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Jon Stewart wasn't the only one this week that let Sen. Rand Paul have it for his failed attempt at minority outreach at Howard University, where he assumed the students there didn't know anything about their own history and were treated to him attempting to gloss over that whole era where Southern whites joined the Republican party because they were opposed to civil rights legislation passed by the Democrats.

As Harris-Perry explained: African Americans don’t need a history lesson from Rand Paul:

I read a lot of letters this week, but don’t worry–I also found time to write one. This one inspired by an especially awkward lecture at Howard University. And since my dad and two of my sisters attended Howard, I feel a little possessive of it and paid careful attention to Republican Sen. Rand Paul’s address.

Dear Sen. Paul,

It’s me, Melissa.

Apparently, you had a bit of trepidation about your visit to the land of the Bison this week. You said that some thought you were “either brave or crazy” to speak on campus.

Really?

Because it strikes me as precisely the mission of a university to give students an opportunity to hear dissenting viewpoints, to interact with political leaders, and to address the major issues of our day. I wouldn’t characterize it as brave or crazy, just part of Howard’s mission. But maybe you were nervous because as a libertarian you know your ideology stands opposed to the impulse that gave birth to Howard in the first place.

Howard University was established by the federal government. Following the Civil War, Congress recognized our nation’s collective responsibility to offer educational opportunities to the Freedmen and the subsequent generations of children that would be born into freedom. So Congress, in an act of collective responsibility toward young people, established Howard and later authorized an annual federal appropriations for its construction, development, improvement and maintenance.

But you left out that story of big-government Republicanism in your fascinating revisionist history. This moment was a gem, though: “I think what happened during the Great Depression was that African Americans understood that Republicans did champion citizenship and voting rights but they became impatient because they wanted economic emancipation… The Democrats promised equalizing outcome. Everybody will get something. through unlimited federal assistance.”

Um, OK: so your theory is African American voters left the Republican Party because they didn’t get enough free stuff.

Let me offer a different take.

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Bill Maher wound up his New Rules segment on this Friday evening's Real Time by going after today's crop of Ayn Rand worshiping Libertarians in a rant where Maher basically said he didn't leave Libertarianism, it left him. As he noted, even though he's expressed support for the philosophy in the past, it was because it "meant he didn't want big government my bedroom, or my medicine chest and especially not on the second drawer of the nightstand on the left side of my bed."

I'm sure he'll have all of the Ron and Rand Paul supporters mad at him after he lumped them in with their fellow Ayn Rand fan, Paul Ryan, for basically taking the movement and turning it into a “creepy obsession with free market capitalism.”

Maher thinks the movement has basically lost its collective mind these days, and I would argue you could say the same for the Republican party as well, which as a whole has adopted these very same "principles" if you want to be generous enough to call them that.

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Jon Stewart had a field day with wingnut and too crazy for Fox "news" flamethrower Glenn Beck, who went and followed in the footsteps of the "patriots" who decided to build their own little utopia that Dave told us about here: Threepers Creepers: On Far-Right Fringes, the Exodus to the Woods is Under Way.

Regular readers of this blog have probably already read Ellen's post on Beck's plans to "build himself some kind of libertarian-utopia theme park called Independence, USA" but in case you missed it and want to know more about what Stewart was mocking in the segment above, you can catch up here: Glenn Beck Announces Plans To Build A Libertarian Disneyland.

Here's more from Mediaite on Stewart's takedown of Beck: Stewart Eviscerates Glenn Beck’s Freedom Town Plans: Sounds Like A ‘Perfect Marxist Utopia’:

If you love America, then why wouldn’t you want to live in a town that isolates you from the rest of America? Jon Stewart helped pitch these new isolated towns by advocates of a less intrusive federal government, including one promoted by Glenn Beck. Beck has repeatedly emphasized that he wants to stop the government from stifling freedoms, which is why Stewart found it odd that his libertarian utopia sounds instead like a Marxist utopia. [...]

Stewart took issue with Beck’s adherence to patterns is a supposedly free society, as well as his bizarre insistence that there will be ABSOULTELY NO GAP or Ann Taylor to shop at. And with Beck’s suggestion that all food be local, Stewart used Beck’s own words about controlling people to basically compare Beck to a Hitler-like leader.

Stewart found it striking that Beck’s right-wing, liberty-minded town sounds so much like a “perfect Marxist utopia,” particularly with Beck’s comment that his town will “break the class barriers,” and got to the real heart of what Independence, USA is about.

