That's how Mediaite characterizes it.
Judge for yourself:
I'd say he's making a standard activist point: If people resist in huge numbers, they can't be stopped. That's America's great civil disobedience tradition. Those who are in the position to announce new mandates know this and must take it into account. The potential for mass resistance is a built-in safeguard. One of 2 forces will stop them. Either they will self-regulate, or they will uncover the inherent limit to their power.We are at a moment of truth and a crossroads. Will we allow these people to use fear and propaganda to do further harm to our society, economy, and children?
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) August 8, 2021
Or will we stand together and say, absolutely not. Not this time. I choose freedom. pic.twitter.com/XrI2tjdAHW
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41 comments:
There's a rule in leadership that you don't give an order that you know won't be followed. I'm doubtful of new mandates simply because half of the states would refuse to implement them. The WH would look incredibly weak if that happened, and there would be pressure to escalate against red states who refused, which in turn risks an even bigger loss.
Given the most recent example (0bama B-day bash) of rules for thee but not the Chosen, it shouldn’t come as a surprise when there is concerted pushback.
I prefer the argument that Congress should put on its big boy pants & reclaim the power it has ceded to the Executive by allowing the regulatory agencies to set the rules. Congress is established in Article I not by accident. Is sad that Congress critters are cowards.
"Wild" is not a word that I would use to characterize Dr. Paul's (or Senator Paul's) comments, but, to be fair, most of Mediate's review was not "wild" either. I would have used the word "measured" to characterize his statement. And perhaps his Kentucky accent is the reason, but I was reminded of words from some of our earlier leaders - many of them southern themselves.
Senator Paul was on the baseball field when a madman (with a dislike of Republicans) tried to kill everyone, including an 11 year old boy, present. He was badly injured when a person who happened to live adjacent to him and with a healthy dislike of his politics attacked him physically. After a Trump speech in Washington DC, he and his wife headed back to their hotel just across a Washington DC street. Due to the rioters the trip took hours. It took about 8 DC policemen surrounding them to get them actually into the hotel once they got close.
I wouldn't blame him if he was "wild". Taking a "measured" approach is a good choice.
Some people are worried about the direction the country is going if people don't obey the pandemic rules while others are afraid if them do. There is a third choice - the law of unintended consequences which both POV seldom consider.
Our leaders have such a long list now of crimes against the people of this country, or abuse of their office, or stepping over their Constitutional authority that I've been waiting for the people in this country to stand up and say, 'no more'. The Left made the phrase 'resist' trite by calling anyone President Trump and anyone who disagreed with the Left, authoritarians, tyrants, etc. They were playing the game 'resist' before he was even inaugurated. But reality shows a much different story.
I won't list all of the issues here, but you all have eyes. You can see what is happening to your country. Even as the 'sophisticated vaccinated' nobility parties on Martha's Vineyard- we watch as our schools are turned into indoctrination centers, that is, IF Randi Weingarten allows the schools to operate at all. We watch as our police are defunded, leaving in droves, and those left, getting shot at, killed, attacked. We watch as Antifa gets free rein in Seattle and Portland and have destroyed those cities, while leaders smile on approvingly. We watch as homeless take over large chunks of our cities. We watch our open borders, opening our doors to anything and anyone- covid or not- by the hundreds of thousands.
And we watch as China sends a virus around the world, killing our economy, opening up the door to government seizure of power in this country and others, while China continues to work on its military and sends computer viruses and hackers to attack our cyber-structure.
We watch as Nancy Pelosi puts citizens accused of- at best- misdemeanors, into prison with no bail, no rights, for an undetermined length, while thousands of felony actors in the 2020 riots were bailed out multiple times by Democrats, among them, our Vice President, Ms. Harris.
I'm waiting for the middle to stand up and say, 'no more'. And by middle, I'm referring to the middle and south of the country. Let the coast rot at this point. Let them play as actors in their own play. Let the sophisticated vaccinated live under their own policies. Let them stew in their own mess. The rest of us need to stand up and do what we need to do. I'm glad Sen. Paul is among the first to stand up and say the words. It's time. There is much more wrong with this country than people not getting vaccinated or wearing masks.
