Rand Paul: The best choice for Born Again Christians

While all of the other presidential candidates are carving up different sectors of the Evangelical Christian vote and insulting each other in the process, one thing is clear, Senator Rand Paul is the favorite of the “young” Evangelicals.

Jerry Johnson, president of the National Religious Broadcasters, is one of the most important evangelical leaders in the country. He must keep the peace among the powerful televangelists and thus is meticulously neutral in the 2016 presidential race.  But his son, Isaac Johnson, supports Rand Paul.

David Lane, labeled by the New York Times as “something of a stealth weapon for the right” has brokered meetings with evangelical leaders and most of the Republican candidates from Ted Cruz  and Ben Carson to Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal. But his daughter, Jillian Lane, supports Rand Paul and works as his press secretary.

James Robison, televangelist, who is perhaps the most politically savvy Christian leader in the country, has met all of the Republican candidates and refused to make a commitment.  But his son, James Randall Robison, supports Rand Paul.  And recently co-authored a book with him.

Surprisingly, Christian youth, like their secular counterparts support Rand Paul for some of the same reasons.

Yes, there is his lonely stand against the persecution of Christians in the Middle East.  There is his stand for criminal justice reform.  There is his stand for Life. But the key to his support is his campaign against the corruption that has killed the free enterprise system.  And that corruption has reached the point that it has become a moral crisis every much as important as abortion and religious freedom.

The only time Jesus lost his temper was when he saw how the moneychangers were cheating the people in the Temple.  Well, the moneychangers are back.

The ongoing transfer of wealth to a tiny few has robbed the churches and the American youth of billions of dollars.  Here’s how it works.

#1) Excessive regulations designed to protect the public are used to prevent start ups and the big companies are often exempted. It prevents young people from participating in the economy.

#2) Excessive taxes that subsidize some companies and penalize others have created monopolies.  It prevents young people from participating in the economy. In some cases their own tax dollars are subsidizing their very own competition.

#3) Policies of the Federal Reserve which award multibillion dollar loans at zero percent interest to banks and big companies while new businesses must pay interest through the nose keep the money flowing to the very few.  It prevents young people from participating in the economy.

#4) Those same companies buy the advertising from major media and get a free pass on the process in return.  Candidates who stand up to the corruption see themselves as targets of that media or ignored.  After all, the media giants are feasting off of the very same system.

When the previous Federal Reserve Chairman was asked why the FED had given an interest free loan over $100 million to the McDonalds Corporation he answered, “To create jobs.”

Ron Paul, the Senator’s father, was a candidate for president at the time and challenged the loan.  At the next presidential debate the NBC moderator was given more time than Ron Paul.  When Paul later complained to the host he was told, “I’m sorry Dr. Paul, a voice in my headset said, ‘Don’t go to Ron Paul, don’t go to Ron Paul.’”  The McDonalds Corporation sponsors the NBC Evening News.

The FED’s answer to why some companies get loans at zero interest and others do not proves the point.  Today’s economy has created $7 an hour jobs for graduates with Master’s and Doctorate Degrees. You can work at McDonalds but you cannot start your own Hamburger business.

For all but a very lucky few, the American dream is dead.

Senator Rand Paul has emerged as the only hope to save the country from this crisis.

While many candidates, from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, speak to the problem, there is no one else other than Rand Paul, who could even come close to providing a solution.

Bernie Sanders would take us deeper into socialism, already rejected by world history.

It was recently revealed that Ted Cruz, who publicly decries the pernicious role of the banks in corrupting the system, had his whole career financed by Goldman Sachs and hid that fact on his reporting documentation.

Donald Trump openly admits he gamed the system to build his businesses empire.

Brian Jacobs, a former consultant to the Billy Graham Organization agrees. “Pure religion is caring for the widows and orphans and how does that square with a monetary system that is rigged to keep out newcomers.”