“They don’t really believe in freedom. ‘Freedom to.’ They believe in ‘freedom from.’ Freedom from liberals, from people they disagree with. From the sensibly priced clothing of Ann Taylor. These folks that cloak themselves in patriotism pretending they alone can reveal the true intent of our Constitution are not our Founding Fathers incarnate. They’re just another shitty neighborhood association whose nostalgia utopia will fall apart the minute somebody decides to paint their house mauve.”

Stewart wrapped things up by saying that if anyone needed him, he'd be in his back yard, eating hot dogs, drinking beer and listening to a little Springsteen. Sounds like a whole lot more fun than living in Beck's libertarian compound to me.

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Former White House adviser Van Jones on Monday defended recent remarks he made against "so-called libertarians" by saying, "I think we have to start punching back."

In a March speech to the Occupy movement in Los Angeles, Jones had called libertarianism a "despicable ideology."

"They say they’re Patriots but they hate everybody in America who looks like us," the former Green Jobs czar explained. "They say they love America but they hate the people, the brown folk, the gays, the lesbians, the people with piercings, ya know ya’ll."

During a Monday interview, Russia Today's Alyona Minkovski asked Jones if he had fallen into the trap of extremist rhetoric with those remarks.

"I think we have to start punching back and fighting back," he replied. "Here's the deal: If you can't take it, don't dish it out."

Noting his statement was "overly broad," Jones added, "But that's American politics. You guys should know that. American politics, we mix it up."

"I've never backed down from a fight over ideas. I'm tired and I think a lot of people on the American left are tired of a certain section of people acting like they have a monopoly on patriotism. They don't. And they're the ones who challenge our patriotism. ... I should have said the so-called libertarians who identify themselves with this ultra-right-wing camp because there are libertarians that don't have those views."

He continued: "But I've met libertarians who say Dr. Martin Luther King, Dr. King, is somebody they can't support because someone should have the right to exclude people in this country from being able to go into a restaurant, go into a hotel or go into a place of business solely based on the color of their skin."

"You can't call yourself a patriot and adopt an extreme ideology that would spit in the face of Dr. King."

Many libertarians believe that the federal government's Civil Rights Act of 1964 went too far by banning whites-only lunch counters and other discrimination by business.

"I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant—but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership," then-Senate candidate Rand Paul (R-KY), a libertarian, told the Louisville Courier-Journal in 2010. "In a free society, we will tolerate boorish people, who have abhorrent behavior."

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Lawrence O'Donnell took Ron Paul to task for his very non-Libertarian like views on people's sex lives and contraception that sadly were on full display during last night's Republican debate on CNN. Anyone who's been following him at all already knows his views on women's issues, abortion and contraception are about as awful as his economic policies, but then you could say that for the lot of them.

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Chris Hedges appeared last Sunday on C-SPAN's Book TV series, In Depth for a three hour interview which you can watch all of at their archives. Here's a portion from the beginning of the last hour where Hedges weighed in on Ron Paul and Libertarianism, the battle between the working class and the elites for democracy and on Oprah Winfrey and her role in the cultural and religious pursuit of personal wealth in America.

On Ron Paul and Libertarianism:

HEDGES: Ron Paul for me is sort of a funny guy. I mean, he says a lot of good stuff, but for me Libertarianism is sort of a preindustrial ideology. The idea that government should be so diminished... well, I mean, the problem is that government is anemic in the face of corporations like Exxon Mobil, City Bank and Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. And we need to find leverage by which these monopolies can be broken up and the power of these corporations can be curbed.

And so I think Ron Paul is pretty good in terms of empire, in terms of fiscal responsibility, in terms of Constitutional rights, but the core of his message, which is essentially to gut government is one that I think isn't going to do anything to diminish the power of the corporate state.

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From the Majority Report, live M-F 11:30am EST and via daily podcast at http://Majority.FM:

Digby of the blog Hullabaloo joins Sam Seder as they talk Ron Paul, Gary John & Libertarianism as it relates to the 2012 elections.

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After watching this Saturday night's Mike Huckabee Republican Presidential Forum on Fox "News", I was left wondering what was worse; the panel of three right wing Attorney Generals that consisted of Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli, Florida's Pam Bondi and Oklahoma's Scott Pruitt being chosen to ask the questions that often looked more like campaign speeches than anything that should be considered worthy of a presidential debate, or the answers that were given by the candidates.

