Rand Paul: I'm not being unreasonable

Sen. Rand Paul says he does not think he is being unreasonable in his stand against government surveillance practices.

“I’m just asking for two amendments and a simple majority vote” on ending the National Security Agency’s bulk data collection, the Kentucky Republican said on “CBS This Morning” on Tuesday.


“I think sometimes my party gets all caught up in the Second Amendment, which is fine, but we don’t protect the Fourth Amendment enough,” he added. “But actually I think neither party ends up protecting the Fourth Amendment enough, which is the right to privacy.”

Paul downplayed any bad feelings between him and his fellow Kentucky senator, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who failed to secure a deal in the Senate regarding the surveillance programs before Congress left for recess, in large part due to Paul.

“I don’t think we need counseling yet,” he laughed. “On the NSA thing, we are on opposite sides. I do think we keep it very civil.”

Arguing that giving the government too much power opens the door for “systemic bias” to enter the system, Paul noted historical examples where race and political motivations played a role in government surveillance.

President Barack Obama is “disingenuous” about this, as he could end the practice on his own, Paul said on CBS.

Paul echoed the remarks in a later interview with “Fox & Friends.”

“We did it to the Japanese-Americans in World War II. We did it to civil rights protesters during the ’60s and to Vietnam War protesters. We just started grabbing them up and started looking at behavior we didn’t like. So the right to dissent in a free country is very important, and some would say this has a chilling effect on a right to dissent,” he said.

Paul also addressed the troubling advances of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), voicing support for arming Kurdish rebels and recognizing Kurdistan as an independent state.

“The ultimate victory is going to become when civilized Islam steps up and civilized Islam says that this aberration ISIS is intolerable,” he said.

Asked about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s comments that he is a “misguided ideologue” with no real-world experience, Paul told Fox News that it “just wasn’t very nice of him to put it that way.”

Adam Lerner contributed to this report.