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Rand Paul

U.S. Senator for Kentucky | I fight for the Constitution, individual liberty and the freedoms that make this country great.

Posted on August 27, 2021

'There needs to be hell to pay' for attack on Americans in Afghanistan

Lexington, Kentucky's NBC affiliate Lex18 reported Thursday comments that I made about the tragic attack on Americans in Kabul.

"There needs to be hell to pay,' said Sen. Rand Paul during a visit to Lexington. 'And the hell, I would say, is there shouldn't be one piece of scrap metal left intact when we leave.'

Paul says America must focus on getting Americans out of Afghanistan, and destroying all equipment that is being left behind.

"We should destroy as much equipment on the way out,' said Paul."

We should never forget these brave and heroic Americans. RIP.

Posted on August 27, 2021

Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine

Sciencemag.org (emphasis added): "The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study that some scientists wish came with a 'Don’t try this at home' label. The newly released data show people who once had a SARS-CoV-2 infection were much less likely than vaccinated people to get Delta, develop symptoms from it, or become hospitalized with serious COVID-19.

The study demonstrates the power of the human immune system, but infectious disease experts emphasized that this vaccine and others for COVID-19 nonetheless remain highly protective against severe disease and death. And they caution that intentional infection among unvaccinated people would be extremely risky. 'What we don’t want people to say is: ‘All right, I should go out and get infected, I should have an infection party.’ says Michel Nussenzweig, an immunologist at Rockefeller University who researches the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 and was not involved in the study. 'Because somebody could die.”

Posted on August 26, 2021

Resist: French protest restaurant vaccine passports by dining in the streets

In France, people are resisting vaccine passports by dining outside the bars and restaurants that require them.

They can't take your liberty if you don't let them.

CBS News reported earlier this month, "France's highest court on Thursday upheld a new law that makes it mandatory to show a 'COVID pass' at cafes, bars and restaurants as the country battles a fourth wave of coronavirus infections."

The French gave us our beloved Lady Liberty. It's good to see so many of them keeping that torch lit.

Posted on August 24, 2021

Drunk with power: Biden wants people to lose their job if they defy mandatory vaccination

President Biden is absolutely drunk with power.

Biden said on Monday, "Today I'm calling on more companies in the private sector to step up the vaccine requirements that will reach millions more people."

"If you're a business leader, a nonprofit leader, a state or local leader who has been waiting for full FDA approval to require vaccinations, I call on you now to do that and require it," he added.

Biden wants private companies to impose vaccine mandates similar to what he did to federal workers.

The president even frames his message in precisely these terms: "Do what I did: Require your employees to get vaccinated or face strict requirements," Biden said, referencing his announcement in July that federal workers will have show proof of vaccination.

Posted on August 24, 2021

Biden did a ‘terrible job’ leaving Afghanistan, but the real problem is we stayed too long

I appeared on Fox News this morning where I explained where the U.S. really went wrong in our Afghanistan policy - we stayed far too long.

As I told host Bill Hemmer, "I think Biden did a terrible job in the withdrawal. So, no I don’t think it was executed very well at all. But, we did need to leave and there has been a consensus for a decade or more to leave. So, the problem isn’t in leaving—the problem is that we stayed too long. The longer we stayed the more the expectations were, but the more complacent the Afghans grew as we fought their battles."

"Year after year we fought their battles and so they had to step up and when the time came—you know instead of James Madison or Monroe rallying the troops in 1812—the guy got on a plane and flew out immediately and left the country and all his soldiers laid down their arms."

Posted on August 23, 2021

Here, here for constitutional limits on the executive powers of Kentucky's governor

The COVID-19 pandemic has inspired a number of state governors to become drunk with power. Kentucky's Democratic Governor Andy Beshear is no exception.

The Louisville Courier-Journal reported Sunday, "The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled Saturday the Franklin Circuit Court was wrong to issue an injunction in March blocking several bills limiting the scope of Gov. Andy Beshear's power to issue emergency orders, remanding it back to the court to be dissolved."

The news outlet noted, "The unanimous ruling is mostly a victory for the Republican-dominated Kentucky General Assembly and Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who argued the legislation passed earlier this year to limit the governor's power was constitutional and should not have been blocked.

Read the entire story here.

Posted on August 20, 2021

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Posted on August 17, 2021

John Stossel: 'We SHOULD listen to Paul. He got much right about COVID-19'

Fox Business's John Stossel put together this excellent video package:

Senator @RandPaul is censored—his YouTube channel frozen for a week.

Why? We SHOULD listen to Paul. He got much right about #Covid19: pic.twitter.com/SnBGHignUK

Monolithic social media companies have tried to determine what the truth is concerning COVID-19 and what constitutes proper health policy for a year and a half. My YouTube channel was censored for a week for questioning the government's mask guidelines, expressing a viewpoint that even Dr. Anthony Fauci once expressed as well.

