Rand Paul remains the talk of the town, and deservedly so.\u00a0 However, more talk should be centering on his colleagues and critics in the Senate, John McCain and Lindsey Graham.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Recall, the Arizonan senator and former presidential candidate, quoting a Wall Street Journal editorial, said: \u201cIf Mr. Paul wants to be taken seriously, he needs to do more than pull political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids in college dorms.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
McCain continued, referring to Paul\u2019s suggestion that the American government would launch drone attacks against American citizens on American soil \u201ctotally unfounded.\u201d\u00a0 In fact, \u201cit is simply false,\u201d McCain asserted, to think that the federal government would target as \u201can enemy combatant\u201d someone who \u201cdisagrees with American policy\u201d and who \u201ceven may demonstrate against it [.]\u201d<\/p>\n
Lindsey Graham seconded the idea that Paul and his fellow Republicans are hypocritical.\u00a0 George W. Bush had a drone program in place, Graham commented, and yet \u201cI don\u2019t remember any of you coming down here suggesting that President Bush was going to kill anybody with a drone, do you?\u201d\u00a0 Graham then asked: \u201cWhat are we up to here?\u201d Finally, while castigating Paul and company for taking the Obama administration to task, he commended the President \u201cfor doing many of the things that President Bush did,\u201d \u201cfor having the good judgment to understand [that] we\u2019re at war.\u201d\u00a0 Graham lamented that, evidently, his own party \u201cno longer\u201d believes this.<\/p>\n
McCain\u2019s and Graham\u2019s critique is more telling than many of their Republican opponents appreciate.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To put it bluntly, by way of both tone and substance, their attack against their colleagues makes it clear that the hands of these long-term Senate veterans are most decidedly not<\/em> those into which Americans should entrust their liberties.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n This is no hyperbole.\u00a0 No Republican of whom I\u2019m aware\u2014including Senators McCain and Graham\u2014credit President Obama with being friendly to freedom.\u00a0 Given the latter\u2019s relentless quest to concentrate power ever further in the federal government, Obama is deemed not an ally, but an enemy, of liberty.\u00a0 Well, there is no greater sign that liberty has indeed reached a perilous state than when the President of the United States possesses the discretion\u2014the power\u2014to determine which Americans are and are not \u201cenemy combatants,\u201d which Americans can and cannot be killed <\/em>by their government. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n McCain and Graham see nothing at all objectionable about this.\u00a0 They even find it praiseworthy.\u00a0 Thus, they pose no less a threat to American liberty than that posed by Obama himself.<\/p>\n But there is even more to it than this.\u00a0<\/p>\n At no time is the government of any society more of a threat to liberty than during a time of war. War is the ultimate crisis, and as Rahm Emmanuel infamously, but correctly, noted, it is during a crisis that the government can get away with doing that which it wouldn\u2019t be able to do otherwise.\u00a0 Hence, we should \u201cnever let a good crisis go to waste.\u201d<\/p>\n Translation: since people turn to their government in moments of crisis, it is during just these moments that government is permitted to expand its size and scope, i.e. its power<\/em>. Yet when this happens, citizens lose their liberties.\u00a0 Anyone with any doubts about this should consider that it is during crisis that citizens are \u201casked\u201d by their elected representatives to \u201csacrifice\u201d for \u201cthe common good.\u201d\u00a0 And what are they expected to sacrifice?\u00a0 The answer to this question is always the same, even if it is never spelled out as such: their liberty.<\/p>\n Now, this \u201cwar\u201d that McCain, Graham, and a whole lot of other Republicans insist that we are engaged in is a war without end.\u00a0 Neither its opponents nor its proponents deny this. But a war without end is a crisis without end, and when there is a crisis without end, the end of liberty looms on the horizon.<\/p>\n The McCains and Grahams of the GOP have turned legions of Americans off from voting for Republicans.\u00a0 They even account for why millions of self-identified Republicans <\/em>have decided to sit out the last two presidential elections.<\/p>\n The sooner liberty-minded Republicans recognize what many seemed to finally realize last week\u2014the party needs more Pauls and fewer McCains and Grahams\u2014the greater the chances that the GOP\u2019s\u2014and the country\u2019s\u2014future will be brighter than its present.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rand Paul remains the talk of the town, and deservedly so.\u00a0 However, more talk should be centering on his colleagues and critics in the Senate, John McCain and Lindsey Graham.\u00a0\u00a0 Recall, the Arizonan senator and former presidential candidate, quoting a Wall Street Journal editorial, said: \u201cIf Mr. Paul wants to be taken seriously, he needs…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n