Rand Paul Rally in Lexington, Kentucky: Analysis and Commentary

Rand Paul

This weekend, Blue Bluegrass spent hours transcribing the Rand Paul rally Saturday in Lexington without any editorial content added. As the brutal economic formula challenges traditional news gathering and reporting sources, other potential volunteer news gatherers may want to also consider covering and reporting events such as this rally. Sharing the speaker’s actual words is a public good, no matter what one’s political beliefs are. The First Amendment has it right. In an accurate marketplace of ideas, the ones without merit will be judged accordingly. Time will tell how Rand Paul is judged as his content actually becomes fully available. That was the intention of recording and transcribing.

However, for the previous posts, having dutifully plodded through the precision of listening, backing up, and listening again to 53 minutes, this post serves a different purpose: to submit commentary and analysis on the content previously reported. This post is not written to address or include every single point made—this is commentary of selected portions.
Please feel free to review the informationally-oriented posts on Rand Paul’s event: The first post consists of photos published while the event was still going on (click here), the second post consisting of more photos and the transcript of Rand Paul’s initial speech (click here), and the third and final post consisting of the question and answer session from Rand Paul’s rally (click here).

Analysis and Review:

From the Speech

Thank you Jonathan. I met Jonathan a few months ago at a tea party over in Frankfort. The Tea Party Movement seems to be everywhere. In fact, the biggest crowds and meetings that I’ve been to in Kentucky have all been Tea Parties.

This is a fundamental point that should not be overlooked. Rand Paul is the Tea Party, and the Tea Party is Rand Paul. He has chosen to self-identify and promote primarily through the Tea Party/teabagger movement. Every bit of what the Tea Party stands for is therefore fair game for Rand Paul to answer for. Because he repeatedly calls on the teabaggers and seeks their support, he also must answer for their conduct, and he must also disavow un-American and dangerous behavior by this group, or else be considered to accept and agree with their conduct.


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I had to promise my family one thing when I went out on the road to campaign. I had to promise them that I would never sing. As you can tell, my voice is kind of raspy, so I’m not going to sing. But I do have the lyrics to a song I’d like to tell you. This is a song called Trees, by Rush.

Excellent call on the singing. The only politician who can safely sing is Kinky Friedman. But stick to quoting Rush Limbaugh, and leave the musical Rush out of your speeches.

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This is what happens when you want equal outcomes. If we want everybody in here to make the same amount of money and we want everybody to have the same amount of ability, we have to handicap people.

There’s a famous short story by Kurt Vonnegut called Harrison Bergeron. Those that were musically inclined had buzzing noises in their ears. They wanted to make everyone equal. We have solved that same sentiment in our country. People say they don’t want certain people to make more money than other people. We need a progressive income tax. We need to somehow equalize everybody so that everybody’s the same. The problem is that if you allow the heavy hand of government to come in and force equality on people, they have to do it with a hatchet, an axe, or a saw.

Okay, now this is one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen since MSNBC repeatedly replayed the round mound of Rushbo shaking like a bowl full of jelly during one of his speeches. Here, Rand Paul, who describes himself as a libertarian, twists the views of an American
hero like Kurt Vonnegut beyond recognition, and and claims that Vonnegut supported inequality. Kurt Vonnegut also spoke here in Lexington, at a Transylvania speech in the 1990s to an overflow crowd that wound back into a room behind the stage area. Kurt Vonnegut was a pacifist who argued for socialism, equality, and most of all, for the need for common decency in people and in government. He died from a fall in April, 2007, although Tralfamadorians recognize he’s only dead at this point in time. So it goes.
In Vonnegut’s 2005 collection of essays, A Man Without A Country, he accused President George W. Bush of gathering “around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography”. In a May 10, 2004 column for In These Times entitled “Cold Turkey”, he referred to U.S. government leaders as “power-drunk chimpanzees”.

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That ability to be mobile within a society is what characterizes capitalism and freedom. Of course in the olden days in Europe where there was the landed gentry and the aristocracy endowed by birth not by ability or skill. So in our country we’ve always had that ability.

