Rand Paul fails epically on the Rachel Maddow Show
Rand Paul’s performance on last night’s Rachel Maddow Show was epic, and not in a good way. To give a little background, yesterday Paul gave an interview to the Louisville Courier-Journel, in which he seemed to say that he would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had he been in the Senate. His rationale? He doesn’t like the idea of telling private business owners that they can’t discriminate. Maddow tried to get him to clarify his remarks, but he wasn’t having any of it:
This is only the first part of the interview (you can find the second here), but I’m not exaggerating when I say that Rand was palpably uncomfortable throughout. At no point did Paul give Maddow a straight answer, and when it was clear that he couldn’t spin his way out of Maddow’s questioning, he took to dismissing the whole issue on the basis of its “obscurity” and irrelevance to the Kentucky Senate race. By the end of the interview however, Paul had all but restated his original view: the Civil Rights Act was fine when it came to prevent public discrimination, but went off the rails in criminalizing discrimination by private businesses and establishments.
Paul claims that he isn’t a racist and abhors discrimination, and I completely believe him. But that doesn’t change the fact that Paul, like many libertarians, has an incredibly blinkered view of oppression and liberty. Simply put, and for reasons that I think have a lot to do with the demographics of the movement (read: a lot of white guys), libertarians have a habit of fixating on the state and its role in perpetuating oppression and constraining liberty, with many libertarians completely blind to the fact of oppression by culture and custom. It simply doesn’t register. As such, it’s no surprise that libertarians like Paul can make arguments about the desirability (or lack thereof) of the Civil Rights Act without once considering the oppression that can flow from ostensibly “just” arrangements of private property
As a quick and final note, the fact that many libertarians still have yet to grasp the fact that oppression comes from a variety of sources, is to me at least a sign that libertarians — or at least those working within the Republican Party — aren’t concerned with “liberty” as much as they are eager to turn the state away from the least-well off and back towards the privileged. But that’s a different post.
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makes me want to go out and apply to an All Black College. just to piss on those “ostensibly “just” arrangements of private property” you speak of
Excuse me?
In response to another comment. See in context »I don’t think anyone would stop you from applying to any college. If you can name an “All Black College” that disqualifies white people from admission, I would be interested to find out which institutions you are referring to.
In response to another comment. See in context »Why doesn’t she just ask him whether or not the Greensboro lunch counter arrests should’ve been legal or not?
Good question; honestly, given that Maddow is a pretty savvy interviewer, my guess is that she realized that Paul would hang himself, and decided to give as much rope as possible.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] This is what I was talking about. Rand Paul’s performance on last night’s Rachel Maddow Show was epic, and not in a good way. To give a little background, yesterday Paul gave an interview to the Louisville Courier-Journel, in which he seemed to say that he would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had he been in the Senate. His rationale? He doesn’t like the idea of telling private business owners that they can’t discriminate. Maddow tried to get him to clarify his remarks, but he wasn’t having any of it: [...]
[...] the Louisville Courier-Journal. Describing the back-and-forth with Maddow, Jamelle Bouie wrote at True/Slant that “I’m not exaggerating when I say that Rand was palpably uncomfortable [...]
People like Rand are why I tend to qualify my libertarian by supporting a ‘Public Good’. Hard core libertarians only see oppression as violence against another. They tend to be unable to cope with denial of opportunity – discrimination and deception & fraud – our financial system.
If people should be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor there should be libertarian ways to ensure this or libertarianism falls short.
I think that any ideology that tries to simplify itself to a few sentences become idiotic. I’ve known libertarians who seriously advocated no public roads or schools. That’s where I push a ‘Public Good’. This can and should be debated.
