Ron Paul: Liberties Also Attacked in Boston

While the loss of life in the Boston Marathon bombings was tragic, so was the loss of liberties during the “military-style takeover” during the manhunt for the suspects, writes former Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas.

The bombing, Paul writes on the libertarian website lewrockwell.com, gave the government the opportunity “to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city.”

The action, he said, “should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.”

Paul, a three-time presidential candidate, has long been associated with the Libertarian Party and the libertarian wing of the Republican Party.

Lost in the celebration of the capture of brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was the fact that “police state tactics” contributed nothing to their capture, Paul argues. He calls the “shelter in place” order given by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick a “forced lockdown.”

The surviving suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was not caught until the shelter-in-place order was lifted and a private citizen left his house, finding the suspect hiding in his boat. Paul points to this and the fact that photos and video provided voluntarily by private citizens and businesses helped identify the men – not “government surveillance cameras.”

Americans have been conditioned to believe the government’s job is to keep its citizens safe, when, in reality, its job is to protect its citizen’s liberties, Paul writes. He calls the city shutdown and door-to-door warrantless searches “unprecedented and ... very dangerous.”