Snowden and Prism scandal show Ron and Rand Paul were right all along
(Telegraph 6/11/13) Today I recorded the Telegram podcast with Jim DeMint, former senator from South Carolina and now head of the Heritage Foundation. He’s here to talk about his “liberty revolution” – a conservatism that’s distinct from Republicanism and which places more emphasis upon what the government shouldn’t do than what it should. Two things stood out from the interview: a) the senator acknowledged that Republicans were partly to blame for the growth in government and b) he name-dropped Rand Paul as a presidential candidate to watch. How times have changed.
The Telegraph doesn’t include the following video of Ron Paul warning about computer surveillance from 1984…
There are now two distinct groups emerging within the GOP: the security state champions led by senators Graham and McCain and the small state folks being drawn to senator Rand Paul. The Graham/McCain nexus used to be the moral core of the Republican Party back in the War on Terror days, the kind of people who would make political ads full of eagles and flags, talk a lot about “homeland security” and tie the whole package up with a paradoxical promise of more war and lower taxes. But they are yesterday’s men. Not only does the public not trust these folks to manage the economy but they have also been undone by the Prism revelations. The Graham/McCain argument is that we need the mass collection of data to prevent atrocities like Fort Hood and Boston. Only problem with that: we had the mass collection of data and Fort Hood and Boston happened anyway. American voters might be happy to swap 100 per cent liberty for 100 per cent security, but they haven’t been given that 100 per cent security. What they have got is NSA agents perusing their emails and TSA agents copping a feel.
By contrast, the Randian argument has been legitimised by the big government scandals. On reflection, it’s fair to say that the Paulite libertarian experiment started too early. When Ron Paul ran for the nomination in 2008 his ideas where assaulted from two sides: a) the War on Terror was ongoing and Republicans weren’t in the mood to have it criticised and b) everyone panicked when the Credit Crunch hit and the common attitude was that we needed more regulation not less. Ron Paul wasn’t just a lone voice in the wilderness, he also looked and sounded a little crazy – lecturing and jabbering where some cool soundbites would’ve been more useful. Things were better for him 2012 because the Tea Party movement had begun to shift the Republicans away from welfarism and back towards constitutionalism. But the time still wasn’t right…