Rand Paul is very glad that his train didn't stop in Baltimore last night because, if it had, he may have been required to show some leadership and actually stand for something; anything.
During an interview with conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, Rand son of Ron expressed sympathy for the oppressed police officers whose right to get away with state sanctioned murder is being questioned.
Railing against what he repeatedly called "thuggery and thievery" in the streets of Baltimore, Paul told Ingraham that talking about "root causes" was not appropriate in the middle of a riot.
"The police have to do what they have to do, and I am very sympathetic to the plight of the police in this," he said.
When Rand asserts that the middle of a riot is not the right time to talk about the "root causes" of societal dysfunction, I suspect what he really means is Ingraham's radio show is the wrong time to talk about it.
But talk he did.
"There are so many things we can talk about," the senator said, "the breakdown of the family structure, the lack of fathers, the lack of a moral code in our society."
To diagnose the "root causes" of unrest, you have to go back much further than a week or even a decade, but the most recent episode of unrest was sparked by the death of young man who mysteriously suffered fatal injuries while in police custody.
Ultimately, police officers are agents of the state, but rather than pledge to reign in state-sanctioned violence or express sympathy for an oppressed minority, Rand Paul chose to express sympathy for the state's agents.
Rand may be right that there is a lack of moral code in our society, but he's wrong about the epicenter of it. A society in which minorities are disproportionately incarcerated and murdered by the state while more than half the country looks the other way and says 'they deserved it' is clearly in a crisis of morality.
Murdering black people is a national pastime that we just can't let go of.