It is theft. It has become a moral crisis. And both Republicans and Democrats are involved.  Only Senator Rand Paul offers a solution.

Rand Paul: The only adult in the room.

“Preventative war is like committing suicide out of fear of death.”

-Otto von Bismarck

This Christmas Rand Paul wrote a blog about “Peace on Earth.” The Senator pointed out that Jesus was called “the Prince of Peace,” that he taught, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”  Rand Paul is a lonely voice.  Maybe the only voice of sanity left in America.

Do we really want a war with Russia? A country with a 15% tax rate, who has more religious liberty than America and who faithfully ferries American astronauts to and from the International Space Station because America has no rockets capable of doing so for ourselves?

Do we want to punish them for having the audacity to join the war against ISIS? For wanting to avenge their own citizens, who were shot down in a commercial aircraft?

Hillary Clinton thinks so and wants us to declare a “no fly” zone over Syria, keeping the Russians out. Chris Christie thinks so too and has said he would order any Russian jet violating such a zone to be shot down.

They would go to war against the only other superpower on earth to defend our right to be the sole progenitors of mayhem in the Middle East.  We can bomb and kill our enemies.  No one else.

Ostensibly, Clinton and the Republican neo-Cons want to get rid of Syrian dictator Assad.  And that means supporting “moderate rebels” who are opposed to him in the Syrian civil war.  They warn that Russian air attacks pounding ISIS are spilling over on the so-called Islamic moderates.

The problem is after spending $500 billion the United States could only produce 50 of such “moderate” rebel soldiers to support a pro American government.  The rest, armed by the American taxpayers, went over to the dark side and are supporting Al Qaeda and ISIS, trying to overthrow Assad.  So who are these “moderates” we are afraid that Russian bombs might kill? The 54?

Several years ago, Rand Paul was warning that our tanks and trucks, given over to rebels in Syria were going to fall into the hands of terrorists.  A few months later, almost on queue, terrorists emerged from the chaos of Syria, driving American tanks across the Middle East, draped in the black flags of ISIS.

Is this really about 54 moderate Muslims?

What really drives the Clinton-Neo Con machine is money.  Isn’t it the answer to almost any puzzle?  Big companies make big bucks fighting wars.  It is why they lobbied to leave the billions of dollars of weapons and trucks behind after the War in Iraq.  Just scrap them. The more weapons we give away, the more they can get paid to produce new replacements.  And the best of all is to arm a new enemy which they must then defeat with even more manufactured weapons.

This is the money that drives the wars and this current election. A war with Russia? Imagine the fortunes that could be made?

Senator Rand Paul does not favor the dictator, Bashar Assad of Syria but he does point out that each time we topple a secular dictator we get something worse.  It happened in Libya. It happened in Iraq.  And it will be repeated in Syria again.

This isn’t about Russia, or Assad, or ISIS.  This is about big companies, making money, by waging war. And the national media, dependent on the advertising dollars of those big company conglomerates, will provide the rationale and the popular opinion to make it happen.

Peace on earth.  Good will to men?

Rand Paul is the only adult in the room.

 

 

The Young Evangelicals: Their Hearts Belong to Rand Paul

While the other GOP presidential candidates are falling all over themselves trying to win the important evangelical leaders of influence, Senator Rand Paul appears to have won the hearts of their youth. What this will mean for the coming Iowa Caucuses, where the Paul campaign has organized the college campuses, remains to be seen.

Jerry Johnson, president of the National Religious Broadcasters, is one of the most important evangelical leaders in the country. He must keep the peace among the powerful televangelists and thus is meticulously neutral in the 2016 presidential race.  But his son, Isaac Johnson, supports Rand Paul.

David Lane, labeled by the New York Times as “something of a stealth weapon for the right” has brokered meetings with evangelical leaders and most of the Republican candidates from Ted Cruz  and Ben Carson to Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal. But his daughter, Jillian Lane, supports Rand Paul and works as his press secretary.

