No single member of the Senate has done more to advance civil liberties than Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky. Paul has sparred with President Barack Obama, filibustering his appointees to make a point about civilian surveillance, and played sycophant to President Trump so he can convince the president to pull out of war zones. Paul introduced the Justice For Breonna Taylor Act earlier this summer, a bill to ban the same no-knock warrants that led to a perfectly innocent essential worker dying in her bed because of police officers seeking someone else. And yet, the oft-alienated libertarian Paul found himself hounded not by the ever-more authoritarian Republican Party but by the very same activists who supposedly want justice not just for Taylor but action to prevent deaths like hers from ever happening again.

As Paul left Trump’s White House speech on the final night of the Republican National Convention, protesters (many of whom were unmasked and not social distancing during a viral pandemic transmitted by respiratory droplets) hounded the Republican and his wife Kelley, demanding that Paul acknowledge the shooting victim he literally authored a bill about. Paul, who has already been (unsuccessfully) shot at by a domestic terrorist who nearly murdered Rep. Steve Scalise and was (successfully) beaten to a bloody pulp by a neighbor who broke multiple of Paul’s ribs, was rightfully frightened by the mob, thanking local police for preventing the situation from escalating.