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View Full Version : Salon: The submissive, indifferent Democrats




jct74
03-09-2013, 05:27 PM
Good article from Faluguni A. Sheth at Salon.com calling out Democrats and progressives for not standing with Rand and even attacking him. Some excerpts:


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Whether rejecting the constitutional rights of American citizens, kidnapping alleged terrorists from foreign soil, or treating captured “enemies” inhumanely, Holder’s supposed confirmation of the limits of the president’s authority to kill without accountability is a deeply unsettling unilateral and illegal expansion of political power.

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Yet instead of expressing outrage, Democrats continued to acquiesce to the White House’s radical expansion of executive power. And they turned on Rand Paul, even though his objections should have been shared not just by liberals, but by everyone with even a passing respect for the rule of law.

So where’s the problem for progressives? Apparently, Paul’s question about killing Americans on American soil is deemed such a singular Tea Party-ish position that only two Democrats (Patrick Leahy and Jeff Merkley) and Independent Bernie Sanders joined Republican forces in challenging Brennan’s nomination.

Rather than challenge a Democratic administration in defense of constitutional principles that all citizens should insist be guaranteed, Democrats embraced party tribalism. As Kevin Gosztola pointed out, so-called progressives from Lawrence O’Donnell to Chris Matthews vilified the only politician who was asserting a — limited, mild, patriotic — challenge to the White House’s imperious expansion of unilateral authority. It was a challenge that every single Democrat, conservative, liberal or progressive should have been pushing for the last four years. Even those few, such as Sen. Ron Wyden, who exhibited some backbone, did so tepidly. After all, Wyden clearly stated that he would vote to confirm Brennan.

Apparently, it is bizarre to insist that the U.S. government’s power to kill should be limited. So much so that (Feet to the Fire!) liberals point to Paul’s endorsement of a 1905 right to contract case as a distraction reason to demonize him instead of supporting his stance on this issue. The most important take-away of Paul’s 12-hour filibuster for ThinkProgress.org’s Ian Millhiser was that Paul endorsed Lochner v. New York in his very same remarks about drones. Tea Party Libertarian Paul went so far as to — gasp — suggest that big government was a problem, or that the right to contract could have helped avoid Jim Crow and racism against African-Americans.

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Is Paul a racist? Here’s a better question: Is Paul any more racist in his economic and drug policy endorsements than the White House in its policies of kill lists, targeted killings, drone strikes, TSA no-fly and watch lists, Department of Homeland Security’s Secure Communities program or “See Something, Say Something” policy? Is Rand Paul more of a threat to black and brown populations (American or foreign) than the current administration, which deported more than 1.5 million migrants during its first term and separated tens of thousands of migrant parents from their children? Is Rand Paul more of a threat to our safety than the current administration?

Despite the White House’s defiant disregard of procedure, transparency or accountability, the Democrats disassociated themselves from an important strategic ally — a libertarian who is the only one asking the questions that progressives, Occupy protesters, political dissenters, Muslims, Arab Americans, African-Americans, Latinos, South Asians and undocumented migrants want an answer to: Will the president claim and exercise the power to kill one of us at his and his advisers’ discretion?

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read more:
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/08/the_invisible_shrinking_democrats/