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Somebody at CNN’s Larry King Live thought that it would be a great idea to put Ben Stein and Rep. Ron Paul on the same panel to discuss terrorism, and what occurred was a microcosm of the current GOP civil war, with Paul absolutely schooling Stein on how neo-con policies help to create terrorists.

Here is the video courtesy of Crooks and Liars:

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After Rep. Paul once again explained how the Bush administration fell into Bin Laden’s trap the following exchange took place:

STEIN: Well, that’s — I have never heard anything quite like that in my whole life. What he’s saying, basically, is we are doing something wrong by defending ourselves. Look, if these terrorists are trying to kill the government of Yemen, we’ve got to help defend them. They’re our friends. We can’t just let al Qaeda run wild. If we try to stop them —

PAUL: Why?

STEIN: Why should we stop them? Because they are terrorists and murderers and they’re very anti-American.

PAUL: Why are they terrorists?

STEIN: Surely congressman —

PAUL: Why are they terrorists?

STEIN: They’re terrorists and murders because they are psychos.

Ron Paul asked Ben Stein an intelligent question, and was given the answer that we should terrorists are bad because they are psychos. Ben Stein is supposedly an intelligent man, but his answer would have been more fitting for an 8 year old than an intelligent conservative.

The person that I really felt bad for in all this was Democratic congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee who could not get a word in between Stein and Paul. Even the usually out of it Larry King noticed that he was seeing something special here, “Look at this, folks. Two republicans going at it. This is fascinating. With a democratic liberal in the middle.”

This segment said a great deal about the state of the Republican Party. The man who was trying to engage in an intelligent discussion about an issue was met with the simplistic because they are psychos response. The intelligent people like Rep. Paul are a distant minority as the GOP has been hijacked by simpletons, who have even managed to convince Ben Stein to join the parade.