I’d like to echo the reader’s criticisms, Jim. In your post you make a lot more reasonable assertions than Paul did at the debate–essentially, that our belligerence toward Castro and Chavez are ineffective at best, or perhaps even counterproductive. That’s a good starting point for an intellegent conversation. But that’s not what Paul said. He said. “We create the Chavezes of the world, we create the Castros of the world…” meaning that these men would not have existed in the first place were it not for the United States. That’s a horribly overly-simplified way of looking at the world that ignores how these men rose to power, and with regard to Castro, it ignores the involvement of the KGB and decades of subsidies from the Soviet Union. Since I don’t think Paul can be so ignorant of such facts, I used the term “cognitive dissonance.” And regarding Paul’s comments upon the death of Mao, it’s great that Paul called him, “perhaps the most oppressive dictator who ever lived.” But it’s sad that you have to go back more than 30 years to find such a comment. It would be nice if during one of these debates he referred to one of America’s current enemies in such a manner. Instead, he seems more interested in being controversial, and couldn’t resist the urge to ham it up last night once he started getting booed.