Rand Paul, Principled Champion of Civil Liberties
Well, unless women count as people.
…and, on a related point, Epps: “By diverting attention to a hypothetical drone strike on Jane Fonda, Paul has created the 2013 version of the 2009 “death panels.” No matter how many liberal columnists he wowed, he has done a disservice to the national interest by making it harder to address the real issues we face.” Pushback against Obama’s terror policies from Congress is desperately needed. But in addition to his horrible positions on many other civil liberties issues Paul is also worse than Obama just on national security state issues, which is why he was asking the wrong questions.
Only fetal women.
Silly wimins, rights is for dudes.
White dudes, actually.
Principled champions of Civil Liberties shouldn’t want vagina’s probes with wands. (Leave that joke alone).
Ok, so now he’s pretty much down to being right only about pot, since he doesn’t mind killing non-Americans with drones.
Not surprising, coming from young Senator Aqua Buddha.
Paul would be against trans-vaginal probing if the probes were performed by drones at the control of Obama. Otherwise, meh.
I was just thinking, rename ‘drones’ as ‘winged wands’ — problem solved, everyone happy!
I cannot even care about this kind of wing-nuttery on its own terms anymore. I do object to the grotesque waste of my precious tax-dollars on these bills, however. Perhaps Mr. Paul would appreciate that concern?
What a ridiculous post, you god damned O-Bot. Did your Dear Leader tell you to conflate the issue of civil rights by insisting that womens rights are real rights? Hmmmmmmm?
If I was going to “stand with” someone on an issue, despite his being completely repellent on such a broad swath of other issues, he’d better be surpassingly excellent on that one issue.
For instance, if I was going to “stand with” a Rand Paul figure on, say, opposition to torture, he’d better actually be against torture. Giving a floor speech about how President Obama allegedly kinda sorta maybe thinks that it’s legal to torture members of the Campus Crusade for Christ in secret FEMA camps wouldn’t cut it.
Well, I did hear that he thought Ghostbusters was a total shit movie, so that’s something, right?
If I was going to “stand with” someone on an issue, despite his being completely repellent on such a broad swath of other issues, he’d better be surpassingly excellent on that one issue.
This too, as I say in the update. Even if we leave aside his horrible positions on most other issues, he’s to Obama’s right even on national security state issues.
If Congress passes a bill that money is human, taxation becomes kidnapping. Don’t think that’s not next.
Going to the store becomes human trafficking!
The only principle any of the Pauls have is “ME! ME! ME!”
Gosh, are you as much as a factious ass as you come across online?
In honor of St. Paddy’s Day, Irish pancakes.
“Of,” not “as.” Please troll better.
And, ‘factious’?
Geek synonym for “factual”.
Was that meant to be “facetious” or “fractious”?
(or fatuous?)
I actually had to google “factious.” Apparently, by criticizing Rand Paul’s “civil libertarian” stance with regard to women, Scott is driving a wedge between civil libertarians and creating “factions.”
Women’s liberties are divisive, apparently.
Huh. It’s a word. I am genuinely surprised.
It was meant to be ‘fissiparous’….
fugacious
Are you as big an ignorant dipshit as you come across?
Your trollery is weak, Frank. Please come back when you can troll above a first-grade level.
why did any living women vote for this fucktard?
There’s an R after his name?
They were ‘thinking of the children’?
They did it for their family, not themselves, because family yadda-yadda?
All their friends did?
Not everyone takes this as seriously as we do.
Because they’re fundamentalists who live in Kentucky?
Because the Democratic preznit is a ni[clang]?
Because love of patriarchy isn’t inheritable via the Y-Chromosome.
(g) all of the above.
Good update.
So the question is, why did so many liberals get fooled?
When the tea baggers made a stink about the DHS memo in 2009, there were no liberals saying, “Hey, I’m opposed to treating people like terrorists based on their political beliefs, and I’m terribly concerned about the expansion of the security state! I stand with James Inhofe!”