I see resistance already happening, unspoken, in this way. The church I go to very quickly adopted the establishment/safe view on COVID restrictions in March 2020. No services at all. When services started back up, a number of precautions existed: Mandatory masks, seating only every other pew, no singing from the congregation, no shaking hands, family groups to be six feet apart at all times from other family groups. Starting in April 2021, as vaccination became widespread, these precautions abated. First the mask mandate was ended for those who were vaccinated. Then the pew separation and household distancing was ended. A few weeks later, congregational singing was re-established. Then just a month ago, the part of the service where you shake hands with your neighbors was re-introduced. In the last month, COVID has surged back to levels that were in force when the original restrictions were imposed but not a single restriction has been announced. We still sing congregationally, shake hands if we want to, don't wear masks and don't household-distance. It seems evident to me that this church doesn't plan to announce all those restrictions again and I'm guessing that is partly because they are concerned about how the parishioners would react.
Rand Paul talks a good game and does nothing. This is just more talk. When it comes to backing up the big talk he's Kentucky's Lindsey graham.
My wife and I suspect that the reason there is no statewide mask mandate in California is that Governor Newsom is up for recall. Science indeed.
"Consent of the Governed" involves far more than periodic elections.
WILD RANT? Far from it. I think sobering is more appropriate.
Love the approach, hate the topic. I just don't feel that strongly about COVID mitigation mandates. I understand the danger of overreach, but I am honest enough to admit I don't know what the virus will do or what is the best approach to containing it. I'm generally supportive of what's been done, under Trump and Biden, even though, again, there has been overreach at times. Maybe I can afford to equivocate because so many of my fellow citizens are looking out for my liberties.
I would love taking Sen. Paul's approach to a host of other topics. Taking our schools and colleges back. Resisting speech codes and standing up and declaring, "You will no longer target me because of my race or perceived privilege." Otherwise, get vaccinated, stop talking about the 2020 election, and save the damn country.
Just ask Antifa or BLM. They get away with violence, rioting, looting, burning down small businesses, and terrorizing innocent white people...and Kamala raises money to bail them out. There IS going to be a civil war if this keeps up, and something is telling me it isn't going to stop anytime soon.
There's a great deal of trust being put in agencies that have by and large discredited themselves. The CDC and Fauci have abused our trust severely in the last year, and the idea that somehow this time they've got the right things going on is really kind of laughable.
And more and more it all seems like a 'Rules for thee but not for me' situation is being played out.
(BTW, same thing for CAGW - there's something off about folks flocking to climate conferences at remote luxurious locales in private jets to decide how the peasants must restrict their lifestyles for the good of the planet. Yeah, show you're serious and use Zoom meetings, why don'tcha?)
Seems kinda like a wild rant when he threatens to defund agencies that do not mandate that all employees end work from home while repeatedly proclaiming I choose freedom.
The fear-theater that underpins the Covid Plandemic is the excuse the elites will use to justify mail-in ballots and related fraud in future elections. The Uniparty - their symbol is the Vulture - is feasting on the carcass of America and most Americans are oblivious to the danger. But at least the pudding eater in the White House isn't sending out mean Tweets.
“Wild”? Why even his hair is fairly composed there!
I went into a post office a short while back. There was a sign on the door saying that anyone entering must wear a mask. But the employees weren't wearing masks, so I asked if I needed to go to my car to get a mask. "They made us put that up there, but we're not wearing them, and we don't give a fuck if anyone else does." Okay then. A government employee tossing around the word "fuck" to a customer is a pretty good indication of the intensity with which many people hate mask mandates at this point.
"That's how Mediaite characterizes it."
And in a way they are correct: from a progressive point of view, advocating liberty = rant.
"Either they will self-regulate, or they will uncover the inherent limit to their power."
But unfortunately, that power is not "inherent." The limit must be activated and imposed.
Rand is right to rant, but still sounds too optimistic.
Rand Paul is either the voice of sanity or the voice of Satan. I don’t know which anymore. Our grocery superstore had a sign on the door yesterday, encouraging mask wearing. I could count on one hand the number inside, including me, who wore one. I thought, these people are done with Covid, and this is a blue state that had strict lockdowns. Civil disobedience can take the form of people just not listening to the authorities anymore. Whether that is good or bad in this case, I don’t know. I only know I am weary of the Covid drama.
For 16 months I wore a mask in public without exception. Not this time.
Sen. Dr. Paul gave Dr Fauci and the CDC babe chances to justify the new shutdowns and maskings, based on science. They failed. The mostly retired Doctor, has made them look foolish time after time, because of their inconsistencies. Don’t demand that we get vaccinated, and then that we have to wear masks indoors anyway. Much of the country got vaccinated so that they wouldn’t have to wear silly face diapers everywhere.
