Sen. Rand Paul: The Rise of the Libertarian Republican

(Above: Sen. Rand Paul, R-KY, considered by many to be the new face of the Republican Party.  Courtesy of Wikipedia)

(Above: Edward Burke, 1729-1796, was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher, who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party. Since the 20th century, he has generally been viewed as the philosophical founder of modern conservatism, as well as a representative of classical liberalism. Courtesy of Wikipedia)

"People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors."

- Sir Edmund Burke,  Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790),  Vol. iii, page 274

The spirit of the Constitution is endowed with the indelible presence of our nation's Founding Fathers. It appears as if after 226 have passed through the hour glass(es), probably more than one, a new Son of Liberty has ascended to the role of leader in opposition to the anti-democratic and extra-constitutional measures and spirit of Barack Obama.  Rand Paul, the United States Senator from Kentucky, is being hailed as the potential new face of the Republican Party, of which he is a member.  In light of the established trio of scandals (Benghazi, IRS targeting conservative groups, and Justice Department subpoenaing documents and news sources from members of the media), and the possible emergence of at least two more in the form of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) targeting conservatives according to Fox News on June 4 that has largely gone ignored due to the recent revelation by former CIA operative Edward Snowden of the worldwide surveillance of tens, maybe even hundreds of millions, of people via their cell phones, the Internet, and credit cards, it would appear that in the immortal words of the great James Madison, known affectionately to Americans historically as America's "Father of the Constitution":

(Above: James Madison, Father of the Constitution, and fourth President of the United States. Courtesy of Wikipedia)

"Such was the aspect of things, that in the eyes of the best friends of liberty, a crisis had arrived which was to decide whether the American experiment was to be a blessing to the world, or to blast for ever the hopes which the republican cause had inspired." (Courtesy of James Madison University)

Rand Paul is the son of Ron Paul, the former Texas congressman who formally ushered in the modern-day philosophy of libertarianism such as the one Thomas Jefferson and James Madison practice more than 200 years ago.  However, Rand Paul is more pragmatic and thus politically savvy than his ideologue father, who so fervently believed in total and utter autonomy from the federal government that his skills as a Machiavellian were greatly hindered.  Rand, unlike his father, identifies himself as "a conservative and constitutional libertarian."  He is for a greatly reduced role of government in the lives of individuals.  He also is against abortion to the point where he wants a bill passed and signed into law formally declaring the beginning of life as being at conception.  However,  unlike most conservative Republicans, he is for same-sex marriage, and to the probably-dismay of his father's principles, he sees a need for a military presence across the globe, which I cannot blame him for that belief since our role as the world's greatest superpower of all time catapulted America into the once enviable role as the English-speaking heir-apparent to the now-dead British Empire, which has therefore created a scenario whereby it would be virtually impossible for the U.S. to avoid international foreign relations and alliances with allied nations in Europe and across other parts of the globe.

Perhaps the greatest attribute of the younger Paul is his stand against the Obama administration's usurpation upon the rights and liberties of the American people as are guaranteed in the Constitution.  Americans seem to have lost the perspective of the Founding Fathers since the early 20th Century when Populists and Progressives dominated domestic and foreign policies.  Since the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913 during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, the federal government has had a mandate to raise nearly-unlimited funds via the method of direct taxation of income.  Upon his being sworn into the office of president in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt created the modern-day Democratic Party by introducing America to the phenomena that had already spread throughout the democracies of Europe known as the welfare state and political and economic socialism.  The welfare state and socialism have only grown broader and more subversive of the people's rights over the past 80 years no matter the president nor the party in which he represented.  While I hesitate to say whether Sen. Paul will be able to win the Republican nomination for the presidency in 2016 should he choose to run (he has not made it official yet), he is now the single biggest name within the party, upon whose shoulders the hopes and dreams of the GOP ride over the next three years if we are to stand up to the Obama administration.

The first article from a nationally-renowned news outlet publicly acknowledging the rise of libertarianism in American politics came in an article from The Washington Times on June 10, 2013, when it was announced that Sen. Paul will be suing the federal government over the surveillance of hundreds of millions of American citizens via the Internet, cell phones, and credit cards:

Rand Paul and the rise of the libertarian Republican

By Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake, Published: June 10, 2013 at 6:30 am

Give Sen. Rand Paul this: He very rarely misses a political pitch slung his way.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. AP photo.

The latest evidence is Paul’s (R-Ky.) plan to launch a class action lawsuit against the government for the National Security Agency’s collection of phone records and monitoring of Internet data. “If we get 10 million Americans saying we don’t want our phone records looked at, then somebody will wake up and say things will change in Washington,” Paul argued during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”

Paul’s seizing on the NSA issue comes less than three months after he made national headlines for his filibuster of the nomination of now-CIA Director John Brennan. And both issues have a narrative string connecting them: Paul as the most visible defender of civil liberties not only in the Senate, but in elected office right now.

That’s a very good place to be given the rising tide of libertarianism in the country. As we noted in our newspaper column today, the emerging majorities in favor of allowing gays to marry and pot to be smoked without penalty suggest that libertarianism has found a real foothold in American politics, particularly among young people who strongly favor both proposals.

