Steve Benen has a good round-up of Rand Paul’s anti-civil rights comments:
I don’t like the idea of telling private business owners — I abhor racism. I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant — but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership. But I absolutely think there should be no discrimination in anything that gets any public funding, and that’s most of what I think the Civil Rights Act was about in my mind.
“[T]his,” Paul said, “is the hard part about believing in freedom.”
As Ben Smith notes, a full Village freak-out over this is underway. Of course, many — I would suspect most — conservatives don’t think the Civil Rights Act was a good idea, they just don’t have the guts to say it.
El Cid
Those damn sit-in students at Woolworth, encroaching upon the freedom of the small business entrepreneur! We were doin’ just fine until all you outside agitators imposed your big gubmit Yankee soshullism!
pharniel
now that’s big brass ballz.
4srs plutonium ballz.
and the man’s got a pretty good forked tounge, with his common senese idears such as ‘just give the handicapped guy a ground floor office’….
This man is the stone that’s been worn so smoothe it’s almost impossible to hold, that’s how polished he is.
Rosalita
aaaaand, the first comment on that blog was oh so charming…
Pooh
To be fair to him, it’s a principled position. One I disagree with strongly, but still.
dmsilev
@Rosalita: I noticed that. Sadly, it’s oh-so-typical for the Politco commentariat.
dms
Tokyokie
Not only is he not a racist, I’ll bet some of his best friends are black.
demo woman
But, but Blumenthal went to that elitist Parris Island while troops died in Vietnam. Leave the poor business owner alone.
stuckinred
@Rosalita: It gets better, or worse I guess,
demo woman
This was the first comment at Politico
El Cid
Oops.
Cat Lady
I didn’t see what Dave Wiegel saw. It took Rachel virtually the whole segment of asking him the same question for Rand to kind of sort of admit that what he was actually saying was what he meant, and even at the very end trying to push it all off as some sort of 40 year old hypothetical discussion apropos of nothing. Principled brave truthtelling my ass. He knows he’s neck deep in his own shit now, and if the national spotlight is going to make him a teabagger hero, he’s gonna have to go full metal racist. Good luck with that, asshole.
EconWatcher
I hope he loses for this, and not for his support of legalized cannabis. His Dem opponent will surely use both.
Crashman
@Pooh: Paul is anti-choice and anti-gay marriage, to the point where I believe he wants to pass a constitutional amendment banning aborting. How is that “libertarian?” This man is not principled; he is a hypocrite asshole.
Noonan
I get the Village freakout. What I don’t get is pretending like this won’t help him in Kentucky.
Kilkee
He is principled, if principled means a simpleton who applies rigid notions to complicated situations.
Lev
@demo woman: You want a really depressing experience? Without exception, I’ve found comments at Yahoo! News to be the bottom of the wingnut barrel.
As for Paul, the GOP is reaping what they sewed. The Pauls are very comfortable on the fringes and have lots of fringe ideas. Some of them are not objectionable (non-interventionism!) but “Member of the Paul family holds backward, controversial views” is but a dog bites man story. If you nominate one of these dudes, you should expect a steady stream of garbage like this from here on out.
Dork
I’d love to see Paul’s theory attempted. I really do.
Show me a company who decides it’s in their best business interest to openly hire only crackers; no blacks, women, or hispanics. Let’s see just how successful that company would be. I bet they’d have a lot of customers, just jumping at the chance to be associated with such blatant racism and sexism.
Johnny B
I found it interesting that Rand Paul continually said that he’s not a racist and he doesn’t support racism. That’s a tried and true tactic for a conservative who doesn’t want to discuss the substance of his argument.
It matters not a wit to me if Rand Paul has come to his position from a deeply felt view of property rights or from a deep seated hatred for minorities.
At the end of the day, if his idea would be adopted as law, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, Arabs, gays, poor people, or any other group could be legally restricted from the full panoply of opportunities in this country. I do not want to live in a country where my family and I can travel, shop, and dine wherever we choose, but other groups do not have that opportunity.
I suspect a good chunk of Americans agree, including white Americans, even white Kentuckians.
