Ron Paul Will Save Our Civil Liberties
Iraq, immigration, runaway spending, and health care are often listed among the top issues in the 2008 US presidential election, but the ongoing destruction of our centuries-old civil liberties is perhaps more important than any of them. Among the top tier presidential candidates, only Ron Paul will restore and defend the civil liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights and inherent in our American legal traditions.
What are civil liberties, and why are they so important? At a very fundamental level, they determine whether we live in a free country, or not. In a free country, no one can be arbitrarily arrested and detained, without being informed of the charges against him and given the chance to defend himself in a speedy public trial before a jury of his peers. In a free country, no one can be tortured, either to extract information or as punishment for a crime.
In a free country, citizens are free to carry on their day-to-day business and correspondence, without government agents spying on them, intercepting their communications, or searching their homes and papers, except after presenting a valid search warrant, issued by a court upon seeing valid evidence that a crime has been committed or may soon be.
Each of these basic civil liberties is explicitly protected in the Bill of Rights, making the fact that they are even an issue in this election an ominous sign of how just far we have already strayed from the rule of law and the tenets of freedom. The Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, the Real ID Act, and various executive orders and actions have been chipping away at these fundamental rights in recent years. Warrant-less wiretaps and attacks on the right of habeas corpus are some of the most high-profile violations.
Rather than acting to strengthen and protect our civil rights after learning of these abuses, Congress has instead been working to put its legal stamp of approval upon them, even going so far as to consider legal amnesty for telecommunications companies which assisted the government in spying on American citizens.
Ron Paul's record of defending our civil liberties is flawless. He has never voted to violate the Bill of Rights, and he never will. He voted against the Patriot Act, against the Military Commissions Act, and against the Real ID Act. He has been a tireless advocate for freedom and privacy rights.
Ron Paul recently introduced the American Freedom Agenda Act (HR3835), a stunning indictment of the ongoing assault on our civil liberties. The AFA would repeal the Military Commissions Act in its entirety, ban evidence obtained by torture, restore habeas corpus, reassert the legal authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and shift the Constitutional balance of power between the President and Congress back to its historical roots.
Some will argue that abuses of our civil liberties have not been widespread, that most Americans are still mostly free, and that the government needs additional powers to protect us from the threat of terrorism. These people are missing the point. The time to defend civil liberties is before their abuse is widespread, before tyranny can take root.
In any country that has allowed the government to arrest people secretly, to imprison them without trial, to torture them for information, to spy on them without safeguards, or to search their homes and effects without a warrant, those powers have invariably been abused. When the government can decide who deserves civil liberties protections and who does not, no one is safe, least of all those who would criticize the government for its actions.
If you care about civil liberties, if you think the Constitution was more than just a good idea, if you want America to remain a free country so that our children and their children can enjoy the blessings of liberty as we have, I urge you to vote for Ron Paul for president. It may well be the most important vote you ever cast.
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What are civil liberties, and why are they so important? At a very fundamental level, they determine whether we live in a free country, or not. In a free country, no one can be arbitrarily arrested and detained, without being informed of the charges against him and given the chance to defend himself in a speedy public trial before a jury of his peers. In a free country, no one can be tortured, either to extract information or as punishment for a crime.
In a free country, citizens are free to carry on their day-to-day business and correspondence, without government agents spying on them, intercepting their communications, or searching their homes and papers, except after presenting a valid search warrant, issued by a court upon seeing valid evidence that a crime has been committed or may soon be.
Each of these basic civil liberties is explicitly protected in the Bill of Rights, making the fact that they are even an issue in this election an ominous sign of how just far we have already strayed from the rule of law and the tenets of freedom. The Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, the Real ID Act, and various executive orders and actions have been chipping away at these fundamental rights in recent years. Warrant-less wiretaps and attacks on the right of habeas corpus are some of the most high-profile violations.
Rather than acting to strengthen and protect our civil rights after learning of these abuses, Congress has instead been working to put its legal stamp of approval upon them, even going so far as to consider legal amnesty for telecommunications companies which assisted the government in spying on American citizens.
Ron Paul's record of defending our civil liberties is flawless. He has never voted to violate the Bill of Rights, and he never will. He voted against the Patriot Act, against the Military Commissions Act, and against the Real ID Act. He has been a tireless advocate for freedom and privacy rights.
Ron Paul recently introduced the American Freedom Agenda Act (HR3835), a stunning indictment of the ongoing assault on our civil liberties. The AFA would repeal the Military Commissions Act in its entirety, ban evidence obtained by torture, restore habeas corpus, reassert the legal authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and shift the Constitutional balance of power between the President and Congress back to its historical roots.
Some will argue that abuses of our civil liberties have not been widespread, that most Americans are still mostly free, and that the government needs additional powers to protect us from the threat of terrorism. These people are missing the point. The time to defend civil liberties is before their abuse is widespread, before tyranny can take root.
In any country that has allowed the government to arrest people secretly, to imprison them without trial, to torture them for information, to spy on them without safeguards, or to search their homes and effects without a warrant, those powers have invariably been abused. When the government can decide who deserves civil liberties protections and who does not, no one is safe, least of all those who would criticize the government for its actions.
If you care about civil liberties, if you think the Constitution was more than just a good idea, if you want America to remain a free country so that our children and their children can enjoy the blessings of liberty as we have, I urge you to vote for Ron Paul for president. It may well be the most important vote you ever cast.
