Ron Paul, child of scorn, grew lean as he assailed the seasons

. . . He wept that he was ever born, and he had reasons. . . .

Ron Paul represents a legitimate political philosophy: Libertarianism. He doesn't hate government. He just wants it to be spare and lean, like him. Liberty, for a Libertarian, is maximum personal responsibility, and a minimal government. Government should be only what people cannot do for themselves, even if people are stupid or unlucky.

Logically, Libertarians represent the right wing urge of the Republican Party. The other side of Republicanism wants a government that supports a more generous, but conservative government that supports business and social necessities.

The Tea Party pretends that it is Libertarian when it scorns big government but, at the same time, they want government to control marriage, and abortion, and what women can decide about their own bodies. There is a mindless fundamentalist religious urge in the Tea Party. There is, in other words, a very activist desire in the Tea Party, wanting the government to regulate people's religious and personal freedoms.

Right now, the Republican Party ignored Ron Paul, who represents their real conservatives, and lusts after its Tea Party governmental activist wing, so long as that activism gets into bedrooms, cuts taxes, and goes off to war.

The Iowa Straw Poll is a phony poll. Candidates pay the entry fees for voters, and stuff them with pulled pork and sweet corn. (They also provide something to eat!) Michele Bachmann got 28% of the vote, and Ron Paul got 27%. Tiny Tim Pawlenty got 13%, in third, and he quit. You would never guess that from the Republican response: it is all cheers for Bachmann, Romney, and Perry! Whoops! Wha' hoppen to Ron Paul?

The Republican Party today isn't your father's Oldsmobile! It has been hijacked by people who hate taxes and Social Security and universal health care, but who love war and unregulated banks and White Anglo-Saxon fundamentalist religion.

It is a party flirting with thoughtless disaster. It talks jobs and cuts unemployment insurance. It hates taxes and demands bigger and better wars. It scorns governmental interference, and asks for subsidies for oil companies. It praises personal liberty and wants an ethics monitor in your bedroom and at the altar. It praises male control of women. It calls us an "exceptional nation" and despises immigrants.

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