Could someone make Ron and Rand Paul please just go away?

We confess to having our own reservations about the April 19 lockdown amid the search for the Marathon bombing suspects. Shutting down the entire city of Boston and surrounding communities was an unprecedented and arguably unnecessary move.

But ex-U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas has taken reasonable concern to a paranoid, delusional level — at a safe distance, naturally, from the frightening events here in Boston.

In a Web posting chock full of insane rantings the former presidential candidate argued that “the government” used the Marathon bombing to stage “a military-style occupation.” The response to the bombing, Paul said, “should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.”

Notwithstanding the fact that we moved around the Seaport district that day without fear of being tossed into a dark sedan by “the government,” we’d love to see Paul travel to Dorchester, or Medford, to the campus of Boston University, or to the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital to make the case that the response was worse than the attack itself.

Families, Paul said, were “thrown out of their homes at gunpoint to be searched without probable cause.” With that he is referring to the Watertown residents who stepped outside while officers made sure a terrorist wasn’t hiding in their pantry, including the family who had run out of milk for their baby and had two gallons delivered to their doorstep by a Brookline cop.

Paul’s son, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) opened his own mouth in the wake of the bombing response, droning on (as he is wont to do) about surveillance drones. These two really have the corner on the paranoia market.

Was there an overwhelming show of force? Yes.

Was it comparable to “a military coup in a far-off banana republic”? Oh, for heaven’s sake.

Ron Paul was nowhere near Boston that day, nowhere near the Marathon finish line. He is simply using our tragedy as an opportunity to further his political agenda. For shame.