Senator Rand Paul: ‘Foreign Relations Hearing on The Crisis in Egypt’

Source:Senator Rand Paul– U.S. Senator Rand Paul (Republican, Kentucky) at the Foreign Relations Committee.

“Sen. Rand Paul at Foreign Relations Hearing on the Crisis in Egypt – 7/25/13”

From Senator Rand Paul

At risk of being in need of a head examination (as early as tomorrow) I completely agree with everything that Senator Rand Paul said here about Egypt and our giving foreign aid to authoritarian regimes and dictators.

I have a theory that it’s not the individual freedom that Arabs and Middle Easterners, including in Egypt hate about America, including the freedom that our women and minorities have here, but it’s the fact that we literally subsidize with American tax dollars the dictators in those countries.

I’m not saying your average Egyptian and anyone else in Arabia is a freedom-loving person, because I don’t think we can know that. And I know the counter-argument from the other side from internationalists and hawks arguing that if we don’t subsidize these dictators, those regimes will fall because they won’t have the money and other resources to stay in power because they’re unpopular and will be replaced by a regime that’s even worst and less cooperative with America and would subsidize terrorists that want to hit America.

But the reason why we get the terrorism that we do, is American taxpayers by force from their government, subsidize these unpopular Arab dictators and their regimes. So how does that make us safer?

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New York Magazine: Jonathan Chait- ‘Why Rand Paul Distrusts Democracy’

Source:New York Magazine– U.S. Senator Rand Paul (Republican, Kentucky

“The most unusual and interesting line in Julia Ioffe’s highly interesting profile of Rand Paul is Paul’s confession, “I’m not a firm believer in democracy. It gave us Jim Crow.” Of course, that’s an awfully strange way to condemn Jim Crow, which arose in the distinctly undemocratic Apartheid South (it was no coincidence that the dismantling of Jim Crow and the granting of democratic rights to African-Americans happened simultaneously). But it’s not just a gaffe or another historical misrepresentation — rather, it’s an authentic clue into an ideology Paul has been busily concealing as he has ascended into mainstream politics.”

Read the rest at New York Magazine

“Rand Paul: Woodrow Wilson’s ‘Spreading Democracy Throughout the World’ is a Failed Policy. Support a Constitutional Republic and Limited Government.”

From Vision Liberty

Just to respond to Senator Rand Paul’s speech about democracy and you can take Jonathan Chait’s speech about him for whatever you believe it’s worth:

Senator Paul was essentially arguing that you don’t want a democracy, but you want a republic. Well, how are the leaders of this republic supposed to get hired and get the jobs to govern for us and stay in power? Most, if not the entire developed world has one form of a democratic system or another and a lot of those countries are also republics. Just look at America or Germany, France, Italy, Poland, etc.

If Senator Paul were to say something like: “Oh, I believe in democracy and want the people to elect their leaders.” Then he is essentially saying that he believes in democracy as well.

There are all types of democracies, as well as republics. What hyper-partisans like the Rand Paul’s of the world don’t bother to mention, is that all of the republics in the developed world are democracies. Republican is not a form of government and neither is democratic.

There are authoritarian republics like in Russia and in the Middle East. China in the Far East. And you have democratic republics like in America and in Europe. The question is if you are a republic, what kind of republic are you: democratic or authoritarian? And a country like the Islamic Republic of Iran which is not part of the developed, first word, they’re both democratic and authoritarian. They elect their leaders, but their personal freedom and individual rights are fairly limited. The same thing with Turkey.

And to talk about Senator Paul’s comments about Jim Crow: what he didn’t bother to mention (and yes, I think he knows better) is that the Democrats who supported segregation and Jim Crow 50-100 years ago, were right-wing Neo-Confederate Democrats. When Rand Paul ran for the Senate in 2010, he was rumored to be a Neo-Confederate Republican, partially because he opposes the civil rights laws of the 1960s. So I don’t think this is a subject and debate that Senator Paul seriously wants to get into with just half the truth, because he could get seriously boomeranged on this.

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Salon: Steve Kornacki: ‘Is Rand Paul The Next Robert Taft?’

Source:Washington Monthly– U.S. Senator Rand Paul (Republican, Kentucky)

Source:The Daily Times

“When Rand Paul was announced as the winner of the Republican presidential straw poll at CPAC over the weekend, there was no chorus of boos from the assembled conservatives, a far cry from the response when his father won the same event a few years ago. Unlike Ron Paul, whose political coalition existed as much outside the Republican Party as in it and whose numerous straw poll victories were the product of organized event-crashing that irritated party regulars, Rand has dedicated himself to becoming a force within the GOP — and CPAC ’13 represents the latest evidence that he’s succeeding.”

From Salon

The mainstreaming of Rand Paul, interesting title for an article. I saw another article in the magazine The Week with the title: “Does the rising of Rand Paul mean and end to social conservatism?” Which are the two things to focus on as well as laying out what constitutional conservatism actually is and how that differs from religious conservatism and they may sound like the same thing but they are actually different.

If you look at Rand Paul’s political background whether you want to call it Conservative or Conservative-Libertarian or just flat Libertarian, he’s always been in the mainstream in America as far as someone who believes that big government shouldn’t interfere in our economic or personal lives. Meaning that government shouldn’t try to control us or run our lives or even try to protect us from ourselves. Not that it shouldn’t tax, but not tax us to the point where we lose the freedom to control our own destiny and not be dependent on the state for our economic well-being.

Conservative-Libertarians like Senator Paul, also believe that government shouldn’t interfere into our personal lives as well. And what we do in the privacy of our own homes, what we watch on TV, who we sleep with and marry as adults, how we spend our own money, as long as we aren’t hurting innocent people with what we are doing. There’s nothing radical about this and this view of what government shouldn’t be doing is a shared viewpoint on both the Right and Left in America which is why it’s mainstream.

Constitutional-Conservatives or Conservative-Libertarians, believe in conserving the U.S. Constitution and all the individual rights that all Americans get from it. As well as conserving our limited government and preventing government (especially the Federal Government) from getting too big. Wheres Christian-Conservatives or Christian-Nationalists, believe in covering their own culture and religious values. Even if that means using big government to try to enforce their values on everyone else. Which is very different from constitutional conservatism or conservative libertarianism and very different from Senator Rand Paul.

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