“The way we’re going to compete is by running people for office who can appreciate some issues that attract young people and independents: civil liberties, as well as a less aggressive foreign policy, not putting people in jail for marijuana, a much more tolerant type of point of view,” Paul told Spencer Ackerman during an interview for Wired magazine late last month.

What’s not clear is whether the Republican Party is ready for the sort of message that Paul embodies. While polling suggests that the American public wants gay marriage, for example, to be legal, that’s not a view that a majority of Republicans hold. And Rand’s father, Ron, saw any chance of emerging as a viable alternative candidate to Mitt Romney dashed in 2012 by his refusal to back away from a non-interventionist foreign policy. Can a “less aggressive foreign policy” — in Rand Paul’s words — be sold to a party that made a name for itself during the 1980s by pushing the necessity of military might?

All of that will be litigated when Paul runs — oops, we mean if Paul runs (silly mistake) — for president in 2016. But there is no question now that Paul will find a constituency of libertarian-minded Republicans that exceeds the number his father wooed in 2008 and 2012. Will it be enough? That’s why we run the races.

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Sen. Paul made his plans to bring about a class-action lawsuit against the federal government which he hopes will reach the U.S. Supreme Court official yesterday.  You can read about his plans in the following article, also from The Washington Times:

PAUL: Americans who cherish freedom must push back against government surveillance

 By Sen. Rand Paul                                                                                                          Friday, June 14, 2013

On Thursday, I held a news conference announcing my intent to pursue legal action against the federal government for infringing on Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights. The National Security Agency’s collection of Verizon’s client data probably only scratches the surface. A court order that allows the government to obtain a billion records a day and does not name an individual target is clearly beyond the scope of the Fourth Amendment, which states clearly that warrants must be specific to the person and the place.

Joining me Thursday to show support for this action were U.S. Reps. Justin Amash, Thomas Massie, Mick Mulvaney, Louie Gohmert and Mark Sanford, along with representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union, FreedomWorks, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Campaign for Liberty, as well as constitutional scholar and lawyer Bruce Fein.

Mr. Gohmert joked about standing next to the ACLU, but he pointed out that upholding the Constitution is not about Republican versus Democrat or conservative versus liberal. It is about liberty versus power. It recognizes and attempts to limit the inevitable arrogance of power. President Obama says that we can trust his administration not to abuse the mountains of data he admits it gathers. Perhaps we can also trust the Internal Revenue Service not to target those who speak out against the government. Perhaps we can also trust the Justice Department not to seize the phone records of Associated Press reporters.

Our Founders never intended for Americans to trust their government. Our entire Constitution was predicated on the notion that government was a necessary evil, to be restrained and minimized as much as possible.

Indiscriminate monitoring of citizens’ records is precisely the kind of general warranting we fought a revolution over. The Colonists did not appreciate a British government that could go door to door, searching anyone and everyone without probable cause or suspicion.

Today, our government goes phone to phone, computer to computer and dares to call this lawful and constitutional. At a hearing on March 12, Sen. Ron Wyden asked Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Mr. Clapper replied, “No sir not wittingly.”

We now know that the NSA did this wittingly. We know that Mr. Clapperwas not telling us the truth.

Are these government officials telling us the truth now when they claim they are not abusing our phone-data information? By what history or track record are we supposed to trust them? What does it say about us if we are willing to give government the benefit of the doubt, but that same government treats every American as a potential terrorist?

No, the proper order of things in our constitutional republic is that the government is supposed to fear its citizens, not the other way around.

So far, we have more than 250,000 people who have signed up to challenge the constitutionality of the generalized warrants. We expect many more.

The Constitution is not a negotiable piece of parchment to be ignored or abused at the president’s whim. Washington leaders are expected to obey and protect what they took an oath to uphold — and if this means taking them to court over it, so be it.

Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Homeland Security committees.

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Let it be said that one way or another that if Sen. Paul has anything to do with it, the Obama administration will be brought to its knees one way or another.  He and his father have been the two most philosophical politicians in Washington in recent years, with this father having been a U.S. representative from Texas off-and-on for 22 years between 1976 and 2013.  The traditional libertarian philosophy the two espouse -- less government, more civil liberties -- is liable to grow like a wildfire; or, as Thomas Jefferson was quoted to have said in 1819 with regard to the topic of slavery during the controversy surrounding the admission of Missouri and Maine into the Union over the former being a slave state with the latter being a free state, the issue over the infringement upon our civil liberties could ring loudly like "a fire bell in the night."

With so many conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats in both houses of Congress having betrayed their constituencies' trust, I wonder whether the United States is on the brink of a phenomena known as the Seventh Party System?  Congress currently is experiencing the institution's all-time lowest approval rating of 10% in its history (Courtesy of The Daily Caller).  Both liberals AND conservatives in Washington and throughout the land have created a monster out of the federal government over the past 80 years, and it has now reached its zenith in what the majority of the American people will allow.  It is time to cut the leviathan off at its head.  

If Sen. Paul has anything to do with it, that will happen.