Every once in a while, an incident comes along that perfectly clarifies the state of our political discourse. Last week, Sen. Rand Paul’s, R-Kentucky, 13-hour filibuster did exactly that. Anyone even remotely concerned with civil liberties, checks and balances and due process of law should have cheered Paul’s filibuster for seeking explicit limits on the use of drones against American citizens on American soil. Indeed, Paul’s discussion, while welcome, did not go remotely far enough in scope.
The questions of whether the government has the right to target American citizens on foreign soil—a right the government has already usurped through the due-process-free killings of Anwar al-Awlaki, Samir Khan, and the 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki—or the right to target non-citizens without due process should receive an equally vigorous discussion. Rather than embrace Paul’s narrow but vital question and encourage further debate on a drone program that has killed thousands of people overseas, so-called progressive commentators undertook a trite partisan attack on Paul instead.
I likewise find the majority of what Paul stands for reprehensible, but this filibuster was not an election. It was not an up or down vote on the entirety of Paul’s beliefs. It was a discussion of a drone program that has received a paucity of attention, despite the wide ramifications involved. Those who wait for the right person to raise these questions miss the point entirely.
I would love for a liberal politician to make an equally bold stand on key issues of militarism and civil liberties, but no such figure has been forthcoming. Commentators who genuinely care about these issues should take this rare moment of heightened media attention to voice their objections, rather than wait for a member of the Democratic Party to take a stand that may never arrive. After all, the only Democrat who participated in the filibuster, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, ultimately voted to confirm John Brennan as head of the CIA, despite his instrumental role in orchestrating the drone program.
Any discussion of Paul inevitably involves his peculiar, if not abhorrent, take on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the same rule applied in this case. I only wish these commentators would attack racism in all its manifestations in the present day, rather than focus solely on a politician’s view of a bill passed 50 years ago. As Falguni Sheth, professor of philosophy and political theory at Hampshire College, has pointed out time and time again, having a black president in office hardly means that racist policies have come to an end.
Examples testifying to this sad reality are abundant. The drone program has killed thousands in the Middle East. During President Barack Obama’s first term, 1.5 million people were deported, more than under any president in history. In the six-month period between January and June of 2011 alone, 46,000 immigrant parents of U.S.-citizen children were deported. The drug war —the policy most responsible for tearing apart African-American communities by branding people felons for committing nonviolent drug offenses—carries on with even greater funding under Obama. Spending on the Byrne grant program, drug task forces started under the Reagan administration and notorious for racial profiling, has increased by billions of dollars in the last four years. The people who pass for “progressive” media personalities at places like MSNBC would much rather focus on Paul’s views about a half-century old bill than draw attention to the active harm done to people of color under a Democratic president.
The reaction to Paul’s filibuster reveals that tribalistic party loyalty, rather than bedrock principle, motivates the Democratic Party and its loyal supporters. The same group who rightfully denounced the horrid civil liberties abuses under President George W. Bush has turned a blind eye to the continuation and expansion of those very same policies under President Obama. Abuses must be denounced regardless of whether the person in the Oval Office has a “D” or an “R” attached to his or her name. Anyone claiming to hold genuinely progressive beliefs has to recognize that.
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