A leftover from last week. I understand feeling annoyance at immigrants who arrive in America seeking a better life only to join the adversary culture. I … do not understand a member of the Paul family calling them out for it.

.@RandPaul on @IlhanMN: "I’m willing to contribute to buy her a ticket to visit #Somalia… she can look and maybe learn a little bit about the disaster that is Somalia." “After she’s visited Somalia she might come back and appreciate America more.” https://t.co/g4Hmw0J1HH pic.twitter.com/RKjSASWbne

— Sara A. Carter (@SaraCarterDC) July 27, 2019

Has Ilhan Omar trash-talked America half as much as Rand’s old man has? Don’t they have the same foreign policy? It’s one thing for the “libertarian moment” of 2015 to end with Rand Paul becoming a Trump shill as the president signs blowout budget bills, it’s another for it to end with him taking a “love it or leave it (temporarily)” position towards radical dissent. After we send Omar back to Somalia to remind her of how superior life in America is, where should we send American libertarians who complain chronically about government spending, cops, drug laws, and interventionism for their own reeducation?

Here’s how a more traditional libertarian reacts to “send her back” sentiments:

A chant like “Send her back!” is ugly and dangerous, and it is the inevitable consequence of President Trump’s demagoguery. This is how history’s worst episodes begin. We must not allow this man to take us to such a place.

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) July 18, 2019

And here’s Omar in her own words on Somalia and the United States. Having been a refugee, she’s familiar with her former country’s problems:

Having survived civil war in my home country as a child, I cherish these values [of pluralism and religious freedom]. In Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, I saw grade-school children as young as me holding assault rifles in the streets. I spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya, where there was no formal schooling or even running water. But my family and I persevered, fortified by our deep solidarity with one another, the compassion of others and the hope of a better life in the United States.

The America we arrived in was different from the one my grandfather had hoped to find. The land of opportunity he imagined was in fact full of challenges. People identified me in ways that were foreign to me: immigrant, black. I learned that these identities carried stigmas, and I experienced prejudice as a visibly Muslim woman.

But the beauty of this country is not that our democracy is perfect. It’s that embedded in our Constitution and democratic institutions are the tools to make it better.

I don’t know that she’s ever called the United States a “terrible country,” as Paul paraphrases her, but certainly she seems eager to recount the country’s many civic, economic, and international flaws — especially the international ones — to her fans. Again, as is Ron Paul, who built an entire movement on that approach which Rand hoped to inherit before discovering to his chagrin in the 2016 primaries that Ron Paul voters wanted a reactionary as nominee, not necessarily a libertarian.

So here’s Rand belatedly getting with the program.

I don’t mean to cry for Omar, though, who’s a bad enough person to have encouraged this:

So Congresswoman Omar is now retweeting those cheering on assaults against other members of Congress. Remember that simply citing her words is incitement, but this is apparently just fine?

Any firefighters on the scene? pic.twitter.com/A9jqAIyxZS

— AG (@AGHamilton29) July 29, 2019

She does a *lot* of complaining about incitement, noted Jeryl Bier afterward, as do her media allies, but giving a thumbs up to Arnold in goofing on Paul over an attack that sent him to the hospital is apparently unremarkable to all concerned. Eh, she’s probably gaining as much politically from this war with Trump and the GOP as Trump himself is. Naturally the extra media attention is providing her with more of a platform from which to preach socialism. And if you believe BuzzFeed, the opprobrium from the right has led voters back home in her district to rally around her. She’s apt to be a righty nemesis in Congress for years to come.