Rand Paul The Pander Bear

     Recently, in a Newsweek article Rand Paul, senator from Kentucky, stated that he thought the police department in Furguson Missouri, as well as police departments across the country, are too well-armed. Senator Paul also opined that the American justice system was used against blacks in disproportionate numbers, and that that fact proved that we still have a serious racial problem in this country. With this one article Mr. Paul has made himself the king of the Pander Bears, those politicians who will support what they think are populous positions in order to benefit themselves politically.
     While Senator Paul is fatuously calling for the demilitarization of the nation's police departments, I am calling for the de-congressionalization of Rand Paul. I have heard the Paulies suggest that Mr. Paul's foreign policy is aligned with that of Thomas Jefferson, but nothing is further from the truth. Mr. Jefferson brought to bear the force of the United States military against the Muslim pirates on the Barbary coast of Africa, and he also spent years overseas entangling the U.S. in foreign relations. Something that the Paulies seem to forget when quoting Thomas Jefferson's inaugural address when he spoke against "foreign entanglements."
     Thomas Jefferson's pragmatism would also lead one to believe that he would not be allied with Rand Paul if the former were alive today. Mr. Jefferson never would have suggested that his statement condemning foreign entanglements applied to an age after his own when missiles, nuclear weapons, airplanes, and a whole host of dangers existed that precluded American foreign policy from being limited by our borders. The view of Rand Paul and his devotees that all we need to do to ensure our security is to protect our borders is both childish and naive.
      The naiveté that instructs many followers of Rand Paul informs them that the United States has no enemies, save those that are created by our foreign policy. And we would just be safe and could ignore the rest of the world if we just would stay in our cocoon and not "interfere" with other countries. But this world view is not only dangerously naïve, but is not fair to the rest of the world. Freedom and prosperity has come to the rest of the world in quantities never before seen in history, precisely because the United States has taken responsibility for influencing world events.
     Mr. Paul sees a growing Libertarian movement in this country and is trying to capitalize on it politically by pandering to its misdirected tenets. But I think the Pander Bear is miscalculating the strength of this movement and will be politically disappointed with his results. I shudder to think of the dark and oppressive world that would exist today had the United States followed a foreign policy over the last hundred years like the one suggested by Rand Paul. And apparently from his recent statements, not only does he not believe in a muscular foreign policy, but he does not believe in a muscular domestic one either in order to protect citizen from rioters and looters.