James Robison, televangelist, who is perhaps the most politically savvy Christian leader in the country, has met all of the Republican candidates and refused to make a commitment.  But his son, James Randall Robison, supports Rand Paul.  And recently co-authored a book with him.

When most people think of the Rand Paul youth vote they think of college campuses and young people concerned with criminal justice reform or marijuana or auditing the Federal Reserve not the immorality of government. For the evangelical youth there are additional issues Rand represents. “We have to be worried about the future of liberty and the loss of morality in this country,” says Justin Machacek, an Emmy Award winning evangelical Christian leader of the Neo Libertarian Movement.  “Make no mistake, there is corruption in the monetary system and crony capitalism throughout, but few candidates are addressing the deeper issue that government is innately immoral. The Bible says that where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. Pastors and church leaders have to be concerned that government is taking our liberty and squeezing out morality along with the Spirit of God.”

Brian Jacobs, a former consultant to the Billy Graham Organization and the man who arranged the important public meeting between George W. Bush and Billy Graham in Florida on the eve of the 2000 election, agrees. “Pure religion is caring for the widows and orphans and how does that square with a monetary system that makes the poor poorer and the rich richer?  What happened to free enterprise and supply and demand? Now it is all about government created monopolies for a select few. It is theft. It has become a moral crisis. And both Republicans and Democrats are involved.  Only Rand Paul offers a solution for this.”

But what about the social issues? What about marriage? Abortion? Jillian Lane says that an older generation of evangelicals are fighting their battles at the Federal level. “If that’s where the battle is waged the evangelicals will lose.  The mainstream media will guarantee that. Senator Paul wants to see us deal with these issues at the State level where we can often win.”

Rand Paul’s new book, Our Presidents and Their Prayers, which he co-authored with James Randall Robison, the son of televangelist, James Robison, quotes Founding Fathers who warned that even the best laws could not make a people good.  “I want you to be free to do just about anything if you don’t hurt anyone,” Paul recently told a television audience. “But I think society and civilization needs structure. There is a theologian by the name of Os Guinness I like who says ‘that liberty requires restraint, but the only restraint consistent with liberty is self-restraint.’

Says Rand Paul, “I am not saying the government should make good people out of you, but I think it makes it a heck of a lot easier for civilization to exist if you have liberty and virtue.”

Meanwhile, the Rand Paul presidential campaign has more than 300 clubs on university campuses across the nation and they include Christian universities as well as secular.  Will it make a difference?  College students are notorious for talking loud and not actually voting,” laughs Sydney Hay, a conservative political consultant who ran the Alan Keyes and Duncan Hunter presidential campaigns.  “The big difference is that this time, those college kids in Iowa will not be gone for Semester Break.  They will be back on campus and they will be able to vote.”

For now, the nation seems transfixed on the Republican front runners in national popularity polls, much as they were on Rudolph Giuliani at this point in 2008 or Herman Cain in 2012.  But the first in the nation presidential contest will be the Iowa Caucuses held next January. National popularity polls won’t necessarily translate into delegates to the Republican National Convention.  Ask president Giuliani or president Cain.  Then, ground game will matter.  Then we will see if Rand Paul’s student army makes a splash.

 

 

Donald Trump? Sorry history says, “Not gonna happen.”

At the moment he is soaring in the stratosphere and I hate to be a kill-joy but if history is any barometer, Donald Trump will soon be falling back down to earth.

First, no businessman has ever been elected president.  And there is a very good reason. People in power have always made the laws that govern business purposely gray, not black or white.  From the emergence of the guilds in the Middle Ages, to modern day regulators on Wall Street, rulers have expected their merchants to break the law so that they will have power over them and keep them at their mercy.

Ask the IRS to fill out your tax return for you and they will laugh.  They aren’t paid to help you get it right, they are paid to catch you when you get it wrong.

