I just made a post about Gillespie and libertarian midwittery, and here's some more.

I posted a while back about the gotcha Rand Paul is trying to corner Marco Rubio with. I take 20 points off my mental evaluation of anyone if they suggest now that the US deposed Maduro, that we will be, I don't know, ethically ill prepared to defend ourselves sdhould some foreign power kidnap the President.

Trouble with a 20 pt deduction is, that puts RP below midwit status, in fact a little below average imho, I put him at a 115-120

Where do people get this idea foreign policy is on some kind of brother/sister in the family car set of ethical rules where fair's fair and we all take turns? Maduro never operated that way, and I'm pretty sure the mullahs don't, either. France doesn't, yet people act as if what Macron says on TV should determine US foreign policy.

"We would never do that, because that's not fair!" is idiotic non sequitur. A military action of any kind is predicated on an imposition of deadly force. The whole idea is the imposition isn't fair, going by international law while Maduro does not is what brought the US to the impasse itfp. In a Machiavellian sense, sometimes you just gotta get the job done. I know I bend people up here when I say it, but knowing in the end there is no ethical basis for government doesn't mean I want the government that exists to be pushed around. My beef with Rand here isn't that he tends more pacificist, it's that he sets up these ethical problems in his head like he's Q in Star Trek, cataloging humanity's sins from on high and behaving as if other nations are motivated to do same by Starfleet's good example. But the cosmos doesn't work that way

If all it takes to steal from US energy interests and stay the hand of the US military is an El Presidente medal rack and a tan jacket, when other options exist, the US is fucked. If US foreign policy is determined by what European heads of state think, the US is equally fucked. And if China or Russia kidnaps the President, it'll be because they can get away with it, and it will have nothing to do with whether or not they liked what the US did with Maduro.