Thursday, I received a visit from Jethro Bodine, a member of Rand Paul’s campaign staff. He’s a lanky, bony Kentuckian with deep-set eyes, which peered out at me in distinct suspicion from their twin tunnels carved beneath his low and prominent brow. Abruptly taking the seat directly in front of my desk, he glanced through the picture window. Upon seeing the White House, he froze momentarily, then turned to address me.
“No doubt about it,” he confidently proclaimed, “my wife was right. Rand Paul has sent me right smack dab into the belly of the beast.”
“Not to worry,” I assured him, “we Washingtonians don’t bite. How can I help you this morning?”
“Dr. Paul,” he began, “offered me a mission – one which I was free to accept or not, depending. That was on account of it being a trip to the center of the New World Order, to speak with the man Dr. Paul’s father says is the only honest person he knows here.”
“Oh, golly,” I modestly replied, “certainly Representative Ron Paul was exaggerating – I’m sure there are several more around here somewhere. But be that as it may, what, may I ask, is it that your boss, Dr. Rand Paul, would like you to ascertain during your perilous mission to consult me here, in the heart of Beelzebub’s bailiwick?”
“It…” he stammered, “uh… I… He… The TEA Party… ah… the Republicans…”
“Has it got anything to do,” I prodded, “with the fact that Dr. Randal Howard Paul just beat the anointed Kentucky Republican senate candidate, Secretary of State Trey Grayson, like a mousse?”
“Dr. Paul,” Bodine shot back, at once mystified and indignant, “does not abuse animals!”
“Of course not,” I mollified. “My apologies. What I meant was, Dr. Paul totally creamed him.”
Bodine blushed deep red as he muttered, staring at the floor. “I’ll thank you not to implicate that Dr. Paul is some kind of pervert, sir.”
“No, no,” I hastened to clarify, “that’s not what I meant, either. I’m trying to say Dr. Paul won the Kentucky state Republican primary for next November’s United States Senate race by a very wide margin.”
“Yeah,” Bodine nodded, “he sure did.”
“And,” I continued, “his opponent was hand-picked by the Kentucky state Republican leadership. So your man Paul has definitely established his credentials as an outsider running against the system.”
“You bet he has,” Bodine proudly confirmed.
“And,” I elaborated, “a very popular one at that.”
“Yeah, that too.” Bodine concurred.
“At least,” I noted, “among Kentucky Republicans.”
“He’s popular,” Bodine insisted, “with everybody.”
“Maybe not,” I speculated, “with some people – black people, for instance.”
Bodine offered an indifferent shrug. “There ain’t that many black people in Kentucky to begin with.”
“True,” I vouched. “They are less than eight percent of the population overall, and ninety-six percent of them either live in Jefferson County, near Cincinnati, Ohio, or in and around Louisville.”
“Sure,” Bodine confidently bragged, “that’s ’cause everywhere else, we put up signs, you know, sayin’ ‘[Expletive], Don’t Let the Sun Set On You Here.’ That generally keeps them out of town, mostly.”
“Yeah,” I observed, “that sort of thing might be expected to.”
“’Course,” Bodine fretted, “sometimes they still get uppity and pile into their Cadillacs and go drivin’ to places where they ain’t supposed to be. Just a couple of months ago, for instance, we had some of them try to eat at Sambo’s…”
“But,” I interjected, “how can that be? Sambo’s went out of business in 1983.”
“Oh, well,” he sighed, “it ain’t officially named ‘Sambo’s’ no more. But it’s the restaurant that used to be the Sambo’s, so’s everybody in town still calls it that. Anyways, here they come, lookin’ to eat there, and Eileen, the hostess, she had to keep them all waitin’ for nearly two hours before they gave up and went away.”
“And your boss, Dr. Paul,” I observed, “would like to change it so Eileen could just tell them ‘I’m sorry, this is a private business, and we don’t choose to serve persons of the Negro persuasion…’”
“Or Jews,” Bodine chimed in. “No Jews either.”
“Understood,” I assured him. “That’s what Dr. Rand Paul would like Eileen there at the Sambo’s in your little Kentucky town to be able to say, right off the bat, no dilly-dallying around, no waiting two hours playing games with these people, just say ‘Get out of this dining establishment, or I will call the police and have you thrown out, because this is private property and Senator Rand Paul has given us back our property rights, so we don’t have to serve blacks or Jews here anymore,’ or words to that effect, correct?”
“That’s about it,” Bodine confirmed. “That’s why I’m in the TEA Party and that’s why I’m working to get Rand Paul elected Republican senator.”