The odds that the Donald has made legal mistakes in his many deals and bankruptcies is almost certain.  The odds that he has run into the Mafia, while operating in New York and Atlantic City, is also quite likely.  And before he becomes president, we are going to meet those people.  We will know their names.  And the people who trusted him and invested in his projects and lost money? We will get to meet them as well.

Second, all presidents held prior elective office or were prominent generals who served for years in government.

Why?  Because this is how candidates are vetted, they run for Congress or the Statehouse.  They serve under the watchful eye of a superior in government.   Remember businessman Herman Cain?  The year before the last presidential election he captured the headlines much like Trump.  According to Pew Research  Cain earned more press coverage than any other GOP contender.  His rally in South Carolina was the largest political event of the GOP primary season.  But before he could move into the White House we began to hear allegations of sexual harassment from women who had worked with him and his numbers fell.

The unproven allegations against Herman Cain were not nearly as bad as the stories we could confirm about other prominent political figures but those stories had been out on the table for a long time.  We don’t like surprises.  We like time to think things over.  The examination of Donald Trump has not even begun.  The American people can be forgiving.  They once elected a man who openly admitted to fathering a child out of wedlock. But before any of us get to vote we will want to know every wife, every girlfriend and we will want to hear their stories in detail.

Third.  Finally, there are those pesky polls.

Oh, you thought the polls were good?  Yes, he is leading among Republican voters.  But those same polls show a very disturbing problem.  He loses to Hillary Clinton in Ohio and Pennsylvania and only beats her in Florida.  And he loses to vice president Joe Biden in all three states.

Now here is the kicker.  Donald Trump ridiculed Rand Paul’s poll numbers among the GOP but Rand Paul consistently, for months now, has been beating Hillary Clinton in those same battleground states including Pennsylvania.  And now, other GOP candidates have joined Rand Paul in beating Hillary in Ohio as well.  Trump calls Jeb Bush boring but “boring Bush” is beating Hillary Clinton in all three swing states and Trump is not.

What does it mean?  It means that the Democrats know their real challenger and it is not Donald Trump.  They have taken out national ads against Rand Paul.  They have made no secret that they would love for Trump to win the GOP nomination and if he can offend a few more general election constituencies on his way to the GOP coronation, well, all the better.

There is one thing still in the Donald’s favor.  He claims that his most qualifying trait for chief executive is his ability to negotiate with an opponent, in this case the Chinese or the Mexicans or Iran.  His bestselling book is entitled “The Art of the Deal.”

In fact, this is the one common denominator of all American presidents.  They honed their skills in adversarial positions against a live opponent.  We have never had an artist president, a Vaclav Havel.  Our presidents have all been tested in combat.  25 presidents were lawyers, including Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama.  12 presidents were war time generals.  They have argued in court or run for office or fought on the battlefield against an opponent.

Could it happen?  Could businessman Donald Trump actually win?  Well, yes, that’s what makes history so compelling.  But the odds are long.  And remember, this time he is negotiating for your vote.  Be careful and remember, he calls it the art of the deal.

 

Rand Paul appears on Daystar Christian TV

Daystar, one of the premier Christian television networks, carried by Comcast, Time-Warner, Direct-TV, Dish, featured Senator Rand Paul on its flagship program yesterday.  Senator Paul led the effort to get a bill before the Senate to block government from funding Planned Parenthood.  Taxpayers give the organization $500 million a year.

Rand Paul also called for Hillary Clinton to refund the money Planned Parenthood gave to her.

Why I support Rand Paul and why he reminds me of Ronald Reagan.

For the first time since Ronald Reagan we have a political figure who is not just running for office to seek personal power but one who is actually leading a popular movement.   I’m talking about Senator Rand Paul who leads a diverse array of young people, free market conservatives, African Americans and Internet Geeks in what can best be described as “The Give Us Back Our Freedom Movement.”