I also find interesting his bogus distinction between public and private. If all businesses may deny services and goods to anyone for whatever reason because of their “property rights,” presumably then the government must be required to come in to enforce those “property rights.” If a doctor doesn’t want to treat a black patient in his practice and the black patient won’t leave, then the doctor may call the police and the police must enforce his “property rights,” that is his desire to discriminate.
That is a small part of what segregation was about. It wasn’t, as I believe Paul sees it, just private citizens making private choices about who they will allow in their private establishments. It was also the knowledge that the state, through the police and the courts, would enforce those decisions.
I don’t want my tax dollars spent on enforcing such discrimination, er, I mean, “property rights.”
Rosalita
@stuckinred:
I had to stop reading, it’s too early for scotch
Ash Wing League
Rand Paul has already compromised on his views on Gitmo and I’m almost sure he was for the anti-immigration laws in Arizona. And yet he feels he has to stay true to his libertarian views when it comes to the Civil Rights Act?!
catclub
@Noonan:
A majority of people, even in Kentucky, will no longer vote for the stone cold racist. Louisiana did NOT elect David Duke – remember ‘Vote for the Crook, it matters”?
Times have actually changed. A little in some ways, a lot in others.
cleek
@Rosalita:
bah.
it’s 3:30 in Scotland!
EconWatcher
catclub:
David Duke won a majority of the Louisiana white vote in his run for governor.
Lev
Watching that Maddow clip, I laughed out loud when he talked about how stuff like civil rights and the ADA could have been done locally. Well, hell, I’m sure that economic pressure in the market would absolutely have made George Wallace and Orval Faubus back civil rights had those damn Yankee meddlers stayed out of it.
Hunter Gathers
Rand Paul and his teabagger allies are going to put the stink of crazy on the GOP that will last for 20 years. Teabaggers lacked a national face, someone who can represent the party nationally who is acually running for office (unlike what’s-her-face). And that face is decidedly batshit fucking crazy. The fact he spent all day yesterday talikng about a law that was passed when he was all of a year old shows he’s not interested in local issues in his state. He’s a novice, and he can try to nationalize his Senate race and talk all the teabagger smack that he wants, but when push comes to shove, he has to be willing to get into the issues that affect his home state, or he’ll lose. Yesterday showed that he has no interest in local politics. The teabagger wail that will arise in November when he looses will deafening. And hilarious.
Zach
I think the consensus is to say that the civil rights act was a good idea, but that we don’t need anymore because there’s no more discrimination. If anything, minorities now have an advantage because of affirmative action! Oh yeah, and gender discrimination doesn’t exist, either.
Jim Crow is entirely over, with the exception of horribly scary Black Panthers in Philadelphia, so we should get rid of voting rights lawyers at DOJ and stop enforcing the voting rights portions of the civil rights acts.
Egilsson
This gets back to Kennedy’s attack on Bork. It sounded harsh, but Kennedy was right.
Conservatives have a problem because it is true that if you follow their little theories, then the US would be like South Africa circa 1960, with apartheid in full swing and people dying. Orval Faubus 4EVAH!
Sounds melodramatic, but there’s no way around it.
Conservatives always end up saying, “sure we agree with the social changes made 20 (or 30-80) years ago, but we oppose any change now!” = even though they opposed those changes then. How it presists as a credible political force baffles me.
Now Palin is saying SHE’S the real feminist. 15 years ago, right wingers could not spew enough hate on feminists.
Corner Stone
@Rosalita:
I’ll just never understand some people.
Remember November
I want to see a sign in a Soho bistro that says “No gun-carrying TeaBaggers allowed”- Private Enterprise, right Rand!
El Cid
@Egilsson: Massive Resistance to all the Outside Agitators!
artem1s
@Hunter Gathers:
I love the smell of teabagger wail in the morning. It smells like victory!
matoko_chan
hey DougJ, could you mebbe throw a little
gasolinelinkage on the flamewar heating up between Althouse and AllahP?I’ll bring the popcorn.
Charles says the Birchers are throwing a party.
And Stormfront threw Paul a money bomb (google it).
Sowwy, Allahpundit…..looks like the “closet klansmen narrative” has more legs than a centipede.
Corner Stone
@El Cid: The thieves must think they have a foolproof way to extort the insurance company for safe return.
