RAND PAUL SUPPORTS MAKING ALL TRAFFIC LAWS VOLUNTARY

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who, with a straight face and no hint of embarrassment or self-consciousness, will take both sides of a single issue during the same interview, is going to be fun to have around during the Republican primary run for the Clown Show’s presidential nomination in 2016.

Mr. Paul---better known to some of my neighbors as “the little feller’ with the perm”---showed up on the CBS Sunday Morning Show Face the Nation earlier today and seeking, I suppose, to solidify his position as Washington’s ultimate libertarian, promptly proclaimed support for suggestions made by other Republicans that the nation’s traffic laws be made voluntary.

You read that right. Especially if you are able to sniff out snark/satire when you hear it or read it.

Now, to be fair, Mr. Paul did allow that he and his family generally think it is a good idea to drive on the right side of the road---while in the U.S.---and obey stop signs. But, before you imagine that this hints at the presence of even a kernel of sanity within the tortured mind of this freedom-fighter, it is worth noting that he considered both of these to be not only “good ideas” but “good choices,” with the emphasis on “choices.”

More simply put, if one did not consider it a good idea to drive on the right side of the road---while in the U.S.---or obey stop signs, Mr. Paul believes one should absolutely have the freedom to choose to follow his/her inclinations.

Philosophically speaking, one always has the choice to obey or not obey traffic laws. But, because they are laws, one’s choice to “express his/her personal freedom” by disobeying them can have sometimes severe consequences. Not to mention the sometimes severe consequences suffered by those whom might well be harmed by that person’s choice to “express his/her personal freedom.”

But Mr. Paul is not speaking philosophically and, in an adolescent---even childish---understanding of freedom, he makes no room for accountability or responsibility or consequences of any sort.

Hence, he is saying that traffic laws should be done away with altogether, such that there would be no consequences for one’s “expression of his/her personal freedom” while behind the wheel of a car.

After all, he opined, Republicans “lack...confidence in the government to decide these traffic laws” and “individuals can be trusted” to choose to do the right things while driving more than the government can be trusted to tell them what they can or can’t do, must or must not do.

Asked how individuals would know what those “right things to do while driving” were, Mr. Paul suggested that “public awareness is the way to go on these matters.” Asked to further clarify his response, he offered that “there should be advertising campaigns that encourage drivers to drive on the right side of the road.”

Seriously, that’s what he said. And, that’s all he said---”advertising campaigns that encourage drivers to drive on the right side of the road.”

Critics promptly responded by stating the obvious: Traffic laws ensure that traffic moves as smoothly and safely as possible.

To which Mr. Paul responded, “You are either for freedom or your are not.”

IF YOU HAVEN’T SNIFFED IT OUT BY NOW, LET ME ISSUE THIS SATIRE ALERT:  He wasn’t talking about traffic laws, he was talking about vaccinations! But the point, in actuality, is the same!

I am “for freedom.” But I am not “for freedom” that doesn’t keep company with accountability and responsibility and consequences.

It is “grow-up time” for Rand Paul.

When/If he does, he might come to understand that the “freedom” of which he speaks is not “freedom” but a dangerously pathological, self-obsessed narcissism (the old DSM would have diagnosed it as “Borderline Personality Disorder) whose only conceivable result would be a chaotic collective of “free people” related to each other only by physical proximity. Such apparently outmoded notions as “community,” “culture” and “society” would no longer exist in a world defined by his idea of “freedom.”

Anthropologists a century or two from now---if the planet still existed and if knowledge and critical inquiry and factual, objective truth were still valued more highly than ignorance (which is, at present, up for grabs)---would have a field day examining the dynamics of how “the land of the free” devolved into a dystopian nightmare worthy of a Coen Brothers film on steroids.

The bright side?

Just think of all the new opportunities for “original research” that will be available to Ph.D candidates.