I meant that his words were recorded and a matter of fact, not the content.
Another relevant portion of Paul’s remarks, from WillFarnaby’s link:
He’s right that actions in the immediate aftermath of a tragedy can be driven by emotion instead of reason, and produce outcomes that seem irrational in the light of subsequent cool reflection. See: internment of Japanese-Americans, the PATRIOT Act, the Iraq War.
You vote for your senators, we’ll vote for ours, that’s how it works. Paul won 55.7% of the popular vote, not 100%, so even if you hate him, tarnishing the whole Commonwealth over it is rather small of you.
What is cowardly about it? It might not be politically wise, but cowardly? It would be cowardly to think it but not say it for fear of the consequences.
Oh yeah, please do. The exploitation of the military has a long and storied tradition. I was in the Army. I got a couple of those ovations. It’s in everyone’s best interests for those to stop.
I think he’s a coward in general, but in this case if he thought there was something wrong with the victims at Sandy Hook coming to see him he should have told them, not couch it all in weasel words. I see Rand as a snotty prick complaining about how hard his job is when he has to look at the reality of his political philosophy.
He did. His comments were public, not private.
Which of his words are weasel words?
I agree with Rand Paul about this as a general principle (although I’m not much of a guns rights guy on the whole).
But it’s well trodden ground. It’s not like Obama is the first politician to do this, or even the thousandth.
I’ve been irked over the years by the enormous input that the families of 9/11 victims have had on all sorts of policy decisions, to pick one recent example.
That’s democracy for you …
But in each case, they’re not being held out as “experts.” They’re not making decisions. They’re mainly just making a statement that something ought to be done. I’m not sure why an emotional argument in favor of action (not the specific formulation thereof) should be categorically inappropriate. I mean–rational, informed people still need reasons.
I know you posted this before the actual quote was posted, but do you now see that he was talking to Obama, not the parents?
But you agree, I’m sure, that Pearl Harbor and 9/11 demanded action in their immediate aftermath. Calling symposia for leisurely debate before doing anything would have been wildly inappropriate.
The ‘emotional’ cry for a response was right; it was the actual decision-makers, the supposed experts, the people whose job was to implement rationality in answering the call of emotional necessity, who fucked it up.
Have you really thought about this argument?
People who are affected by a problem have always spoke out and driven solutions to the problem. Be they returning injured war vets, victims of violent crime, ill people suffering from the side effects of pollution, people fleeced by unethical corporations, those facing unfair tax policies of a confiscatory government, victims of medical malpractice or experimentation, people subjected to discrimination, workers being mistreated by employers, and those suffering from abuse by police or other authorities. By your argument the least qualified people to make rational policy decisions included the tea protesters in Boston, the marchers in Selma, and the union organizers in Chicago. Or if this is not your argument, what is different about this issue?
Maybe that’s why he said “can be driven by emotion” instead of “are always driven by emotion”.
And in your examples, an “emotional response” might have been to drop a nuke on Afghanistan (wrong) or imprison Japanese (wrong). Going to war was a rational response to the facts, not an emotional one.
Pearl Harbor represented an immediate, ongoing threat: war with the Japanese Empire.
9/11 represented a semi-immediate, semi-ongoing threat: Al-Qaeda.
The Newtown shooting represents neither; the killer is dead. This is exactly the sort of situation that allows for leisurely debate and cool reflection.
The ‘emotional cry’ is seldem just “we need a response of some kind, at your convenience”, it’s a call for specific actions that are based on emotion, even hysteria. In the case of Japanese-American internment, organizations like the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West and the California branch of the American Legion specifically called for those of Japanese ancestry or birth to be placed in concentration camps.
In the aftermath of 9/11, we had sentiments like this floating around in national periodicals:
The popular call for senseless action must be resisted, and one way to achieve that is, in cases with no immediate threat, to take time to study the issues before acting. Another way, as was referenced above, is to freeze out the most radical and dogmatic voices from the debate and listen to the moderates.
The coward would be the president using them as props in a public concern thatrates 4% against other problems. He’s using this as a publicity stunt to divert attention away from high unemployment and economic issues. It’s being reported in the news as if it was a done deal if the Senate voted it in when it’s not even being considered for a vote in the House.
But it was heartening to see the President use the most expensive limousine in the world to fly his props around. I’m sure they enjoyed it.
Are you also against gun owners speaking to Congress about their need for self-defence? Should non-experts on both sides not be used to support their respective causes?
If said gun owner had just been involved in an act of self-defense, that would be an apt analogy. Just your everyday man off the street? Not so much.
Same thing for people who had just lost friends and/or relatives, or were victims themselves, right?
If Rand has to call some people props, why can’t Obama be a prop for the families? Why are the families mindless objects in Rand Paul’s pathetic fact-less view? Why isn’t Rand Paul the one putting on a performance for the NRA and Tea Partiers?
He did not say they are “mindless objects”, he said they are being used as s such. In this instance. By Obama.
And since Obama was not personally affected by this, he doesn’t qualify.
I don’t really care for Rand Paul much. He’s kind of a kooky, not so smart mini-me of his dad. The best thing about him is that he causes the heads of so many people around here to asplode.
How many mass random shootings since Columbine where the attackers were suicidal or mad, do we need to follow with leisurely debate and cool reflection.
You are advocating giving the advantage to the emotional gun rights lobby while defusing the emotions of survivors and relatives of gun violence.
Are you saying gun rights folks are the most reasonable and rational advocates in this eternal debate?
By the time the emotions from last December die down, then another incident happens and the gun lobby talking points will come at us again.
“We need to pause for more leisurely debate.”
Bury your kid and loved one, and get back to us in a year or two, when you’ve come to your senses and can see why some Americans must have their lethal mass killing firearms more than you need to spend your life with a loved one that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.