Last week on the Senate floor, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul reminded the American people of Franklin’s saying, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” 

Senator Paul spent approximately 13 hours filibustering Obama’s nomination of John Brennan to lead the CIA. The tactic is rarely used in the Senate, but Senator Paul said an “alarm” had to be sounded about the threats imposed by our own government. He promised to speak “until the President says, no, he will not kill you in a café,” by which he meant use drone strikes against American citizens on the U.S. soil. 

Not surprisingly, Brennan’s nomination was confirmed, but Senator Paul’s filibuster has successfully grabbed national attention on the issue that has been ignored by most of the mainstream media. 

Rand Paul has been widely misunderstood as someone who “pulls political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids in their dorm,” according to a Wall Street Journal editorial. But Paul’s finger pointing is far more than just a rant on Obama’s national security policy, it’s a constitutional principle concerning whether or not the Fifth Amendment is violated. 

In a testimony last Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Eric Holder did not entirely rule out using drone strikes against Americans. But he said it has never been done previously and he could see it being considered only in an extraordinarily extreme case. Holder has inspired the question: What constitutes an “extraordinarily extreme” case? 

The Fifth Amendment states “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law except in cases rising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger.” The underlying concept is that government may not behave arbitrarily and capriciously, but must act fairly according to the established rules. All provisions in the Fifth Amendment aim to limit the power of government to take action against individuals. 

We may not know if the list that Holder provided to the committee is comprised of the circumstances matching the Fifth Amendment, but we do know that using drone strikes to kill Americans is without due process of law. 

At the heart of the issue is the right of the executive branch to be able to designate “enemy combatants” in the absence of a congressional declaration of war. Many Americans are unaware that the U.S. constitution delegates war powers to the Congress, not the president. Congress also has the additional powers “To declare war, grant letters of marquee and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water” and “to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces; To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.” 

Each of these enumerated powers in the U.S. Constitution clearly indicates that Congress, not the president, is charged with keeping the nation safe and making the decisions to engage in violence. Even Alexander Hamilton — an opponent to executive power — agreed with this, writing in 1794 that “war is a question, under our constitution, not of Executive, but of Legislative cognizance. It belongs to Congress to say — whether the Nation shall of choice dismiss the olive branch and unfurl the banners of War.”

Senator Paul was talking all by himself on the Senate floor. On one level, it shows the power of a single senator to make a difference. On the other hand, it’s a sad statement that people on both the right and left remained silent, including most mainstream media. 

Thanks to the filibuster, he has made the American people aware the government so often abuses its power if more people don’t speak out.