Steve
[...] Jamelle and others have said much of what’s worth saying about Rand Paul’s apparent belief that one gets to abhor racism on the one hand and vote hypothetically against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on the other. As Jamelle writes: Paul claims that he isn’t a racist and abhors discrimination, and I completely believe him. But that doesn’t change the fact that Paul, like many libertarians, has an incredibly blinkered view of oppression and liberty. Simply put, and for reasons that I think have a lot to do with the demographics of the movement (read: a lot of white guys), libertarians have a habit of fixating on the state and its role in perpetuating oppression and constraining liberty, with many libertarians completely blind to the fact of oppression by culture and custom. It simply doesn’t register. As such, it’s no surprise that libertarians like Paul can make arguments about the desirability (or lack thereof) of the Civil Rights Act without once considering the oppression that can flow from ostensibly “just” arrangements of private property. [...]
He’s gotten himself into a conundrum….but I like to play devil’s advocate…
Racism IS a form of “free speech” as we define it.
To advocate “free speech” in it’s truest form is to advocate for the RIGHT of others to hold prejudiced beliefs…
It’s easy to look at it as “black or white” but there’s really, as he says, an intellectual discussion to be had on where the line is drawn on Federal intervention in private business and property.
I DO NOT!! agree with him by any means, but I do see his argument as substantive.
Basically, his argument revolves around the role of Federal Gov’t in private affairs.
What I’m personally curious about is whether Rand’s argument lies with the Feds or whether Gov’t intervention in general, whether Federal OR State, is his problem.
If Feds did NOT intervene in private desegregation, would Rand advocate State sponsored desegregation of the private sector? This is the question for me.
Like I said, as much as a person may HATE racism, to stand for “free speech” IS to stand for the RIGHT to hold those views. Unless you believe in state-censored speech (China).
It’s just a circular argument that gets uglier each time around.
I am actually really disappointed with Maddow’s interview. She spent the entire time badgering him on a subject he was obviously going to work his way around answering.
Instead of trying to paint him as a racist, she could’ve engaged him on a range of issues.
I’d personally like to know exactly WHAT these teabaggers even stand for and advocate, if anything!
I don’t agree with Rand, but he seems to differ with the GOP in the respect that he seems more principled and willing to stand up for what he believes in opposed to being a shill for the GOP itself.
If ANYTHING, it will just make it easier for Dems to win Kentucky this November…Dems won the only House seat up for grabs in Penn. this past week.
Republicans were claiming Murtha’s seat in Penn. was going to be a “referendum” for Nov. and the “mood.” Now that Dems won that seat, Republicans have suddenly changed their tones….and now that Rand has given Democrats a better chance in KY, they need to start expecting a different November than they had in mind…
There’s also going to be a special election in IN for Souder.
If Dems can get through an EFFECTIVE financial reform bill, I think it will help them all the more. If Dems can tackle immigration reform before the fall, they could possibly even GAIN seats.
Rand Paul presents the question in a sneaky way. Of course people are going to agree that the Federal Government should not infringe on personal liberties if you just keep saying it like that and don’t delve any deeper.
But lets look at it at it another way – It is the role of the Federal Government to insure our individual liberties and when the fight comes do to individual liberties vs. state or local government and by extension privately owned businesses.
Most laws are made because there is a conflict of interests that cannot be resolved between the parties – so they go to the community via the government for help.
And illustration: A man walks into a business that is open to the public and the clerk says we don’t like your race and you need to leave.
If he leaves the government does not need to get involved. If he stays, the community is called in to resolve the matter(at some point either due to violence or a desire to avoid it) What should be done? Rand Paul apparently thinks the cops should drag the guy out or arrest him. Which is what happened. So the guy goes to the larger community – the State – with the conflict between him and the local government. When either party loses they appeal it to the Feds (in various ways.) The Feds took the side of the individual. Rand Paul thinks that was a mistake. He doesn’t state it that way but that is what he is advocating.
As to racism being speech – works the same way.
Guy uses a racial slur. The offended party can walk away – no government needed, punch the guy and get arrested for assault and attempt to use the insult as a defense or try some other way to get the government involved. The First amendment in this case will dictate how the Federal level gets decided if get that far.