Of course, the decision to demand masks after vaccinations was never a medical or scientific decision. The timing tells the story. The Administration was fine, as were the head bureaucrats like Fauci with the vaccination message. But large Dem constituencies, most notably and vocally the teachers’ unions, pushed back and demanded masking and shutdowns again (probably for the teachers, so that they don’t have to go back into their classrooms). And a couple days later, the Administration caved, and their top medical bureaucrats announced the changed policy. But it was never really a medical or scientific decision, but rather a political one. So they really couldn’t defend it when questioned by Sen. Dr. Paul. He ran rings around them, making them look like the medical hacks they are (having spent their careers as bureaucrats, and not saving lives). No surprise then that the MSM arm of the DNC is trying to change the focus to how he made the top medical bureaucrats look like tools trying to defend the undefendable, to how much of a whack job they want you to believe he is.
This whole fiasco just points out, again, that the Biden Administration is a rudderless ship, with one interest group or constituency pushing them one way, then the next. There is no one at the helm. If there had been, they could have enforced messaging discipline, and if they needed to support the teachers’ unions and bureaucrats over the American people, they should have laid a proper foundation for it, through an orchestrated campaign over a couple weeks, maybe starting with leading academic epidemiologists plausibly explaining why we need masking of the vaccinated. Then maybe a well staged House hearing (since Dr Rand is in the Senate, and the Speaker has more control that the Senate Majority Leader, as evidenced by her heavily staged 1/6 show trial). And then with the “science” (supposedly) all on their side, have the head medical bureaucrats announce the change in policy. Instead, the Biden Administration threw them to the wolves, defending a policy that they had opposed a week or two earlier. And then got publicly eviscerated by Sen. Dr. Paul when he got the chance.
I am also curious what made it "wild"? Was there inordinate gesticulation? Was a dangerous level of frothy saliva produced?
My body.
My choice.
Masks are so 2020. Why the vaccine is the best way through Covid
Dr ZDogg on Vaccines
One version of the Franklin wise saying:
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
We all have choices with Covid. If you fear it, isolate yourself. Don't isolate everyone else.
“In the last month, COVID has surged back to levels that were in force when the original restrictions were imposed but not a single restriction has been announced. ”
It’s not roaring back. The virus has been detected in an increasing number of people recently, but, at least so far, they stubbornly aren’t dying. We don’t know how much of the recent surge in detected infections is a result of more and better testing, and how much is a result of the more infectious Delta variant, over the month of July, almost completely pushing out the other variants. According to CDC statistics, Delta went from maybe 20% to 80% innJuly, while the original strain went from 80% to 20% (or so). But maybe three weeks ago, the death rate separated from the infection rate and flattened. One theory is that the Delta variant is less deadly. Another is that enough of the populace has now been vaccinated, that they can catch the virus, but it isn’t killing them. Which is the better theory will probably become obvious over the next couple weeks, as we watch these statistics change over time. But in either case, with the flattening death rate, there is no reason to require masking of the vaccinated.
Don't we need to hear the conservative case for knuckling under to petty tyrants, before agreeing that Rand Paul isn't a lunatic?
I have affection for the phrase "irish Democracy" to describe the refusal to comply with government orders as though they had not been heard.
Arguing for the right of every American to control their own body?
Senators Gone Wild!
We are all at risk for something all the time – covid being no exception. Yes, we can die from it even if we are healthy, however, more likely if we are old and infirm. From the media, I hear cases, cases, and cases. I do not hear deaths and a breakdown of the ages and health of those that died from covid and the rate over time so I can determine my risk. They are truly hiding information.
In the last 4 months I have lost 3 blood relatives to cancer, one only 52 years old. In the past I have lost a wife, a sister and brother to cancer. The odds dying from cancer or a heart attack or something else appears to me to be much greater than covid. It is just another disease.
"That's America's great civil disobedience tradition."
I am trying to think of some examples of this great tradition. I can't think of a single one. What are you referring to here, Ms. Althouse?
"Wild rant" = Someone said something I didn't like.
Dancing wildly at among the mask-free at a crowded, drunken party, 44-60 joined Soul Brother Rand Paul in the thought "They can't arrest us all."
"No shirt, no shoes, no service" has always worked in retail stores in order to get service. Student uniforms in private military and Catholic schools has been deemed to be absolute requirements and I was even required to wear my ROTC uniform on drill day in college.
