moral corruption

i didn't watch the debate last night. perhaps i grow weary. or perhaps i just love college basketball inordinately. but ron really is something. obviously, newt was going for the race-bait. (and newt, answering paul's obviously anti-christian idea that we should apply the golden rule in foreign policy, 'quoted' andrew jackson: 'the enemies of america? kill them.' like: say for example there's an indian tribe in florida harboring fugitive slaves. slaughter as many as possible, especially the women and children, and turn the rest over to slavers. we need to return to our glory days, when we served as a moral beacon to racists, rapists, and genocidal psychopaths everywhere.) anyway below is a summary of paul last night. pull the circle to 4:30 and listen to his remarkable rap on race and criminal justice. can you imagine that this is a republican candidate? do you see what cowards presidential candidates commonly are? even if they believed something like this, even if they thought hundreds of thousands of people were suffering because of systemic racism, they would not say that to a group of south carolina conservative voters. look, that isn't just political necessity, what we should all expect: that is actual evil caused by overweening cowardice. 'tailor your message' sounds reasonable. but these people tailor their message about actual matters of life and death. i propose that anyone who does that simply be disqualified on the grounds of deep moral corruption. finally there's someone on the debate stage who actually shows that. he's not showy or self-righteous; he just says what he actually thinks. that should be the absolute minimum we require in a leader. instead everyone seems to think it's disqualifying.