Rosalita
@cleek:
@Corner Stone:
I hear ya, but I’m still working on the coffee part of my day…give me til noon
Zach
I have no clue why Maddow didn’t just ask him: “Let’s get this straight; you support Rosa Parks’ right to sit at the front of the public bus, but you think that the arrests at the Greensboro lunch counter sit-in should be legal. Correct?”
“To follow-up, should states be allowed to ban miscegenation? Should private employers be allowed to discriminate based solely on race or gender in hiring?”
She needs to be more specific and not let him drawl on about the first amendment and his love of this country because racists can be racists and we can hate them.
Allan
Great, so I can legally refuse to serve Glibertarians!
The low point for me was when Rand tried to suggest that the CRA inhibits the First Amendment rights of the property owner.
Behavior is not speech.
Or that’s what I shouted at my teevee last night, but Rachel apparently couldn’t hear me.
catclub
@EconWatcher:
Touche. Luckily, I wrote people. With any luck my comment still stands.
I do know that only 11% of whites in Mississippi voted for Obama – yet the US still elected him. If about 18% of whites had, he would have won Mississippi.
matoko_chan
Palin is a retard. We don’t need to worry about her until she can survive an open presser.
kay
I think it shows the real selfish nastiness that is behind libertarianism.
Allowing business owners to restrict based on race impinges on freedom, because it applies to housing, employment and travel.
It just doesn’t impinge on Rand Paul’s personal freedom.
No one is going to refuse to sell him a house in a particular neighborhood because he’s a selfish moron.
You know, we did this. Some of the best minds in the country grappled with this, a long time ago, and this remedy is the best they could come up with. Rand Paul’s non-solution didn’t fix the problem.
The freaking arrogance of tea baggers just boggles my mind.
They think they came up with this new and interesting idea, but it’s just the same old re-hashed arguments. Their ideas failed last time.
EconWatcher
catclub:
I hope you’re right about Kentucky: I was just sayin.’
All of my extended family are in southern Indiana, just across the border. I’d probably rather not know how many of them would react to Mr. Paul’s position in the snug privacy of the voting booth. I’ve learned to avoid such topics.
NickM
You’ve always had that right. Glibertarians are a suspect classification, but not in the legal sense.
TDE
@Dork: This is true of now, but not the 60’s or earlier. It’s amazing what 40 yrs of govt forced integration does to society. As in, it makes it a better place.
fucen tarmal
one one hand, anyone who pretends they haven’t heard this crap across a bar, or in conversation somewhere is pearl clutching. people with this exact opinion are everywhere, though they may be relatively few in number, their belief that they can abstrusely argue their position enough to make it fly.
now to out and out say it, when one is vying for public office is a whole other matter. much of this mindset comes out of the belief that their are black owned, or women owned or hispanic owned businesses that only serve clients of that group. what they fail to grasp is that they can patronize those business if they wish, but its the characteristics that make it unique to those groups, not the force of law, that makes them self-segregating.
they can open a whites only restaurant, bar, hair salon, et al, simply by making their business unattractive to patronize to everyone other than themselves. should someone wander in anyway, who isn’t in the target demo, you still have to serve them, in either case.
what i would love to do, if i had some soros money to fund it, is set up a stealth-site for wingnuts to report businesses that “refuse to serve white people” gather some intel, then go there gonzo style, as a white guy, to demonstrate that i can indeed patronize the business, but to a hopefully humorous degree, the common sense reason why the clients are of a self-selected group. which is a whole other matter than excluding people on a race, gender etc basis….
Bulworth
@Cat Lady: Me either. It’s as if Paul is OK with racism and discrimination being practiced, although he personally disapproves of it, all in the name of allowing business owners to run their businesses as they see fit, all in a perfectly amoral manner, but when it comes to abortion or gay marriage, suddenly these are issues that individuals and businesses (doctors) cannot make on their own and which require government intervention to prevent.
Morbo
Funny, it seems like he has a pretty easy time of it. But then he is white, straight, and male.
Gregory
By the way, Paul’s harping in the Maddow interview about “institutional racism” strikes me as a dog whistle about affirmative action.
