My Old Kentucky Home

I’ve been told by a few people to whom I write that that they enjoy the more humorous messages.  So do I. They’re fun and easier to write under appropriate circumstances. But the stomping of a Move On activist by Rand Paul’s County Coordinator in Lexington Kentucky is not one of them.

By itself this act doesn’t denigrate Dr. Paul’s candidacy or his positions and those of his followers. Please note the italics. But his response in this context speaks volumes, not by what he said, but by what he didn’t say. He properly “disassociated” his campaign from the action of his representative. After all he doesn’t want voters to think that he knowingly hired a man to beat up on a young woman. But he declined to condemn the act! If you missed that in the news, this is not a typo. In other words he wouldn’t actively encourage what happened. But if people decide to do this sort of thing on their own, well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

Dr. Paul is one of numerous candidates, eight for the Senate according to pundits, advocating policies that can be described euphemistically as unconventional. Many are expected to win. Will the winners wink at this kind of physically abusive incivility as Dr. Paul has? How will Sharon Angle supporters respond to her “Second Amendment remedies” suggestion if she loses?  

The sense of order, at least superficial, prevalent in recent years has been broken on occasion by individuals, but not by broadly organized domestic groups; at least not yet. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Timothy McVeigh was influenced, if not inspired, by the rhetoric of the 1994 “Republican Revolution” articulated by Newt Gingrich. What makes the situation today more alarming is that unlike Gingrich then, the Tea Party has the voice of a major information network to amplify its message.

Domestic violence is not exclusive to the political right. The Weathermen are a case in point. But their actions were disapproved by the left as a group, and more important by its public officials, most notably those with a likelihood of having a voice in making the laws of the nation. Do our political leaders, aspiring or established, have a legal responsibility for the actions of their supporters, probably not? Do they have a moral responsibility? You bet they do!