Not since Ronald Reagan has a Republican attracted so many Independent and Democratic voters.  His ideas transcend partisan politics, like his recent tax proposal which as he puts it, “blows up the tax code.”  It’s no surprise that he usually does better than any other GOP candidates when pitted against Hillary Clinton in national polls.

Young people support Rand Paul because he is the only public figure who talks about the corruption of the current economic system.  Regulations create contrived monopolies for some companies and keep new ones out of the marketplace.  Government subsidies favor Democrat or Republican corporations depending on who is in power.  The result?  The rich get richer and the poor get poorer no matter who is president.

Socialist solutions call for more government run businesses.  The US Post Office comes to mind.  Paul favors a  return to free markets and supply and demand.  Many young people like that.  They want a chance at the American Dream.

Most of his following comes out of his strong support of the U.S.  Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Many African Americans support Paul because he would reform the criminal justice system and make justice color blind.  While Democrats like to reminisce about their Civil Rights victories of the past, Rand Paul has picked up the torch and reclaimed the Republican lead for the first time since Abraham Lincoln.

Internet Geeks like Rand Paul because he is the Archangel of Internet freedom, standing with his flaming sword and trusty filibuster should the FCC or any other government agency make good on their promises to tax and regulate the digital age.

Evangelical Christians like Rand Paul because he is a born again Christian, himself, and he fights for their right to freedom of worship.  Paul would end foreign aid to countries that execute women who are, themselves, the victims of crime and Christians simply because of their faith.

Gays like Rand Paul because he is a fierce proponent of personal privacy and the dignity of the individual.  His opposition to government intrusion and eavesdropping are already legend.

His opponents say he can’t win because of his father’s sometimes controversial ideas.  Actually, I like his father’s ideas but presidents were never elected because of their fathers.  Reagan’s father was an alcoholic.  So was Bill Clinton’s stepfather.  Barack Obama’s father walked out on him when he was two years old.  Abraham Lincoln’s father used to chase down runaway slaves for a living.  He would sometimes beat them before returning them to their master.

If this were a contest about who had the best dad, Rand Paul would do quite well.  He can be proud of his dad’s great career in congress.  But in fact, this is a contest about who has the best ideas to run the country and at the moment Rand Paul is a fountain of ideas.

Foreign Policy?  Rand Paul sees Israel as one of American’s most important allies.  In 1978 I served as vice president of Christians and Jews United for Israel so that is no small point for me.

The biggest knock on Rand Paul is his reluctance to go to war.

Yes, he is slow to send in the same troops over and over.  American soldiers now experience the highest divorce rate in history and, as a result, the highest rate of suicide as well.  Rand Paul cares about these families, the soldiers, but also the children.

And yet, Rand Paul was one of the first public figures to call for a Declaration of War against ISIS.  Perhaps more significant, Rand Paul would not have armed ISIS in the first place.  Two years ago he was trying to block the U.S. Senate from transferring arms and vehicles to Syrian rebels.  “It could fall into the wrong hands,” he warned.    Two years later, American equipment raced across the Middle East with black ISIS flags waving, slaughtering Christians and Muslims who opposed them.

When Reagan stuck his toe in the Middle East in 1982 it resulted in the death of 241 marines.  He immediately withdrew our forces, deciding that it was not in America’s security interest to be involved in the region.  Nobody called Reagan an isolationist.

Rand Paul has made it clear that American must clean up its own messes.  So he will do what has to be done in the Middle East and elsewhere.  But I proudly support a man who thinks before he shoots. Someone who won’t get us into messes in the first place. “The soldier more than anyone else,” wrote Douglas MacArthur, “prays for peace.”

Rand Paul is right about ISIS and his opponents have become hysterical

“If you are afraid of being lonely don’t try to be right.” – Jules Renard

Lost in the recent GOP debate is the fact that Senator Rand Paul was the first public figure to call for a declaration of war against ISIS.  He did so because he said they represented a threat to the United States.  So why are so many of the other GOP candidates attacking the Senator?  What’s their beef?