What color is the sky in your world, Mr. Paul? We’ve always had that ability to be mobile in America? Does anyone honestly believe this? Honestly? Tell that to the mother who’s cleaning houses to keep the gas on so her children don’t freeze to death this winter. Tell that to Pedro, back at the Wilshire, sitting there dreaming of how he can fly fly away, from the dirty boulevard.

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Recently we’ve given capitalism sort of a black eye. We said the reason behind this great financial panic last year is all because of greed. Well, what is greed? If it’s your money, it’s greed, if it’s mine, it’s just self-interest. It’s all a matter of perspective. Is self-interest a bad thing? No, self-interest is the invisible hand that Adam Smith talked about.

Gee, I thought that the financial meltdown last year was a bad thing. In fact, it’s one of the few things almost all Americans besides Rand Paul agree on. In 2008, even John McCain admitted that Wall Street had breached Adam Smith’s social contract (see p.12).

Also, Adam Smith neither knew the word, nor the phenomenon of ‘capitalism’. The word itself was first used in English (Oxford English Dictionary) in 1854 by Makepeace Thackeray in his novel, The Newcomes. Smith died in 1790. Smith warned against ‘men of system’ who, ‘wise in their conceit’, force their designs (such as capitalism is) upon others.

Further, as Religion Online notes, using Smith as a short-hand cover for greed-is-good and inequality-is-better is incorrect:

Smith was also concerned that the labouring classes should be properly and adequately rewarded. As in many other issue he supplied a common sense justification for it. After noting that the labouring classes constitute the greater part of society, he said, “What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable” (Vol. I p. 70)
Apparently, latter day admirers of Adam Smith who put forward the argument that what is important in the development process is that national income must grow, irrespective of what happens to the conditions of the majority of the people are unaware of the position that Smith took on this crucial issue. Indeed, Smith supplemented his common-sense argument with an invocation of the equity principle saying “It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged”. (Vol. I p. 70)

Rand Paul also appears to be unaware that his praise and advocacy for a flat-rate tax flies directly in the face of the position of his oft-quoted hero, Adam Smith, who said:

The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state….In the observation or neglect of this maxim consists, what is called the equality of inequality of taxation. (Wealth of Nations, 1994, Modern Library Edition, p. 888).

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From the Question and Answer Session

On Abortion:

I believe that Roe v. Wade was incorrectly decided and should be overturned. I think that there are both federal and state ways that you can overturn it and I support both the federal and state ways of trying to overturn it. … The other part of the way we can try to change things is an incremental approach and actually trying to limit and regulate and make more difficult the prospect of getting abortion on the state level. There is also something called the sanctity of life legislation which would require only a 50 % vote in Congress which is easier than a constitutional amendment and could be a workable way of sending things back. What it would say is that questions like abortion or Roe v. Wade should not be decided in federal court but should be in the state court. What would happen on that is immediately you would have many southern states who probably would choose to and it would be upheld in state court to regulate and/or stop abortion.

Aside from the dizzying lack of understanding of the limitations of the U.S. Constitution and the void nature of such legislation, this position by Rand Paul is exactly opposite and in direct contradiction to his so-called libertarian principles of less governmental intrusion into personal lives of citizens.


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(Responding to a question from a “doctor” about a cancer patient in Oregon):

Yeah, I read the story and actually used it in my speeches sometimes. They gave Glenn Beck a hard time about death panels. I use that as an example of we already have death panels in our country. It shows already that people are given a financial number as to what they’re worth. In England there’s the Nice Commission-sort of inappropriately named, but the Nice Commission determined that they’re worth $26,000 in the last six months. If your chemotherapy exceeds that, you don’t get it. And that’s the same philosophy here. You’re worth only a certain amount in your chemotherapy and if you exceed that then you can’t have it. But you’re eligible for assisted suicide. I think that’s a disaster and something we need to be wary of, because you’re right, that’s what we may be getting from an Obama plan.

I have to agree with Rand Paul on one point here: we do indeed already have death panels in the United States of America. They’re more commonly referred to as insurance companies. Jon Stewart and the Daily Show line up with Rand Paul and defend the need for private death panels, instead of government-run death panels.