When they made a stink about death panels, there were no liberals saying, “Hey, I’m opposed to denying people access to public health care programs for reasons of eugenics! I stand with Sarah Palin!”
Do we just have more cranks on our side of the aisle these days?
“When they made a stink about death panels, there were no liberals saying, “Hey, I’m opposed to denying people access to public health care programs for reasons of eugenics! I stand with Sarah Palin!””
Well, in practice…
Mean, Brien.
I’m not talking about “objectively-pro…,” ending-up-against-the-same-policy dynamics. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Even among the anti-ACA liberals, there was no “standing with” Sarah Palin.
Grover Norquist, on the other hand…
Dammit, I’d just about managed to forget that ever happened!
“Do we just have more cranks on our side of the aisle these days?”
we do seem to have lots of people on “our side of the aisle” for whom critical analytic skills are not part of their personal skill sets.
I think the Pauls have a specific and special appeal because they are nominally libertarian and there is a persistent fantasy that libertarians are potentially useful allies (in spite of 1) their complete lack of power and influence and 2) their actual beliefs).
This is one of the unpleasant side effects of the rise of Geek Culture.
Yes, the delusion that libertarians are okay seems to exist mostly among geeky white men, whose concepts of “freedom” and “liberty” do not include anything that has historically been valued as such by women, minorities or the working class.
I think this fantasy persists because libertarians have co-opted some of the historically liberal rhetoric about individual freedoms, and many people are ignorant about political history. So some liberals get fooled into thinking that libertarianism is in fact about personal freedom, when historically and in the present day, they are actually about protection of private property at the expense of personal freedom. They will sometimes support personal freedom, but only if it can be conceptualized as a subset of traditional property rights belonging almost exclusively to monied white men.
they are actually about protection of private property at the expense of personal freedom
And about protection of personal behavior at the expense of the general welfare.
Yes–but only if they can identify with the personal behavior. Many libertarians defend abortion restrictions as being for the “general welfare.” Many have nothing to say about stop-and-frisk. Many libertarians have been iffy on gay marriage, because it’s a “positive” right and not a “negative” one. But not gun control, for instance. That is somehow an infringement on inalienable rights, because a white male may want to use such freedoms.
This is a major driver, I agree.
I think, also, there’s three other big factors, 1) the “righteous outsider” syndrome (hey, YOUR voice isn’t heard EITHER; and we sorta agree on some things! IF YOUR VOICE WERE HEARD (on the things we sorta agree on) THINGS WOULD BE BETTER; 2) the fact that the nominal agreement is often on really dramatic things (e.g., war), and 3) contrarianism (oh yeah? You think you’re so liberal, well, I’m not liberal, I’m superleft which is why I can join forces with Buchanan to oppose the war!).
Howard Zinn would find Rand Paul’s many issues completely consistent with each other. He stands for the liberty of all propertied white men (and their corps and LLCs). Just as the Founders intended.
I dunno. Isn’t this how women how women became protected under Title VII? Long-short: a dixiecrat inserts “sex” into the language, figuring that the inclusion of women would peel off enough supporters to kill the 1964cra.
But what do the supporters do? They say, “fuck it, we’re going all Andrea Dworkin on his ass”. Boom! The bill passes. Catharine MacKinnon runs with it and the rest is history.
There must be some way to similarly railroad Rand.
My understanding (based on Wikipedia, anyway) is that even though the Congressman in question was pro-segregation, he was fairly decent on gender issues so it’s entirely possible that he was being sincere in proposing that amendment, even though he opposed the Civil Rights Act as a whole.
Yeah, I’m aware of the wiki issue. Not too long ago it was in “talk” and now its migrated onto Smith’s front page. A Feminist Dixiecrat? I remain skeptical.
As much as I love the ideological complexity of civil rights history, I know that whitewashing is more common. I suspect his apologists want to erase from history this attempt to kill the 64cra. Indeed, reframe it as pro-civil rights.
But hey, I could be wrong. The point is this history is still evolving. Most of these guys have not met their Caro yet.