Fifty states, including Kentucky, require that vaccines for numerous diseases must be administered before public school attendance is permitted.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, protection against a deadly virus must somehow be resisted, while on the other hand, I smoked cigarettes for 32 years and was smoking two-and-one-half packs the day when I quit "cold turkey" in 1990. Believe me when I tell you that the Pfizer vaccine jabs were easier to take than withdrawal from nicotine and the smoke-sucking habit.
This isn't about masks, this is an attempt to implement "social credit" tracking of the US citizenry, beginning with one's vaccination status. To hell with that, and to hell with everyone who supports it.
In response to gadfly I’d say if we trusted the government and this were really Black Death I’d agree. But if you are in your 20s or younger it’s nearly impossible to die from this. If you’re in your 30s and 40s same in the absence of significant medical conditions. People at risk are the elderly and the medically infirm
Including the obese and diabetic. If you’re not in those categories your risk of death is incredibly small. It seems to me we are all competent to decide our own risks. This is not measles or rubella. This is a bad flu. In that case the government overstepped wildly and it is completely inappropriate for them to make any mandate about this especially now when ICU beds are plentiful and the mortality rate is extremely low given the number of people vaccinated already.
Living in california I can attest if it wasn't for the recall, power tripping Newsom would be having another field day mandating masks, party hats, you name it. He's cowering in Sacramento now and allowing counties to do the heavy lifting. Which is great as there are many referendums appearing to strip the local health authorities with the sole power to shut things down again. The president, CDC, Fauci squandered their authority and are now just blustering as people tune them out.
If we only knew for sure how many people died from the y. pestis "Black Death" bacterium we could compare that to a somewhat accurate accounting of total deaths from the SARS-CoV-2 virus over the past 18 months. The best we can do is take the scientific-wild-ass-guess that puts European Black Deaths at 25 million in the five year period beginning in 1347 and ending in 1351 when no cure existed and compare that to the 204 million people worldwide that have contracted Covid-19 and the 4.3 million who have died in a year-and-a half despite the limited availability of effective vaccines over the past eight months.
My story about conquering tobacco smoking has a sad ending. My wife and I set out to quit smoking on the same day but until four years ago when COPD intervened, my wife never stopped puffing. Now she suffers every day with severe breathing difficulties despite the best inhaler drugs money can buy. As you might expect, I don't believe that people die from 2nd hand smoke.
I agree that the government has wildly overstepped its bounds this time around. I grant them the benefit of the doubt last year when this whole thing started and there was so much uncertainty about the virus, but now they just seem irrational. Here’s a good summation of the evidence for vaccines and masking from the British Medical Journal. I was surprised to read how weak the evidence is for masks in the community setting, even though I suspected as much intuitively.
"I am trying to think of some examples of this great tradition. I can't think of a single one."
I came up with the lunch counter sit-ins in the South's desegregation period, and the early labor strikes -- except they were almost never non-violent, which is usually considered a part of the 'civil disobedience" strategy.
Of course the Boston Tea Party, but that was pre-nation, pre-Constitution. Maybe the biggest example of civil disobedience in U.S. history is the secession of the South in 1861. That didn't work out well.
Anti-Prohibition behavior? Yes, that should count, even though "committed" in secrecy as much as necessary, which might be a disqualification. Similarly, skipping our masks today might also count, depending on your own state's rules on any given day.
But the main reason that I think we have not needed a tradition of civil disobedience is for the greater positive that our Founders made explicit in the Bill of Rights, through the very First Amendment, every American citizen's right and freedom to peaceably assemble and petition for redress of our grievances. They said it, and we as a society have fought for it to be honored. So we can march on Washington, and not worry that we face Tiananmen Square, Siberia, or the guillotine for speaking our minds.
Gadfly, sorry to hear about your wife's COPD. My daughter, who also suffers from COPD, and my 16 year old granddaughter contracted Covid last November. Both had extremely mild cases that were asymptomatic by the third day. Her doctor believed that both had mild cases because both had been taking vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc supplement, 81 mg aspirin and Ivermectin as a prophylaxis under his prescription. Her husband and son, also on the same regimen, never developed Covid symptoms at all. The only additional treatment he applied was cortisone for my daughter to temporarily strengthen her lung function, given the COPD. This doctor has reportedly never lost a patient to Covid, despite a large percentage of his practice directed toward patents with reduced lung capacity for various reasons. After her experience, my wife and I got on the same regimen. You might investigate such an option for your wife. Regardless, best wishes to you and your wife.
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