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Below is a Follow Up Question from same “doctor”—Note—the doctor was not identified by name. If you’re being treated by a doctor in Lexington who is a male, says he was at the Rand Paul rally, and has children at West Jessamine High School, do not walk away. Run as fast as you can.

Q: I want to ask for your comment about education (unintelligible) teaching about environmental science—what do you do with nuclear waste, possibly do space travel, what do you do when your dog is lost in the wilderness. We’re losing a generation with educational techniques and propaganda through the school systems. And I wanted to know what your feelings were about education and combating this very type of centralized propaganda that is being substituted for science and core curriculum studies.

A: Yeah, I agree with you. A lot of pseudoscience on climate change—they used to call it global warming but since it’s getting colder now, now they’re trying to call it climate change. See you’ve got people—Al Gore’s being taught in school systems. I think it’s a travesty. John Stossel had a good program not too long ago he went to grade school classes and he asked them: do you think we’re polluting more now, or forty years ago? Every one of the kids said the oceans are rising and we’re going to become extinct as a race. If you look at pollution objectively, it’s a thousand times better than it was forty years ago. It’s a million times better than it was—there are pictures of Pittsburgh in 1916 and at noon the street lamps are on and you can’t see your hand. We’ve come a long way in controlling pollution and for people to tell the children that it’s a lot worse than it used to be is completely untrue. But it’s just scare tactics. You know, Al Gore says the polar bears are going extinct because there’s no ice for them to float on. There’s no evidence of that. He quoted a biologist who didn’t do a study. There are studies and there is no evidence there’s less polar bears.

Free advice, Dr. Paul: Don’t agree with and then try to out-crazy a teabagging doctor. You gave it a good effort, but he had the whole space travel and dog-lost-in-the-woods thing.

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Q: We know that the mainstream media is in sync with Obama administration so what is your strategy to get your message out to the public so you can get the public behind you?
A: That’s a great question. I think what we should do is one thing Obama does pretty well is he can articulate his message. So we need people who can counter that and who can articulate our message just as well. And they can do it without a teleprompter. (laughter). That’s part of it. And then there are many sources now within the media that will present our side of it. I’ve been very fortunate to be on Fox News probably ten times now. And so there is another side to the equation now there’s more networks. There’s also the great equalizer and that’s the internet. I couldn’t be standing here talking as a confident and as a candidate who has a chance to win were it not for the internet.

No, what you need is not your own personal propaganda machine. What you and every candidate need are to be heard in the first person by voters, either in person or through recordings, and let the people decide which candidate has any meritorious ideas. Fox News likes you. Congratulations. Guess what? Nancy Pelosi likes MSNBC. Your choice of media outlets doesn’t make either of you in the right.

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In response to a question about repealing the 17th Amendment:

Some people say it would be better if they were still appointed or elected by the state legislators. The only downside I see to that is somebody like myself who is an outsider – if you pick the top 50 Republicans in the state, they’re probably going to vote for the insider who they think –well, this guy may not believe in anything, he may be a moderate ex-Democrat – (laughter) I’m not speaking of anyone in particular – but if it were left up to these insiders, they’re going to make their choice based on that, and I’m afraid if it were up to the state legislature, you would continue to have insiders and not having the outsiders having a chance.

What is noteworthy here is how Paul identified and attacked his primary opponent, Republican Secretary of State and Mitch McConnell protege Trey Grayson. Note the pattern—”I’m not speaking of anyone in particular”, after identifying Grayson so specifically that everyone knows he is attacking Grayson. That pattern is used again by Rand Paul later in the event in a most disturbing and un-American way.

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Q: On cap and trade, are you familiar with the scientific issues, and the web sites such as (unintelligible) and the (unintelligible) and scienceandpublicpolicy.org (a site featuring both Glen Beck and world-renowned scientist Lord Monckton)?