Ron Paul was asked by Pam Bondi about President Obama's recent comments on Republicans' approach to the economy and in typical Libertarian fashion, Paul manages to throw out the baby with the bathwater when it comes to the government having a role in regulating the behavior of industry. Paul gets it right when it comes to industry's undue influence over how regulations are written in the first place (meaning they're toothless or meaningless), but terribly wrong when it comes to the fact that corporations do need meaningful regulation in place if we don't want them doing great harm to our economy as Enron did.

BONDI: President Obama has had the audacity to say that the Republican approach to the economy means dirtier air, dirtier water and less people with health insurance. Is that really what less federal regulation means?

PAUL: Hardly. As a matter of fact, I get charged with that all the time, you know, because I don't want the federal regulations and most Republican conservatives don't need, or think we need more federal regulation and say, “Oh you're going to have, you know, people in the streets with no medical care. The whole thing is, if you don't have regulations, say in the environment and everything, or regulations on, banking regulations, actually, the market is a real strict regulator, it's a stricter regulation.

Our problem today is when you write the regulations, say on drugs, the drug companies get involved and they write the regulations. Banking regulations are written by the banking community. They become the lobbyists. So it isn't the lack of regulation.

But if you have the market, you have property rights, you have contract rights and you have bankruptcy laws and those are strictly enforced, it wasn't the lack of regulations that caused the Enron scandal, but it was the market that took care of it.

Those individuals were convicted in Texas court for fraud and they went to prison. So no, we have to answer back. I think we do a lousy job on that, saying that they, the liberals grab the moral high ground and say that we're going to take care of everybody and if you don't do it everybody's suffering, there won't be any medical care. So it is up to us to argue the case that the market can answer that. The free market and property rights can solve just about all of these problems much better than more bureaucrats in Washington.

I hate to break it to Paul, but the "free market" didn't convict those Enron executives. The government did.

Here's more on just how the lack of regulation was exactly what caused the Enron scandal to be allowed to happen in the first place -- Blind Faith: How Deregulation and Enron’s Influence Over Government Looted Billions from Americans:

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It seems millionaire Nick Hanauer's recent op-ed on why we need to be taxing the rich in America has, as Steve Benen explained, “caused a stir, and with good reason.”

Political Animal – Raise Nick Hanauer's Taxes:

If Hanauer’s name doesn’t sound familiar, he’s a very successful venture capitalist, playing a role in the creation of companies like Amazon.com. This week, he took on a standard Republican talking point: the notion that job creation suffers if taxes go up on the rich. Hanauer explained very well why the GOP’s approach is backwards.

I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people. But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate.

That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is the feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion a virtuous cycle that allows companies to survive and thrive and business owners to hire. An ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than I ever have been or ever will be.

It appears that Hanauer, unlike GOP policymakers, understands supply and demand, and that three decades of concentrating wealth at the top doesn’t create an economic base that ensures broad prosperity. Republicans can keep lavishing more and more money on the rich, but they’ll only spend so much. [...]

Hanauer’s advice? Raise his taxes, make public investments, and get some money in the pockets of middle-class consumers.

Digby’s take on this rings true: “This is a person who really doesn’t want to kill the golden goose of capitalism but would like to save it. It doesn’t speak well for the future of capitalism that there are so few entrepreneurs like him.”

Damn straight.

Be sure to go read the entire editorial here -- Raise Taxes on Rich to Reward True Job Creators: Nick Hanauer.

Hanauer was a guest on Neil Cavuto's show on Fox Business this Wednesday and he did a great job knocking down every one of Cavuto's arguments and straw men as Cavuto desperately tried to rebut Hanauer's assertions on why the rich aren't paying enough in taxes.

Here's the shortened version of their conversation with a tiny bit of paraphrasing and which does not reflect Cavuto constantly interrupting and talking over Hanauer.

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Time for your weekly podcast with The Professional Left, otherwise known as our own Driftglass and Bluegal.

Links for this week's podcast include:

David Gergen reports "offensive" debate behavior.

Lawrence O'Donnell goes full Driftglass

David Corn on liars at the GOP debates.

You can listen to the archives at The Professional Left Podcast and you can make a donation there if you'd like to help keep these going. And you can follow them on Facebook at The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal.

Enjoy the podcast peeps and have a great weekend.