Who knows, maybe we'll discover some deep seated authoritarian desires held by Dr. Rand Paul if you do, or his hidden murderous tendencies.
The kind of philosophical debate the corporate media is attempting to have with Dr. Rand Paul has no place in today's political discourse as they report it. They are attempting to discuss an intellectual stance that takes time to explain in the course of a few minutes and a couple of sound bites. It's not even a discussion that's particularly relevant in our society anymore. Most of us have gotten past the color barrier. I think the election of Mr. Barack Obama has proven this. Sure, there are still isolated pockets of ignorance and people who somehow manage to cling to racist beliefs such as the color of one's skin making one person better than the other, but these beliefs are no longer institutionalized. I doubt very much we will ever take steps backward to revisit that dark place in the human soul.
Presently, here and now, we have far more pressing problems that need to be addressed. There is, for instance, the problem of too big of a government intruding too much on the personal lives of too many ordinary individuals. There is the problem of the too big to fail having too much power over the ever growing federal government that reaches too deeply into the pockets of the common folk. There is the problem of the Federal Reserve having too much power over our economy and failing miserably in its mandate to stabilize the economy and provide full employment. There is the problem of too much taxation. There is the problem of the federal government continuously ignoring their own documents and violating the rights of common folk because they feel they are somehow protecting us by doing so. These are the problems that are significant in our present times.
These problems were addressed in Dr. Rand Paul's campaign to become the Republican candidate for one of Kentucky's two senate seats. The Kentuckians seem to have responded well to his message. He offers solutions that have not been forwarded or tried by the establishment. The common folk are ready to try something new. They're ready to take power from those who have been abusing it and failing miserably. They're ready to try shrinking the size of the federal government, to try limiting the amount of time someone can remain in power, to try balancing budgets rather than accruing debt, and to try eliminating federal involvement and applying more local solutions. These are the issues that should be focused upon by the establishment media, not some nebulous concept that was dealt with half a century ago.
The establishment media seems to enjoy muddying the waters, however. They seem to enjoy protecting their power base by raising irrational fears from the ghosts of the past. It is time to start moving forward and stop looking backward. I wasn't even particularly that excited about Dr. Rand Paul because his views on the misguided wars we are currently engaged in differ quite a bit from mine. Still, when I see the established corporate media try to attack him in such a manner and intimate that he's a racist, I have to believe that they're afraid of him. He represents a step toward freedom, and I don't believe the establishment wants us to take even one step, small as it may be, away from the tyrannical path they have set us upon.
Who was it who actually brought up the race issue in the first place? I don't think it was Dr. Rand Paul, I believe it was an establishment media figure. Didn't Maddow ask about what was said on Siegel's radio show and didn't Siegel bring it up in the first place? The race issue is a divisive issue. It's an issue that can easily make anyone look like a bad person by twisting and spinning quotes. Talk to anyone about the issue, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, or any other ethnicity and you will likely be able to uncover a quote that will make that person sound racist. That's because people like to talk in generalizations and simplify things even when such generalizations and simplifications can confuse and misdirect.
Dr. Rand Paul stated unequivocally that he was not a racist and was at least as interested in protecting the individual rights of business owners as he was protecting the rights of a collective. Isn't that really where we should stand? Isn't that the best in the larger scheme of things? Moving forward, shouldn't we get over our self identification of belonging to the group labeled black, or the group labeled white, or Asian, or Hispanic, or any of a myriad of ethnicities and start living as free individual members of the human race? No one should care about what color a person is, they should care about how good a person is, how kind, how generous, how caring. That's where judgment should lie. So leave him alone on that question already. How many times does he have to explain his stance has nothing to do with race and everything to do with individual rights and liberties?
Collectivist and authoritarian philosophies fail miserably. They have through the ages. Having one person, such as a king or dictator, telling everyone else what to do fails every time. Having a group of oligarchs telling everyone what to do is just as much a failure. So is being ruled by a group of plutocrats. These systems have failed time and again because they are inherently flawed. Only a few people have the power and influence to work out the problems of the many. A system that focuses on the individual, such as the American system was supposed to at its inception, provides incentives and opportunities to everyone regardless of race, creed, or social status.
The individual is the smallest minority. There is where our focus should lie. That is what a responsible media should be talking about. It should be reporting on the abuses of power that are happening in this country. It should be reporting on the many who have had their rights violated by agents of the government. It should be asking Dr. Rand Paul and other national level politicians their plans to correct such practices. As it is the people of Kentucky have, at the very least, voiced their disgust with the establishment. The corporate owned media now tries to turn that disgust back on the people, but I have the feeling that it will not work anymore. The change in this country continues, more people awaken to the lies and deceptions, and it is the establishment and anyone perceived to be part of that failed establishment who are going to loose popularity while those who believe in liberty and individualism will raise in stature and gain in influence. Ignoring present day issues in favor of past issues will not alter this fate.
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