A: I’m not familiar with the sites but write them down for me. I think there’s a lot of pseudoscience going on with all of this climate change thing you know. When I spoke before the coal-producing counties, I said, I’ve got the answer on climate change if you’ll just listen to me. Now listen carefully. We just have to euthanize all the goats in New Zealand. They’re belching the methane that’s causing the globe to get warmer. There are actually real scientists who say that the biggest greenhouse gases are be they methane or water or (unintelligible), but you have to also explain to me at least, why are the polar ice caps shrinking on Mars? Are the Martians polluting that much? I mean, there probably are and I’m not an expert in this but I would assume there are solar cycles because we’ve had geologic ice ages and warming since the beginning of time that we can measure. I saw the other day that in Greenland beneath a foot or two of ice beneath the tundra they can find graves that were dug by hand with a shovel. That has to be fairly soft ground. You’re not digging through ice and tundra. So that means that Greenland was a lot warmer and a lot greener at one time. We go through these cycles. It’s not an excuse to say we should just accept pollution, but I think we have to decide what is acceptable in emissions, and it should be based on science and local community reaction. But it shouldn’t be based on pseudoscience coming out of Washington. And Al Gore is no scientist in my book.

Wait a minute—“New Zealand goat burps? Martians? You would assume there are solar cycles?” Mr. Paul, I must apologize for previously stating that you shouldn’t try to out-crazy the teabagging doctor. You sir, are a legend.

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I am absolutely opposed to cap and trade. … cap and trade would be a disaster. Even if we did not have any coal industry in this state, I’d be opposed to cap and trade because of the tax (applause). With regards to the coal industry in particular, I’ve been there twice. I’ve been to Harlan, I’ve been to Hazard, and I’m going back to Pikeville (sic) in another month. I’ve seen the mountaintop removal, I really don’t see any objections to it. It’s private property and as long as they don’t hurt their neighbors property, they can do with their land as they wish. The land that they have removed, in Hyden I saw the sports complex is beautiful. It looks like a national park. They have very little flat area out there. If you go to Eastern Kentucky, it’s precious to have flatland. Everything is so steep up and down. So any big area—100 acres of flat land, it’s prized property. Some of it’s going for $500,000 an acre because it’s flat land. I saw hospitals go on flat land. I saw a sports complex. I saw elk roaming. You know it’s really not something.

The irony of someone like Rand Paul quoting Adam Smith and also sounding the alarm against deficit spending is not lost. Robert F. Kennedy points out how this position by Rand Paul is advocating deficit spending—the very thing Paul spends the majority of his initial speech warning against. Kennedy stated:

In 100% of the situations, good environmental policy is identical to good economic policy—- if we want to measure our economy, and this is how we ought to be measuring it, based upon how it produces jobs and the dignity of jobs over the generations, how it preserves the values of the assets of our community and how it averts the catastrophe of global warming.
If, on the other hand, we want to do what they’ve been urging us to do on Capitol Hill which is to treat the planet as if it were a business in liquidation, convert our natural resources to cash as quickly as possible, have a few years of pollution based prosperity, we can generate an instantaneous cash flow and the illusion of a prosperous economy. But our children are going to pay for our joyride with denuded landscapes, with poor health, with huge cleanup costs and with climate chaos which is going to amplify over time and that they will never be able to pay.
Environmental injury is deficit spending. It is a way of loading the costs of our generation’s prosperity on to the backs of our children. Climate change is upon us. Its impacts are going to be catastrophic and we are causing it. The good news is, we have the scientific and technological capacity to avert its most catastrophic impacts. We only need the political will.

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Capitalism is not a dirty word. Capitalism is the most humanitarian economic system known to man. (Strong applause). The Soviets used to like to show a video of our tenements in New York. The windows were broken, not a very good building, but it backfired on them because as they scanned down the building, the people in the Soviet Union watching it saw that most people had color television sets. So even the poorest of our poor were richer than the middle class in the Soviet Union. That’s capitalism. It’s self-interest. It’s profit. These aren’t dirty words these are good things. And they motivate small businessmen as well as large businessmen and they’re a good thing.

Mr. Paul, to respond, In the immortal words of General Buck Turgidson,

Let’s get going. There’s no other choice. God willing, we will prevail in peace and freedom from fear and in true health through the purity and essence of our natural fluids. God bless you all.” Then he hung up. We’re still trying to figure out the meaning of that last phrase, sir.