This is dangerous. Big Tech should not be able to control our public discourse.

Thanks again to John Stossel for highlighting this important issue.

Posted on August 16, 2021

If more people had listened to my father our war in Afghanistan would have been less tragic

By Sen. Rand Paul

After America was attacked by al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001, my father, Republican Congressman Ron Paul, voted for a U.S. strike on the Taliban in Afghanistan for harboring the 9/11 terrorists.

We were attacked, so we struck back. This is the reason we have and need a strong military: Actual national defense.

But our military is not meant for nation building. Not for policing the world. Not for imposing democracy in places that have never known it.

Not only are these bad ideas, but they aren’t the point of our military and they do nothing for our national defense.

Unfortunately, that was the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney neoconservative vision of perpetual U.S.-led wars around the globe. We know how that worked out in Iraq. Now we are learning how it ends in Afghanistan.

But this isn’t hindsight.

It was always doomed for failure, and some have said so for a very long time, and proved right time and time again through our recent foreign policy disasters.

It was my father, often alone in his party, who said for decades that the neocons’ endless wars would always come back to haunt us.

He did it early, and often. Over the weekend, a video compilation of warnings my Dad issued years ago went viral. Why was a 13-year-old video of a Congressman who retired in 2012 going viral?

Because he was right and more people should have listened to him, to me and to others who have been saying for a decade that this war needed to end.

Ron Paul asked questions like, “What if occupying countries like Iraq and Afghanistan and bombing Pakistan is directly related to the hatred directed toward us?” The scenes we see coming out of Afghanistan today are rage-filled. We honor and respect the brave men and women who served there for so long, but to ask them to stay another year there would be unconscionable. They did their duty.

“What if all wartime spending is paid for through the deceitful process of inflating and borrowing?” Dad asked. Considering that we were never able to afford the trillions spent in Afghanistan and we are now more concerned about inflation at home, Dad seemed ahead of his time.

My father asked, “What if we finally see that wartime conditions always undermine personal liberty?” Thanks to whistleblower Edward Snowden, we have a clearer picture of how our government abuses our constitutional liberties every day, often using post-9/11 jargon to justify it.

And again, on Afghanistan, my father had long urged to bring American troops home after the U.S. accomplished its original mission early on.

If the neoconservatives and others at the time had listened to Ron Paul back then, the tragedy in Afghanistan would not have been prolonged. Most importantly, it would have saved thousands of American lives and also money that we don’t actually have.

During the Tea Party-era ten years ago, I and other libertarian-leaning Republicans followed in my father’s footsteps and managed to change some formerly hawkish minds about war. When Donald Trump became president by blasting the Bush administration’s interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and condemning “endless wars,” Dad’s foreign policy message had come full circle within the GOP.

Yet, if the Republican Party had been more like Ron Paul than Dick Cheney throughout the aughts, it would have saved our country a lot of heartache. If Barack Obama had actually ended the wars he promised too, like Dad had long urged, we would have been better off.

Now the same people who still defend the Iraq War and who also wanted to stay in Afghanistan forever are some of the loudest voices criticizing the Taliban retaking control of that country. If after 20 years of preparing Afghanistan to govern itself, it immediately bends to extremists the moment we leave, what did hawks think we were going to accomplish over another decade—or ever? Was two decades not enough time?

The fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban is sad but the blame should attach to the naive neocons who thought they could create a Jeffersonian democracy in a land clinging to the Stone Age, not to those who warned that it would inevitably end in a mess.

What’s clear today is that no one with the last name Cheney should even be speaking publicly right now. This origin of this debacle lies at their feet.

What’s even clearer, is that unfortunately the warnings of a Republican congressman from Texas years ago now feel more prescient than ever.

Posted on August 16, 2021

More people should have listened to Ron Paul years ago

My father retired from Congress a decade ago. But he had a few questions that we should have paid closer attention to.

America would have been better off if our leaders had listened to Ron Paul years ago:

"What if our foreign policy of the past century is deeply flawed and has not served our national security interests?

What if we wake up one day and realize that the terrorist threat is a predictable consequence of our meddling in the affairs of others and has nothing to do with us being free and prosperous?

What if propping up repressive regimes in the Middle East endangers Both the United States and Israel?

What if occupying countries like Iraq and Afghanistan and bombing Pakistan is directly related to the hatred directed toward us?

What is some day it dawns on us that losing over 5,000 American military personnel in the Middle East since 9/11 is not a fair tradeoff for the loss of nearly 3,000 American citizens (on 9/11).

What if it is finally realized that war and military spending is always destructive to the economy?

What if all wartime spending is paid for through the deceitful process of inflating and borrowing?

What if we finally see that wartime conditions always undermine personal liberty?

What happens if my concerns are completely unfounded? Nothing.

But what happens if my concerns are justified and ignored? Nothing good."

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