Dear Rand Paul: Please tell dad to shut up

Ron Paul wants to overrule the Islamists’ own statement of their motives. I call this Bin Laden Syndrome by Proxy: taking someone else’s terrorist attack, fantasizing what you think his motives ought to be according to your world view, and then using the attack to try to get everyone to climb onto your own ideological hobby horse.

It goes without saying that there isn’t much of a market for that outlook, particularly among the Republican base. It smacks too much of appeasement. There might be some good reasons to alter our foreign policy, but avoiding the anger of our sworn enemies is not one of those reasons.

So if Rand Paul wants a chance in 2016, he has to convince his father to zip it.

Then again, Paul the Elder’s views don’t come out of nowhere. They come from the same old-style libertarian base that Paul the Younger is no doubt counting on to jump-start his campaign.