I think Rand Paul just doesn’t not was the Bill of Rights applied to the states.
It is more a matter of what is the government going to defend. Fortunately our federal Government does not tend to enforce the individual right to be completely sheltered from anything you find objectionable when it infringes of the liberty interests of others.
In response to another comment. See in context »“And illustration: A man walks into a business that is open to the public and the clerk says we don’t like your race and you need to leave.
If he leaves the government does not need to get involved. If he stays, the community is called in to resolve the matter(at some point either due to violence or a desire to avoid it) What should be done?”
If a family holds a party in their house, and someone shows up who wasn’t invited, and the family asks the univited person to leave, and that person doesn’t, what should be done?
In response to another comment. See in context »Hello Bulletproofair,
Racism is not principally about what white people say or think, it is mainly about what they do. People in this country a free to think and advocate racist ideas. However, people are not allowed to put racist ideas into practice in the public arena. If an individual wants to do business with the public, they cannot discriminate based on race, gender, national origin, &c. That is against the law and should be. If someone wants to start an business that is not open to the public but only on an “invitation only” basis, then they can be as racist as they want. However once a business operates in the public arena, public rules apply.
In response to another comment. See in context »I was a Ron Paul supporter in the 2008 campaign until I found out about the racist comments published in the Ron Paul newsletter back in 1992. Paul denied writing them, but considering that they were published under his name, it was enough for me to drop my support for him immediately upon learning about them. I guess the apple didn’t fall far from the tree in the Paul family.
Boobs like this are the best thing that could happen to the dem party. Not that it’s in the best shape, but in comparison to the ‘man of the people’, keep the government out of my business nut jobs they’ll be shoe ins this November.
Now if we can just get BHO to grow a spine
[...] Paul is taking quite a bit of heat from all corners for his comments on the Civil Rights Act, and deservedly so. I think [...]
You all can sit here and pat each other on the back for what you consider a job well done, but every one of you misses the point.
The point of Paul’s comment – which is entirely consistent with everything ever said by Paul or his Father – is that the Federal Government has no authority under the Constitution to enforce these policies on private individuals or businesses, while mandates for public facilities (built, maintained and operated with public tax monies) is an entirely different issue altogether. All but the most State-worshiping among you can recognize that the FedGov has overstepped its bounds a long time ago and continues to grow like a cancer into areas where it absolutely does not belong.
If you think that, given a choice whether to do so or not, every private business would quickly become “whites only”, then you’re not only foolish but hopelessly stupid and probably one of the historically illiterate people who thinks the Civil War was fought over slavery and nothing else.
Actually the Federal Government does have the power:
Amendment 14 –
1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
So, for example, if a state or local government enacts laws that allow it to prosecute a black person for trespassing for entering a whites only business, the the 14th amendment says nope, state, you can’t do that.
In response to another comment. See in context »I don’t see where private business owners or individuals are mentioned.
I see references to the United States and States in general.
In response to another comment. See in context »Wow, really? Ok – I don’t mean to be patronizing but lets get back to basics. My example was pretty brief and I was assuming a certain understanding of how the law works.
Jim Crow were laws requiring the separation of blacks and whites in the public sphere (this included private businesses open to the public.)
Blacks broke those laws, were arrested and challenged the law in court. They lost in the state courts so they a appealed to the Federal courts as everyone has a right to do under the first amendment (to petition the Government for a redress of grievances). The U.S. Supreme Court decided that these laws – the Jim Crow laws – violated the 14th amendment of the US Constitution. So, rather than have every law that violates the 14th amendment litigated through the court system, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act invoking the power of section 5 (The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.) to pass legislation to enforce the provision of the 14th amendment.
SO now you might ask, but Jim Crow laws were laws made by the State and local governemnts and a business policy is not a law. True, and any business who practices discrimination will be fine as long as no one notices. However, if they call in the cops to have someone ejected based on race – they lose because cops enforce the law and not a random business policy. If they assault the person to get them out (which is against the law and they will be prosecuted) they cannot use it as a defense, and the person who was discriminated against can go to court sue.
