Editor’s Note: Zach Rachuba is a member of The Daily Tar Heel’s Editorial Board.
TO THE EDITOR:
In his editorial lambasting Apple for taking a stand for Americans’ privacy rights, Senator Richard Burr has demonstrated himself yet again to be a beltway, George Bush Republican, unfit for continued office. It appears Senator Burr is more dedicated to growing government power and advancing his political career than to protecting our liberty and prosperity.
Despite the utter failure of government snoops to prove the efficacy of blanket spying on Americans, Burr has continued to oppose privacy and encryption, even leading a failed effort to extend elements of the odious PATRIOT act last year. On every critical issue, from stopping senseless and unconstitutional wars to reducing government interference in our private lives, Senator Burr has chosen to stand with big government, rather than liberty and the Constitution.
Senator Burr has stood by idly as Presidents Bush and Obama usurped Congress’s authority to declare war, cheering as Washington embroiled our country in ill-advised faraway conflicts from Libya to Afghanistan. Now, Burr has the nerve to cite the rampant jihadism that these failed wars unleashed as his justification for forcing Americans to surrender their right to privacy.
On economic issues, Burr may pretend to be a conservative and stand for free markets, but he advocates shoveling taxpayer and private sector money into bloated military spending — the largest item in the federal budget and main driver of the debt—and has also voted against defunding Obamacare. Burr even wants a new internet sales tax, and one of his pet issues is a special taxpayer handout to tobacco growers. The senator gets a kickback for his cronyism, of course — his biggest campaign donors are a large tobacco conglomerate and a defense contractor.
Even though Burr has extended special favors to cronies in big tobacco, the senator apparently thinks the federal government should police our bodies and homes and is on record calling for a federal crackdown on states where voters have approved ending the disastrous, expensive prohibition of cannabis — including for medical purposes.
Fortunately, North Carolina Republicans and Independents who value free markets, personal liberty and the Constitution have an alternative to Richard Burr and the tired, failed GOP establishment that he represents. That alternative is Greg Brannon, Burr’s underdog primary challenger.
Brannon opposes reckless, unconstitutional foreign entanglements, and he stands for the whole Bill of Rights — not just the Second Amendment.