Tom Q
Two things:
1) This is a perfect illustration of why libertarianism is useless as a mode of government. It’s a theory that doesn’t stand up to real world tests. Had Paul’s standard been part of the Civil Rigt Act, as he wishes, the South would still be far more segregated than it is today.
2) Sorry to go all Bob Somerby on you, but…I hope this story has a short shelf life, because it’s not the issue on which Conway can beat Paul this November. It’s an issue that liberals will love to brandish, because it speaks to our moral superiority over the other side. But the voters Conway needs to reach include some for whom this is not necessarily a problem; they can be far more easily persuaded if they hear Paul wants an end to agricultural subsidies.
Hunter Gathers
@Tom Q:
The fuck it isn’t. This little episode proves he does not take the job of being Senator seriously. He wants to make it about ideology. Kentucky may be conservative, but pocketbook issues trump ideology every time. Instead of changing the sunbject and hammering away at unemployment, bailouts, etc., he spent the entire first day of his national rollout talking about settled law passed when he was a year old. I don’t think he gives a fuck about local issues in his state. If he did, he would have pivoted yesterday anytime this came up, be he kept digging the hole. Conway can and will beat him to death with his extreme ideology. “He’s so fucking crazy he’ll hurt your wallet” makes for an excellent cudgel. And Paul’s too fucking stupid to work on local issues. He care more about teabagger accolades than his would be constituents.
This race is fucking over. Joe the Scar was wrong. He doesn’t have 24 hours. He’s Dead Man Walking.
Lurking Canadian
Here’s how it works. First you say, “I am a principled libertarian. I don’t think public institutions, like schools and public transit systems, should discriminate, because I’m not a racist, but I think private property should be sacrosanct, and the state has no right to tell property owners what to do.”
THEN, you say, “I am a principled libertarian. I don’t think there should be any public institutions. The private sector can do a much better job than the state at things like schools and public transit systems.”
See?
Tom Q
Hunter Gathers, I think if you read to the end of my sentence, we’re not miles apart. I too think the emphasis has to be on the pocketbook issues — agricultural subsidies and others. My only problem with this issue here is, instead of being angled the way you’ve presented it, it will (with media help) turn into “Vote against Paul because he’s a racist”, and I don’ think that’s the maximally effective way of running the campaign.
KC
@Dork:
I’d be up for trying this, actually, but on one condition.
Any business who chooses to discriminate, either in hiring or serving, must be required to state their policy on every entrance to their establishment. If a business owner wishes to discriminate, then I must be given that information so that I can choose to take my business elsewhere.
If someone wants to discriminate, then let them take public responsibility for it. Let them own up in public. Let people see each other walking into a store with a sign on the front door saying, “No Muslims allowed.” Or “No illegal immigrants will be served or hired here.” (What are they going to do – check everyone’s ID?) And see how far it gets them.
El Cid
By the way, can I state that I don’t give a shit if lunatic propertarians feel oppressed by something I don’t see as repressive?
As a libertarian soshullist, I find their support of the tyranny of economic propertarianism horrific, but no one gives a shit that I feel that way.
Why are we supposed to genuflect in front of the insane aesthetics of propertarian fetishists?
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
I think it’s important for Rand Paul to express exactly how he feels and not muzzle himself. That way it’s clear to all what the teabaggers stand for and some of us colored folk can either avoid the places that vote their candidates into power or make our escape plans if we happen to live in those places because we know where this is all headed if they win.
LGRooney
@Johnny B: We need to hear more of this line of reasoning because, as a matter of fact up to the point of reading what you wrote, I tended to agree with the idea that private businesses should be allowed to discriminate all they want. My reasoning for this is twofold: I’d love to know who the real racists among us are, quite frankly, and I agree that people should be allowed to do with their private property what they want as long as they don’t violate the rights of someone else, e.g., it is a violation of my property rights if your business is polluting my air a/o my water a/o my land.
Again, after reading your post, and perhaps I just need to read up more on the whole background of the Civil Rights movement/Amendment to get a better sense of the full reasoning behind it, it is clear the full implication of running out that process of allowing said discrimination.
Thank you.
