In his Sunday New York Times column, Frank Rich tries to belittle and defames Congressman Ron Paul, because Dr. Paul wants to shrink the size and scope of the federal government. By lumping the former 2008 GOP presidential candidate with the pro-war 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, and militaristic talking head Glenn Beck, who delivered a sharp rebuke of the GOP in his CPAC speech more than a week ago, Rich reveals his true colors: an unapologetic supporter of the welfare-warfare state.

Ron Paul should not be linked to either of these big government conservatives, nor to extremists like Joe Stack, who recently flew a plane into an office building housing the I.R.S. in Austin, Texas, or Timothy McVeigh who bombed a government office building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Frank Rich tires to paint Ron Paul and his supporters as violent, “obsessed and deranged,” and therefore a lunatic fringe that should be ignored as critics of the federal government’s policies, which Rich apparently supports, mass killing overseas, and legal plunder and currency debasement at home. Instead, Frank Rich implies that any criticism of the welfare-warfare state is due to a psychological disorder and therefore “these’ people are really “enemies of the state” and should be monitored very carefully.

Ron Paul has been one of America’s articulate advocates of a constitutional republic in the United State Congress. Dr. Paul supports abolishing the Federal Reserve and ending the income tax. He also favors replacing the entitlement programs with and charities, and creating real, sustainable prosperity built on a foundation of savings and investments. Dr. Paul also opposes premptive war and military adventurism overseas, a policy that fans the flames of hatred for America. In short, Dr. Paul is America’s most outspoken critic of the Empire that is responsible for tens of thousands of innocent deaths overseas and the financial bleeding of our economy.

Frank Rich approvingly cites the dismissive attitude of neoconservatives William Kristol and William Bennett toward Ron Paul and his presidential straw poll win at the CPAC conference. If Mitt Romney had won, their tune would have been a lot different: Romney is the 2012 GOP presidential front runner. Frank Rich’s “intellectual” soul mates, Kristol and Bennett, join him in battling Ron Paul and the liberty movement for the soul of America.

The clock is is ticking on the welfare-warfare state, frightening the likes of Frank Rich and other apologists in the media. So instead of debating the merits of the welfare-warfare state, Rich and his ilk engage in unrelenting character assassination of a decent and patriotic American, congressman Ron Paul of Texas.

There is apparently no insult that Frank Rich and the neoconservatives pals will not use to undermine the reestablishment of a limited government republic in America. They would prefer to genuflect before the altar of power and gain fame and fortune from the welfare-warfare state apparatus than have the American people live in a free society.