This is the path followed by the Left: rule by mob. Whomever is the loudest carries the day. We should avoid such behavior. I am completely sympathetic to Senator Paul's position, but I disagree that a filibuster would be an effective strategy politically or an appropriate course for a duly elected official of this great Republic. Going to war is a grave decision and Congress deserves to have a vote. Denying the people's legislative body the right to express its preference is wrong, and I am certain that the Founding Fathers would not support a parliamentary gimmick to forestall a vote on the most serious question a country can ever pose to itself. The Founding Fathers would not approve of the erection of such a barrier to the legitimate democratic process even though to a man they would condemn this unwarranted incursion in the affairs of another country.
I think you misunderstand.
A filibuster allows him and Cruz and others of their persuasion to talk and invite Americans to listen. As long as they can hold the floor uninterrupted. They can inspire and educate.
In the end it does not stop a vote unless there are enough votes to stop one, and Rand Paul knows there won’t be. Reid and the Senate Dems along with the McCain insane faction of “R”s will pass this in the Senate.
They will get to engage because that’s how the Senate is set up.
There will also be a vote, just delayed for a few hours.
Rand filibustered on a nomination, for 13 hrs, in order to demand that the WH clarify its position on the legality of killing Americans in America with Drones, something they had dodged before.
There was then a vote on that nomination after Rand gave up the floor, and that nomination passed overwhelmingly.
Now we have a 21st Century Tonkin Gulf Resolution. There were no Nay votes in the House, and only two Senators voted Nay in the Senate, Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernst Gruening of Alaska. Morse is a hero of the anti-war left for that vote. I am not a fan of Morse but he was correct in his assessment of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, and Paul is right in his assessment of this obvious fraud.
This is the path followed by the Left: rule by mob. Whomever is the loudest carries the day.
____________________________
We are already ruled by mob, bullies and totalitiarians. If we don’t show some size and force, history will say of us as Solzenitzen said:
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!
Solzhenitsyn
AND:
“How is that people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery and cast to the bottom of the pit can nevertheless find the strength to rise up and free themselves, first in spirit and then in body; while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly lose the taste for freedom, lose the will to defend it, and, hopelessly confused and lost, almost begin to crave slavery”.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
I agree with Paul that Kerry is making a show of consulting Congress. This is no more than theatre. It came about only because Cameron got his ass handed to him by the House of Commons. Fortunately for Kerry he really doesn’t have to stand and deliver, knowing that the opposition has more than a few minutes to shred his arguments.
Chickensoup...If he filibusters on this I think people will start gathering at the Capitol....
irish links...This is the path followed by the Left: rule by mob. Whomever is the loudest carries the day. We should avoid such behavior
__________________________________
Yeah lets help Barry convince the American people they are isolated in their thinking...
lets not encourage people that most of the country agree we should not go to war with Syria...
lets have that pesty 1st Amendment “right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances” ignored...
HEY !!! Kid !!!
Its American to voice our opinion amnd what we want OUT LOUD where everyone can see us...
Its long over due...
Would you call the disabled American veterans of WWI who camped outside the White House demanding help and medical aid and jobs in what became known as Hooverville leftists ???
The rule by mob is in my White House...
Barry and his henchmen are trying to take us into a war from which there will be no turning back..
Its unConstitutional for a president to do what the boy king is attempting to do...
You do remember the Constitution dont you ???
LOUD is what is called for...