Hunter Gathers
@Tom Q: Most people don’t know what libertarians really stand for. This puts the entire libertarian ideology in the national spotlight. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Conway will push the racial angle. The MSM will, until it sees it’s next shiney object. And this will hurt Paul. Not everyone in Kentucky goes for his type of bullshit. While Paul spends the next 6 months on TV trying to spin this, Conway will do the necessary leg work on the ground to beat him. Paul thinks that the teabaggers will lift him to victory, and won’t go local. He’s making the same mistake that the GOP made in PA-12. He thinks he’s the teabagger messiah.
thomas
according to Dr. Paul, property rights trump human rights. It’s that simple.
Where did I miss that when I took Constitutional Law 35+ years ago?
Martin
This is such a stupid argument from Paul. It’s not just the civil rights act that he’s opposing but also every other piece of legislation that enforces equality – fair housing act, title IX, and so on.
What is so incredibly stupid about the libertarian argument is what do you think the government would be forced to do if blacks couldn’t get housing from the private sector? Well, the government would be compelled to get into the housing business in a far more broad way than they are now – and the only reason public housing exists is because of discrimination in the first place. They’d be compelled to get into huge sections of the economy. For the lack of equal treatment of the populace the government would be forced ever toward socialism, the whole thing would have the opposite effects which is why libertarianism is so narrow sighted as a philosophy.
Texas Dem
You’re right. Being against the Civil Rights Act probably doesn’t hurt Paul all that much with white Kentucky voters. For most of them, the civil rights movement and segregated lunch counters are ancient history. But there are plenty of things that white Kentucky voters feel strongly about, i.e., minimum wage laws, child labor laws, social security, medicare, and I’m betting Dr. Paul is against all of them. Scarborough is right: Paul has a very limited window of opportunity to get on top of this, or he’s done. I guess we now know why McConnell didn’t support Paul. The guy is a fruitcake.
El Cid
@thomas: Look, you don’t understand: Propertarians are to be assumed to be automatically, base-level right, and everyone else has to justify their views.
feebog
Maddow was like a pit bull with a bone. And Rand was not smart enough or agile enough to turn the debate in another direction. I listened to his victory speech Tuesday evening. He had little to say about the issues that affect Kentucky. Paul is so full of himself right now that he is an easy target. If his handlers (assuming he has any) are smart they will tell him to shut up and get to work on local issues.
And of course this is only one issue that he holds extremist views on. There are others, and they will come out in the course of the campaign.
Cat Lady
@Bulworth:
Too bad Rachel had to waste all of her time getting him to admit to one of his so called principled stands. I doubt she’ll get him to come back to discuss those other principled stands that contradict his CRA principled stand, especially since one of those principles is that the government and not women is the rightful property owner of women’s bodies. Principled defender of liberty, my fucking ass.
kay
@Johnny B:
Like all libertarians, he refuse to look at how the world actually works, because they can’t see past their own noses.
The people that drafted civil rights legislation had to grapple with that.
I think he’s a dunce, who doesn’t know his own country’s history.
You can’t say, on one hand, that children should be permitted entry to public school without regard for race, and then insist that private property owners can restrict sales because of race. Schools are in neighborhoods. Stores are in neighborhoods. Civil rights laws were enacted because minorities were de facto barred from whole areas. Whole states. They had trouble traveling between states, because they couldn’t find lodging. They couldn’t relocate at all to certain areas, because they couldn’t rent or buy there. Their rights were violated.
He’s granting “rights” that people can’t exercise. Rights he enjoys without even being aware that had this Act not passed, people would be denied the essential right of freedom of movement.
kay
@Johnny B:
And this is exactly how the government reached housing discrimination. They had to. If they hadn’t, they would have been institutionalizing racism. They would have been putting a state seal of approval on the sacred rights of property owners to refuse entry based on race. They can’t do that.
But Rand Paul’s never had to deal with that particular problem, so really, who cares?
Not him. “Living” and “freedom” are sort of theoretical ideas.