You should read the New Yorker review of the new book about FDR and the New Deal. You might even learn something for a change.
Heaven forbid. He is 14 and already knows everything.
Even better, you should read the trenchant review in The American Prospect.
Look, if Paul ever actually does anything concrete, forming an alliance with him his fine and his motives are beside the point. As long as it’s just words, the fact that he’s a terrible spokesman is a real issue.
Somebody has to replace Joe ‘He’s with us on everything except the war’ Lieberman….
“Somebody has to replace Joe ‘He’s with us on everything except the war’ Lieberman….”
why?
Because we live in a cruel universe.
Joe ‘He’s with us on everything except the war’ Lieberman
You mean, Joe ‘He’s with us on everything except the war . . . and health care . . . and bankruptcy . . . and just about everything else’ Lieberman?
To recognize that a foetus is a person is not to deny civil liberties to women!
“To recognize that a foetus is a person is not to deny civil liberties to women!”
except that a fetus has never, in all of human history, ever been recognized as a “person”. a fetus became a “person” after a live birth, never before. nowhere, in any religious dogma, for 1,000′s of years, has a fetus ever been recognized as a person. for all of human history, the mother’s life has always taken precedence, always.
to recognize a fetus as a person would be in direct contravention of basic “conservative” theory, that everything old is right.
When someone kills an unborn human, it attacks not only that creature’s flesh and blood but it assaults as well the image and the likeness of God that each and everyone of us incarnate.
Strike against an innocent being and you strike against God!
What is a “personna”? It refers to the mask (or image) that an actor on stage wears in order to represent the character in a drama ; it refers to the image one actor is representing on a stage.
Each and everyone of us are made in the image of God; Christ can be seen in every human face; each of us represents the image of God; don’t move againt it.
Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.
Tell me more about how you live according to Bronze Age myths. Oh, I forgot, Jesus told you to ignore the parts that don’t line up with your sexual hangups.
In that same book, it specifically says that causing a miscarriage (abortion) is not a crime and that you must give adulterous women abortifacients. The Halakhah clearly hold this as the proper interpretation (life, and thus personhood, begins at birth and not before then). Even your own scripture says you are wrong
It also, a few verses earlier, is very clear about prohibiting the iconography Dagney hold so very dear.
The iconophiles — with Nicéphore leading the charge — decisively won the war against the iconoclasts!
Fascinating, of course. I guess that makes it cool to ignore the parts of Leviticus you don’t like. Which is cool! And we can ignore the parts we find irrelevant. Which is, you know, most of it.
The theology of image and icons changed after the arrival of the Messiah.
As I said, Jesus told you which parts to ignore, which in an amazing coincidence, precisely line up with your sexual hangups.
Malaclypse
The debate amng iconophile and iconoclast in Constantinople is really fascinating; if you read French, see Marie-Josée Mondzain on Image, Icon, Economy. Otherwise, see analysis of the works of Nikephoros. It’s not about representation, but about diagram, or sign in the sense of Charles. S. Peirce.
If I remember my abstruse theology correctly, John of Damascus made the fairly defining pro-iconophile point that the proscription of icons and graven images was no longer valid since God had broken it by making an image of himself in Christ (when Paul says that ‘he is the image of the invisible god’ it is precisely the word eikon which is used).
Is anyone else really confused by this: first Daguerre, now iconography? Hidden depths, Mr Chesternuts. Is this just a new tactic, or is the mask slipping?
And I would genuinely like to hear your thoughts on DrDick’s point about the way the OT treats miscarriages. He’s brought it up several times, and you’ve ignored it. Are you able to respond to it?
Paul never met the Rabbi Yeshua and was a delusional loon. All Paulist Doctrine is heresy which directly counters the recorded teachings of Rabbi Yeshua. If it is not in the Apostalic Gospels, it is NOT Christian teaching.
The Rabbi Yeshua clearly states that you must uphold ALL of the law or you uphold none of it and that he was not there to destroy it.