In response to another comment. See in context »Whenever there is a conflict between parties the law is going to have to take someones side.
In the U.S. the rights of all individuals win over the “rights” of a particular subset of the country – bigots.
I guess I was assuming a basic understanding of The Constitution, and that every single word of that document is a restriction on the activities of *governments* and not on people. (The 18th Amendment, the one amendment that did, on it’s face, try to restrict activities of people, was a horrendous failure.)
You still are missing the whole entire point that private enterprise is not government. Just because the State can’t legally sanction separate-but-equal facilities shouldn’t mean a private business can’t.
In response to another comment. See in context »There is no reply option to your last comment so I am doing it here.
ALL laws are a restrictions on individual and business liberties. They are enacted to resolve on going or systemic conflicts.
What should happen, in your view, to the black man who sits at the lunch counter at the whites-only establishment. Seriously, what is the next step in the scenario? At some point the government has to get involved to maintain a civilized society. Play it out… private businesses do not exist in a vacuum but as part of a community that has LAWS. They have to abide by those laws.
In response to another comment. See in context »Put another way, what if the State said the murder of a particular race was ok? Feds still powerless?
[...] Many persons are inclined to be charitable, attributing his statements to the rigidity of Libertarianism and not to ill motives on the part of Mr. Paul. This bit from Jamelle Bouie is an example: Paul claims that he isn’t a racist and abhors discrimination, and I completely believe him. But th… [...]
Mr. Bouie,
Mr. Paul is a racist because he panders to racism. What he thinks in his mind or feels in his heart is beside the point. Sen. Strom Thurmond loved and cared for his only child, who happened to be Black. However he was was complete and total racist in every way that matters in this world. If Mr. Pauls says that private businesses doing business in the public arena should be allowed to discriminate based on race, that is racist.
Again, I don’t have enough to say that the man has animus towards people of color, so I’m not going to.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] Rand Paul fails epically on the Rachel Maddow Show – Jamelle Bouie – United States of Ja… [...]
Paul’s an awkward communicator. His success is entirely predicated on his ability to give straight answers, and once you take that away you get the present trainwreck.
If we give corporations personhood (and we ‘get out of their business’), this is what we end up with: irresponsible behavior with no recrimination. This is sooooo 19th century.
Lets not allow ourselves – being people of goodwill – to be pulled into answering the question of “Is Rand Paul a racist?”, because that question is both unimportant and left to him to answer; let us weigh his response.
Let us turn toward the more important question: “Is Rand Paul worthy of being a member of the Senate of the United States of America”?
No, he is not.
For Paul to posit that he would have wanted more discussion on that one title of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – is for Paul to state that he has no understanding of the state of the nation in 1964.
Paul stated – indirectly – that he had no idea that Reconstruction ended in 1877 and that for the succeeding eight-plus decades, the absence of the federal government in any and all transactions across every state of our union is exactly what happened.
Rather than white people deciding not to frequent establishments that had signs out front stating starkly: “Whites Only”, they waltzed through those doors in droves. They cheered when Babe Ruth feasted on non-black pitching and they threatened Henry Aaron with death for simply being a better home run hitter than Ruth; crossing past the Babe and taking the home run crown in 1974.
I think Paul would have been nearly ten years old then. So he knows that Aaron was treated horribly by racists, those who longed for the purity of baseball without black players.
He knows that world; he was born into a segregated Texas and he has lived his whole life in states of the former Confederacy.
His comments – beyond just what he sad on the Rachel Maddow show, but also on NPR and to the editorial board of the Louisville Courier-Journal (a paper that has printed continuously since 1868) – have shown us the ignorance, the lack of curiosity to the world about him, that Paul brings to his Senate campaign.
He is not prepared to join the Senate.