MCA
I think we someone needs to make the connection for the Tea Partiers between changing demographics in the U.S., and unwinding governmental prohibition of discriminatory practices in the public realm. Isn’t it a little shortsighted that, while a good portion of the fear- and resentment-based, English only, round up the illegals, teabagging “philosophy” is based primarily on their terror at the dissipating prominence of middle-class whites and the fact they’ll be in the minority within a generation, their newly-minted leader is going around saying we need to unwind the law to allow racial discrimination? I mean, aren’t the white people in Arizona wondering where the hell they’re going to be allowed to eat? How on Earth will I be able to get a cab in downtown Chicago in another 15 years when I’m in the minority if we repeal the Civil Rights Act? These people don’t seem to realize they might soon benefit from these laws themselves
Tokyokie
I recall how quickly George Allen dropped in the polls after his “macaca” remark, and no matter how much he bleated that he wasn’t racist, nobody seemed to believe him. Granted, Virginia is a more moderate state than Kentucky, but then, Allen at the time was a lot more well-known than Paul was when he made his gaffe.
Anyway, I’m just glad we don’t have discrimination by business establishments, or I’d miss the full spectrum of yummy barbecue.
Randy P
@KC: I like your idea.
I’d like to know if I’m patronizing a discriminatory business. I’d like to know if my neighborhood is being redlined. But as someone who doesn’t get discriminated against, I’ll never know unless somebody tells me. I had this experience when I belonged to a gym that was part of a national chain. I had no clue that they had a corporate policy of putting little code letters next to prospective members that were black, of inflating the prices of memberships and not offering discount to black prospective customers, etc. When somebody did an expose, I quit.
I don’t know if black people realize just how clueless white people (I’m actually mongrel, but for purposes of this kind of discussion I use “white”) can be about the existence of discrimination. The one time I experienced racial discrimination I had no clue till much later what had happened. A friend of mine and I decided to go out dancing at the local disco (yes, I’m that old) on our mutual birthday. We got stopped at the door and told the place was full, fire regulations, etc, etc. I saw a couple people come out, so I figured, OK now they have room and tried to re-enter. Nope, still full, sorry. After this was repeated a couple of times, she asked me just to take her home.
I still had no clue. It was only after the local paper exposed the practice of not allowing interracial couples at this place and others, and how they’d use this transparent “fire regulations” ploy, that the light bulb went off.
No. Freaking. Clue.
We clueless need to be educated. Constantly. I imagine it’s infuriating, but it’s necessary.
Tazistan Jen
@MCA:
Ha ha, this is excellent. Teabaggers most emphatically do *not* welcome their new swarthy overlords.
Tokyokie
@Randy P:
I’ve generally avoided places that have a dress code that doesn’t allow hats, because it’s a wink-wink method of discriminating against blacks. Not to mention, I usually wear a hat.
Cat Lady
@Tokyokie:
Reminds me of my father in law’s memories of having meetings at his former place of employment which were always held at dinner time and the only thing ever served was ham. Wink wink.
WereBear (itouch)
I’m simply gobsmacked that this will be the new face of the teabagging party; but ironically I am not surprised. Right now the GOP needs enthusiasm and turn out, and they’ve never been picky about what, have they?
ciotog
What gets me about most of the discussion of this issue is that people don’t seem to realize that this law protects white people, too! There are minority-owned businesses, you know. There are doctors and nurses and lawyers and accountants who come in all possible shades. Yes, whites have more power, generally, but the idea that this does not apply to whites, which has been the tenor of the discussion thus far, is itself indicative of white privilege. I have a feeling that if Rand Paul were refused service at, say, his favorite Chinese restaurant because he was white he’d be a lot less interested in his so-called libertarian principles. It’s more “abstract” an issue to whites, but in 2010 it sure doesn’t have to be.
b-psycho
@Johnny B: Good point, I have to admit. Somehow I doubt in an alternate universe with no civil rights act that police in the South would’ve taken seriously the calls of any black business owners wanting them to remove a white person from their premises…
grumpy realist
As said before, libertarians have NO knowledge of law, history, or how humans interact with each other…
Someone send this idjit a book on Constitutional Law and how we finally got the Commerce Clause to be as expanded as it came to be….(ditto for why the Civil Rights Act was passed in the first place.)
Oh, and Rand should be forced to write on a blackboard 100 times: “Lochner has been overturned. There is no economic substantive right protected by Due Process.”
Triassic Sands
Paul kept telling Maddow that this is an esoteric discussion without real relevance today.
