This is Exciting

In response to Marco Rubio to Filibuster Brennan:

I have the same feeling of receding cynicism I did when the Tea Party first exploded on to the scene and began doing things that just weren’t done in America anymore — taking politics seriously, taking the Founders’ legacy to us seriously, showing up at Town Halls to ask their once and future representatives some real questions, engaging, questioning, insisting, demanding.

 There was a time 200 years ago when this was commonplance.  Americans had just won their liberty and were enthused about it.  They treated their civic duty not as a mere duty but as the highest aspiration of political man.

This filibuster excites me for the same reasons — a return to the Old Ways, the ways that actually work, the way American politics is actually supposed to be conducted, with Senators offering thoughtful defenses of their positions and, above all, insisting that this nation is We the People not We the Ministers & Lesser Bureaucratic Warlords of Whatever Current Government the Public Has Had the Folly to Install In Office.

I don’t entirely agree with Rand Paul, at least if he’s arguing for an absolute bar– the Terrorist On His Way To Deliver a Working Nuke to NYC obviously (to me anyway) merits a unilateral exercise of prophylactic lethal force (assuming time won’t permit regular order to be followed).

But this filibuster is bigger even than that issue (which is itself large).  This filibuster is about the basic character of a Democratic Republic, and restoring that character to good working order.