I Hate to Keep Harping on This Guy, But…

… why do many libertarians appear to think that the invitation extended to Rand Paul to speak at Neoconfest 2012 (a.k.a. the Republican National Convention) will translate into some sort of benefit for his father’s cause?   Why would any rational, thinking person believe that a guy who clearly has no guiding principles at all, a guy who has made it clear that he’s a rank opportunist like most of the rest of his political colleagues, a guy who betrayed his own father at one of the most crucial junctures of his father’s (and his) political life is someone who has anything to say that would benefit liberty's cause?  It simply staggers the mind that, after he endorsed the Establishment candidate for the office of Puppet-in-Chief, anyone would believe that anything spewing forth from Rand Paul’s mouth at this convocation of war worship and statism will have anything to do with liberty, other than perhaps to ridicule it.  Am I missing something here?

Maybe this is yet another case of libertarian wishful thinking.  This sad and deleterious condition does incalculable damage to the cause of liberty by causing its victims to focus on unrealistic and unattainable goals at the expense of productive endeavors that could otherwise bear much nutritious fruit.  The energy wasted on the Ron Paul presidential campaign, it saddens me to say, was the most prominent of such exercises in wishful thinking in recent history.  Common sense told all of us that the Establishment was not going to allow Ron to get anywhere near the levers of power – ever.  Knowing what we have always known (but probably only reluctantly admit to ourselves), was it really any surprise that the GOP “leadership” donned its gangster mantle and pulled out all stops to lock Ron and his followers out of almost every state caucus and primary?  Given that almost all of us recognize that the State is nothing but institutionalized violence and coercion, concerned above all else with maintaining its power, did we seriously think that it would allow as its head someone who would take away that power?  I hope and pray that most of us have better sense than that.

Whether or not Rand Paul, or anyone who genuinely represents liberty speaks at Neoconfest 2012 is completely irrelevant.  The entire process is as criminal, corrupt, and fraudulent as the political system of which it is a part.  Any message of liberty delivered at this event would be, at best, equivalent to dousing Superman in a kryptonite bath, or, at worst, to singing an aria in front of a crowd of deaf people.  Those (very few) within the Republican Party who are followers of Ron Paul already know the score and are giving the convention itself a very wide birth, focusing instead on the Ron Paul rallies and other events in Tampa coinciding with the convention at which they are more likely to reach the people who really matter: ordinary American citizens.

So, to those who think that Rand Paul is really going to deliver a ringing endorsement of his father’s cause to the insiders who’ve purchased his soul, I offer you, at an absolute giveaway of a price, my beachfront condo in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  No doubt it will offer you a view as stunning as the promises to defend freedom and the free market that will pollute the air inside the Tampa convention center are substantive.