Gerson Nails Rand Paul

Regular readers will know that Michael Gerson is one of my favorite voices on the right, not least because of his principled stance against libertarianism. But, I also admire Gerson because of his ability to deliver a hard blow of reason in the face of over-heated rhetoric. In his essay this morning about Senator Rand Paul's filibuster about the Obama administration's drone policy, Gerson notes that Sen. Paul, in sounding the alarm about the potential for a U.S. president to send drones into cafes, "is careful to point out that he is concerned about the possible abuses of some future Hitler-like president. (Though one imagines the advent of a Hitler-like president would present problems other than drone policy.)" That parenthetical is to Sen. Paul's analogy what a pin is to a balloon: Once inserted, you just sit back and watch the balloon fly around the room until it lands, empty and lifeless, on the floor. Bravo.