FOUND: A Republican for limited government

Primary elections are like Where’s Waldo pictures.  Voters systematically scan the homogenized field of candidates in search of differences— any variable they can latch onto, hold up, and proclaim, “this is my candidate.”

This week, Waldo might look like the curly haired senator from Kentucky because Rand Paul is about to pare himself from the GOP apple.

Aspects of the U.S. Patriot Act—most notably section 215 which gave rise to the NSA’s collection and storage of Americans’ phone data—are about to expire, and Rand Paul is poised for a Mr.-Smith-Goes-to-Washington style attack on their extension.

{mosads}Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), the newest name in the GOP presidential discussion, has been a vocal fanboy of the NSA spying. When the issue first made headlines in 2013, he told the Fox & Friends crew, “I don’t think you’re talking to the terrorists. I know you’re not. I know I’m not. So we don’t have anything to worry about.”

This sort of trust-your-good-ol’-Uncle-Sam mentality should be frightening to less hypocritical Republican voters—the ones who say they believe in limited government and actually believe in limited government.

Jeb Bush is also a fan, calling the NSA tracking, “the best part of the Obama administration.”

Aside from Paul, Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) is the only other GOP candidate taking a moderate stance on the bill, but his dissent isn’t rooted in deep philosophical objection like Paul’s is.

As a right-of-center-libertarian Republican, this is a genuine philosophical split between Paul and the other candidates, not just typical, incremental political positioning.  At the same time—and lucky for him—it happens to be an excellent political move.  A poll commissioned by the ACLU and performed by Global Strategy Group and G² Public Strategies showed that 60 percent of likely voters support modifying the Patriot Act.  But, more interesting, is the breakdown of the poll which shows that 58 percent of Republicans and 59 percent of those who consider themselves “very conservative” favor modifying the act.

The statistics aren’t surprising.  The Patriot Act has always been about sacrificing freedom for security with constitutionality as an afterthought.  I was all for it myself once.    

I was 21 years old when I sat in my National Security Policy class and watched live footage of the first WTC tower crumbling to the ground.  Then, the second.

“It’s Osama bin Laden.” The professor told us.  And we believed him.  Just a few weeks prior he had told us that in the next six months there would be a Pearl-Harbor-sized attack on the U.S.

None of us left class when time was up.  We all just sat there watching the news coverage we’ll never forget.  I was still sitting there when the local, small-town news station came to interview the professor and my classmates. I didn’t speak to them because I was certain everything I thought I knew was wrong.

I thought the attack on Pearl Harbor was something that happened out in the middle of the ocean a million years ago before the world changed from black and white to color.  I thought America was invulnerable no matter what the professor said.

I learned more in that class that day than I learned all the rest of college and graduate school combined.  I learned that an ocean, a giant defense budget, and a nuclear arsenal can’t keep you safe.  But what could?

Like everyone else, I was terrorized that day. 

Like everyone else, I was afraid.

Enter the Patriot Act dressed in a red, white, and blue top hat promising us that the horrors of that day would never happen again on his watch.

But fear has always been companion to bad public policy.  The Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) that came with the beginning of the Quasi-war with France, The Sedition Act of 1918 that came with the First World War, The Smith Act (1940) that came along with the Second World War.  All of them sacrificed freedom for security at home, and the U.S. Patriot Act that came with the beginning of the War on Terror is just another piece of legislation in a long line of fear-induced security overreaches.

If Rand Paul makes good on his pledge to do whatever it takes to stop reauthorization of the Patriot Act, and GOP voters notice, he may manage to claw his way up into the top tier of candidates.

Zipperer is an award-winning playwright and an adjunct English professor at Georgia College.