Except of course, if the Civil Rights Act of 1964 hadn’t been passed or if it had excluded private businesses, this would not only be a current issue, but I dare say we’d have had decades of race riots leading up to today and I sincerely doubt that Obama could have been elected in 2008.
Rand gets to pretend that we’d have somehow magically made all the progress we’ve made (still without ending the problem of racism once and for all) if his views were enshrined in the law. He’s not a dreamer; he’s an idiot.
El Cid
@b-psycho: Oh, the police would have responded — if not directly, then they would have called up their buddies to go beat the sh*t out of the black-owned business and probably have them try to burn the place down.
For freedom and Constushull lib’tee, of course.
El Cid
@Triassic Sands: Maybe if we’d ‘a elected Strom Thurmond in his Dixiecrat campaign, we wouldn’a had all the problems we had all these years.
Triassic Sands
@El Cid:
It’s hard to argue with that.
Now, we know El Cid is really Trent Lott. Who would have thought that Trent Lott would hang out on BJ? Hi, Trent, how’s the hair?
Ron
I have some sympathy for Paul’s views in the sense that there is a legitimate question of how much the government can impose on a private individual’s rights. That being said, there are two main things that I think are relevant here. First, as many have pointed out, governing requires dealing with real life scenarios as opposed to theoretical ideology. But the worst thing about Paul’s interview was his absolute refusal to actually answer Rachel’s question. She asked him a simple yes or no question and he answered everything BUT that question. While this is par for the course for most politicians when they don’t want to answer a question, I think it’s going to be hard to look like a real outsider when you act the way all the insiders do. I’m not sure why Rand Paul agreed to be on Rachel’s show, since I suspect there isn’t much overlap between her audience and people who might vote for him. But then he announced his exploratory committee for the Senate on her show as well, so I have no idea.
Anon of Ibid
My question is this: What about the ADA? Does Rand think that private business should be able to have a sign that says, “No cripples”, or have doors and bathrooms that won’t work for people in wheelchairs?
We can take race and guns right out of the conversation because anyone can be hit by a bus and loose their legs. If every place to get food in your hometown isn’t ADA compliant, what would you do? What _could_ you do if you “take government out of” protecting the rights of minorities?
thomas
@El Cid:
El Cid, it must be my naivete. Silly me not being properly tuned-in to libertarian gibberish.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@Tom Q: If his Democratic opponent has any sense, he’ll seize on the following factoid about Libertarians: they don’t believe that the government should insure banking deposits (they would basically abolish the FDIC given the chance). Even if no one in Kentucky is bothered by Paul’s views on the Civil Rights Act, I’m sure there are enough sane people in Kentucky that can make the connection between the financial meltdown and losing the entire amounts of their savings and checking accounts in a failed bank in the absence of the FDIC. I think he can be thoroughly trounced by focusing on choice economic issues that force him to take a “principled stand.”
Johnny B
@kay:
Exactly.
Rand Paul believes in a Glibetarian utopia where there is property rights on one side and government on the other. Government, in his view, is always hostile to property rights. But that’s ridiculous.
While it may seem counterintuitive to some, one must have government to have property rights. Property rights arise when government recognizes, protects and enforces your property rights. Government, in fact, makes property rights possible.
A great example of this is one that I’ve heard Professor Lawrence Tribe use in his constitutional class. He shows his class a constitution, but without telling them whose it is. He points out all the rights enumerated in the constitution, many of which are ones we Americans quickly recognize. Then he tells his class it is the constitution of the Soviet Union.
Why were none of those enumerated rights available to the Soviet citizenry? Was it because the government was too big? No.
The Soviet Union refused to create the necessary governmental institutions to ensure its citizens rights in the constitution were enforced. Specifically, they did not create an independent judiciary which could enforce those rights. Tyranny ensued despite all the fine phrases in the constitution.
Rand Paul assumes that property rights enshrined in the Constitution were infringed by the Civil Rights Act. But since we only have property rights if government enforces those rights, then a property right that allows for discrimination on privately-owned, public spaces, would only exist if government enforces such a notion of property rights.
It was rejection of that idea that led, in part, to passage of that portion of the Civil Rights Act that Paul finds objectionable.
maus
@Anon of Ibid:
Yes. He has said as much.