The Redemption of Rand Paul, by Justin Raimondo

Has Rand Paul rediscovered his inner Libertarian? He tried to play footsie with the Republican party’s interventionists, moving their direction, but there are so many true blue interventionists in the party that Paul was never going to get their money or their votes. The flip side of foreign intervention, the external growth of the state, is domestic repression, the internal growth of the state. Paul made a lonely stand against renewal of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which supposedly authorizes the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records (except the 2nd US Circuit Court of appeals said that it doesn’t). Time ran out on Section 215, although civil liberties’ advocates shouldn’t get too overjoyed, because it looks like the misnamed USA Freedom Act may become law. From Justin Raimondo at antiwar.org:

If one of the very worst provisions of the Patriot Act – which the government has erroneously and illegally interpreted to gather the phone records of each and every American – expires, we’ll have Senator Rand Paul to thank.

And the truth is, we can’t thank him enough.

Yes, I’ve been critical of the Senator in this space and elsewhere, and yet with this brave stance – and up against a veritable storm of disdain and contempt from the Washington cognoscenti – he has in large part redeemed himself.

With everyone from the President to John McCain and Lindsey Graham attacking Sen. Paul for supposedly “endangering” the national security, the Senator has not only stood his ground but he’s also articulated the libertarian position on the utter impermissibility of what our government is doing and its dire implications for the future of our republic:

“Forcing us to choose between our rights and our safety is a false choice and we are better than that as a nation and as a people,” Paul tweeted. “It’s why I have been seeking for months to have a full, open and honest debate on this issue – a debate that never came.

“Let me be clear: I acknowledge the need for a robust intelligence agency and for a vigilant national security. I believe we must fight terrorism, and I believe we must stand strong against our enemies. But we do not need to give up who we are to defeat them. In fact, we must not. There has to be another way. We must find it together. So tomorrow, I will force the expiration of the NSA illegal spy program.”

There is, of course, “another way,” as pointed out here. The government and its law enforcement agencies have plenty of legal alternatives to scooping up our communications indiscriminately, en masse: they’ll just have to put their lawyers on overtime and start obeying the law. This is the real essence of the fight Sen. Paul is making on our behalf: he’s fighting – almost alone – against the utter lawlessness of our rulers, who believe they can do anything to anyone and get away with it.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/05/31/the-redemption-of-rand-paul/

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