Sen. Rand Pauls filibuster was a masterful and well-timed piece of political theater perhaps a little disordered on the merits but which nevertheless reanimates an important conversation on the limits of executive power and the states primary and proper duty to protect society from threats. It is a sometimes tricky but by no means impossible line for conservatives to traverse.
The Right Word
Sen. Rand Pauls filibuster a couple of weeks ago was enormously fun to watch and was a piece of political genius to boot. If nothing else it was a symbolic victory for conservatives who were in sore need of a public show of resistance against an increasingly engorged leviathan.
On the merits of Sen. Pauls arguments we enter more muddled territory which makes the episode all the more fascinating to watch. It recalls one of the historically central arguments in American politics that of the ontological role of the state in general and the limits of executive power specifically.
Now the question can be burlesqued by posing it at its extremes by asking on the one hand whether the President has the right to order a drone strike on an innocent journalist for writing a piece criticizing this or that policy of the administration or on the other by asking if the President needs to get a court order reviewed and signed off by the ACLU to order the shooting down of an explosives-laden airplane hurtling towards a packed football stadium that happens to be piloted by a seriously disgruntled American citizen. Little is gained by such acts of reductionism as the answers to either question are obvious to most. The struggle lies in between.
Conservatives rightly harbor a natural skepticism of executive power. This skepticism has come under strain from time to time particularly when Democrats controlled Congress and the executive was held by Republicans the natural tendency was to gravitate towards an affection for executive power. This is dangerous ground for a conservative to tread on both philosophically and practically philosophically the underpinnings of conservatism have always been geared towards a diffusion of power away from a central authority; and practically since well our guy might not always be at the helm. Like for instance… now.
The Supreme Court has much to teach us in this regard if not in the homiletic manner it is accustomed to. It has long been a favorite sport of the right to lament upon the creeping authority of the high court though even this opposition is tempered when a particular ruling comes down favoring the conservative position. As much as it is proper to guard against usurpation by the Supreme Court it ought to be equally proper to guard against the same on the part of the executive.
This is not to say mind you that a strong executive has no place. We live in an era where decisive military (or paramilitary) force may be required and where the failure to properly use such force can result in consequences too terrible to bear much contemplation. Such action can only come at the direction of the Commander-in-Chief and to deny him that ability is both wrong and supremely dangerous. (This incidentally is why that election you Americans hold every four years is kind of important.)
Adam Smith perhaps put it best when he described the first duty of the government as protecting the society against violence and invasion from other societies. I dare suggest that if an individual chooses to visit great harm or death upon his society in the name of an organization dedicated to destroying that society then that individual effectively forfeits his rights to that societys protections. The question that has badgered and gnawed at those who think and argue on the American political structure since before the Republics inception is some version of Where is the line drawn between adequately protecting society and tyrannizing it? The United States has historically done rather well at answering that question by identifying certain ideas and principles inherited and honed that place checks on the power or authoritarian overreach of any one branch of government and then codifying them in the Constitution.
Thats where the problem lies with the current administration. Do I think President Obama would like to order a missile hit on say Bill OReilly or some of the tea-partiers? Probably. Just as I am confident that Richard Nixon from time to time harbored violent day-dreams about Bob Woodward or the hippie infestation or that President Reagan did about the obnoxious Green-peace nuts. Do I think he will? Of course not. In fact I often worry that the Egalitarian-In-Chief would be more inclined to deploy the ACLU than the USMC in the face of a threat. But his demonstrated statist affinity for promiscuous use of Executive Orders coupled with the fact that he holds most of the Constitution and many other American and Western traditions and institutions in obvious contempt makes one very uneasy.
Which is why if for just a moment I too found myself standing with Rand.