“Whoever goes against the smallest of the laws of Moses, teaching men to do the same, will be named least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who keeps the Law of Moses, teaching others to keep them, will be named great in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:19).
Matthew5:17 “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.”
You have not even read that book of yours, have you?
Christ Jesus did not abolish the Law of Moses indeed, nor the Abrahamic Alliance; He fullfilled it indeed.
The Old Alliance is still active and valid among the Jewish People, the Chosen People.
Yet from the perspective of the Gentils, the Old Alliance is neutralized, deactivated; it is not abolished, simply suspended — as in a state of permanent exception; there is a New Alliance in effect, in virtue of the Incarnation of God into flesh and blood via the Maria, the Ark of the New Alliance.
The even of the Incarnation changed the theology of the image and the icons, obviously; Mary is the paradigm of the icon; the matrix via which the Invisible becomes visible, an Image becomes flesh, a virtual becomes an actual.
None of that theological babble was known to Jesus.
All available evidence is that he didn’t want to found a new religion, but wanted to reform Judaism by getting rid of all the laws except two of them:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
All else is fulminating and of the Adversary’s work, Chesternuts.
Remember the old Slovak saying, “The devil is never so close, as when you think him far away’.
Pure rank heresy, Chesterbutt. Not one mention of any of that in the words of Rabbi Yeshua. If you do not keep kosher and the rest of the Halakha you are damned by your god. Also bear in mind that the rich are barred from heaven and Christians are supposed hold all goods in common and to disavow all worldly things and concerns. Get thee to a hermitage and repent sinful heretic!
All of this is in Paul.
See the word “katergeo” in Paul, unfolding the concept of deactivation of the Law.
The Law becomes inoperative (katapausis, or anapausis): non-Jews have access through Christ to the Promise God made to the Jewish People via Abraham.
The Law is deactivated but not abolished. What has been neutralized is the division between Jews and non-Jews. Via Christ, non-Jews can have access to the Kingdom of God. But it does imply at all that the Promise has been abolished for the Jews remaining Jews, non-Christians.
Christ accomplishes the telos of the Law, but does not destroy it. This is orthodox Christianity, coherent Catholicism; Ratzinger also wrote about it in the Salt of the Earth.
Erratum: But it does NOT* imply at all that the Law has been abolished.
Ratzinger, is of course, the same fellow who helped hide and protect child molesters. I don’t have to quote what Jesus said about such fellows to you, do I, heretic?
It was *I* who allowed the Alliance to know the location of the shield generator. It is quite safe from your pitiful little band. An entire legion of my best troops awaits them. Oh, I’m afraid the deflector shield will be quite operational when your friends arrive.
Find some pertinent red text in any version of a red letter bible and then come back.
“When someone kills an unborn human, it attacks not only that creature’s flesh and blood but it assaults as well the image and the likeness of God that each and everyone of us incarnate.”
your words, not the bible’s.
A fetus is not a person.
You’re not actually real, are you? I mean, you’re a liberal who’s posting nonsense just to entertain the rest of us. Right?
“You’re not actually real, are you? I mean, you’re a liberal who’s posting nonsense just to entertain the rest of us. Right?”
if true, i demand he at least be more entertaining. so far, he’s failing that basic requirement. fuck, i paid good money to be on this site…………… oh, um, never mind!
No – he’s a troll who posts things to try to piss people off.
If he were trying to entertain he’d be more like Manju.
Women have a constant obligation to ensure that their uterine linings are as amenable as possible to the possible implantation of a blastocyst that is scientifically undetectable and may not even exist in the present moment.
Similar to a Schrodinger’s uterus: women are in a constant state of pregnancy/non pregnancy and being able to accurately observe their status resolves the question of which state they occupy.
He uses the Celtic Cross. It’s a well known white supremacist symbol. He is what he is and he is what they all are.
What’s that? Comes time for Li’l’ Paul to introduce legislation again, it’s vicious reactionary shit attacking women’s rights, not anything to rein in the warmaking powers of the executive branch? Well, knock me over with a UAV at breakfast.
Silly women, liberties are for men!