“Okay, then,” I posited, “suppose Rand Paul gave you back your TEA Party freedom, and Eileen could actually say that. How would you know if, for example, somebody was, in fact, a Negro – maybe an octoroon, say, and trying to get at that Sambo’s all-you-can-eat salad bar? I mean, what if they could pass?”
At that, Bodine lowered his head and stared at his crotch in profound reverie for a rather long time, solemnly picking his nose, deep in thought. At last, he spoke. “I reckon we’d get a white paper bag and put it on the wall next to a sign that says ‘If You Are Darker Than This, You Can’t Eat Here,’ or something like that.”
“Okay,” I pressed him, “but what about the Jews? How would you know if they were trying to get in?”
Bodine considered my question much more briefly, smiling with satisfaction as he found an immediate, effective solution. “Oh, that’s simple. We’d just have them take off their shoes.”
“To what end?” I asked.
“So’s we could see if they have hooves,” Bodine explained. “Everybody knows Jews are born with horns and tails and hooves, but they cut the horns off their kids when they’re babies, then wear them funny hats and wigs and big hair to cover up the stumps. Same with their tails; but they can’t cut off their hooves, see, because then they wouldn’t be able to walk around kidnapping Christian babies to get blood for their Satanic rituals, would they? The hooves – that’s always the dead giveaway, right there.”
“So,” I postulated, “if Rand Paul gets elected to the United States Senate and restores private property freedom to the TEA Party and Republicans of Kentucky, your friend Eileen at Sambo’s is going to make everybody take off their shoes?”
Bodine pondered the implications of his proposal momentarily. “Yeah, sure, I guess so. Everybody has to take their shoes off at the airport, don’t they?”
“True enough,” I acknowledged. “So, I take it, Rand Paul is having a problem with reconciliation of his Libertarian views with more pragmatic political necessities?”
“Huh?” Bodine’s expression went blank.
“What I mean,” I told him, “is that Dr. Paul has, presumably, sent you here to get some advice from me on how he can, for example, on the one hand, advocate the right of private property owners to exclude the use of their business premises on the basis of any criteria they wish, and, on the other, expect sane people in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Ten to vote for him to become a senator of the United States of America.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Bodine nodded, “that’s pretty much it, I reckon.”
“Mr. Bodine,” I dryly interrogated, “what do you know about Libertarian political philosophy?”
“Um, well,” he mumbled, “it… it’s against taxes, and it’s against the minimum wage, and it’s against unions, and it’s against big government telling us what to do… and, uh, it’s against the United Nations and the Federal Reserve…”
“You seem to be quite an expert,” I chided, “on what Libertarians are against. But do you know one, single thing that Libertarians are for?”
Bodine knit his brow. “Nope,” he confessed after several minutes of intense concentration, “can’t say as I do.”
“What would you think,” I postulated, “if I told you that, in order to avoid philosophical inconsistency, Libertarianism logically must permit legal recreational drug use, legal prostitution, legalized abortion, legalized gay marriage, legalized polygamy, universal legalization of all types of gambling and legal pornography of every kind?”
Bodine went white as a sheet. “You’re making that up,” he quietly murmured. “You’ve got to be making that up.”
“What if I told you,” I relentlessly pursued, “that the first use of the word ‘Libertarian’ to describe a political philosophy was by Joseph Déjacque, who was not only an anarchist, and not only a communist, but was also, as I am sure you can tell from his name, French, and from Paris, no less.”
Bodine placed both his hands over his abdomen, pitching forward slightly. “I think I’m going to be sick,” he moaned.
“Me, too,” I commiserated. “Look – tell Dr. Paul that being a Libertarian is a total can of worms and he’s got to cut it out, right away. He’s got to quit trying to be logically and epistemologically consistent with a Looney Tunes political philosophy that’s strictly out where the buses don’t run. If he doesn’t, every reporter trying to make a name for themselves; every town-hall meeting nutcase with an axe to grind; and, I can assure you, his opponent in the Senate contest, in every single debate, and in every single negative campaign ad, is going to make him look like a complete, blithering fool.”
“Okay… okay…” Bodine whispered, “okay.” He looked up at me, beseeching, completely at sea. “What should I tell him?”
“Tell him,” I advised, “to start calling himself something else.”
Bodine’s eyes widened with expectation. “What?”
“Well,” I suggested after some incisive thought on the subject, “the phrase ‘constitutional conservative’ has a nice ring to it.”
“‘Constitutional conservative,’” Bodine slowly repeated. “I reckon that does sound pretty smart and all, no doubt about that. But what does it mean?”
“Ah-hah!” I triumphantly declared with a grin, “That’s why I get paid the big bucks! It’s going to mean whatever Dr. Rand Paul wants!”