PAUL: It's all of the above. My bill would have addressed refugees, students, visitors and those who want to emigrate from countries that have significant jihadists movements. The Boston bombers also came here as refugees and became radicalized. So I think that for the president to say there's no danger is incorrect. But I do agree with those who say the visa waiver program is a problem. There are many French citizens who want to attack their government and attack us and we have no program for screening them. I say they should all come in through global entry, sort of a frequent flier program where you have to get background check or they have to wait 30 days.
PAUL: I'm very worried about that because I think when you have a fearful time or an angry time, that people are coached into giving up their liberty. In the United States, all phone records are still being collected all the time and we still had the attacks. And realize that in France, they have bulk collection or surveillance of their citizens a thousand fold greater than what we have with very little privacy protections. They still didn't know anything about this. So what I would argue is that you can keep giving up liberty but in the end I don't think we'll be safer, but we may have lost who we are as a people in the process.
PAUL: If you're doing surveillance on religious institutions, yes. I think surveillance, though, has lower threshold for individuals. I think the discussion should be, "will we have surveillance, will we follow people who we think are a risk?" That's even a lower threshold than getting a search warrant. So, yes, we should follow people who are a risk. Should we talk to their neighbors and friends? Should we talk to their imam? Sure, all of that is legitimate. But should we target mosques and have a database of Muslims? Absolutely not. And I think that's really disqualifying for both Donald Trump and Marco Rubio to say that we're going to close down every place that potentially has a discussion that might lead to extremism. That would require some sort of religious czar that I think isn't consistent with our freedom.
PAUL: I think the first thing we have to do is learn from our history. In the past several decades, if there's one true thing in the Middle East, it's that when we've toppled secular dictators, we've gotten chaos and the rise of radical Islam. So if we want a long lasting victory and peace, the boots on the ground are going to have to be Arab, and you're going to have to have Sunni Muslims defeating Sunni Muslims because even the Shiite Muslims can't occupy these Sunni cities. ISIS is essentially surrounded, but what we have to do is, we do need a ceasefire in Syria, and probably Russia's going to be part of that solution if we're willing to talk with them, but we also need to engage Turkey on one side. We need to engage the Kurds on one side.
PAUL: What I want to do first is secure the border. If we secure the border and we can say who is coming, who is going, and only people come, come legally, the 11 million that are here, I think there could be a work status for them. And I think what I have tried to say is, what we want is more legal immigration, so we have less illegal immigration. But I am open to immigration reform. I voted against the bill that came forward, though, primarily because it limited the number of legal work visas.
PAUL: Well, you add that to the fact I am also one of the most conservative members of the Senate, in the sense that I vote against spending, I vote against unbalanced budgets, I'm a proponent of lower taxes. So all of those are right within the mainstream of the party. But I do have some additional things--I call them sometimes the libertarian-ish kind of issues--of believing in privacy, believing in criminal justice, that everyone should be treated fairly under the law, no matter the color of your skin. We still have a large problem in our country that, if you are black, you are not always being treated fairly under the law. And I want to fix that.
PAUL: Occasionally, I can be partisan, but, on this, I don't think I would jump to the conclusion that, all of a sudden, the ayatollah of Iran is telling the truth, and my government is lying to us. Now, the biggest problem we have right now is that every time there is a hint of an agreement, the Iranian foreign minister tweets out in English that the agreement doesn't mean what our government says it means. So I keep an open mind as to who is telling the truth. It is very, very damaging to the American public, and to the details of this agreement, if we can't trust the sincerity or the credibility of the Iranian government
Q: So, at this point, you have an open mind about this?
PAUL: Yes. I want peace. I want negotiations. I don't want another war. But I also want a good agreement.
If the GOP wants to appeal to minorities and other voters beyond its core conservative base, he said, it must defend the entire Bill of Rights. The party should make the case that "big government's not only a problem as far as regulation and taxes, [but also] with sometimes not giving justice to those who deserve it."
"When I look at government, I think the most important thing we do at the federal level is defend our country, without question," he stressed. "I envision an America with a national defense unparalleled... and unencumbered by nation building."
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The above quotations are from CBS "Face the Nation" interviews during 2015 (Bob Schieffer interviewing candidates for 2015 and 2016 races). Click here for other excerpts from CBS "Face the Nation" interviews during 2015 (Bob Schieffer interviewing candidates for 2015 and 2016 races). Click here for other excerpts by Rand Paul. Click here for a profile of Rand Paul.
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