A certain trumpet for a liberty-centered constitutional universe.
Endless, pointless, exorbitant wars fueled by the military-industrial complex must cease.
Dragnet spying on loyal American citizens must end.
The manipulation or suffocation of free markets by government or special interests must stop.
The bail-out state must die.
Rand Paul must conclude sermons touting these commandments with periods, not commas, semicolons, or question marks.
As 1 Corinthians 14: 8 teaches, "For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?"
Americans have collectively voted no confidence in the powers that be. A plurality of registered voters is independent, neither Republican nor Democrat. Outsiders are besting insiders as the 2016 presidential campaign unfolds.
Rand Paul needs to give thunderous voice to the aspirations or wishes of the self-evident voting majority.
He needs to radiate confidant, robust, and unswerving defense of a national security policy that pivots on deterrence through invincible retaliatory threats and capacity; the encouragement of democracy and human rights in foreign nations by example, not be force; and, the cessation of military adventurism abroad in search of monsters to destroy, including Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, and China. In the process, the United States would cease squandering trillions of dollars and the lives and limbs of courageous American soldiers on fool's errands.
Rand Paul needs to teach that his national security policy is the policy of the United States Constitution. It was the policy of President George Washington's Farewell Address.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who commanded D-Day forces across the English Channel to crush the Nazi war machine, presciently underscored the risk of gratuitous wars driven by a military-industrial complex eager to enhance profits and prestige. Rand Paul should deliver that wisdom from a war hero with a megaphone.
He needs to preach that the glory of the United States is liberty, not world domination or control. It is restraint in the use of power that is the touchstone of civilization and American exceptionalism.
Rand Paul should be echoing Kentucky statesman and Senator Henry Clay. He elaborated in opposing United States intervention in Europe to support upheavals against autocratic governments, "Far better is it for ourselves...and for the cause of liberty, that, adhering to our wise, pacific system, and avoiding distant wars of Europe, we should keep our lamp burning brightly on this western shore as a light to all nations, than to hazard its utter extinction amid the ruins of fallen or falling republics in Europe."
Rand Paul should be unequivocal. All the soldiers and weapons President Barack Obama has deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Japan, South Korea, Germany, and elsewhere should be returned to the United States. Every defense dollar should be devoted to defending Americans against foreign aggression from state or non-state actors. Every American soldier should be deployed on American soil. The nation's motto should be: "Billions for defense, but not one cent for Empire."
That does not make Mr. Paul indifferent to misery or strife abroad. But as then Secretary of State John Quincy Adams taught in his July 4, 1821 address to Congress, the United States would sully its emblem to liberty if it sought to become dictatress of the world.
Rand Paul should be assailing the surveillance state featuring the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance of the entire United States population with the same vehemence that the leaders of the American Revolution used to denounce King George III's Writs of Assistance employed to rummage through colonial homes and businesses. He should champion the right to be let alone from government snooping absent probable cause under the Fourth Amendment as a cornerstone of liberty. The NSA and CIA should be spying exclusively on foreigners abroad to collect foreign intelligence, and leave Americans unsuspected of crime undisturbed.
Rand Paul should firmly promote Adam Smith's economic gospel: "Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things."
He should vow to dismantle the regulatory state; end corporate welfare; and secure an even playing field in all economic endeavors.
There is nothing novel in what has been said.
It is simply Rand Paul being Rand Paul.
Will he exhibit the wisdom and strength to follow his own philosophy?
If he does, Mr. Paul will soar like a comet over the fashion-resistant hairdo of Donald Trump.