So Rand Paul, the Rethuglican (Tea Party branch) candidate for Senate from Kentucky, is opposed to Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights acts on libertarian grounds? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha (draws breath) ha ha ha ha ha. That’s a good one.
Paul made the mistake of being interviewed by Rachel Maddow last night (a “mistake” he acknowledged this morning while talking to conservative talker Laura Schlesinger, to whom he whined that the “looney left” was out to get him.) If Rachel is the looney left, I guess Noam Chomskey’s politics reside somewhere near infinity.
Trep, you should watch or read this interview, if you haven’t already. Previously Paul said he opposed part of the CRA because it forces private businesses to serve people they’d rather not. When she asks specific questions about the ramifications of his position, Paul evades, evades, evades.
He makes a limp analogy between restaurants excluding gun-bearing patrons and people they “don’t want” (ignoring the glaring fact that black people cannot choose to be black while gun owners can choose to carry or not). He says her questions are “abstract” and “philosophical” when she asks if the owners of lunch counters had a right to beat up the Civil Rights activists who attempted to desegregate their businesses in the 1960s. Whooee! In Paul’s mind, or what passes for the space between his ears, clubs and baseball bats are “abstract”!
I expect there is a sound libertarian argument to be made against Title II, but this interview proved that Rand, Jr. is all hat and no cattle. Unlike his father, who is equally racist but is better versed in libertarianism. Rand Paul needs better handlers, who won’t book him on shows where the host has a PhD in Political Science. Handlers who will teach him how to answer hard questions so that his racism isn’t on naked and embarrassing display.
Not that recourse to libertarian values is a useful way to hide a candidate’s racism. Libertarianism is both elitist and juvenile in its desire to elevate the “fittest” over all of those who can’t cut it in the view of the fittest, and most people grow out of it when they turn sixteen or so. I have a friend who went to St. Johns, where the curriculum consists almost entirely of philosophy. He says that every year one or two freshmen tried to start an Ayn Rand club, which soon died for lack of interest. And for awhile the Randians tried to argue with everybody in their philosophy classes, including the professors, until they either learned how paltry selfish individualism really is, or just gave up and transferred.
Are the Rands, father and son, related to Ayn?
UPDATE–LINES OF THE DAY:
Olbermann: “Republicans have begun to rue Paul.”
Jim Clyburn, minority whip and Democrat of South Carolina (I’m paraphrasing here): Given Dr. Paul’s libertarian philosophy, one wants to ask what he thinks about regulation in general–of Wall Street banks, or of oil companies, for instance.
I wonder if Rand P was named after A Rand. What a clown he is! I’d think even the Tea Partiers are going to regret him soon. Talk about bad publicity. I just hope he keeps talking.
“…rue Paul”! I didn’t know Keith had such a sense of humor.