The real irritant to the other GOP contenders is that Rand Paul would not only go to war with ISIS, he would have blocked the creation of ISIS in the first place.  Three years ago Rand Paul warned that American arms to Syrian rebels would would almost certainly end up in the hands of Islamic radicals.

And Rand Paul was not the only one.

Micheal Shank, a board member at George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution warned as early as 2013 that we were setting up another Middle East war with an even more vicious enemy.  Warning about the Syrian rebels Shank said, “Regardless of the vetting procedures in place, the sheer factionalized nature of the opposition guarantees that the arms will end up in some unsavory hands. The same militant fighters who have committed gross atrocities are among the best-positioned of the rebel groups to seize the weapons that the United States sends to Syria.”

Shank gave an historic litany of how the same policy had worked in the past. “Arming one side of Syria’s multi-sided and bloody civil war will come back to haunt us. Past decisions by the U.S. to arm insurgencies in Libya, Angola, Central America and Afghanistan helped sustain brutal conflicts in those regions for decades. In the case of Afghanistan, arming the mujahideen in the 1980s created the instability that emboldened extreme militant groups and gave rise to the Taliban, which ultimately created an environment for al Qaeda to thrive.”

In a chilling description of the horrors that were to come, Shank profiled the type of warrior on the ground in Syria and what we could expect.  “When you lift the curtain on the armed groups with the most formidable military presence on the ground in Syria, you find the Al Nusra Front and Al Farough Brigades. Both groups are closely aligned with Al Qaeda and have directly perpetrated barbaric atrocities. The Al Nusra Front has been charged with beheadings of civilians, while a commander from the Al Farough Brigades reportedly ate the heart of a pro-Assad soldier.”

The U.S. Senate and the administration, both lavished with money from the arms lobby, ignored the warnings.  Getting rid of the weapons – even if meant giving them away and even if mistakes were made – assured that more could be manufactured and sold.

A year later, in September, 2014, the United States was still arming the rebels.  Over strenuous objections from the Turkish government  President Obama airdropped ammunition, grenades and rocket propelled grenade launchers to Syrian rebels.  Senator Rand Paul was one of the few voices of reason but there were others warning that yet again, we may be giving the enemy the bullets they will use to kill our men.  Almost immediately the airdrop was picked up by Islamic radicals and their videos showed the event to the world.

Within two years of Rand Paul’s warning ISIS emerged from the petri dish of the Syrian civil war and raced across the Middle East in American made tanks and Humvees destroying cities and Christian communities that traced their unbroken heritage back to the apostle Thomas.  Today, Senators who scoffed at Rand Paul’s warnings two years ago now bristle with indignation calling any question of their failed policies as “unpatriotic.”  Meanwhile the embarrassed Obama White House complains to media outlets that they should stop using videos that show American tanks racing across the deserts with black ISIS flags flying.

Senator Rand Paul recognizes that there are unintended consequences to American actions and that America, itself, should clean up its own messes.  And so he immediately called for the war to destroy ISIS. There is no doubt that their use of social media makes them dangerous even on American soil.  Nevertheless, Rand Paul’s political enemies, shamed by their own actions, now seek to force a different narrative.  Paul suggests that a little humility is in order.

Senator Paul has made it clear that he will commit America troops to defeat her enemies.  He has called for an increase in the Defense Budget.  But he has also made it clear that he is deeply concerned about the lives of that same tiny percentage of men and women are being sent back to war, over and over again.  Their suicide rate is astronomical and closely mimics their divorce rate, the result of the longest wars – and therefore the longest separations among military families – in American history.  And the children of those soldiers are now being raised in broken homes.

Having a president who will consider the consequences of his actions and who will only commit to war with deliberation just might be what the nation needs.  Let us defeat ISIS.  But let us not create another one.