“I understand the game he’s playing,” Charles offered, calling him “politically savvy… He learned from his dad’s mistakes.” And then, “I don’t know how to put this without sounding conspiratorial,” but, ISIS, like every other conflict in the world, he said, was “all planned by the people who control everything globally. They want a World War 3.”

This, I soon realized, would be a common theme at LPAC…

Doug Stafford, a senior aide for Rand Paul, told me that the liberty-lovers’ disappointment in Paul’s support for airstrikes would never change his position. “It’s what he believes. He believes it’s the right thing to do.”