Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

nationaljournal.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 207 posts

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#41

Post by shitlord »

fleitz wrote: post #26
JulianMorrison wrote: post #11

The man is such a disaster in so many other ways, that getting one thing right is more of a half-cup of punch in a turd-bowl.

He's also against the President being allowed to execute US citizens with out charge or trial.

And against gay marriage, too! His defenders will claim that although he does not like it, he will still allow it. But that's not true either, because he will leave it to the states to decide (and about half of them will decide to ban it).

Private prisons? Have at it. Urban poverty? Let the charities deal with it. Access to abortion? Similar response to gay marriage.

The only reason he's popular on the internet is because he likes bitcoin, wants to legalize weed, wants to drastically reduce defense spending (including scaling back the NSA), and likes "civil liberties" (whatever those are).

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#42

Post by zak_mc_kracken »

All presidential candidates make similar promises when they run, and then, when they get elected, they get exposed to the true reasons why most of these programs exist and they realize the reality is not as simple as it seemed from outside. And then, they perpetuate the status quo.

Besides, I just can't stand libertarians who contradict their own positions saying that they want the government out of their lives except when it pertains to contraception, abortion, mandatory vaccinations and same-sex marriage.

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#43

Post by jfaucett »

lubos wrote: post #30

This is not surprising. Rand Paul, similar to his father Ron Paul, has very libertarian political views which means they prefer no government involvement, not just in the Internet but anywhere. This is not as good as it sounds. For example, he doesn't support FED in controlling money supply. But FED was instrumental in making USD the most stable currency in the last 100 years. He doesn't like energy regulations and b…

Some of you're statements about his political views appear to be false: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rand_Paul#Political_positions)

Its always nice to have a link when you make such claims :)

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#44

Post by cbd1984 »

researcher88 wrote: post #36

If anyone is a threat to the Establishment, it is Rand Paul. He is not perfect but he can't be if he wants to win. He has a serious chance of getting the nomination and will help propel the conversation on surveillance reform and criminal justice reform. In another article, it said that he wants to eliminate jail time on all non-violent drug misdemeanors.

> If anyone is a threat to the Establishment, it is Rand Paul.

He's not a threat to the part of the Establishment which wants government regulation rolled back so they can pollute and play games with energy prices.

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#45

Post by angersock »

lubos wrote: post #30

This is not surprising. Rand Paul, similar to his father Ron Paul, has very libertarian political views which means they prefer no government involvement, not just in the Internet but anywhere. This is not as good as it sounds. For example, he doesn't support FED in controlling money supply. But FED was instrumental in making USD the most stable currency in the last 100 years. He doesn't like energy regulations and b…

And then there is his religious agenda like anti-abortion, anti same-sex marriages, anti mandatory vaccination etc...

So, this is an interesting ad-hominem, but something to consider is that, if a candidate is against pervasive government influence, they probably are also against using the .gov to enforce their ideology on other people.

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#46

Post by joshuapants »

lubos wrote: post #30

This is not surprising. Rand Paul, similar to his father Ron Paul, has very libertarian political views which means they prefer no government involvement, not just in the Internet but anywhere. This is not as good as it sounds. For example, he doesn't support FED in controlling money supply. But FED was instrumental in making USD the most stable currency in the last 100 years. He doesn't like energy regulations and b…

I disagree with many of Rand Paul's stances, but I think you're being misleading in saying that his stance on vaccination is related to his religious views. You should probably edit your comment to put that under a different category (like the preceding three blocks relating to his libertarian views).

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#47

Post by higherpurpose »

zmanian wrote: post #19

One thing I'm confident in is that the further Rand Paul makes in the election process, the more discussion and awareness of mass surveillance's threat to democracy itself.

I remember when Ron Paul ran in the primaries, and in one of the first debates from 2011 I believe, they asked the Republican candidates whether they support a stronger Patriot Act or not. Like all the other 4 or 5 other candidates tried to out-match each other in how much stronger they would like the Patriot Act and other such laws to be.

Ron Paul? He was the only one who said he would do away with it. Full stop. If only Rand Paul could reverse that majority of opinion this time in the debates, and force most candidates to say they'd also scale back on the mass surveillance, support repealing the Patriot, FISAA, EO12333, and possibly even pardon Snowden (probably even promising that in the campaign would be the best litmus test to see whether a candidate is actually serious about truly reforming the surveillance powers).

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#48

Post by vezzy-fnord »

lubos wrote: post #30

This is not surprising. Rand Paul, similar to his father Ron Paul, has very libertarian political views which means they prefer no government involvement, not just in the Internet but anywhere. This is not as good as it sounds. For example, he doesn't support FED in controlling money supply. But FED was instrumental in making USD the most stable currency in the last 100 years. He doesn't like energy regulations and b…

He's a traditional U.S. states' rights conservative, an ideal intersecting with classical liberalism - less common these days due to the widespread influence of neoconservatism.

He doesn't really touch on deeper libertarian or even minarchist philosophy at all. His stringent views on border security are also unusual for it (unless you're Hans-Hermann Hoppe).

His platform ultimately rests on anti-federalism.

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#49

Post by saboot »

I'm not in favor of a rand paul president, or even nominee. However I think it's great to at least have one candidate who can steer the conversation towards these issues.

Hopefully he will go after candidates on the left and right about this.

Re: Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

#50

Post by lettergram »

lubos wrote: post #30

This is not surprising. Rand Paul, similar to his father Ron Paul, has very libertarian political views which means they prefer no government involvement, not just in the Internet but anywhere. This is not as good as it sounds. For example, he doesn't support FED in controlling money supply. But FED was instrumental in making USD the most stable currency in the last 100 years. He doesn't like energy regulations and b…

Alright, two things..

(1) It seems you are just dismissing him and his father have similar ideas, which aren't necessarily any crazier than every other politician ever (i.e. social security is so awesome). Rand and Ron Paul both supported STATES rights, which lets be honest, makes it possible to move between states and have different taxes, laws, and unique experiences. This leads me to my second point...

(2) "His religious agenda" he's made it clear he doesn't have a agenda, he's not going to push any religious agenda because he seems (at least) to support the constitution. This means that,

(2a) Rand seems to support the President, Senate, House, and Supreme court all being separate. Constitutionally, the president doesn't control a state religion, abortion, marriage, etc.

(2b) Supporting the policy of letting the states determine their laws seems probably the most American thing to do. If you don't like it, you just move to a different state where people are like minded.

It's actually pretty awesome if you ask me, we can work together to defend our country, but live the way we want.

That is the American dream.

Post reply on HN