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Rand Paul was asked what he thought of the current proposal to remove the exemption from federal anti-trust laws for health insurance companies. Unfortunately, Rand Paul had no idea there was any such law. He responded:

“Removing the exemption—these insurance companies are exempt right now from anti-trust? I do agree with the general statement they should be allowed to sell across interstate lines. You know what, I’m going to pass this question off.” At this point, Rand Paul directed his economic advisor, University of Kentucky economics professor Dr. John Garen to provide a response for him.

The entire exchange was reminiscent of another prominent Republican on the national state last year—just like Sarah Palin, Rand Paul used one of his lifelines, but Paul didn’t have to phone a friend—he had one accompany him in the audience.





Finally, the penultimate question and Rand Paul’s un-American response:

Q: I just wanted to say I was born in Germany and I grew up under Hitler’s regime. So much of things now are like Hitler’s regime. (Unintelligible) We had to take whatever he said. There was – everybody talking about it And the Third Reich and what’s going on in Washington DC, it’s too close to it. And I’m really worried I know that I’m old but I have children and grandchildren and I don’t want them to go through what we went through.
A: I think you’re right. I think the records of Hitler is one that I bring up also. The reason I bring it up is because Hitler came out of the chaos of the Weimar Republic when they exported their currency in 1923. Hitler arose out of the chaos. What I see and what I hear in our country is our country exports our currency and out of chaos – and I’m not saying there’s that leader or who that leader could be, but some leader could arise who says these people, this ethnic group caused it, just put them in jail and we’ll be okay, you know. If you can just trade your liberty for security everything will be okay. You give me power and I’ll make you safe. Hitler said those things and people actually voted for Hitler in the very beginning. That’s what I fear, is not a particular person, but I fear chaos, and out of chaos I fear what can happen out of chaos.

Mr. Paul, what I fear are pandering candidates who without a moment’s hesitation agree with equating current political leaders in Washington, DC with the most monstrous and homicidal regime to ever wield power on our planet. You have agreed with a linkage between Adolf Hitler’s actions and actions in Washington DC, and concluded your response with talking about fear and chaos.
And the pattern you established earlier in talking about Trey Grayson, you repeated here: “Now, I’m not talking about a particular person”, after clearly identifying current political leaders in Washington, D.C. Your approach is a cowardly approach, and yet one in which you clearly and unambiguously embrace the teabagger’s tin-foil-under-the-hat paranoia that we’re in Nazi Germany. In doing so, you are whipping the flames of fear to attempt to strengthen a populist base of support by suggesting people are at risk due to the frightening times in which we live. And that is both ironic and contemptible.

Time for one more question? Does this question bring any other questions to mind?

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Q: Dr. Paul, what is your interpretation of the right of people to keep and bear arms about their person?
A: I am absolutely a supporter of the Second Amendment without question and backer of it. I’ve given speeches at the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot.

Once again, what is striking is the connectivity—the question identifying Washington, D.C. and Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany is immediately followed by a question and answer about machine guns. Fear and Loathing have now met Lawyers, Guns and Money.

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The final and most bizarre demonstration of the danger of Rand Paul groupspeak, the fear and ignorance it relies on, and the easily predicted deadly consequences, was found by Joe Sonka of Barefoot and Progressive. On the Rand Paul Facebook event page this weekend, it showed the following as an event photo for this rally:

The above message was even more disconcerting, given that one of the attendees at the rally (who applauded right along with other attendees for Rand Paul) was a four-year-old girl. If her parents buy into the tin-foil crowdspeak, and fail to get her vaccinated, this young girl is at a directly increased risk of contracting a potentially fatal flu due to ignorance, paranoia and fear.

Conclusion

One side of the debate has got Hope. The other side is buying machine guns, talking about burping goats in New Zealand, and scaring people. And Rand Paul was discussed this weekend as a 2012 candidate for the presidency of the United States.
Fortunately, as noted previously, the First Amendment still has it right. In an accurate marketplace of ideas, the ones without merit will be judged accordingly. The above Rand Paul content has been made fully available, and awaits the public’s judgment.

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