Conservative> R Emmett Tyrrell> Senator Rand Paul Comes Of Age

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Senator Rand Paul Comes of Age

WASHINGTON — When Senator Rand Paul took to the floor of the United States Senate the morning of March 6 he really — as they say — may have made a difference. It is a difference in our awareness of the issues facing the country. It is a difference in our perception of the man who is leading the country, President Barack Obama. It might even have been a difference in the direction the country will go. Will it continue on its melancholy path toward statism or will it follow the course of freedom as laid out by the Founding Fathers?

Senator Paul rose ostensibly "to begin to filibuster John Brennan's nomination for the CIA." Yet he aimed higher. As he explained it in the Washington Post on March 10, "I wanted to sound an alarm bell from coast to coast. I wanted everybody to know that our Constitution is precious, and that no American should be killed by a drone without first being charged with a crime. As Americans, we have fought long and hard for the Bill of Rights. The idea that no person shall be held without due process, and that no person shall be held for a capital offense without being indicted, is a founding American principle and a basic right." Thus he filibustered for 13 hours, and his views redounded around the Internet, on Tweeter, on Facebook. Everywhere!

Senator Paul is a tea party senator. He does not tailor his message to the pollsters' wise counsel. His staff does not include handlers with political antennas. Frankly, I doubt there was much advance notice to his filibuster. He just went out and did what he thought was called for by events, and the result was astounding. Millions of people, many who had never thought much about drones and due process, listened and took his side. My guess is that this moment is going to last. Senator Paul has come into his own, and what I know about him suggests that he will be a major figure in the Republican Party for years to come. He has his mind on the issues that matter.

This is what the tea party does so well. It raises awareness around the country about the slovenly way government is dealing with finances. It focuses attention about shoddy government in Washington and about constitutional issues that are being ignored.

The tea party cares about those issues because they are essential to our freedom. Senator Paul believes that American rights as embedded in the Constitution are being endangered. After his performance on the floor of the Senate, millions of other Americans now share his concern. He may just possibly have given the tea party movement a digitalis. He may lead us into 2014 midterm elections not unlike the 2010 midterm election. There is a frisson of excitement about his performance that is not going away.

It would be a mistake to read too much into Senator Paul's triumph at this stage. Senator John McCain and Senator Lindsay Graham went way too far in denouncing him. But the jury is out as to how Senator Paul will perform on the world stage. The libertarian worldview flirts a little too closely with isolationism, for my money. But Senator Paul has plenty of room to grow there, and he made a very successful trip to Israel that indicates he wants to grow and maintains an open mind.

We will see if President Obama does as well. He just installed at the Pentagon the most anti-Israel cabinet official in memory and at the State Department a secretary who, two generations ago, carried the arguments of our communist enemies into the Vietnam War debate. He also installed as head of the CIA a director who, in John Brennan, is closer to the Arab line than any recent top spymaster has ever been.

It was Brennan on whom Senator Paul focused his now famous filibuster. On Feb. 20, Senator Paul inquired of John Brennan whether "the president has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, and without trial." On March 4, Attorney General Eric Holder answered Senator Paul's inquiry with an inconclusive statement of boilerplate. Holder's letter opened more questions than it resolved. He should have answered "no." That Senator Paul knew to focus his attack this way suggests he is a shrewd player, and that the old guard who have stood so firm in our long war against Islamist terror would be wise to spend less time denouncing him and more time trying to win him as an ally.

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is founder and editor-in-chief of The American Spectator and an adjunct scholar at the Hudson Institute. He is the author of the book "The Death of Liberalism." To find out more about R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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Sir;... What does that mean for people on the right??? Coming of age just means growing older without the sense to keep out of poopee diapers... If Adult were ever to mean: holding so many contradictory notions inside of one skull to be trotted out to the world to marvel at on every possible occasion, then Senator Paul has them and the right is there with applause... When people, and their officials of government can find their future only in the past they are done for...
Ya... We had a better democracy back then... What has changed??? The government was made less responsive to the people be fixing the number representatives while the country continued to grow... And we made the civil service a bureaucracy without even having the heads of departments subject to elections so that all are aloof...And then the rich gobbled up the country, and this became possible by a tax scheme made constitutional to bring tax justice to the rich, that was turned against the poor instead...
What are you going to change to restore the past...When you have to change everything to restore the best part of the past you must inevitably push progress forward...You cannot get rid of the income tax because it would wipe out all that is left of the middle class farmers...You cannot make it fair because the rich would howl like skinned animals, so you are stuck fleecing the only people too poor and powerless to resist...You could not simply return to the spoils system, and making cabinet positions into elected offices is unconstitutional however much needed...
I will not say the past did not have some advantages for the people, but a government like ours with so much of inertia built into it cannot be turned forward or back without effort enough to destroy it...All forms are designed to resist change... Those who first made revolution in this land knew exactly what they were doing in changing forms... They also knew what they were doing in making the form of government so resistent to change... Consider that it takes two thirds of the people and their government to change the constitution; and that it took only about a third of the people to effect revolution in this land to begin with...
Mr. Paul does not know what he is doing or he would do it better... No one yet has succeeded in recapturing the past... No one ever has achieved revolution without appealing to the general need to preserve the best qualities of the past...And you have to consider that the rich always are looking backwards, and with their money try to establish themselves as natural nobility with castles and estates... It is when the poor and the middle classes begin to look with envy on people past and long dead for the hope they once had, denied in the present, that society is primed for revolution... People are naturally conservative... We fear change as we fear death... Every good feeling and good situation we want to secure by our forms of economy and government, by forms of every sort and kind...
As stable as forms are designed to be, they are open to evolution and so they evolve to serve purposes unintended... For that reason we have less democracy, and so we have surrendered power to parties, and now it has gone too far...Partocracy is not democracy, and neither is olgarchy or plutocracy -democracy... If the sect that Mr. Paul represents could gain control of the republican party would they change any element of it to give the people a greater and more responsive democracy??? I doubt it... These people have one single ultmate issue; and it is their own power and advancement... Which means there will be no revolution from the top no matter how many sops physical or ideological they throw at us...
Thanks....Sweeney

Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Thu Mar 14, 2013 7:04 AM